“Emma?” Nina smiled, relaxing a little. “She’s with her father this weekend.” Well that explained it. Rachel listened to Nina talk about her date-an Illinois congressman. That was a step up from a corporate lawyer, wasn’t it? Nina’s eyes seemed to ask. Rachel didn’t say anything, she just led her client over to the dryer and handed her a stack of magazines.
“Okay, I’ll be back in ten minutes. You stay here and get conditioned.” Rachel smiled and turned the blower on, raising her voice so Nina could hear her. “Your hair will look ten years younger when the heat treatment’s done.”
“Ten years?” Nina touched the plastic cap tentatively. “Can we do twenty? Then Emma and I could be twins.”
Rachel laughed, setting a timer for ten minutes and putting it on the counter behind Nina. “If I could do twenty, I’d be a magician, not a hairdresser.”
“I’m sentimental about hair, I admit.” Nina flipped through the magazines, choosing a People with a smiling Brad and Angelina on the cover. “I haven’t let Emma cut her hair since she was ten.”
“It must be very long.” Rachel swallowed, remembering that a decidedly less hirsute Emma and her father were waiting for her to return.
“It’s gorgeous.” Nina flipped the magazine open, situating herself in the chair.
“She wanted to get it cut for some charity. I told her I’d write them a ten-thousand dollar check before I let her cut her hair.”
“I’ll be back in ten minutes,” Rachel said faintly, really realizing for the first time just how big of a deal it was going to be when this woman found out what she’d done to her daughter’s hair. Maybe she won’t have to know it was me personally, Rachel thought as she swept past the stations and rounded the corner. Then she saw Emma, sitting back in the chair, laughing at something her father had said.
You’re a coward, Rachel Lange.
She was. Here was this young girl who had given up her mane of beauty as a sacrifice for a friend, who was going to have to face Nina Malden at the breakfast table every day with that fact, and Rachel was worried about one little confrontation with the woman?
She touched her wig, checking the adhesive-she did this obsessively all day long-and put on a professional smile. “Are you ready to get your style on?” Emma’s returning smile was radiant, making her even more beautiful, and Rachel got to work, spraying her hair down to wet it and picking up her scissors. The girl’s hair was a joy to cut, thick and healthy and truly, as her mother had remarked, just gorgeous.
“I bet you feel lighter,” Rachel remarked.
“Loads. For so many reasons,” Emma agreed, glancing over at her father. He sat back in the stylist chair, arms crossed, just smiling. Rachel wondered if he was gloating, if this was some sort of payback to his wife. Ex-wife, she reminded herself.
“Your mother is going to kill me,” Jake said, crossing one very expensive Prada shoe over the other as he watched more of his daughter’s hair fall to the floor. “But I’m pretty sure my life insurance is all paid up, so you’re set, Em.”
“Very funny.” Emma rolled her eyes. “I’m almost seventeen. It’s my hair. It’s my life.”
“In theory, that is correct.” Jake grinned and looked at Rachel. “Hey, I bet you know my wife. She comes in here to get her hair done.”
“Really?” Rachel’s scissors only stopped for a moment before she decided to continue to play dumb. “What’s her name?”
“Nina,” Emma piped up, holding her head straighter when Rachel gently tilted her chin.
“Same last name?” If she was going to play dumb, she might as well play really dumb, Rachel decided.
“Yes. Malden,” Emma offered again before her dad could speak.
But Jake was quick to point out, “We’re divorced.” He glanced at his watch and then back at his daughter. “How much longer, do you think?”
“A few more minutes, not long,” Rachel remarked. She was cutting Emma’s bangs.
“Dad, you’re not missing anything.” Emma rolled her eyes again. She was quite good at it, but most teenagers Rachel knew had perfected the gesture. “The game will be on DVR when we get home.”
“But it’s the finals, Em!” Jake looked at his watch again.
Rachel perked up. “Hockey?”
“Yeah.” Jake looked at her speculatively.
“Game one.” Rachel positioned herself in front of Emma, checking the sides of her hair, pulling them forward to see if they were even. “Blackhawks and the Wings.”
“You like hockey?” His voice had changed entirely, Rachel noticed. It had gone from that formal chit-chat tone she heard all day to something more rich and warm, like chocolate.
“Love it,” she agreed, picking up the blow dryer.
“Me too.” Jake looked a little blindsided, like he’d rarely come across a woman who loved hockey before.
Well, she supposed that might have been the case, but she’d grown up with it.
Her father had been a huge hockey fan and she’d gone to all the games with him. It was his one indulgence. He had been Rachel’s whole world, but he’d been gone two years now. Cancer. Ah, life’s little ironies.
Jake’s words brought her out over her reverie. “I’ve got season tickets.”
“Don’t tell me that.” Rachel sighed. “I tried to get tickets to game two. I even went to the scalpers on Craigslist, but no luck.”
“I’m not surprised.” Jake shook his head sadly. “They’ve been sold out for a month.”
“I know-the Blackhawks and the Wings-such a big rivalry.” Rachel turned on the blow dryer and talked over it, using a rounded brush to style Emma’s hair. “They’re two of the original six.”
Jake sat up, looking incredulous. “I know.”
“I think my dad has a death wish,” Emma remarked, a little non sequitur. Rachel gave her a puzzled smile. “He’s a Red Wings fan living in Chicago,” the girl explained.
“And, you know, then he takes me to get my hair cut…” She shrugged in that awkward way teenagers had, so caught somewhere between adult and child, knowing it but not quite sure what to do about it.
“Well, if that’s the case, then you are brave, Mr. Malden,” Rachel teased.
“Jake,” he insisted, shrugging. “And I’m not all that brave.”
“Oh, I don’t know.” Rachel turned off the blow dryer, combing out the girl’s hair.
“I’ve met your wife.”
Jake laughed. “You have a point.”
Rachel grabbed the hand mirror off the counter and turned Emma around in a circle in the chair. “But I have to admit, I’m secretly rooting for the Red Wings myself.”
“Do you have a death wish too?” Emma asked, looking at the back of her hair in the reflection of the hand mirror.
“Hardly.” Rachel swallowed the irony of her response and changed the subject.
“How do you like it?”