Total pages in book: 146
Estimated words: 141951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 710(@200wpm)___ 568(@250wpm)___ 473(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 141951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 710(@200wpm)___ 568(@250wpm)___ 473(@300wpm)
Adding the decorations in the place to her choice in clothing, and he had to wonder if the woman had a favorite holiday.
“I am—”
“Being wonderful,” Lucas interjected, making Delaney’s lips curve into the prettiest smile. Those dark eyes of hers skirted to his fast before darting back to the woman behind him, but nothing came out of that candy mouth of hers. She couldn’t quite hide the slight pink coloring the apples of her cheeks. “I’m grateful she fit me in.”
“Me, too,” Linda replied, her reflection winking.
Delaney moved around the chair, a hand gesturing at her boss all the while. “Thank you, I’ve got this.”
“Mmhmm. Mr. Dalton—”
“Lucas,” he told Linda.
It only seemed fair that—after everything the woman had helped him with here—he let her call him by his first name. Professionalism and privacy kept Lucas maintaining a wall between the person he allowed the public to see and the man who went home to a quiet, dark apartment every night. Almost always alone, now. It became something he could bank on. There was comfort in familiarity, after all.
Lucas wished he didn’t lean so hard into it, though.
“Lucas,” the woman echoed, nodding, “would you like a drink—coffee, tea, water?”
“I just came from brunch, actually. I’m good for the moment.”
“Great. Call over if you need something,” Linda said, spinning on her ankle-high wedge boots. She even waved her fingers over her shoulder as she went.
Delaney laughed under her breath as she pulled a clean cape and rolled towel from the shelves next to her workstation. She came to stand behind Lucas at the chair so they both faced each other’s reflections in the mirror. “She’s something else, that one.”
“I like her,” he noted.
“Oh?”
“She’s helpful. Kind, too.”
“She is definitely both of those things,” Delaney said, and her grin softened a bit at the kind comment. She went ahead and fit the towel around his neck before also covering him with the cape and securing it on tight, too. “I would think someone who knows about being kind might recognize it in others, though.”
Lucas, distracted with the way Delaney’s one hand came to rest on the top of his shoulder while her other swept through the hair at the top of his head, didn’t see where the conversation had headed. He enjoyed the way her fingertips squeezed tenderly, barely there at all, around tense muscles. Could she feel that—his stress? It weighed there and, in his neck, more than anywhere else. Not even a weekly massage helped to work it all out. He tried.
He couldn’t pretend like the tension seemingly forever knotted into his body didn’t melt away a little at her touch. Even seconds of relief were welcomed.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“Kind people …”
“What about them?”
“Well, you.”
Lucas’ gaze snapped up to meet hers in the mirror.
Delaney shrugged. “Thank you for what you did. Paying for my chair rental, I mean. You didn’t have to—”
“I didn’t really think of that as a kind thing to do. The right thing, maybe.”
He’d not been able to stick around very long after his last appointment, but he had been able to see a vibrant young woman turn into a terrified, crying statue at the sight of a few sparks and a bit of plastic-smelling smoke.
Terribly, truly.
Even though he hadn’t been able to forget about it, Lucas didn’t think it was also his right to ask what brought on the reaction despite Linda’s comment to the peanut gallery about a fire and whatever else. So, he didn’t ask that day, but he had called the salon later in the day to check up on Delaney and offer to mail a check to cover her chair rental when Linda mentioned Delaney had taken a few days off.
“I try to be mindful about that sort of thing, but sometimes I just do it and never see it for what it is,” Lucas muttered, more to himself than the woman standing behind the chair.
“Of—”
“Kindness,” he filled in quickly. “Or of being kind. I forget sometimes, or I’ll do something and remember there’s a reason I try to wake up and choose kindness.”
“I don’t think you have to try, really,” Delaney replied. “You smile, and it radiates.”
Why couldn’t he see that in himself, then? Too busy seeing someone else, his thoughts quickly filled in. The self-awareness served to do nothing but make Lucas quiet in the chair as Delaney began her work.
She didn’t notice the somber change within Lucas, either.
He didn’t mind.
“Same as before?” she asked, her dainty features lighting up.
“Same as before, please.”
“No fade.” Delaney patted his shoulders and smiled big. “Let’s get to work.”
Lucas found peace in watching someone else work. Especially if their job took a skill he had never mastered. Not that trips to a hairdresser had been a particularly fun day in his past—simply an appointment he tried to keep up, despite never finding a barber he cared to visit more than twice—but it was a different beast for him to sit still while Delaney circled his prone form in the chair again and again.