“Absent. No longer here. Not someone I’ll be seeing today.”
“Honey, that man loves you. He—”
“He hates Cutter, whom I’m still marrying. I won’t be in the middle of their vendetta anymore.” It wasn’t a total lie…but it was definitely misdirection. “I’m putting him out of my head, the same way I’m sure he’s put me out of his.”
At least she hoped he was focused on Montilla and not spending any of his energy worrying about her.
“All right.” Rayleigh didn’t look like she believed a word, but she didn’t argue anymore. “I’ll have Joy call the first person on the list. Your ten a.m. isn’t here yet. Do you want to take this time to make a statement to the press? If you do, it’s possible these folks will leave.”
Brea didn’t want to…but she understood Rayleigh’s point. “I’ll make a brief one.”
With that, Brea stopped into the back room, tucked her purse away, applied a tinted lip balm, then took a deep breath. She had to be convincing. Her life—and her baby’s—might depend on it.
The moment she walked around the partition, she saw the crowd had grown in the last few minutes. Rayleigh was trying to shoo and wrangle them out the door. Most simply ignored her and shouted questions.
Brea grabbed the step stool Joy kept behind the counter so that all five-feet-nothing of her could reach the top shelf of the products they sold, climbed on the top rung, and cleared her throat.
Instantly, the room fell silent. “I’m Brea Bell and I’ll be making this one and only statement. I won’t be taking any questions afterward, so please listen carefully. As you know, Cutter Bryant is my fiancé. We’ve already discussed his recent time in California protecting Shealyn West. I know the story beyond the salacious gossip and I’m satisfied with his explanation. We will be pressing forward with our wedding. We hope you understand our desire for privacy as we look forward to our future. That’s all.”
En masse, the reporters started shouting questions—all prying, indelicate, and as titillatingly phrased as possible. Brea ignored them when her first appointment of the day squeezed through the door with a confused frown. “What’s going on here?”
Brea glared at the tabloid press with disdain. “Nothing important, Marcie. Go on back and we’ll talk about what you’d like to do with your hair.”
The forty-something woman nodded, then inched through the throng before finally making her way behind the partition to the empty salon.
Satisfied that her client was no worse for the wear, she addressed the press again. “If you don’t have an appointment today, you’ll need to wait outside. If anyone is unwilling to do that, we’ll be forced to call the sheriff.”
Then Brea stepped off the stool, folded it up, propped it back in the corner, and disappeared behind the partition.
Thankfully, most of the rest of the day was far less dramatic. After the press camped outside, clients came and went, most offering her a smile, a sympathetic ear, or an encouraging pep talk. They expressed excitement that she and Cutter were finally getting married and having a baby. Some even asked if they could help.
Today had proven folks in Sunset had bigger hearts than she’d thought, and she felt almost sheepish that she’d imagined differently.
At least until five o’clock. Then Theresa Wood arrived, all scrutinizing green eyes and gray roots concealed by an updo that showed off her faux platinum ends. Brea sighed. She’d always suspected the woman didn’t like her. Why the divorcée continued to make appointments with her, given their mutually unspoken enmity, was anyone’s guess.
“How are you today, Mrs. Wood?”
The fiftyish woman leaned around the partition to stare out the plate-glass windows at the reporters clogging the sidewalk, then turned back to her with a judgmental smirk. “A damn sight better than you, I’d say.”
Brea pasted on a smile like she didn’t have a care in the world as she dismantled the woman’s updo. No way would she let Mrs. Wood dig those artificial claws into her hide. “I’m fine, thanks for asking. Your roots definitely need attention. Let’s head on over to the shampoo bowl. I think you need a good clarifying shampoo before we get started.”
The older woman made her way to an empty chair and plopped down. “How are you coping with this mess, girl? I know you’re not used to being quite so…popular. And now to hear that your man has been cheating? You poor thing.”
Maybe Mrs. Wood was being genuine…but her tone didn’t sound that way.
Brea tried not to grit her teeth as she wet the woman’s wiry hair and lathered it up. “Not at all. Cutter and I are closer than ever. Wedding plans are chugging along. I’ll be having this baby next year. Life couldn’t be grander.”
“I told those silly reporters as much when they accosted me outside of Jasmine’s after my grocery shopping on Sunday afternoon, asking a million questions about y’all.”
“Oh?” Brea rinsed the suds from the woman’s hair and tried not to lose her cool.
“Yeah, they seemed all kinds of interested in how happy you were, how close you were. I was surprised they didn’t ask me a thing about the baby.” She raised a platinum brow, her smile just shy of superior. “So I made sure they knew about it.”
This old viper had speculated to the press about her pregnancy? Blabbed it without any proof, then preached it like gospel?
Rayleigh whirled around from her nearby station and pinned the older woman with a glare. “Why would you have done that, Theresa? You didn’t know for certain Brea was pregnant.”
The woman scoffed. “Of course I did. When I was in here six weeks ago for my last touch-up, the poor girl looked positively green. She all but ran to the bathroom. I had to use the facilities after her, and given the stench it seemed fairly obvious she’d been vomiting. I just
