Page 14 of One Wild Night
‘Right,’ I say with a sigh. I turn to Kent. ‘Maybe I’ll see you later.’
‘Yeah, maybe,’ he replies as he throws himself back into his work.
‘Dylan, what the hell?’ I say as we make our way back over to Pat’s side of the barn.
‘What?’ he replies, feigning innocence.
‘He was nice and good-looking and fun and he wanted to take me out for a drink,’ I rant.
‘Ooh, alright, calm down,’ Dylan teases. ‘I didn’t realise you had fallen in love in the five minutes you were back there.’
I notice something in his tone. Something I’ve never really heard before.
‘Dylan King, are you jealous?’ I ask him.
I can’t imagine he’s jealous of another man talking to me. It’s more likely that he’s used to being the one who is getting hit on by random people, and here his only choices are Kitty or her mum.
‘No, Pat is just around the corner,’ he tells me quietly. ‘And he wants you.’
My blood runs cold as we pop out in front of Pat. It’s too late for me to do anything now.
‘Nicole, I’m going to need to pull you from your duties,’ Pat tells me. ‘I have a special job, just for you.’
Noooo. I don’t want a special job just for me. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I want to be here, shovelling snow. Strength in numbers, right?
I look to Dylan, hoping he’ll have the magic words to get me out of this mess.
‘Don’t worry, you’ll see him again,’ Pat tells me. ‘Dinner will be served before you know it.’
It hadn’t actually crossed my mind, that I might never see him again, so that’s alarming.
‘Okay,’ I say, because what choice do I have?
‘Smile,’ Pat insists as he leads me back towards the house. ‘This job is indoors.’
And ordinarily I would be into that but, I don’t know, I just have a bad feeling that whatever this special job is, I’m not going to like it.
I guess I’ll find out soon enough.
Chapter 7
‘What’s the matter, don’t you want to look beautiful for Dylan?’ Kitty asks me in an aggressively sarcastic tone.
I don’t know what I was expecting, when Pat said he had a special job for me, but being taken to Kitty’s room to help her with her coursework was the last thing I expected.
It turns out that Kitty wants to be a make-up artist so she is currently in training and, as such, needs models to practice on and take photos of. Pat told me that even though Kitty had been trying things out on her mum, she needed – and I quote – ‘young skin’ for the photos.
I know what you’re thinking, sitting indoors where it is warm, having my make-up done, sounds much better than being outside shovelling snow, but this is Kitty we’re talking about. Not only can she not hide the way she feels about me, which doesn’t make for the friendliest of environments, but it is hard to relax when she’s in my personal space, brandishing tools, some of them millimetres from my eyeballs. My life flashed before my eyes when she came at me with some eyelash curlers.
‘Come on, hold still,’ she insists, losing patience. ‘You’re not exactly a great canvas to work with. Are you sure I can’t shave your eyebrows?’
‘Absolutely not,’ I say for the fifth time.
‘Ugh, fine,’ she moans. ‘But it’s not making my life easy at all.’
I chew my lip for a moment, as Kitty rubs wax through my brows.
‘So, what made you want to be a make-up artist?’ I ask in an attempt to make normal conversation.
