Page 24 of SEAL'S Baby Surprise
I’m not sure what I’d had in mind when I’d tried to leave last night. His scent surrounds me. It’s a heady mixture of masculinecologne, laundry soap, and salt water. There’s even a little bit of doggy odor. Probably because Ark likes to sleep with people.
I get bored with the movie I’m watching. It’s some kind of stupid sit-com with fairy tales. Really? Who believes in that stuff anyway?
I start channel surfing. Weather predictions — sunny. Surfing conditions, red tide locations, cooking show — ew! Someone else can do that.
I watch two minutes of a fashion show and realize it’s in drag. Fine for whomever, but not my bag. It is coming up on eleven o’clock.
As the chronometer on Austin’s headboard ticks over to the hour, the television blares, “News flash! Lovely bride gone missing!” The talking head goes on to describe the missing woman.
A photograph flashes up on the screen, of a sweet-faced girl in theatrical makeup.
Oh no.
Oh no, no, no.
That’s me.
I panic! He’ll know! He’ll see, and he’ll hate me for being a rich society girl, or for running off. Or Jason will see me and make me go back. What was the most memorable part? Pink. Pink hair. Long, pink hair.
Austin hasn’t seen this. Maybe he won’t know. He’s seen the hair. Oh, God! What am I going to do about the hair?
I start going through drawers until I find a big pair of sewing shears. I grab a big handful of hair and cut it off. Pink! Pink, almost all the way down. I cut off more of it. More pink. Then more, and more, and more.
I have just hacked off the last bit of pink, when Austin comes in.
“Lee?” he asks. “What in the world did you do to your hair?”
“I cut it off!” I hiss at him, waving the scissors. “Pink, pink, pink…I cut off all the pink. I’m not a pink girl anymore, I’m not!”
I realize a little too late that I’m practically screeching, and I sound more than just a little bit crazy.
“Shhh, shhh,” Austin tries to sooth me. “Easy, Lee. Just take it easy.” He catches the hand with the scissors. “Just let me have the sharp things, all right? I think you’ve done enough cutting. What was wrong with your hair?”
“They’ll see me. They’ll see the pink, and they’ll make me go back. I won’t! I won’t go back. I won’t marry him. I won’t!”
“Whoa up there, sweetheart,” Austin says gently. “This isn’t the Middle Ages. Nobody can make you marry anybody unless you want to. You cut off your hair to keep from being recognized?”
I nod. He understands. Austin understands a lot of things that no one else does. “I can’t be the pink girl anymore. She’s got to go away, just disappear.”
“Going off the grid can be kinda hard,” Austin says. “You gotta have an ID for just about everything, including getting a job.”
“Can I work for you?” I ask.
“Oh, my mermaid, my lady of the sea, I’d let you in a minute if I had any work you could do. But I’m kind of a one-man show. I’deven pay you cash so you wouldn’t have to have identification to buy stuff. But let’s let that ride for a minute. Let’s get you cleaned up before Julia comes home so you don’t scare her.”
At that, I burst into tears. I like Julia, and I don’t want to scare her. She’s sweet and cute and smart.
“Easy, easy, now,” Austin says. And he lifts me up and sets me on the kitchen counter. Me, the girl Jason had always called the “chunky monkey” and other things that were supposed to be endearments, but maybe weren’t quite so nice. “Let’s look at you. You’ve got a good shape to your head, I think we can make you look real sharp, kind of like G.I. Jane. Whadaya say?”
I try to blink the tears out of my eyes and calm down a little. “Okay. I guess I cut it a little short?”
Austin chuckles, but it’s a nice chuckle like he’s laughing with me, not at me. “Just a little bit. But I’ll get out my clippers, and we’ll get you fixed up right away.”
Austin hauls me outside and sets me down on a little stool. He brings his personal kit along with him, and he takes what looks like dog clippers out of it.
He looks at my hair, then he looks in the bag, and he puts a thing that looks kind of like a rake on the end of the clippers. “I’ll have to use the shortest guide,” he says. “Some places you cut it right down to the scalp.”
“Had to get the pink off,” I say.
