Page 43 of The Stud Next Door (Frisky Business 3)
My hair is longer than it’s been in years, so I made the innocent mistake of complaining about it, among a litany of other tedious to-do items I haven’t gotten around to yet, like getting my oil changed, updating my voter status, researching new dishwashers. As a single dad with a full-time job and very few free moments to myself, it’s hard to summon up the energy to do even the easiest of tasks. So when Jessa offered to trim my hair for me, a job I’d normally assign to a professional, I couldn’t think of a good reason to say no.
Now, I can think of a few.
“Remind me how many times you’ve cut another person’s hair?” As hard as I try to mask it, my voice gives away just how nervous I am. I can’t go into work looking like I put my head in the blender.
Jessa’s eyes meet mine in the bathroom mirror, where I’m fixed like a petrified gargoyle on a stool with a gray towel draped around my shoulders. She goes back to focusing her attention on measuring the hair on either side of my head.
Even in this bright fluorescent lighting, she’s beautiful. Watching her at work is always captivating, but having those blue eyes zeroed in on me? It stirs a little excitement in my core. Or maybe that’s my nerves, seeing as I might not make it out of this night in one piece.
“Hundreds of times,” she says with a confident nod. “Short cuts like yours too. Comes with the territory of being the big sister of a lot of boys who go from buzz cut to Bieber in, like, a week. Why? Are you scared or something?”
“Scared, no. Contemplating my escape? Yes.”
Jessa swats me playfully, except she uses the hand with the scissors to do so.
I flinch reflexively. “Cool it, Edward Scissorhands.”
“Sorry.” She giggles, pressing a kiss to my cheek. “I promise I won’t snip you.”
“You can snip. Just no buzz cuts.”
“Please. You’d look good with or without hair. I’m just going to trim it all down so it’s not in your eyes as much. Less bunching up around your ears too. Do you trust me?” Her smile is as contagious as it is calming.
“Yes.”
Snip, snip. Snip.
As Jessa begins to shape the mop on my head, I close my eyes, focusing on the sensation of her fingertips combing through my damp hair. It’s a comforting feeling, knowing you’re in good hands. And Jessa’s hands have a magical, soothing effect on me. I’m beginning to doze when her voice draws me back.
“You just have the one sibling, right?”
I blink open my eyes lazily. “Yeah, it’s just me and Penelope.”
“She’s really nice. I like her. It’s a relief, honestly—she treats me like she’s known me longer than six weeks.”
“That’s my sister for you. All she wants is for everyone within a mile radius of her to be happy. She’s kind of a people pleaser in that way.”
Using two fingers, Jessa lines up a few uneven strands along the side of my head and straightens them with a single confident snip. “Is that a bad thing?”
“No,” I murmur, shrugging, and Jessa gives me a warning look as if to say didn’t I ask you to sit still? Must be the big sister in her coming out. “Not with Wolfie there to look out for her and make sure she’s taking care of herself too. How about you? What are your siblings like?”
“Oh wow, where to begin? There are six of us, to start.”
“Geez. Six.” My eyes widen. “That must have been a lot.”
“Mm-hmm. Three girls and three boys. Me and Taylor and my little brother are my mom’s kids from her first marriage. The twins and little Cara are from her second marriage.”
I sense there’s a story there that Jessa isn’t telling me. But as curious as I am, I ultimately make the call not to pry. If she wants to tell me, she will.
“That’s quite the family.”
She quirks an eyebrow and lets out a humorless laugh. “No kidding. I love them all to death, don’t get me wrong, even when they’re being total assholes. But when I was at home, it was like . . . I don’t know.”
She shakes her head, her mouth twisted into a frown. “I couldn’t be myself. I was too busy making sure that no one was eating glue or stepping into traffic. Money was really tight for a while there, so my mom and stepdad were working full-time jobs at all sorts of odd hours to pay for, well, the six kids between them. So there was an unspoken expectation that I was the backup plan, the perpetual babysitter.”
“That must have been really hard.”
She smiles, relief written all over her features. “You can imagine how nice it was to leave and go to college. Coming home for the summers to help with the kids wasn’t a walk in the park exactly, but it beat being on call twenty-four/seven. Can you tip your chin down?”
