Picket Fence Promises. Kathryn Springer

tried to ignore Alex but it wasn’t easy. Especially when he jumped up and prowled over to the chair. Jill’s eyes got so wide I was afraid they were going to roll out of her head.

      “Wait a second. You’re telling her what to do?” He leaned over until he was eye to eye with Jill, who shrunk farther into the chair.

      “Alex!” I snapped out his name but he ignored me.

      “Yes…” Jill obviously thought it was a trick question.

      Alex looked at me and shook his head. “They have no idea, do they?” he muttered.

      “You’re not helping,” I said through gritted teeth. “Have some more coffee.”

      “Tell Bernice to cut your hair the way she sees it,” Alex said.

      I stepped on his foot, wishing that I’d worn my one pair of stilettos, an impractical impulse buy that lurked in the back of my closet but I didn’t have the heart to part with. “Alex, Jill just wants a trim.”

      “What do you mean, the way she sees it?” Jill was confused but willing to be enlightened.

      “You aren’t supposed to tell her how to cut your hair—she’s supposed to tell you how your hair should be cut.”

      “She is?” Jill glanced at me. “You are?”

      “Jill, I’ll cut it any way you want me to.”

      Alex said something under his breath that made Jill gasp again but she swallowed bravely. “Go ahead.”

      “Jill…”

      “I mean it, Bernice. Do whatever you think you should.”

      Alex grinned and stalked back to the row of chairs. “My work here is done.”

      The work of messing up my entire day? And he was willing to do it for free. How sweet.

      An hour and a half later Jill was staring at her reflection in the mirror, touching the ends of her hair with shaky fingertips. Every four to six weeks for the past ten years I’d been trimming a conservative inch off Jill Cabott’s puddle-brown blunt cut, knowing that the style was hopelessly outdated and didn’t show off her features to their full advantage. I had to admit that I went a little crazy with the unexpected power I’d been given.

      “I…Old Dan is going to faint when he sees me,” Jill whispered.

      Old Dan is Jill’s husband and he isn’t that old. Unfortunately, his firstborn son was named after him and to differentiate between the two, they had to split into Old Dan and Young Dan. People should really think these things through in advance, if you ask me.

      “He’s going to buy you roses and take you out for dinner,” Alex, the eavesdropper, said.

      “I’m sending this bottle of gel home with you…” The tears in Jill’s eyes stopped me cold. “Jill, I’m sorry. What can I do? Do you want me to take the highlights out?”

      “No, I love it. I look…like I always wanted to.” In a daze, she wrote me a check with a tip big enough to pay my monthly cable bill. She even gave Alex a timid smile as she walked out the door. Oh no, his first convert.

      “Thanks a lot.” I grabbed the broom and started to sweep the floor, resisting the urge to use it to chase him down Main Street.

      “Do these people know anything about you, Bernice?”

      “They know what I want them to know.”

      “I get it. You’d rather pretend that all you know how to do is follow directions. If they knew who you are, what you can do, it would wreck your whole small-town beautician persona, wouldn’t it? You might not feel like you fit in after all.”

      Without knowing it, Alex ripped a Band-Aid off a wound I’d been trying to keep covered for years. I knew I didn’t fit in with Prichett. All the years I’d lived and worked here and no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t blend in with the natives. But why did Alex have to see it? And why did he feel the need to point it out?

      “Don’t even think you know me. That was twenty years ago. We were practically kids when we met. Don’t think for a minute I’m still the same person.”

      “You haven’t changed that much.” He actually had the nerve to laugh. “You still aren’t afraid to tell me what you think.”

      “Somebody has to. Honestly, just because people are gorgeous and have money doesn’t mean they shouldn’t get yelled at once in a while.” I absolutely wasn’t going to smile.

      “Bern…why aren’t you married with ten kids?”

      My heart stalled suddenly. Alex was still standing five feet away from me but suddenly he felt much closer. It astounded me that he could even ask the question—I mean, was his eyesight that bad? My looks were as plain as my name.

      Since I couldn’t tell him the truth, I gave him the grim statistics instead.

      “If you must know, Prichett has a population of less than two thousand people and out of that number there are only six eligible men. Out of those six eligible men, four of them are afraid of me and the other two are forty-year-old brothers who still live with their mama.”

      “Afraid of you?”

      “There are totally unfounded rumors that I’m…difficult.”

      “No kidding?” Alex stretched and rubbed the back of his neck with one hand. I immediately focused on the coffeepot instead of the expanse of tanned abdomen that he’d uncovered with that casual movement. Alex really was a health hazard. “Hard to imagine. So, are we on for dinner tonight?”

      “I have a PAC meeting.” Yes. Finally a reason for its existence.

      At Alex’s blank look, I filled him in. “The Prichett Advancement Council. Don’t laugh.”

      “Not in a million years. But just to warn you, I’m not leaving town until you have dinner with me so the more excuses you come up with, the longer I’ll be here.”

      My ten o’clock appointments—the Graley sisters—were crossing the street. I couldn’t take the risk that Alex would say the same thing to them that he’d said to Jill. As it was, I couldn’t imagine what kind of fallout there would be when people saw her new look. I figured I might have to beg for a job at the Buzz and Blade.