The Misconception (13 page)

Chapter 9

Ryan Caminetti stopped at the door of The Cutting Edge and peered through the glass window. A half-dozen beauticians cut, combed and styled the hair of the clients sitting in front of them. But only one of them interested Ryan.

Tracy Dalrymple Caminetti. His wife.

He still thought of her that way even though she’d been his wife in name only for almost as long as they’d had a real marriage. He’d had just fourteen months with her before she walked out. For all he knew, she didn’t even use his surname any more.

She was wearing one of those cute little get-ups she always dressed in for work. A lime-green T-shirt hugged the breasts that could drive him wild and bared a sliver of the satiny-smooth skin at her midriff. Royal-blue bicycle shorts hugged the long, lean legs that used to wrap around him when they made love. Lime-green high-tops completed the picture. He used to tease her about having a Hairstyle of the Month, and this month’s flavor was long, tight curls that made her look a sexy Shirley Temple.

She laughed at something somebody in the shop said, throwing her head back so her curls bounced. He couldn’t hear her through the door, but knew her laugh sounded like the tinkling of the crystals on a wind chime. He used to try to think up funny things to say just so he could hear that laugh.

Damn, he loved her. He always had, and he’d recently accepted that he always would. Nine months of separation hadn’t dimmed that feeling. All it had done was make him want her more.

He had to stop himself from throwing open the door, striding across the shop and hauling her into his arms so he could kiss her senseless until she no longer cared whether or not she trusted him.

But he couldn’t do that. If he did, his victory would be built on rocky ground that wouldn’t allow anything, least of all trust, to take root. If the past nine months had taught him anything, it was that a marriage without trust could never survive.

It wasn’t her forgiveness he wanted. Until she trusted him again, trusted him completely, he couldn’t ask her to give their marriage another go. He couldn’t kiss her. He probably shouldn’t even touch her.

He could, however, make damn sure he didn’t give her up without a fight. Even if it were a sneak attack, sort of like the soldier who infiltrated the enemy camp in the dead of night. Only Tracy wasn’t the enemy: Her lack of faith in him was.

He forcefully wiped out the desire he knew was on his face. If he let Tracy see the desire, he’d lose the battle before it was fought. Taking a deep breath, he pushed open the door.

Incessant chatter, the whir of hair dryers and the smell of chemicals assaulted him, freezing his feet in place just inside the salon. Mirrors lined the establishment, making it seem as though there were twice as many rows of chairs as there actually were. Making it seem as though there were two delectable Tracys instead of one.

Her expression was animated as she talked to the teenage boy in the chair, her quick fingers teasing a line of dyed-purple hair skyward into a mohawk.

He saw a flash of something shiny on her left hand as she worked and realized, with a jolt of pleasure, that it was her wedding ring. If she hadn’t taken off the ring he’d put on her finger, he refused to believe that all hope was lost.

Something, a sixth sense perhaps, made Tracy pause. Then both her faces, the one belonging to the living, breathing woman and that of her mirrored image, turned toward him. Ryan focused on just one of them. The real thing, he thought as his heart stampeded in his chest.

Her green eyes went saucer-wide. Her sensuous mouth hung open, revealing the adorable little gap between her front teeth. The comb dropped from her fingers, wedging in the teenager’s mohawk.

“Ryan.” She croaked out his name, telling him she hadn’t been expecting him. His spirits fell. He’d made an appointment in the hopes that she’d see his name and start thinking about him, start remembering how very much she’d once loved him.

“Hi, Trace.” He greeted her as though it were a few hours instead of endless months since he’d last seen her. Smiling wasn’t a problem, because it was so damn good to be in the same room with her again.

She leaned down and said something to the boy in the chair, who was trying to extract the comb from his mohawk, and made her way over to where he was standing. She was tall for a woman, just a few inches shorter than he was, another thing he’d always liked about her. She stopped well shy of him, being careful, he supposed, not to touch him.

“What are you doing here, Ryan? You and I have nothing to talk about.” She was trying to sound stern, but she was nervously biting her lip while her voice shook, giving Ryan hope.

“I came here to get my hair cut.” If he told her why he was really here, she’d give him no more chance to explain than when she’d seen him at the hotel with that woman.

“There are a lot of hairdressers in Northern Virginia.”

“The only one of them who cuts my hair the way I like it is you.” Ryan forced himself to sound nonchalant. “I haven’t had a decent haircut since you left me.”

“Since you drove me away, you mean.”

It took willpower not to respond to that, but Ryan managed it. Just barely. “Come on, Trace. I need a haircut. You’re a hairdresser. I even made an appointment. Surely you’re not afraid to cut my hair.”

She rose to the bait, just as he knew she would. His Tracy was nothing if not courageous. “Of course I’m not afraid.”

“Then I’ll take a seat and wait until you’re done with the purple Geronimo.” He flashed a smile and sat down before she could reply, picking up a magazine and pretending to leaf through it.

Tracy glanced back at him when she returned to her station, noting that the real Ryan was even more gorgeous than the one in her daydreams. He wore a long-sleeved denim shirt that made him look virile and, combined with the five o’clock shadow on his jaw, a little dangerous. She dragged her eyes from him, then immediately let them drift back again. Because it just registered that he was holding a copy of
Cosmopolitan
. Cosmo? For a man who worked as a housing contractor and subscribed to
Field and Stream
?

“Who does he think he’s fooling?” she muttered in a low voice. She picked up a comb from her work area and vigorously dragged it through the boy’s grape mohawk.

“Ow!” the boy yelped. His troubled eyes met hers in the mirror. “You really think I look foolish?”

“Sorry.” Tracy patted him on the side of his shaved head. “I didn’t say you looked foolish. I said that purple hair won’t be fooling anyone.”

“No joke. Anybody who thinks purple hair grows out of my scalp would be pretty lame, huh?”

“Yeah,” Tracy agreed. She spent an inordinate amount of time putting the finishing touches on the mohawk, more to avoid dealing with Ryan than because she thought she could make the grape concoction look any better.

She simply didn’t believe that Ryan was here simply to get his haircut. Maybe he’d beg for forgiveness and ask if she’d forget about the divorce and move back home with him.

Maybe he was going to turn on the lights and banish the nightmare the past nine months had been.

By the time she finished with her customer and asked Luanne, the shampoo girl, to wash Ryan’s hair, Tracy’s hands were trembling. She’d been so angry and hurt when she saw him cheating on her that she hadn’t thought she could ever forgive him.

But now, after so many months of missing him, of craving him, she wasn’t sure what she would do if he wanted her back. She knew the precise moment Luanne finished washing his hair, but she didn’t trust herself to watch him walk across the room toward her. She knew, even without looking, he’d be the first customer she thought looked sexy in wet hair and a maroon cape. Then he sat down, and she couldn’t avoid looking at him any longer.

“What do you want done today?” She tried the breezy tone she used with all her customers, but her voice cracked, ruining the effect.

His dark, dark eyes met hers in the mirror, and she remembered the first time she’d seen him. She’d been sitting alone at a table in a sundae shop, reveling in the taste of chocolate fudge, when she spotted him staring at her from across the room. He hadn’t released her gaze, just picked up his own sundae, walked deliberately to her booth and sat down across from her.

“You know what I want,” he said now.

Her breath hitched. She was right. He wanted her back. Because it had been easier that way, she’d tried to convince herself that the long months of silence meant he no longer loved her. But he’d simply been giving her time to forgive him. Could she? Would she?

“You’ve cut my hair enough times,” he added.

“What?”

“Don’t tell me you forgot. Short on the sides, longer in the back. I’m not like you, Trace. I don’t change hairstyles month to month.” He paused, pinned her with those eyes. “Is something wrong?”

“Of course not. Nothing’s wrong. What could be wrong?” Mortification spread through Tracy as she picked up a pair of scissors. He wanted a haircut. Just a haircut. He didn’t want her, after all. She forced herself to be professional, but touching the wet warmth of his scalp was sweet torture. His hair was so silky that running her fingers through it had been another one of the sensual pleasures of living with him. She snipped, because it was expected of her, but wasn’t sure whether she’d made the cut in the right place.

“So, how’ve you been?” he asked.

How had she been? Desperately trying to convince herself she wasn’t miserable without him.

“Great,” she said brightly, snipping again and again. “Just great. And yourself?”

“A little lonely, but getting by.”

“Lonely? You?” Snip, snip. “I find that hard to believe.”

“You always did have trouble believing in me.” Before she could argue, pointing out it was difficult to believe in your husband when he was making out with a stacked blonde who looked like a Barbie doll, he continued. “But you’ve made it clear you don’t want to talk about that. So let’s talk about you instead. There must be something new in your life in the past eight months.”

“Nine.” She lifted a hank of his hair and snipped it off. “It’s been nine months.”

He smiled, and his eyes crinkled at the corners in that way that never failed to charm her. “It’s been nine months since we separated but eight months since I’ve seen you. Anything new since then?”

Was he asking if she had a new boyfriend? Is that what he wanted to know? “Like what?”

“Like your acting. Are you doing any community theater?”

She could answer that. “There’s a new company in Arlington called the Put Up With Us Players. We’re doing an experimental play that opens in a couple of months.”

He nodded, as though filing away the information. “You’ll have to let me know when. I’ll check it out.”

“You might not want to.” She panicked at the thought of him in the audience watching her, the way he was watching her in the mirror. “It’s a little weird.”

“I can handle weird.” A corner of his mouth lifted. “Anything else new?”

“I’m taking some college courses at Kennedy toward a degree in anthropology,” she said, just for something to say.

“You are? Why?”

“Do you think I want to be a hairdresser all my life?” she asked, repeating the question Marietta often asked her.

“Yes,” he said, nodding.

She cut off a piece too close to his scalp. “Don’t move your head,” she warned.

“Yes,” he repeated. “You love being a hairdresser. There’s nothing wrong with being a hairdresser.”

“There’s nothing wrong with having goals in life, either.” That was another thing Marietta often told her.

“Then open your own shop. Forgive me for being blunt, Trace, but this anthropology thing sounds more like Marietta than you. You shouldn’t let her talk you into something you don’t want to do.”

“I don’t let her talk me into things,” she snapped, snipping.

“Yeah, you do. I know she loves you, but she has a weird way of looking at the world. You should take that into account when she’s giving you advice. Especially when it’s about relationships.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”