From Texan for the Holidays

  Scarlett looked up from fighting Myra Hammer’s tight perm as the door to the shop opened.  Holy schmoly.  What was a man – especially a man who looked like this one – doing here?  Surely there was a barber shop in Brody’s Crossing where the young and preppy got their hair cut.  Not that she minded looking at six feet of trim, hunky, thirty-something male, dressed in pressed chinos, a blue plaid button-down collar shirt and a brown leather jacket.  His belt matched his polished boots, and his nails appeared clean and trimmed.  She just couldn’t imagine what he wanted in the very pink House of Style.
     “May I help you?” she asked, since Venetia was in the back mixing up color for her client, and Clarissa was off to the café for lunch with “the regulars” as she called her friends.
     “You must be the new stylist,” the hunk said with a smile.  “The one who’s ‘not from around here.’”
     “Yep, that would be me.” 
     “I’m James Brody,” he said, handing her a card from his jacket pocket.  “My office is down the street, across from the bank, next to the little park with the fountain.”
     “Not that you’re doing us much good,” Myra Hammer interjected.  “Won’t even do what we ask you to do.”
     Scarlett frowned and looked at the card.  “An attorney?  Sorry, but I don’t need an attorney.  Now, if you were a mechanic, we could talk business.”
     “Actually, I was hoping you’d have a moment to speak to me.”  He looked down at Myra and Scarlett got the impression he was working to keep his expression neutral.  “In private.”
     “I’m busy now.  I’ll be finished in ten minutes.”
     “Maybe,” Myra said.  “I want my hair with a wave but no little curls.  I can’t stand those little curls.”
     Then why did you get a tight perm? Scarlett felt like asking, but didn’t.  “Ten to fifteen minutes.”
     “I can grab a burger and come back in fifteen minutes.  Unless you’d like for me to wait and we can get something together.  If you haven’t eaten yet.”
     He was asking her out to lunch?  How odd.  He didn’t even know her.  “That’s nice, but . . .”
     “You might as well go to lunch with him,” Myra injected.  “He’s rich, powerful and single.”
     “Now, Myra, you know I’m not getting rich in this town,” Brody answered.  “And I’m hardly powerful.”
     “You’re a Brody, aren’t you?”  Myra looked up at Scarlett.  “Town’s named after his family, you know.”
     “No, I hadn’t made the connection.”
     “That was generations ago, and they owned a ranch like most everyone else around here.”
     “You could be rich if you’d have sued that grocery store.  I could have gotten sick on bruised bananas.”
     “But you didn’t, because you had enough sense not to eat the bananas, and therefore we didn’t have a case.”
     “So now I have to eat bad bananas to get my due!”
     “I didn’t say that,” James Brody replied, then sighed.  “And besides, I came in to see . . . I’m sorry.  I don’t know your name.”
     “I forgot to tell you.  It’s Scarlett.”
     “Scarlett . . .?”
     “Just Scarlett, unless you’re from the licensing board or health department or insist on seeing my license.”
     “That bad, hmm?”
     She nodded.  “My mother has a warped sense of humor.”
     “Sorry to hear that.”  He shifted from one foot to the other, looking uncomfortable, but why?  Because he stood in a beauty salon, or because he’d just asked her out to lunch?  “So, Scarlett, do you want to get a burger?”
     She could definitely use all the free meals she could get, since her car engine, as the snaggletooth chicken crate man had prophesized, was “blown.”  But no, she couldn’t have lunch.  She had another client coming in after Myra was finished with her wave, no tight curls.
     “Sorry, but I can’t.  I’m booked up until after two o’clock.  If you want to talk, I’ll work you in.”
     “Well, if that’s the best you can do, I’ll accept your offer to see me between appointments,” he replied, and added a dimpled smile, which proved just how perfectly preppy – and okay, charming - he really was.
     “Just remember you can’t trust lawyers,” Myra said.
     “It’s good to see you too, Myra,” Brody replied without the dimple, then gave Scarlett another slight, all-suffering smile.  “I’ll see you in a few.”
“I’ll be here.”  As soon as the door closed behind him, Scarlett wondered just exactly what she’d agreed to do . . . and if she should have held out for the free lunch.