Chapter 20
CHAPTER TWENTY
L ucy spent the next four hours under Brit and Natalie’s complete mercy. After Brit, who was an award-winning colorist, had her in foils for a good chunk of the afternoon, Natalie snipped Lucy’s hair with precise confident clips, while chatting casually about family, weddings, and how grateful she was that at least now the limelight was deflected off her for another few months. Lucy sat in her chair, mute for the most part, as the flurry of salon activity buzzed around her.
Later, she emerged from a little room down the hall after being well and truly tortured by the aesthetician named Jess, whom Lucy was pretty sure had waxed every single hair off her body, except that on her head. Lynn handed her a thin flute of golden bubbly liquid as she walked back into the main salon, and despite herself Lucy had to admit, she could get used to being pampered this way.
Brit was right. It did feel good primping and preening, to be given the permission to look and feel your finest. For the first time, she understood why her sister invested all the time and energy into her looks. It felt good .
Thinking about Vanessa brought the usual pang of longing and worry. She’d wished her sister could see her now. When they were little, Vanessa always begged to do makeup on Lucy. Sometimes she’d cave, and they’d sit in Vanessa’s bedroom, on the bed littered with tubes of concealer and palettes of makeup.
They’d had some of their best conversations during those times, commiserating over family dramatics and their dreams for the future. Vanessa had always supported Lucy’s wish of taking over Barone & Sons, even if she hadn’t understood it. Much like Lucy supported Vanessa’s thirst for adventure and fame—even if she didn’t always think it was what was best for her.
“Shut the front door.” Vanessa’s voice echoed through the salon like Lucy’s nostalgia had conjured her. “Nat, who is this stunning creature who looks like my sister, walks like my sister, but has the freshly shaped eyebrows of a goddess?”
Lucy blinked in the direction of the voice. Vanessa stood by the front door, suitcase in hand, hair in a sleek high ponytail, immense black sunglasses pushed down her nose as she peered over top with wide, expressive brown eyes, rimmed with thick dark lashes. Her cherry-red lips glistened in the bright light of the salon. A twenty-first century picture of Audrey Hepburn.
“Vanessa?” Lucy shot from her chair, shock and elation catapulting her toward her younger sister, who met her halfway and jumped into her arms, nearly bowling her over. She inhaled Vanessa’s expensive, signature scent and tried to absorb the shock that she was in her cousin’s hair salon. “What on earth are you doing here?”
Vanessa reared back and whipped off her sunglasses to shoot Lucy a look she’d seen many times in her life. Part affronted, part pout. “What am I doing here? Where else am I supposed to be when my big sister sends me a text message ,” she said these two words in a deeply accusatory tone, “telling me she is engaged to the Western Hemisphere’s most eligible bachelor, followed up by a super melodramatic call from Mom telling me there’s an engagement party in Portland on Saturday for my sister, and I better not embarrass the family by missing it.”
“Mom made you come here?” Lucy’s gaped because, heck, that was unexpected.
“Made me? Sissy, she threatened to disown me. But I have to say she didn’t have to work too hard to convince me. I wouldn’t miss this for the world.”
Something about that statement didn’t ring right to Lucy, since Vanessa had expertly avoided her messages the last few days. But Vanessa hugged her again, wrapping her arms around Lucy like a bow—so Lucy pushed the inkling that something didn’t feel right aside and hugged her sister back fiercely.
She’d missed her sister, and knowing the craziness that would be coming up this weekend for the engagement party, she felt instantly better knowing Vanessa would be by her side. Her sister lived for the limelight, knew how to work magic in it. Lucy avoided it like the plague.
When they pulled apart, Vanessa was blurry-eyed and had a big ole smile on her face. “I missed you, Lu, you have no idea how much.”
They weren’t hugging anymore, but Vanessa still had her arm draped over Lucy’s shoulders, and from that vantage point, Lucy took a closer look at her sister. Exhaustion was etched around her eyes, even under the meticulously applied makeup, and professionally curated eyebrows and lashes. Dark shadows hollowed out her cheek bones. She stared intently, trying to piecemeal what could have her sister appearing so…bone-weary.
“How’d you get here?”
Vanessa shrugged. “Caught a flight.”
“And how’d you know I was here, at the salon?”
Pulling back completely, Vanessa laughed as she moved toward Natalie who was plugging in a curling iron. “What is this? The third degree? Geez, Lu, I wanted to be here for you, okay? And to answer your question, I didn’t know,” she said as she busied herself rifling through the supplies at Natalie’s station. “I came here to avoid going to Zia’s madhouse for as long as I could, and to see Nat, of course,” she added hastily when their cousin gave Vanessa the evil eye. “So, I texted to say I was on my way, and lo and behold, you’re sitting in the chair looking like you belong on the cover of Elle Magazine . Looks like I came in time to do your makeup.”
“I don’t need makeup. In fact, I don’t need any of this.” Lucy ran her hand over her new silky hair. “The wedding date hasn’t even been set, and the engagement party isn’t for another couple of days.”
Natalie and Vanessa exchanged a look, having a full conversation telepathically that Lucy was not privy to.
“What?” she demanded, not trusting the smug looks on either of their faces.
“Well, Brit put so much effort in, and when I realized Vanessa would be here too, I figured we shouldn’t let any of this go to waste.” Natalie gestured down the length of Lucy’s newly primped, preened, and plucked body. “So I put the word out to get some girls together.”
“Get some girls together?” Lucy parroted. She didn’t know any girls to get together. What was her cousin planning ?
“Let’s call it a practice bachelorette party,” Natalie said, guiding Lucy back into her chair.
The moment her butt hit the leather seat, Brit descended on her with a hot iron. “You cannot let my fine talent go to waste,” Brit insisted, wrapping a strand of Lucy’s hair around the hot wand. “Go out and make them all fall at your feet. Queen energy, right babe?”
Lucy looked helplessly at Natalie in the mirror. Natalie shrugged and Vanessa appeared in front of Lucy, holding what looked like a massive toolbox.
“Come on, Lu. The Barone sisters together again, looking like sex on a popsicle stick? We gotta go out. We’ll call it a girls’ night if it makes you feel better.” Vanessa dabbed liquid cream on the four points of Lucy’s face, then went at it with a big makeup blender. “Besides, with you there, what could possibly go wrong?”