Chapter 14
Jenna’s hands worked almost automatically—scissors snipping, comb flipping—while her mind did an entirely different sort of work, one that involved navigating the social whitewater rapids of the small-town rumor mill.
She’d barely been open an hour, and five clients had brought up the so-called “date” with Deacon St. Claire.
By noon, it was all anyone in the salon was talking about, including the Kiki and all the stylists.
Even Rue, the esthetician who had rented a room for the past eight months and who had never participated in any gossip once since she’d been there, had slipped her a voucher for free bikini wax. A. Bikini. Wax.
The exact same conversation had happened over a dozen times.
Random client: “How do you know Deacon St. Claire?”
Jenna: “I don’t. Niko asked him to be on our Trivia team.”
Random Client: “Oh, yeah, I think Niko is staying next door to him at the Airbnb.”
Or.
Random Client: “Oh, that’s right. Did you know he’s Poppy and Liam’s half-brother?”
Jenna: “Yes. Yes, I did know that.”
She was tempted to write the script with lipstick and put it on her mirror and point to it when people started talking.
She was in a rare lull from anyone addressing her directly, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t still the subject of conversation.
She had seven stations besides her own, and they were all filled at the moment, as well as her waiting area.
She could hear the constant hum of gossip’s whispering wings fluttering around the shop.
“They talked for hours in the parking lot.”
“I heard they left together.”
“Of course they were together, he’s never been to Trivia Night before.”
“You know he’s a billionaire.”
“I heard he chased her out of the bar.”
“Has anyone asked her about it?”
“She is really pretty, though.”
“Yeah, but he’s Deacon St. Claire.”
She hoped this was going to cycle out of the news. There was a huge charity gala being hosted by Niko Costas and other sports stars coming up in a few days, and she’d heard there were a few celebrities who planned on being in attendance. Hopefully, that would take some heat off.
When her phone rang with a Facetime from her daughter, she wished she could mute the entire salon. Her phone was propped up on the cabinet next to the mirror, she reached out and pressed the answer call button, and Blake’s face filled the screen. “Hey, Peanut.”
“Do you know where my gray sweats are?”
“They are still in the dryer if you didn’t take them out last night.” Like I reminded you to. Twice.
“I need them for practice.”
Jenna took a breath. She knew she needed to stop bailing Blake out. Her daughter had to start feeling the consequences of her actions. So, she had no idea why she found herself saying, “I’ll drop them off in your locker on my lunch break.”
“Thanks, Mom. Love you.”
She expected the screen to go black, but then she saw Rayna’s sweet little face poke in the side of the screen. “Ask her.”
“Oh, right. Why didn’t you tell me you were on a date with Deacon St. Claire last night?!”
Oh, for the love of Pacey Witter.
“I was not on a date.”
“Mom, don’t lie, everyone at school is talking about it.”
“Everyone at Hope Falls High is talking about my non-date? I seriously doubt that.”
“You and Tiana went on a double date with the two most eligible bachelors in Hope Falls since Hot Pastor, of course everyone is talking about it, Mom. Niko is Niko Costas, and Deacon St. Claire is like a mega-billionaire, and he’s super hot. You know he dated a Kardashian, right?”
No, I didn’t know that.
Why did that make her jealous?
Blake’s friend Angel, who had a very large social media following due to her popular YouTube movie reviews, had her finger on the pulse of all things pop culture and the uncanny ability to speak with the authority of Wikipedia and the emotional conviction of a French existentialist, called out, “Actually, I think it was a Jenner.”
That did not make it better.
“Seriously?!” Rayna spun around to face Angel, who nodded. Then Rayna turned back around and looked at Blake, and then into the camera. “Miss Thomas, everyone is talking about it.”
Jenna turned the Muzak in the salon down and spoke several decibels louder than she typically did as she tried to set the record straight but feared it was like shouting into a hurricane.
“I’m sorry to disappoint everyone, but Tiana is on my Trivia Team, and Niko came with her, and when Robbie and Kiki couldn’t come because Layla was sick, Niko offered to play, and he asked Deacon St. Claire to join.
I had nothing to do with it. When they left and went home, so did I. Alone.”
After she finished her speech, she turned the music back up.
“So it was like a blind date.” Blake smiled widely. “That’s sooooo cute.”
“It was not a blind date," Jenna refuted even though she knew her daughter was giving her a hard time. “I’ll drop off the sweats. Love you, Peanut.”
“Love youuuu.” Blake tilted her head.
“Love you more.” Jenna hung up thinking about how lucky she was that her daughter wasn’t embarrassed to tell her she loved her in front of her friends, in the middle of school.
Then she remembered Deacon, wow, she knew his name now, that was weird…Anyway, she remembered Deacon telling her she was doing something right because when Blake was out in California with Asher, she’d called to fill Jenna in on the hot gossip and told her that she’d loved her.
Why did that make Jenna feel things she didn’t want to feel? Like he saw her. The real her.
After getting back from lunch, midafternoon, the salon had finally hit a lull, the kind that lasted only as long as the time it took for another small-town rumor to mushroom in a pressure cooker of idle hands and glancing eyes.
Jenna’s hands were still moving in muscle memory—section, snip, brush, repeat—as she tried to focus on the present: the way Mrs. Vassallo’s hair did a stubborn crinkle at the nape of the neck, the way the sunlight caught the loose golden threads littering her smock.
She was in the middle of a root touch-up—gloves on, timer set, foils in place—when she heard the bell over the door, followed by the unmistakable cadence of Robbie’s voice.
It was a voice with a built-in amp, loud, warm, and designed to be the center of attention even when it was asking for something as innocuous as an oat-milk latte.
Jenna could practically see him in her mind’s eye before she turned: oversized sunglasses, a scarf so bright it needed its own SPF, and the air of someone who’d already read every page of the script and was just waiting for the right moment to improvise his own lines.
“Who needs a caffeine delivery?” Robbie called out, arms full of cardboard drink carriers.
Several hands shot up, including Jenna’s.
He made a lap around the perimeter, distributing little cups of joy to the stylists, then parked himself at Jenna’s chair, leaning in with the intimacy of a friend but the drama of a tabloid reporter. “So, I heard someone had a hot date last night.”
It wasn’t a question. It was a volley, lobbed with just enough affection to make it impossible to be annoyed.
Except she was absolutely annoyed. Jenna pretended to focus on the foils, but she could feel her temperature rising, a subtle flush that had less to do with the blow dryers and more to do with the fact that yes, in a way, she had and she didn’t want Robbie, who didn’t miss much, to notice.
Robbie, undeterred by her silence, waggled his brows. “It’s all over town. You and Deacon St. Claire. Parking lot. Deep conversation.”
There was a time, before motherhood, before the whiplash of two divorces, where Jenna might have let herself fantasize about what it would be like to actually date someone like Deacon St. Claire.
He wasn’t just small-town good-looking, he was so far out of her league it was laughable, not to mention the financial imbalance, and she felt those discrepancies deep in her sternum.
It was absurd, and yet there she was, privately replaying him following her out to the parking lot to ask her about their one-night stand.
But the past five hours proved why she couldn’t “talk” to Deacon St. Claire after Tiana and Niko left last night.
This morning proved no one could know anything about their past. This morning was proof her love life in a small town was under a microscope, and it wouldn’t just be her life that would be affected.
Blake and her friends said everyone was talking about her “date.” She remembered what it was like growing up with her mom ‘dating.’ She would not put Blake through that. She wouldn’t put herself through that.
Not even for Deacon St. Claire.
“Where are we going?” Tabby, buckled into her booster seat, pressed her nose against the window.
“To get my haircut.” Deacon checked the time, it was almost six p.m. He wondered if the salon would even still be open.
He’d been wrestling with whether or not to go to The Beauty Spot all day.
He’d made a mental pros and cons list. There was a laundry list of cons, and only one pro.
He’d get to see Jenna. He knew she was there because clients had tagged her in photos.
After seeing the last one five minutes ago while he was doing dinner dishes, he made an impulse decision.
It seemed one pro was all he needed. At least when the one pro was that he got to see Jenna again.
Could it backfire on him? Big time. But he honestly couldn’t help himself.
He’d always been such a disciplined, measured, controlled person.
Right now, he was acting purely on primitive compulsion, on primal instinct, on base drive.
Tabby’s feet kicked as she craned for a better view. “We’re going to see Uncle Peter?”
Peter, just Peter, because he was so good he only needed one name, was his barber, or as he’d branded himself, hair-artist, as well as the hair-artist to the stars.