Chapter 13
blonde
LEXI
After the fashion show Clementine had arranged, Nicolai and his goons shepherded us over to the spa appointments she’d booked.
In the rear seat of the full-sized SUV, I crawled to the middle of the wide bench. It seemed only fair because Clementine had been on the hump yesterday, and I didn’t want to take advantage of her.
Nicolai sat behind Ueli, who was riding shotgun.
He angled himself in his seat and rested his arm on the back of it behind my head, trying to arrange himself to consume less space.
His broad shoulders and long legs limited just how much he could compress his form, though he tried to bend and lean back into the corner.
Instead of man-spreading, he was man-scrunching-up.
Clementine announced, “We’ll have facials, hair and makeup, and mani-pedi touch-ups.”
Touch-ups?
The eternal battle against my hair’s dark roots raised its brown-striped head. “How long are we going to be in Vegas for? I think I’ll need to touch up my roots pretty soon. I just need to buy a box of hair bleach from the drugstore.”
Clementine blinked rapidly and inhaled through her nose like she’d almost passed out. She did glance at the top of my head before she said, “John’s bachelor party is only four more days. You’ll be fine until we get back to Paris. I’ll need my roots redone by then, too.”
“Your color is amazing,” I reassured her. “The tone is simply beautiful, like moonlight, and it looks so healthy that it glows.”
Clementine looked a little pleased, I thought, that I noticed, by the way her head floated a little.
“Yes, well, I’ll send you to the girl who does mine when we’re back in Paris.
Don’t use a box at home.” She shook her head and shoulders like an ick-shiver had run up her spine.
“I’ve heard about those—those kits. Don’t worry, Lexi.
I’ll beg her to take you on. It’ll be okay. ”
“Well, your hair looks amazing. She must be the best.”
“Yes, she is talented. My particular process may not be the best shade for you, but my girl will sort you out with something you’ll like.”
“You don’t have to change your hair, Lexi,” Nicolai said, his voice low, a little quieter than usual.
“Oh, I’m not going to change it. Not much. Maybe just what Clementine tells me I should.”
“Well, don’t change it too much. Your natural color is nice.”
“Good God, you’re such a male,” Clementine griped at him. “Look at Lexi’s eyebrows and skin tone. She’s a brunette, probably medium-dark with some auburn tones because of the autumn coloring. That’s where she gets those ridiculously lush eyelashes.”
I had lush eyelashes? Okay. I wasn’t going to argue.
He squinted at my part in the middle of my head. “You’re a brunette, normally?”
“Well, yeah,” I admitted. “I mean, I’ve been blond for years, though. I don’t think I’d recognize myself as a brunette. I’d probably walk right past a mirror and wonder who that old drudge was.”
“I had no idea you were naturally a brunette. What did you look like?”
I grabbed my phone and scrolled back in time, past my engagement photos with Jimmy, past his sisters’ weddings, past high school graduation, back to my old theater pictures and cast parties, and finally back to early high school, my sophomore year.
With each swipe of my finger and scroll of my pictures downward, my hair grew darker, then lost its highlights, until I was a drab brunette with hair the color of a dirty penny. “Yeah. Here.”
Nicolai took the phone from my fingers, examined it, and then stared at me. “You look completely different.”
“I was fifteen. So yeah, I hope I look different.”
“Not just the color. It changes the shape of your face.”
Clementine reached over my legs and snatched my phone from him.
After a cursory glance, she said, “They’re both fine colors for her, though I think you should go with some caramel highlights, but Ines will make the final decision for you.
Men can’t see makeup or hair dye. It’s like a congenital fashion disorder. ”
She dumped the phone back in my lap, and I grabbed the slick glass before it slithered off my denim jeans to the floor.
The drive back to Billionaire Sanctuary was a quick jaunt with sudden spins around corners that shoved me against Clementine or Nicolai in turn.
Clementine made no mention of my faux pas of flopping onto her shoulder, but when centrifugal force pressed me against the side of Nicolai’s body, his heavy arm on the back of the seat curled around my shoulders to steady me.
Once, I could have sworn that his lips brushed my temple, but he was already facing away when I looked up.
After one particularly quick turn, he leaned forward and directed his question at both of us. “Did your shopping go well enough?”
Clementine turned her blank expression at him like a robot. “We found enough for the week. She will need all those dresses for the entire week. Won’t she, Nico?”
He faced front, looking over Ueli’s shoulder at the road ahead. “It’s complicated.”
“No, it’s fucking not. You will both be at all the events, unless Lexi is indisposed. And don’t think I won’t check because I will definitely check,” Clementine told him. “I mean it. I want to see you both there, or I will be pissed.”
“Clemmy, you know how things come up—”
“Nope. Be there. At every single one.” She glanced over at him. “This week is your only chance to cement Lexi as one of us, at least as your plus-one, among our rather discerning group. Leaving her out or missing events would convey a message you don’t want to project. Don’t miss any.”
Nicolai leaned back in his seat, one small frown line creasing between his eyes.
When we arrived at the spa, Clementine stepped out of the back seat first. I was scooting and getting ready to follow her, but Nico reached over and grabbed my hand. “Have them dye your hair back to its natural color. If you want. If that’s what you decide.”
I didn’t think I’d ever heard him stumble like that when he spoke.
He was staring right into my eyes, like he was saying the most important thing ever. “Whatever you want. But do whatever you want. Whatever feels right to you.”
So much deep paranoid confusion ran through me. “Why? You like me as a blonde.”
“I like you as you. Be you. We’ll talk later.”
Clementine bustled me into a side entrance with a neon, metal sign of circles and skinny lines that vertically read Lazuli, as if the letters had tumbled down a waterfall.
I tried to head for the check-in desk with the big brass Reception sign on the front in the very nicely appointed lobby, unbleached linen furniture and sumptuous plants and orchids like I was in a rain forest, but Clementine held my arm firmly and propelled me toward a side corridor.
Three steps inside, a properly pretty woman with her hair in a slicked back bun and wearing the spa’s turquoise uniform top greeted us. “Ms. Kaas, Ms. Romanov, right this way.”
Ms. Romanov. I was never going to get used to that.
“Just a moment,” Clementine said as she tugged me to a stop.
The spa lady kept walking until she was farther up the hallway, obviously letting us have some privacy.
“Do you want to change your hair back?” Clementine asked me, her eyes focused on mine as she scrutinized every minute micro-expression I didn’t even know I was making.
“I hadn’t thought about it until now. It’s a big change. I should probably think about it.”
Clementine nodded. “Then we’ll just do facials and preparation for the event tonight.”
“Is that okay?”
“Of course!”
And yet, all those pictures of myself on my phone spun through my mind. Scrolling backward as my hair darkened to my real color felt like I was flying backward in time, back to before Jimmy had sucked me into his orbit.
Back to before Jimmy.
Back to before I had made the monumental mistake that was Jimmy.
Back to when I’d known who I was, or at least back to when I’d been trying to figure out who I was before I’d taken the easy route and become just whatever he and his family and his church had wanted me to be.
I touched Clementine’s slender arm. “Would they have time to dye my hair today? The lawyers are supposed to be at Nicolai’s suite at three o’clock.”
“The more important question is whether the spa has time for you. I’ll tell Nico to move that legal appointment until tomorrow.”
The appointment to finalize the post-nup contract, yikes. “Yeah, but it’s kind of important, and I don’t want to cause any trouble.”
But Clementine was already on the move.
“Anong?” she called and strode down the hall to the woman who’d been guiding us. “I was wondering if we could have a consultation with the salon for something more extensive. We’re concerned about time.”
The woman smiled, a dimple creasing her cheek.
Her nametag vertically spelled “Anong” in the same thin font as the Lazuli sign out front.
I hadn’t even realized her brooch was a nametag because the stylized modern font looked like bubbles and sticks.
“Of course, Ms. Kaas. We’re always pleased to help you. ”
“If it’s no trouble,” I clarified. “If you happen to have an opening.”
“For a friend of Ms. Kaas, we will find an opening,” Anong said. “Just tell us what you’d like done.”
Clementine had connections everywhere.
I thanked the woman, maybe a little too profusely, while Clementine grabbed her phone out of her purse.
The case was matte silver, like steel but just a little more lustrous.
She held it close to her face and spoke rapidly, without any particular emotion.
“Nico, delay that meeting with your lawyers until five o’clock or tomorrow. Something more important has come up.”
The spa was a whirlwind of cosmeticians and beauticians and estheticians and stylists and cosmetologists and consultants. I was not so much pampered as prepared like the main course at a state dinner.