Addicted (Ethan Frost #2)(21)

“So, what can we get for you today?” asks the man behind the counter. He’s wearing more makeup than I even own and to add insult to injury, he looks absolutely gorgeous. Sometimes life really is unfair.

“She needs a makeover,” Tori tells him, pointing at me. “A whole new look.”

“Oh, yes, she does, doesn’t she?” he says, and though the words are rude, the tone and his expression are nothing but kind. “Come on over here, sweetheart, and let me get a look at you. I’m Sam, by the way.”

“I’m Chloe. And my crazy friend over there is Tori.” We both watch, bemused, as Tori randomly picks five or six different eye shadows off the display and starts applying them one on top of the other. She does this, of course, without taking off any of the rock star makeup she’s already wearing.

“She does like color, doesn’t she?” he says. It doesn’t sound like a judgment, exactly, but the man is dressed from head to toe in black. Even the gauges in his ears are black.

“You have no idea.”

After another minute of staring at Tori gone wild, he leads me over to a trio of makeup displays that are set up behind the counter. “What look are we going for exactly?” he asks after I’m settled in the chair.

I shrug. It’s not like this is my idea.

“We’re going for anything that makes her look less dead,” Tori chimes in as she bounces over. I expect her to look like a clown after everything she just put on her face, but instead she manages to look better than ever. Just another reason why I should hate her.

“Hush!” Sam says. “She just looks a little tired, that’s all. We can fix that.”

“Bad breakup,” Tori whispers loudly enough to be heard in the shoe department all the way across the store.

“Oh, you poor thing,” Sam clucks sympathetically. “I’m recovering from a breakup myself. It sucks.”

“You seem to be handling it a lot better than I am,” I tell him. It’s true. He looks absolutely gorgeous.

“That’s why you need a makeover,” he says. “A good lipstick can hide a multitude of sadnesses.”

“See! I told you!” Tori crows, clapping her hands triumphantly.

And that’s how I end up spending the next ninety minutes in Sam’s beauty/therapy chair. He powders, applies, spritzes and blends until I’m certain I am wearing enough makeup to outfit an entire Cirque du Soleil production, all the while delivering little tips on how to survive a breakup.

Set a routine for yourself every day. Don’t just lie in bed wanting to die.

Always wear something pretty. It’s hard to be depressed when you’re wearing a gorgeous dress.

Don’t let yourself fall too far off the wagon. You don’t want to be a total wreck when you’re finally ready to get back out there.
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I’m not sure if these pearls of wisdom are meant to be taken seriously or if Sam is just trying to make me laugh. Either way, by the time he holds the mirror up to my face with a theatrical, “Voila,” I’m feeling better than I have since I opened Ethan’s door to find Brandon on his front porch. And that’s before I see the absolutely astonishing job Sam has done on my makeup.

“What do you think?” he asks, as I stare at myself wide-eyed in the mirror.

“I think you’re a miracle worker.”

He preens under the praise. “I try, doll. I try.” He grabs a couple of face cards from his drawer and says, “Now, let me show you exactly what I did so you can do it at home.”

“I’m not sure that’s possible,” I tell him.

“Of course it is,” he answers, waving off my concerns.

I spend the next thirty minutes getting a step-by-step tutorial from Sam on how I can make myself look like this every day. I’m still not sure that he didn’t wave some kind of magic wand and do this to me, but I’m willing to take his word for it. At least until the first time I try out the look and make a total disaster of it.

Tori insists on buying me everything Sam recommends, even though I try to pay for it myself—what are credit cards for if not to splurge when your heart has been ripped out of your chest? Another pearl of wisdom from Sam, by the way. And though I still feel a long way from okay, I have to admit I feel better than I have in days.

It’s a start.



We spend the rest of the weekend eating ice cream and watching Titanic and a bunch of other love stories that don’t end well. Nothing like a sinking ship and thousands of dead people to put my own life and breakup in perspective.

Or at least make it seem just a little less traumatic.

By the time Monday morning rolls around, I’ve actually gotten close to eight hours of sleep over the weekend—a record for me in the last couple of weeks. And if I’m not exactly feeling refreshed, at least the hour I spend on my makeup is enough to make me look like I am.

It’s a big day for the legal department. We’re heading over to the Trifecta building to hammer out the last major parts of the merger agreement today—parts that deal specifically with intellectual property acquisition. We’ve been working toward this meeting for weeks and I only hope that it goes well. Otherwise I’ll be buried in patent research for the rest of the summer.

I dress carefully in the same old suit I wear for everything important. I even put on the Louboutins Tori got me that I haven’t worn since they crippled my feet on my first day at Frost Industries. With my makeup done and my hair twisted up into a complicated chignon, I feel as ready for the meeting as I’m going to get. Not that I’ll actually be doing anything but taking notes and looking up case law if that becomes necessary, but it’s still good to look the part.