Sugar Daddy (Travis Family #1)(54)

"How much training does it take to wash hair?" Travis asked incredulously. You could tell he wasn't used to being denied anything, from anyone, for any reason. "You do your best, Miss Jones, and I won't complain."

"Liberty," I said, returning to him. "And I can't."

"Why not11"

"Because if I do and you never come back to Salon One, everyone will assume I screwed up, and I don't want that on my record."

Travis scowled. I should have had the sense to be afraid of him. But the air between us was alive with a sense of playfulness. And a smile kept bobbing to my lips no matter how hard I tried to push it back.

"What else can you do besides bring tea?" Travis demanded.

"I could give you a manicure."

He scoffed at the word. "Never had a manicure in my life. Why any man would need one I don't know. Damn female thing to do."

"I manicure lots of men." I began to reach for his hand and hesitated. In the next moment I found his hand resting on mine, his palm down, my palm up. It was a strong, broad hand, one you could easily imagine gripping a horse's reins or a shovel handle. The nails were clipped almost to the quick, the skin of his fingers nicked and pale-rusted. One of his thumbnails was permanently ridged from some long-ago injury. Gently turning his hand over in mine, I saw his palm was webbed with so many lines, it would have made a fortune-teller stutter. "You could use some work, Mr. Travis. Especially on the cuticles."

"Call me Churchill." He pronounced it without the i, so it sounded like "ChurchTl." "Go get your stuff."

Since keeping Churchill Travis happy had become the modus operandi of the day. I had to ask Angle to take over my duties, which included floor-sweeping and a ten-thirty pedicure.

Angie would have liked to stab me with the nearest pair of scissors, but at the same time she couldn't keep from offering advice as I stocked my manicure supplies. "Do not talk too much. In fact, say as little as possible. Smile, but don't do that big smile you do sometimes. Get him to talk about himself. Men love that. Try to get his business card. And no matter what, don't mention your little sister. Men are turned off by women with responsibilities."

"Angie," I muttered back, "I'm not looking for a sugar daddy. And even if I was, he's too old."

Angie shook her head. "Honey, there's no such thing as too old. I can tell just by looking, that man hasn't lost his juice yet."

"I'm not interested in his juice," I said. "Or his money."

After Churchill Travis's hair was cut and styled. I met him in another private room. We sat facing each other across the manicure table in the white light of a large swing-arm lamp. "Your cut looks good." I commented, taking one of his hands and placing it gently in a bowl of softening solution.

"It should, for what Zenko charges." Travis stared dubiously at the array of tools and bottles of colored liquid on the manicure table. "You like working for him?"

"Yes, sir, I do. I'm learning a lot from Zenko. I'm lucky to have this job."

We talked as I tended his hands, sloughing off dead skin, trimming and pushing back cuticles, filing and buffing his nails to a glassy sheen. Travis watched the procedure with great interest, having never submitted to such a thing in his life.

"What made you decide to work in a beauty shop?" he asked.

"When I was younger. I used to do my friends1 hair and makeup. I've always liked making people look good. And I like it that when I'm done, they feel better about themselves." I uncapped a small bottle, and Travis regarded it with something close to alarm.

"I don't need that." he said firmly. "You can do the other stuff, but I draw the line at polish."

"This isn't polish, it's cuticle oil. And you need plenty of it." Ignoring his flinching. I used a tiny brush to apply the oil to his cuticles. "Funny," I commented, "you don't have a businessman's hands. You must do something besides push paper across a desk."

He shrugged. "Some ranching work now and then. Lot of riding. And I work in the garden from time to time, although not as much as I did before my wife died. That woman had a passion for growing things."

I slicked some cream between my palms and began a hand and wrist massage. It was hard to get him to relax, his fingers unwilling to give up their knotty tension. "I heard she died pretty recently," I said, glancing at his rough-cast face, where grief had left signs of obvious weathering. "I'm sorry."

Travis gave a slight nod. "Ava was a good woman." he said gruffly. "The best woman I ever knew. She had breast cancer—we caught it too late."

In spite of Zenko's adamance that employees refrain from discussing their personal lives, I was nearly overcome with the urge to tell Churchill that I, too, had lost someone dear to me. Instead I commented, "They say it's easier when you've had time to prepare for someone's death. But I don't believe that."

"Neither do I." Churchill's hand tightened over mine so briefly that I barely had time to register its pressure. Startled, I looked up and saw the kindness and muted sadness in his face. Somehow I knew that no matter what I chose to tell or to keep secret, he would understand.

As it turned out. my relationship with Churchill became something far more complex than a romantic one. It would have been more understandable and straightforward had it involved romance or sex, but Churchill was never interested in me that way. As an attractive and insanely wealthy widower just past sixty, he had his pick of women. I got into the habit of looking for mentions of him in newspapers and magazines. I was highly entertained by photos of him with glamorous society women and B-movie actresses, and even occasionally with foreign royalty. Churchill moved in fast circles.