The Decoy Girlfriend(30)
“Yes, you can touch me anywhere you want.”
She thinks the strangled sound behind her is a cough.
“Er. What I mean is—” Freya squeezes her eyes shut, positive she’s already failed.
Mandi would never be this indecorous. And if she were, it would be coy and charming, not has-this-girl-ever-spoken-to-a-single-other-human-being awkward.
“Good to know.” His fingers start to trace through Freya’s hair. His voice barely holds back a laugh. “You don’t have to close your eyes. I haven’t started yet.”
She sighs and turns to look at him. “You sure you know what you’re doing?”
He angles her back the way he wants her with a soft click of his tongue. “If you’re going to be Mandi for the next few weeks, you’ve gotta have more faith in me.”
“Right. Sorry. Right.” She tilts her head to look at him. “How do you know how to do this, anyway? Did you do a stint at a Great Clips in high school or something?”
He hesitates. “My mom used to color her hair at home. She couldn’t reach the back, so she had me help out. I watched enough YouTube videos that I learned how to cut and layer, too.”
“Not a lot of sons would go to that much effort.”
“I guess not.” His voice returns to coolly professional and not at all like he’s about to intimately bury his fingers into Freya’s hair. “Is this how you normally part your hair?”
She can readily imagine how many girls would kill to be in her place right now, continuously being touched by one of Hollywood’s hottest. Distracted, she mumbles, “Yes.”
He adjusts her head again. “Are you tender-headed at all?”
Even Freya’s actual stylist never asked her that, she just yanked away. She tries not to let the surprise show on her face when she answers, “Yes, but it’s fine, my hair is usually a little tangly, especially in the back middle.”
“I’m going to comb your hair out, but if it yanks on your scalp, let me know. I’ll do my best to be gentle.”
And to her astonishment, he does. Every time the fine-toothed comb hits a snarl, his nimble fingers tease it out. Not one single hair snaps the way it would have if Freya was the one doing it, far too frustrated and impatient for such a tedious task. But Taft doesn’t complain once, even though it takes him forever to get through her thick mane.
Halfway through, her eyes flutter shut. She never considered before what a small yet mighty pleasure it was to have someone run tender fingers through your hair, followed by the slow, rhythmic strokes of a comb. Most of her ex-boyfriends treated foreplay and affectionate gestures as precursors to be endured rather than enjoyed, always with sex as the end game.
Freya hopes that she isn’t looking like she’s enjoying this too much, even though she totally is. “So . . . ,” she broaches hesitantly. “The silver in your hair. Natural? Or is it for a role?”
“Natural.” His nails gently scrape against her scalp, working through a particularly nasty knot. “Sprung up out of nowhere, but the movie execs liked it so much I’m contractually forbidden from coloring it. Apparently it went over really well in focus groups.”
“I can see why,” she says before she can think better of it.
His fingers still. “Good to know.”
Mercifully, he can’t see her face, and Freya’s fine to let him have the last word.
Taft is thorough and methodical as he brushes the cold paste on her hair, covering it in foil to separate the highlighted sections and keep the heat in. “Are you nervous?”
“About how my hair is going to turn out? Yes. About everything else? Also yes.”
He laughs under his breath. “At least you’re honest.”
“Sometimes,” Freya acknowledges. She wouldn’t be here otherwise.
He takes an extra-long time to start the next section of hair, wrapping it around his finger like he’s thinking something over. Finally, he asks, “Why do you do it?”
There’s no point pretending to misunderstand. “It’s the only thing I seem to be good at lately.”
“That’s . . . disappointing.”
“To you and me both,” she mutters.
“I meant because you don’t seem to count your writing as something you’re good at. It’s a shame, if you ask me—which I know you didn’t—but I’m not really one to hold back on a compliment. Especially when the other person is so damn in the dark.”
Freya’s skin prickles under the cape and beneath her beige cropped cami. Finally.
She knew he’d recognized her from their encounter at Books & Brambles when he called her Bookshop Girl at the front door, but he turned away before they could acknowledge it. This time, Taft lets her get away with swiveling around on the barstool to look at him. “You’re not seriously telling me that you read my book,” she demands.
“Bought the e-book the second I left the shop.” His lips twitch. “Funny story, it wasn’t under the name ‘Randy.’?”
Taft’s tone is so dry that Freya balks for a second before getting the joke. “Ha ha. Just so you know, whenever anyone tells me they like my book, it takes everything in me not to make them give me an oral review right on the spot.”
“Oral, huh? I could do that.”