A Date with the Other Side (Cuttersville #1)(16)
Author: Erin McCarthy

“I don’t want a haircut, Harriet.”

“But you could be a pretty girl if you just took care of yourself.” Harriet was all clucking concern, even as the talons dug in.

“Shelby’s pretty the way she is.”

Shelby wasn’t sure who was more surprised, her or Boston. He looked like he’d been flattened with a tractor. She just felt like she had been squashed. But in a good squashed way.

And while she stared at Boston and he stared back, Harriet wiped her hands on her pink billowing blouse and stuck one out at Boston. “I don’t believe we’ve met. I’m Harriet Danforth.”

Boston recovered enough to shake her hand. “Boston. Boston Macnamara. And you must be Chevy’s mom.”

He shot Shelby a look of amusement and she slapped her hand over her mouth so she wouldn’t laugh. He remembered what she’d told him about the origin of Chevy Danforth’s name. It was a frightening vision, Harriet carried away by passion with Clyde Danforth in the back of a nineteen-seventy Chevy Nova.

“Yes, I am. Have you met him, Boston? Is that your real name? Or is it a stage name?”

Now Shelby did laugh. “He’s not a circus act, Harriet. He’s a Samson executive.”

Boston’s hand remained trapped in Harriet’s but he shook his head and kept smiling, impressing the hell out of Shelby. “Boston is my real name. And I haven’t met Chevy. Shelby just mentioned him to me.”

Harriet clasped Boston’s hand between both of hers, giving enthusiastic pats and jerks, so that his whole arm was working like a puppet string. “Oh, I see. Well, Shelby’s always had a crush on Chevy, so I’m not surprised she mentioned him.”

“I do not have a crush on Chevy!” she burst out, mortified in the extreme. Chevy was nice if you liked talking dirt bikes and Budweiser memorabilia, and you didn’t mind that his body was the size of a 747, but she had no aspirations to live with a walking beer encyclopedia.

Boston raised an eyebrow.

Harriet leaned forward and whispered in a voice loud enough to ensure that any person within forty feet heard, “I’m sure Shelby would have eventually married Chevy except that she let Danny Tucker knock her up first.”

Boston’s startled eyes shifted to her, and Shelby felt a hot rush of shame sweep over her. Lord, but she felt like she was eighteen again, with every gaze in Cuttersville condemning and self-righteous. Gran’s disappointed silence. Her mother’s shrieking hysterics.

Her fear then that she would never make it fly as a wife and mother.

And sadness too, which crept up on her now sometimes flat out of nowhere and reminded her that if she hadn’t miscarried, she would have a seven-year-old child now, just about the age of that boy in the cemetery.

“I have to get going,” she said, stumbling over her words. “I’ll see you around, Boston. Don’t let Harriet give you highlights.”

She turned, pain in her gut, intent on making a quick getaway. Boston’s commanding corporate voice stopped her.

“I still want my tour, Shelby. I’ll see you at the house at seven.”

It wasn’t spoken as a question, but she didn’t want to argue it with him in front of Harriet. Nor did she want any of the salon sharks who were plastered to Harriet’s front window to see the stupid tears in her eyes.

“Fine. But it’s fifty bucks for a private tour.”

It was only after he agreed and she walked away that she realized something about that phrasing sounded vaguely like prostitution.

Just her luck, Harriet would be spilling it all over town that Boston Macnamara was pimping out Cuttersville girls and Shelby Tucker was his madam.

Boston stepped out of the shower, feeling his hair to make sure that all of the mousse Harriet had slapped in it had been removed. He should have known better than to get a haircut in Cuttersville. Common sense would have dictated that he wait until the weekend and drive the hour and a half to Cincinnati to get a cut by someone who wasn’t still using nineteen-eighties hair products.

But he hadn’t, so he’d gotten mousse.

Fortunately, she hadn’t messed up the cut. He padded across the white tile floor, his feet still damp, and looked in the oval mirror hanging over the vanity sink. He had only needed a trim, with those annoying little neck hairs shaved off, and Harriet had managed that, all while extolling the virtues of her unmarried daughter and questioning Boston about his financial status.

If he ever had the misfortune to meet Holly Danforth in person, he was going to run. Harriet made her daughter sound like a cross between Martha Stewart, preconviction, and Pamela Anderson, which was frightening. A woman who could bake a soufflé in a thong bikini was more than he cared to encounter in his kitchen.

Not that he wanted to be thinking about Harriet’s daughter when Shelby was coming over in ten minutes. He had a lot of questions for Shelby Tucker, starting with why she had never bothered to mention that she had a child with her ex-husband. It wasn’t his business, he supposed, but despite all best efforts, his attraction for her had grown steadily over the week since he’d met her. He was lusting after some poor kid’s mother and that just seemed wrong.

The doorbell rang, loud and clear even over the radio he had playing.

“Shit.” He was still in just a towel and Shelby was early. But at least the gunk was out of his hair.

Rubbing his body vigorously, he heard the front door open. Jesus, Shelby had used her key, which was not what they had agreed to. Or maybe they had never actually resolved that sticky little issue.

“Boston?”

“I’ll be down in a second,” he yelled, stepping into his boxers, water still dripping down his chest.

Shelby’s feet were on the steps, the boards creaking as she ascended. What the hell was she doing? The bathroom door was open.

He had one leg in his khaki pants and one leg out when she appeared in the hall.

“Oh! God, sorry, Boston.” Her cheeks flushed beneath her golden tan, and those soft brown eyes were pained. “It’s just, I didn’t want to be alone downstairs.”

Her teeth dug into her bottom lip. “I got a little freaked out standing on the porch. Stupid, huh?”

He dropped his pants so he’d look like less of an ass. “It’s okay. But I’ve been here all week and nothing even remotely weird has happened.”

“Can I wait up here while you . . .”

She dropped her eyes below his waist, a little blush on her cheeks, and he was amused. He didn’t recall Shelby being shy about the whole thing the first time they’d met.