I squint, holding the magnifying-glass mirror a few inches from my face, tweezers in hand. “I’m doing my eyebrows.”
Reflected in the half-wall-sized mirror, he’s a study in artistic perfection. While I am Rubenesque, he’s all Greek sculpture, his body suited for display at a national gallery. Declan isn’t an enormous, overbuilt gym rat, nor is he a metrosexually-toned man who has a Body By Trainer. He works out regularly and yes, has a staff for that, but the natural grace of muscles stretched over bone that moves through the world as if it owns the space in any given room is part of his mystique.
He sets his neatly-folded underwear on the sink next to my toothbrush and glowers at me.
“Doing your eyebrows?”
“Yes. It’s a beauty thing.”
“I know what it is, Shannon. Why not go to the spa downstairs?” He frowns again, his eyes buried under a tuft of bedhead hair from last night. Boyishly cute, his look morphs into an expression that makes me pause.
“Spa? No.” I don’t need the intimidation factor. If I want to be reduced to an ego the size of a fingernail and feel like an awkward middle-schooler out of her league, I’ll ask my mother to go shoe shopping with me. I don’t need the stress that comes from going to a luxury spa in a place where the breakfast menu includes egg whites with basil-infused air.
“Where did you get tweezers? We never packed bags. Did the staff bring those?”
“When I went out with Amanda yesterday, I dashed across the street to a drug store. Got a few things.”
His frown deepens. “You’re plucking your eyebrows with drug store tweezers?”
“Yes.”
“While staying in one of the first hotels I created, which possesses a world-class spa I personally designed for optimal marketing purposes and hotel guest satisfaction?”
“Uh...”
Snatching the silver implement out of my hands, he throws it in the trash and stalks out of the bathroom. I retrieve the tweezers from the garbage can and tuck them away in my makeup bag.
He’s back in one minute. “Lüq is expecting you downstairs. Now.”
“Luke?” He says it in a funny way, like Lee-ooq.
“No, Lüq.”
“That’s what I said. Luke. And who is Lüq?”
“The spa manager. Lüq has orders to take care of you.”
Terror makes all the hair on my body stand up, especially the southern parts. I know where this is going.
“I hate spas. You know I hate spas.”
He leans against the doorjamb with a smug smile. “I know you do. That’s why I just called in reinforcements.”
“What? You need reinforcements for cucumber skin treatments and hot stone massages?”
His eyebrow goes up. “You did read the spa menu.”
I shrug. “But at two hundred bucks for a fifty-minute massage, no way.”
“That’s a bargain.”
“That’s a crime. For five dollars I can get Tyler to heat up rocks in the microwave and put them on my back while Jeffrey walks on my ass and spine in his stocking feet.”
Knock knock knock.
“Shannon?”
That’s my mother’s voice.
I look at him in horror. “You didn’t.”
“Reinforcements.” His smug smile makes me regret having so much sex with him this morning.
Okay. That’s not true. Let’s just say I’m angry and leave it at that.
Declan shrugs into the bathrobe in the armoire, then opens the door. Even Mr. Exhibitionist has his limits when it comes to being naked around my mother.
Mom and Amanda are standing there.
Mom walks in, looking as excited as Chris Harrison with a fresh set of contestants on The Bachelor. “We’re here to make Shannon learn to relax!”
Right. ’Cause that’ll work. Force Shannon to enjoy herself.
She reaches for my face and twists it from side to side. “You need a full-face threading. Especially for that chin hair there. A few more of those and you’ll have that new lumbersexual look down, honey. If Declan wanted to see growth like that, he’d have married a man.”
Amanda mouths, I’m so sorry.
My nostrils are flared and my teeth are gritted, so I all I can do is bare my fangs like a dog with rabies. Am I frothing? If not, I should be. In fact, I wish I had rabies. Then they’d have to take me to the emergency room and give me shots to the stomach with super-long needles, which is sounding like Disney World compared to what’s coming.
“Let’s go get smooth!” Mom crows, linking her arm through mine like we’re Dorothy and the Tin Man and off to see the Wizard.
The wonderful wizard of chin hairs.
“Oh, no. No, no, no, no, no.” I dig in my heels, physically refusing to let my mom get me out into the hallway. “You are not tricking me into a full Brazilian again.”
She looks abashed. “That was never a trick! A miscommunication, but not a trick.” Right after our first Christmas together, Declan got me, Mom, Carol and Amy a day at one of the Anterdec hotel spas in Boston. Through a series of unmentionable events (involving my unmentionable bits), Mom was in charge of telling my waxer what I wanted, and I was given a Brazilian. You don’t get over a “miscommunication” like that quickly.
“I couldn’t pee straight for weeks, Mom.” I wasn’t waxed.
I was deforested.
“We have to suffer for our beauty. Pain builds character. And the right waxing reduces that whole Sasquatch thing you’ve got going down there. I see your father’s Polish ancestry coming out in you.” She winks at Declan, who just scowls. He wasn’t a fan of the all-bald look, but mostly didn’t like the fact that I was in so much pain we didn’t have sex for a week.