Sam’s breathing quickens. “You’re worrying me.”
I hand the girl at the front counter my card without even looking at her, my eyes glued to Sam’s hair.
“It’s horrible,” Sam groans, deadpan. “It’s hideous. I’m gonna scare children. That’s what it is, isn’t it?”
I get my card back, swipe Sam’s glasses off the counter, and put them on her. The next instant, she slumps over to the nearest mirror, then engages in a strange sort of staring contest with herself, many odd, unreadable emotions cutting through her face.
I come up behind her. “Pretty damn hot, huh?” I murmur, breaking a smile.
Sam’s eyebrows, completely reshaped, slowly lift, as if she were seeing daylight for the first time. She doesn’t say anything, staring at herself in a daze.
Now it’s my turn to wonder if she hates the cut. “You know, hair grows back,” I reason with her, “and if you don’t like it—”
“I love it,” she says with her brand of deadpan joy. “I love it so much. It’s really the best thing. Wow.”
Every one of her words, monotonous and flat. She makes “joy” sound miserable. She makes “love” sound like an exhausting climb up a hillside. Yet even with all that indifference that is Samantha Hart, I know better than to rely on the mere sound of her words; she does love her haircut. She loves it so much, she can’t look away from the mirror.
I smile inside at a job well-done.
By the time we get back to campus, I realize I’m already five minutes late to my lighting crew shift. The glass door nearly meets my nose before it meets my hand, and I stumble going down the short hall to the auditorium.
Clayton waits for me, his legs dangling over the lip of the stage. He’s since changed and showered, as is evidenced by the new white shirt and jeans. Also, his hair seems to be fixed up a bit, like he threw a splash of water over his head and gave it a few rubs.
“I’m late,” I mouth soundlessly when I reach him.
He seems amused, smirking out of the side of his mouth as he gives me a once-over. “Doesn’t look like appropriate attire for crew work.”
“I picked up this dress today when I went on a shopping spree with my roommate,” I tell Clayton with a coy smile. “I thought that you … might like it.”
“Like it?” he echoes.
From the look on his face, I think he more than likes it.
“By the way,” he goes on, “Dick won’t be by pretty much for the rest of the semester.” I wrinkle my brow questioningly. “It means I’m your boss. It’s my say on how late or inappropriately dressed you are.”
I cross my arms and squint defiantly at him. “So … am I in trouble?”
Watching my lips so intently, a dark, roguish glint enters his eyes. He nods slowly, then hops off the edge of the stage and saunters up to me, staring down at me over his big chest and intimidating size.
“Big trouble,” resonates his deep, silky voice.
I bite my lip.
“I was told to send you to rehearsal after we finish everything on this list.” He waves a piece of paper in the air, then slaps it onto the stage. “Just so happens, I finished the list an hour ago.”
My heart races. “Oh?”
“But I don’t feel like sending you to rehearsal.”
“I don’t feel like going.”
A hand firmly settles on the small of my back. “Let’s double-check some of the items on this list.”
I stare up into his dark gaze. “Yes, boss.”
He grins.
Then, with a superior flick of his chin, he leads me up the steps to the stage. I follow, my heart fluttering excitedly.
“Lighting rack organized?” he inquires, his eyes finding me.
“Check,” I say, then press my lips together.
He rounds about the stage, coming to a bunch of hooks that line the back wall. “All the cords wrapped and sorted?”
Feeling playful, I pull at one of the hooks, a set of yellow cords dropping to the ground in a pile.
His eyes zero in on me.
I shrug innocently. “Oops.”
The very next instant, he has that cord in his grip. He steps forward, and suddenly I’m against the wall.
“This needs to be wound back up,” he says quietly, grabbing me and beginning to loop the yellow cord around my wrists.
“Clayton,” I hiss at him, my eyes darting around.
“No one’s here,” he assures me with a mischievous tone, wrapping the cord around and around itself, then pulling tight. “No one at all.” He flips it over the hook, then pulls.
My bound hands fly up with the cable, startling me. Oh my god. My heart hammers like a prisoner in my ribcage. My breath is stolen.