Free Half Moon Hill by Toni Blake

him her shower? But . . . no. Just no. Duke Dawson naked in her house, for any reason whatsoever—just . . . no. “Make do,” she told him.
    A few minutes later, he sat down in the chair, his hair hanging in soft, wet, messy waves to his shoulders, some of it falling down in his eyes, as well. As she draped a towel around his shoulders, she tried to appear confident, as if she were an expert cutter of hair—and as if being this close to him again wasn’t already making her uneasy. But it was. It had been challenging enough just to talk to him in the foyer—yet now she was touching him, sort of, as she secured the towel. He smelled like the woods, but in a good way—sort of piney, earthy. And why on earth had she thought this seemed like a good idea?
    She’d blurted out the suggestion before thinking yesterday—it had seemed like the obvious solution and she’d been under a lot of stress at the time. Now, though, she began to question everything . Cutting his hair. Letting him work for her. Even agreeing to keep his secret. Despite the moments he’d seemed normal, even bordering on friendly—and hell, he’d seriously come to her rescue yesterday—she still couldn’t shake the idea that she was somehow being sucked into something a bit dangerous here.
    “Meow.” Anna looked down to see that Erik had arrived on the scene. Figured.
    “Your cat,” Duke said. Like maybe she wouldn’t recognize him. As Erik padded about their feet and the chair legs, meowing a couple more times, Duke asked, “What does he want?”
    “I don’t know,” Anna replied. “He’s annoying that way.”
    “You feed him?”
    “All the time. He’s probably going to get fat. But it never shuts him up.”
    Ready to get down to business here—because she had to be—she reached for a comb. And then she paused. If she was cutting his hair, she had to comb it out—but even doing just that suddenly seemed . . . surprisingly intimate.
    “Something wrong?”
    Crap. He was looking up at her, those steel gray eyes pinning her in place as usual, even while peering through locks of damp hair.
    “Nope,” she said merrily. “Just . . . trying to figure out where to start with this mess.”
    “It’s not that bad,” he protested.
    But she shrugged her disagreement. It was pretty bad. Yet she dove in with the comb anyway then, because she didn’t want to appear too timid to touch his hair, for God’s sake. After all, she was cutting it, not running her fingers through it in passion.
    Yikes, where had that thought come from?
    From your lack of sex. It’s no biggie. Just cut the guy’s hair and move on with your life.
    She stood over him, carefully combing his hair back over his head, trying to be gentle. But some snarled tangles required actually working with the hair, holding locks of it in one hand while she combed with the other. She couldn’t help noticing the texture of it between her fingers and thinking how odd it was that she’d ended up with her hands in Duke Dawson’s hair.
    “Ow!” he groused as she fought with one particularly tough tangle near his ear.
    “You sure are sensitive for a big, tough biker guy,” she said, still untangling.
    “You sure are rough with a comb.”
    “Toughen up,” she advised him. “I’m sure you’ve been through worse.”
    Though she kind of regretted the words as soon as they left her—she’d been teasing him, but maybe he wouldn’t take it that way. Maybe it would be a reminder of bad things. Though . . . perhaps it heartened her a little to know Duke Dawson had weaknesses, just like everyone else.
    Once his hair was combed out, hanging straight down now around his head, she reached for the scissors. She actually owned a pair of hair shears—one of her closest friends back in Indianapolis was a hairdresser, and when they were younger, Julie had given Anna a few lessons in trimming.
    “Sure you know what you’re doing with those things, Daisy?” he asked doubtfully,