Free Weekend Wife by Carolyn Zane

ran his hands through her long, thick, satiny hair. “Oh, gad! This stuff is gorgeous! I would kill for hair like this! Ralph! Come here, man. Will you look at this hair? It’s to die for!” Swirling his fingers through her luxurious hair, Emily watched Max in the mirror as his eyes rolled back into his head in ecstasy. “What would you do with it?” Max asked the expressionless Ralph.
    “Cut it off.” Casting an apathetic glance in her direction, Ralph shrugged and blew a stream of cigarette smoke at the ceiling.
    “Yes! That’s exactly what I was thinking!” Max shrieked in delight.
    “Wha—” Emily gasped in horror, but was too late.
    Max’s expert shears flashed with the precision of a samurai’s sword, and before she knew what hit her, her crowning glory landed in her lap.
    “You can give that to lover boy as a souvenir,” Max chortled before yanking her backward into the shampoo bowl.
    Emily bit back the tears as Max shampooed and rinsed, snipped and clipped, permed and highlighted, styled and spritzed. It was all part of the experiment, she told herself, attempting to swallow past the thickening in her throat. Of course she could sacrifice her beautiful head of hair in the name of research. It was for a good cause.
    Squeezing her eyes tightly closed, she tried to shut out Max’s loud, flamboyant self-proclamations of genius, and wondered absently how Helga and Carmen were faring. Every so often, over the whine of a blow-dryer, she could hear the older woman’s bawdy cackle as something would tickle her funny bone. At least someone here was having some fun, she thought grumpily.
    “I love it!” Max, braying like a donkey, stood back and critically eyed his handiwork. “It’s you, it’s you, it’s you! No, no. Don’t look yet,” he chided, spinning her chair away from the mirror. “I want you to get the full effect after Ralph has done your makeup. You’re really lucky that he’s here today. Usually he’s out on some movie set, doing Michelle or Demi or Julia or somebody. ” He winked conspiratorially at her.
    While Ralph applied his rather passionless art to the canvas of her face, Emily wondered what was keeping Ty. Hopefully, he’d show up soon so that she could give him another black eye.
    * * *
    Ty slammed the door to his Mercedes and set the security system before entering the cool, dark interior of Maxime’s Impressionistic Hair. Beauty salons gave him the willies, so he’d opted to spend the morning filling Carmen’s prescription for antibiotics and making a late lunch appointment for the four of them at a popular seafood restaurant on the coast. It would be a good place to practice the art of eating out, he reasoned, thinking about the numerous formal meals they all had to get through on the cruise ship.
    When he’d left his new “family” in the care of Maxime’s capable—he hoped—hands, he’d had no idea what to expect. He just knew they had to look better than the motley crew he’d picked up at the side of the road yesterday afternoon. Nothing on earth, however, could have prepared him for what he found.
    For there, waiting patiently in the lobby with two people he supposed were Helga and Carmen, was Emily.
    And she was gorgeous.
    Drop-dead, traffic-stopping, steal-your-breath-away gorgeous. He was positive she could walk into any modeling agency in the country and land a job. Yes, his heart pounded in his chest triumphantly, Roxanne would hate her.
    Her chic new hairdo gave her a level of sophistication that most women strived for, but just missed, all their lives. Short, but not too short, its soft highlights glowed golden, a wispy frame for her cover-girl-quality face. Thick, dark eyelashes now surrounded her expressive brown eyes, and her alabaster complexion was offset only by her full, sensuous, plum-colored lips.
    Ty felt his blood surge suddenly hot as he stared at her, and remembered the way she’d felt in his arms yesterday during their impromptu