Total pages in book: 116
Estimated words: 112249 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 561(@200wpm)___ 449(@250wpm)___ 374(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112249 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 561(@200wpm)___ 449(@250wpm)___ 374(@300wpm)
Everything was fair game.
Town gossip.
The school’s most popular.
Even the occasional rumor slipped into the mix while the Haus employees worked and everyone else intermingled. For the most part, the adults kept the teens from overthrowing the place or crossing any lines. Especially in their conversations.
Kids really could be cruel.
Sometimes.
Nonetheless, Gracen liked the fast-paced and friendly atmosphere on most days, but each of her smiles felt faker than the last as the clock made of gun metal high on the far white wall ticked on and time crawled. It was only her lull in the last hour of the evening that allowed Gracen a chance to get a start on some of the closing chores. Sweeping the gallery, pulling out garbage bags in the studios and bathrooms. Even wiping down the high-touch areas with cleaning disinfectant to keep up on cleaning.
Margot and Delaney helped by rotating the chores in the mornings and afternoons while Gracen liked doing it to wind down in the evening. It allowed her to close her schedule for that last hour of business to make sure the place was mostly open-ready for the following day. Cleaning and tidying were two things Gracen never complained about, but it wasn’t OCD like Delaney complained whenever she went on one of her daily sprees in their own home.
Doing something just meant Gracen was busy. Not thinking. Less anxious because her mind had a task to focus on until it was finished, and wasn’t there always something else to clean in a house? She could find every nook and cranny.
Gracen tossed the last black garbage bag into the dumpster at the rear of the Haus before taking a moment to glance up at the towering maple soaring higher than the roof of their salon at the caw of a raven. Keeping the rear of the building shaded for most of the day with large limbs full of big maple leaves that scattered a canvas to the ground for them daily in the fall, it saved them on heating in the summer so they couldn’t bear to cut it down despite the way its growth over the decades caused it to lean hard towards the salon.
Margot said it best.
The trees were here first.
“Hey, you missed this one in the staff bathroom.”
Gracen caught the small white bag of trash Margot tossed from the rear exit doors. She opened the dumpster again to heft the feather-light bag inside. “Thanks; I knew I left one somewhere.”
She always counted the bags.
Margot shrugged off the help. “I heard Delaney’s last appointment canceled. She said she wasn’t calling anybody on the cancellation list, and I just have Shelly’s daith to do, and I’m done. So, if you wanna close a half hour early, we’re game.”
Gracen nodded, already heading for the doors. “Sure.”
“Cool, so hey.” Margot’s eyebrows jumped high to make a statement with her own.
“Hey, you.”
Margot chirped out a light laugh. “Anyway, I wanted to say sorry about earlier. I don’t mean to be a nosy bitch, I’m just—”
“We’re all nosy bitches.”
That earned Gracen a grin.
“Well, mostly true,” Margot countered, “but I’m also serious. I don’t mean to, like, cross a line with you and Delaney.”
“You’re not. And you didn’t.”
If the other woman wanted to argue the point with Gracen, she opted not to with a jerky nod before stepping back from the door to let her employer inside the rear of the building. A small corridor of stairs led up to the back of the salon where the office, staff bathroom, and exit door was sectioned off with an employee-only hallway. Gracen had just climbed the last stair when she heard voices traveling from the studio floor she shared with Delaney.
“I thought her last appointment canceled?” she asked Margot.
“Oh,” Margot said like it wasn’t a big deal, “I saw her cousin drive in with some other girl when I came down to use the bathroom.”
The news should have made Gracen turn around on the spot and head for the private office where she could shut the door until Delaney handled her unexpected—or was it? —visit with Bexley Reed. It had to be Bexley. None of Delaney’s other family would be caught dead speaking to her in public unless they absolutely had no other choice to save face and appear polite. Everything boiled down to appearances for those people.
Instead of hiding away with her feelings, Gracen decided she could and would power through it. Or maybe she was just a little too nosy and determined to prove something to Delaney. Not that she entirely understood what that something was now when it could be a variety of things, and none of them were particularly good.
Like pretending she wasn’t bothered by Delaney’s cousin showing up. It was a good, solid plan. Until the second Gracen walked out from the rear of the studio to find the other woman standing side by side Bexley. Alora Beau’s profile was hard to miss when her father was the pastor of one of two churches in town.