Blindsided (Indigo Love Spectrum) (2 page)

“Why do you have to be so secretive? That one’s really
got your nose open.”

“She does not have my nose open,” he said a little too
quickly. “Norris Converse’s nose is open to no one.”

A
gnes laughed. “If you say so.” She handed him a pink
message sheet. “You had a call from a Dr. Gail Elders.”

“Gail Elders?” He hadn’t heard that name in seven
teen years, but it was one he’d never forget. She was the beautiful older woman who’d had a hand in creating his
legendary persona. Norris smiled as he scanned the mes
sage. She wanted him to meet her at the hospital. He
could do that. “My calendar is clear for the rest of the
day, so I’m going to head out a little early.”

“I don’t think your Ms. Sinclair will like you meeting
up with another woman.”

Norris considered those words.
If only.
A part of him wished she would care. He frowned at Agnes. “Don’t you
have some papers to file or something?”

“In fact, I do.”

“Then you do that. I’ll see you on Monday.”

Norris spent the short drive back to his condo trying
not to think about Dahlia and the way she made him
feel. Ryan had given up preaching the merits of
monogamy as a much-appreciated birthday present.
Now, three months into his thirty-seventh year, monogamy had become a constant daydream he
wouldn’t mind making a reality. Even the idea of a little
Norris or two running around excited him. Norris
grunted. Ryan’s domestic heaven was killing him.

Norris moved through his living room, shedding his
clothes as he made his way to the shower. The steamy
spray pelted his tense muscles. How could he feel so
incredibly good physically after spending quality
moments with Dahlia, yet feel like his life was the pits?

H
e shouldn’t be miserable. He had more money than
he’d ever be able to spend, he was good looking, and
women fell at his feet. For years, those things had been
enough. Now he wanted more, and he wanted it with
Dahlia.

Norris stuck his head under the forceful spray.
C’mon,
man. Get it together.
He slapped his face. Great sex didn’t
equal great relationship; it just meant great sex. And with
Dahlia, he had someone who was willing and available whenever he was. It was a charmed life. Then, there was
Gail Elders, beautiful Dr. Gail, asking to see him. He
turned off the shower and wrapped a fluffy white towel around his waist. What the hell was he complaining about?

* * *

“I’m sorry I’m so late, Reese,” Dahlia said to her client
when she finally made it to her salon. “Where’s Diana?”
Reese and her best friend were never far apart.

“She’s babysitting for the Andrews tonight, and had
to take care of a few things beforehand,” Reese said,
sliding the book she’d been reading into the backpack set
tled between her ankles.

Dahlia smiled. Diana’s cousin Lara, and her husband,
Ryan, had dinner plans with Norris.
Norris.
Dahlia willed
her heart to stop pounding from memories of their salacious encounter. Five fast minutes in a hot shower had
washed away his intoxicating masculine scent, but no
amount of soap or water could wash away the indelible mark Norris had made on her.

S
he could still feel the warmth of his skin against
hers, the feel of him as he moved inside her, and the
tickle of his breath when he dusted her neck with kisses.
Dahlia’s face grew warm. Her heart raced faster.

“Dahlia, are you sick?”

Dahlia blinked, shaken from her wanton thoughts.
“What?”

“You’re flushed. If you’re under the weather, I can always re-reschedule,” Reese said in a strained voice.

Dahlia laughed at the well-meaning teen. “Fear not,
Reese, you won’t have to reschedule. I’m not sick.”
Lovesick maybe, but she didn’t want to think about that.
“I’m a little preoccupied, but up to the challenge of
making you more beautiful than you already are.”

Dahlia smiled at her young customer. A very sweet
girl, though the slightest bit vain, Reese had flawless
golden brown skin, light eyes, and flowing curls of coal
black hair, which made her as striking as she was pleasant.
Most of Dahlia’s clients would give their eyeteeth to have the ‘good hair’ Reese had, but Reese was chomping at the
bit to get it cut.

The two had met a year earlier when Dahlia partici
pated in Career Day at the high school. When Reese
learned Dahlia had graduated from Columbia University,
a school she had aspirations to attend, they developed a friendly mentor/mentee relationship. A friendship made stronger when Dahlia realized her former Sunday school
teacher was Reese’s mother.

“C’mon, let’s go back to my chair.”

D
ahlia ushered Reese to the first booth in a row of seven. She had loved styling hair from the time she was
six, spending hours in the flowing manes of her baby
dolls. Through the vocational program at her high
school, she studied cosmetology and received her license, which she put to work when she started Columbia. A few
hours after class and weekends at Sadie’s House of Beauty
had generated a hefty savings toward the purchase of her
first salon. Now she lived her dream, making women
look and feel beautiful, while listening to them talk about
everything or nothing. She loved it.

Her parents had had conniptions when she’d dis
closed her plan to open a beauty salon.
“Why waste a
Columbia MBA in a beauty shop? Dahlia, this is mad
ness!”
her father shrieked. But he said scant little when
DBS, Dahlia’s Beauty Salon, pulled in six figures after
three years in operation. And at age thirty-two, with her
original hair and nail salon in Denburg and four flour
ishing full-service day spas across South Carolina,
Dahlia had made her first million. Her studies in entre
preneurship didn’t go to waste. Unlike her twelve years as a wife.

The devastating end of her marriage prompted the
sale of her day spas and forced Dahlia to face single life at
thirty-four. The abrupt change in her world led to a year
long sabbatical in St. Thomas—her time in paradise a
journey of self-rediscovery. She returned to Denburg a
brand new Dahlia, and jumped back into the work she
loved in the salon that had started it all. Fourteen months
later, things were going well.

“
Dahlia, I didn’t realize you were back.” Marci
Jackson, the newest, youngest, and most religious of the
shop ladies, exited the shampoo room with a client and
directed her to the booth next to Dahlia’s. “You had a call
earlier,” she said. “The message is on your desk.”

“Do you know who it was?” Dahlia asked.

“She said her name was Leslie.”

In what seemed to be a choreographed move, the
necks of the five other stylists in the shop snapped to the
right, fixing questioning eyes on Dahlia.

“You reckon that’s your sister, Dahlia?” asked Ms.
Flo, the eldest of the group and the busiest busybody of the bunch. She was a direct contrast to Marci, who read
her Bible and tried new coloring techniques on her man
nequin in lieu of dishing the dirt on what got done to
who and why. “You haven’t heard from her in what? Two
years?”

“Yes, Ms. Flo, it’s been about that long.”

“She still in Atlanta?”

“I wouldn’t know.” Dahlia draped Reese and escorted
her to the shampoo room, leaving Ms. Flo and the four
remaining shop ladies, who fell comfortably between
gossip hound and bible hugger, murmuring in her wake
about the call and its ramifications.

“Are you okay?” asked Reese. “You seem a bit flus
tered.”

She had been flustered after being with Norris. Heck,
just being around him made her feel flustered in a way
she’d never thought she would again. A feeling she was in
no rush to claim. Right now she wasn’t flustered.

S
urprised and a bit steamed, but not flustered. “I’m good,
Reese,” she said.

“I don’t know. I’ve never seen you anything but
together, but today you seem a bit distracted. Is it just
this Leslie person or is it someone else? Someone with . 
. .hromosome?”

Dahlia’s cheeks grew warm. Was she that obvious?
“Uh-huh. It is a man.” Reese giggled.

“All right, Miss Smarty Pants, enough of that,”
Dahlia playfully chided. “Lie back.”

Reese settled her neck into the rest. “Is he nice?”

“I never said there was a he.” Dahlia wet Reese’s hair.
“Too hot?”

“It’s perfect,” Reese answered. “You didn’t have to say
it, your expression said it all. He must be nice. He
couldn’t make you this giddy if he wasn’t.”

Dahlia blinked. Was she acting giddy? “Was that a
romance novel you were reading when I came in?” she asked. “Your mind seems to be on one track right now.”

“
The Great Gatsby
. Required reading.”

“A classic.” Dahlia squeezed some shampoo into her
palm. “You enjoying it?”

“Eh.” Reese’s hand motioned so-so. “Is Leslie your
sister?”

Dahlia laughed as she scrubbed Reese’s scalp. “I
thought business was your thing. You suddenly want to
be a reporter?”

“I’m sorry, am I prying?”

“You don’t know the answer to that?” Dahlia
quipped.

Reese made a hissing sound. “Sorry.”

“Don’t sweat it. Lucky for you I like you.” Dahlia
shampooed and rinsed and repeated the action for the
next several quiet minutes. “Leslie is my younger sister,”
she finally confessed as she turned off the water and
squeezed the excess from Reese’s hair.

“You’re not close?”

“Not anymore.” She saturated the damp hair with
conditioner and slapped on a styling cap. “Let’s sit you
under the dryer for a few minutes.”

As Reese deep-conditioned, Dahlia slipped into her
office. What in the world did her sister want?

* * *

Norris ignored the smiling women he passed on his way into Denburg Memorial Hospital. Never short of
female admirers, he knew one look in their direction
would send them flocking over, and he wasn’t interested
in fighting off advances.

An attractive blonde at the reception desk pointed
him in the direction of Gail’s office. A couple of months
ago, that honey would have been his lunch. She clearly
had a serious hankering for him. The way she smiled and
licked her lips as if she’d just finished a serving of her
favorite dessert said it all. He thanked the receptionist for her help and headed down the curving corridor to Office
110. He knocked on the door.

“Come in,” said a voice that took him spiraling back
over seventeen years.

N
orris cracked the door. The soft scent of jasmine
erased the pungent smell of hospital antiseptic. Gail
loved jasmine. He remembered she always had the
scented candles burning at her home. Norris peeked
around the door to find the lady behind her desk looking
as beautiful as ever. “Dr. Gail.”