Five days without being able to talk to Colt felt like eternity. She reopened her salon and threw herself back into the Halloween Festival preparations, since they were only days away. Colt was returning from his trip on the thirty-first, the same day as the festival.
Her customers had started to trickle back in now that the coupon extravaganza was over. It’d take a bit for them all to return, and if they didn’t, well, that was okay, too.
Allan had sent her flowers and an apology card. She’d refused them at the door. When he’d come by for a haircut, she’d thrown him out of her salon. She was well and truly done with him. No more being nice. Nice only got her shoes, with Allan. He could go to hell, and take those shoes with him.
And now, Colt was due back tomorrow and she was getting antsy. It was her day off, so she’d driven all the way in to Houston with Miranda, digging through a local costume shop and getting supplies for the festival. Miranda had to buy a jersey for Dane since he hadn’t kept one, and a hockey helmet. For her costume, Miranda had decided to be a fifties librarian, and they’d gotten her adorable cat’s-eye-shaped glasses, a poodle skirt, and matching sweater, and Beth Ann had practiced old-fashioned hair styles on Miranda’s long hair until they’d found one that looked suitably sexy.
They were in a costume shop even now, flipping through costume books.
“I can’t believe Brenna wants to be Bettie Page,” Miranda was grumbling for the tenth time that hour. “Wasn’t Bettie Page naked in all those photos?”
“We’ll just get her a leopard bikini and she’ll be fine, honey,” Beth Ann soothed. “All the other women in town will hate her for it, though.”
“Maybe we’d better buy her a nice leopard cover up, too,” Miranda added. “What are you going to be?”
Beth Ann flipped through books of costumes, then shrugged. “I don’t know. I haven’t been able to concentrate on it. I keep thinking about Colt.”
“How about matching costumes?” Miranda said, her eyes gleaming with fun. She knew all about Beth Ann’s waffling about the breakup, and was convinced that if her friend would let Colt grovel correctly, they would be back together and happy again.
Beth Ann was kind of hoping the same.
“Matching costumes?” Beth Ann said dubiously. “I don’t know if he’ll want to dress up. He might be mad at me. He might not want to show up for the festival at all once he knows I’m there.”
“I’ll get Dane or Grant to bully him,” Miranda said stubbornly. “I’m sure he wants to at least talk to you.”
Beth Ann wasn’t so sure. But her hand rested on one particular costume, and she paused. And smiled.
Perhaps she knew the perfect costume after all.
When they returned to the ranch, Beth Ann steeled up her courage and left the box in his cabin, along with a note. What if he didn’t come back in time for the festival? She headed into the main lodge to chat with Brenna.
“He’s leaving tomorrow, actually,” Brenna said with a sad face.
“Leaving? What do you mean he’s leaving?”
“For Alaska,” Brenna said. “Grant’s driving him to get to his flight tomorrow right after he comes back. His tickets are all ready and everything.”
“But he hasn’t even packed,” Beth Ann protested, her heart thudding with panic.
“He doesn’t need much,” Brenna said. “Just a couple changes of clothes and a picture of you to jerk off to. Everything else, nature provides.” She rolled her eyes. “Or so everyone keeps telling me.”
“Can you make him stay?”
She looked thoughtful. “I guess I could misplace his ticket.”
“Please do,” Beth Ann said. She raced back to his cabin and took the note off of the box, and wrote another one.
She’d leave him the message in his cabin, and leave a message on his phone. And if he still left without talking to her, well…
Then she’d have her answer.
EIGHTEEN
The next day
Beth Ann sprayed pink glitter into a fairy’s hair. The pigtails sparkled bright pink, and the mother seemed almost as excited as her daughter.
“She looks so cute,” the mother squealed. “I love what you did with her curls.”
They’d been carefully stiffened with styling wax and pomaded into bouncy spirals that made others stop, stare, and then pay five dollars to have their child’s hair fixed as well. Next to her, Brenna painted faces on squirming children, her cave-girl costume and Bettie Page hair surprisingly adorable. She’d cut her purple bangs in a thick, straight fringe across her forehead, just like Bettie Page, and the result made her impish face even more charming.
“Do you do birthday parties?” the fairy’s mother asked her. “She has a birthday in two months and I’d love to have a makeover party for the little girls. It’d be so cute.”
“I haven’t in the past, but I can,” Beth Ann said easily, slipping a now-glitter-covered card out of her costume’s bodice and handing it over. “Just give me a call.”
“I will,” the woman said, collecting her daughter with a smile. The little girl waved, her hair full of sparkles and curls and the plastic tiara that Beth Ann had fitted into the curls. She did look cute, Beth Ann thought proudly. The Halloween Festival was full of little girls with sprayed hair from her booth—it had been a bigger success than she’d imagined. That was the fourth birthday party invite that she’d gotten—she’d turned none of them down.
She looked over at Brenna, who was helping a child down from her chair. “I’m going to go check on Miranda and see how she’s doing,” she said, wiping her hands with a towel.
“Got it, boss,” Brenna sang out. “I’ll hold down the fort.”
Beth Ann slipped away, crossing the bustling festival in the town square. The costume contest would be in a few hours, and judging from the people dressed up, it’d be just as much of a success as the fund-raising booths were. The crowd today was massive, easily double the size of normal Bluebonnet shindigs. The Halloween festival was a big deal in the area, though, and she wouldn’t have been surprised to find out that people from nearby small towns had stopped in to join in the fun. People in costumes crowded the town square, both adults and children. She passed by a pumpkin pie booth, smiling at the person seated there, and a booth where they served cider. At the far end of a row, Lucy was taking tickets for the cake walk, and Beth Ann raised an eyebrow at the sight of Lucy’s helper. It was a tall, skinny man in a fur loincloth and cape. His goatee was so long that it had been rubber-banded. The infamous Lord Colossus? Heavens, what did Lucy see in that man? She made a mental note to drop by and ask Lucy if Colossus had brought a shirt.