Marrying Molly

Tate looked at her, dead on. “That’s right,” he said. The set of his shoulders and the icy look in his eyes clearly indicated that the conversation was concluded.

Donetta took the hint. She raised her magazine and pretended to read it with all her might.

Tate gave up looking for reading material. He sat in the red chair and stared straight ahead. For a while, the Cut was way too quiet. In time, though, the women did begin talking again—but furtive and soft, the way people whisper at funerals or in church.

Molly finished putting the solution on Emmie, set the timer and moved her to another chair. She took off her plastic gloves. “Donetta, let’s have Charlee get you shampooed.”

Donetta eagerly put down her magazine and headed for the sinks where Charlee, the shampoo girl, would take good care of her.

Tate stood. The place went dead silent again.

Molly shook her head. “Sorry. No can do right yet.” She beamed him a big, fake smile.

Tate glared—but he did sit back down. Molly went over and made a show of checking on Emmie, though really there was nothing to check on as yet. Then, since it would be a few minutes until Charlee was done with Donetta, Molly headed for the back door. Out in the alley, she crouched behind the big shop Dumpster and waited for enough time to pass that she could start on Donetta.

Five minutes later, she reentered the shop. Tate was right there waiting by the door. “Where did you get off to?” he demanded.

She edged around him. “Excuse me. I’m working, here.”

Charlee had already led Donetta to the chair and put the cape on her. Molly set to work on Donetta’s hair. Tate, who had followed behind her from the back door, hovered a few feet away, looking dangerous. But after a few minutes of that, he gave up and went back to sit down.

Molly cut and blew Donetta dry. By then, Emmie was ready for the setting solution and the rinse. Molly put her gloves back on and took care of it. Then Emmie had to be dried and combed out.

By the time she whipped the cape off of Emmie—about an hour and a quarter after Tate had first entered the shop—he was getting pretty edgy. Molly kept sending him careful sideways glances.

Uh-uh. Not good. He wasn’t giving up and going away as she’d secretly hoped he might—and he wasn’t sitting still for this waiting game much longer.

Just as she’d expected, two or three minutes later, he stood. “Molly, I’ve had it. Either you talk to me in private—now—or we will have our little conversation right here with all these lovely, interested ladies listening in.”

Molly looked in his eyes and knew she couldn’t stall him another minute longer. So all right, she thought. She would take him into her office and tell him all over again what she’d told him last night.

How many times was she going to have to tell him? Judging by his mulish expression, too many.

Or maybe he actually had something new to say. It could happen. After all, anything was possible.

“Emmie, you can settle up with Darlene and she’ll get you scheduled for that color—next week?”

Emmie nodded and moved to the reception desk. The place had gone deathly quiet again. And though Donetta had already had her cut, she hadn’t left. Oh, no. She’d plunked herself right back down in that red chair and picked up the same magazine she’d already read at least twice.

A feeling of equal parts bottomless dread and glum resignation dragged on Molly. Those two scandal-free months she’d been anticipating were starting to look more and more unlikely.

She turned to Leslie Swankstad, her next customer. “Sorry, Leslie. I’ll be a few minutes.”

“Oh, no problem,” Leslie said, sounding breathless. “No problem at all.”

“This way,” Molly told Tate and turned for the hall at the back of the shop.

She led him through the last door on the right before the exit door at the end. Inside she had her desk and computer, a couple of four-drawer file cabinets, some display shelves with various hair-care products on them and two red plastic guest chairs. She signaled Tate toward the guest chairs and shut the door, closing them into the small space together, instantly feeling that there wasn’t enough room.

In an effort to get as far away from him as possible, she went around behind the desk and dropped into her swivel chair. “All right. What?”

“You know what. Marry me.”

Oh, wonderful. Of course. More of the same. “Tate. We’ve been through this.”

“Marry me.”

Just great, she thought. He had one tune on this subject and by golly, he was going to play it until he drove her out of her mind. “Listen. Please.” She really was trying to be gentle, to be reasonable. “Be realistic.”

“I am. You’re having my baby. The way I see it, that means you and me are getting married.”

“No, Tate. We’re not.”

“Oh, yeah, we are.”

Calm, she thought. Stay calm. Be reasonable. “I want you to just think this over a little. Think about how poorly suited we are to each other, how marriage could never work for us. Tate, I’m an independent woman from the wrong side of town and you’re a domineering rich man raised to think you own the world.”

He looked at her from under the heavy ridge of his brow, his lip curled in a sneer. “So now you’re insulting me…”

Molly sighed deeply and shook her head. She leaned back in her chair. “No. I promise you. I’m not trying to insult you. I’m just trying to make you see.”

“What’s there to see? You’re pregnant and it’s my kid and we need to get married immediately.”

“Tate. We’re a match made by the devil himself. You used to know that.”

“Everything’s different now. There’s a baby on the way.”

“No. No, really, nothing is different. Nothing has changed. You’re still you and I’m still me and for us to get married would be a disaster. The baby would only suffer for it if we did.”

Tate stood. He didn’t look encouraging. He looked…about to start shouting. “I know what’s right, and damn it, right is what I intend to do.”

Molly stared up at him in despair. So much for my month or two, scandal-free, she thought. “Oh, Tate…”

“Molly,” he said way too loudly, “you are going to marry me.”

“No, I am not,” she replied, her voice soft and low and steady as a rock. She stood. They confronted each other across her desk. “And I want you to leave now.”

“You’re not keeping this a secret,” he said. “Don’t think that you will. This isn’t going to be like it was when we started in together, something only you and me will know about. And you can’t end this the way you did when you dumped me, moaning about how you’re tired of sneaking around and lying to the people who trust you. You are having my baby and by God, I’ll shout it to the rooftops.”

It was a challenge. What could she do but accept it? She felt a deep sadness then—for him. For herself. For the innocent baby who would have them for parents. Were there ever two people in the world so poorly suited to the state of matrimony? She didn’t think so. And why couldn’t he see that? Why did he have to be the kind of man who got something in his head and wouldn’t let go of it?

“No way I can hide it in the end, Tate,” she told him flatly. “So you go ahead. You shout it as loud as you want to. It won’t change a thing. I’m not marrying you.”

“Oh, but you will.”

“Oh, no, I won’t.”

Calmly, he went over and opened the door. Out in the shop, it was quiet—very, very quiet. Molly could just picture them all out there—Donetta and Emmie and the rest of them—straining their ears in hopes of hearing just a few words of what was going on in Molly’s office.