Underneath It All

So he’d acted out of character. The Dean Edgar character he and Bart had invented would never have apologized.

Of course, Dean Edgar would never buy a camisole like that in the first place. Then he certainly wouldn’t have stood there while his gorgeous neighbor yelled at him—picturing the soft silk against Kate’s creamy skin and auburn hair, imagining those pink cheeks flushed, not with anger, but with passion….

He’d been a fool, all right.

Darren stomped back to his computer, stretching his cramped shoulders. He removed the heavy glasses, rubbing absently at the indentation they left on the bridge of his nose, and sat down to get back to work. One thing he’d proved was that his disguise was working. Kate hadn’t treated him as though he were America’s most eligible bachelor; she’d looked as if she felt sorry for him.

The one good thing about the magazine disaster was that it had allowed him to leave the family firm and try to make his own career. This was the silver lining inside the black cloud of notoriety. All he needed to finish his software program was a few months with no distractions.

His mind wandered to the scene at his front door.

Kate.

Under the general heading Distractions, Kate would top the list.

She’d been so angry with him she couldn’t get the words out fast enough. Even her hair got angry, bouncing and swinging as she shouted at him, shooting fire every time the sun hit it. That hair curled all the way down her back.

It was amazing.

The stuff of fantasies.

Still, he reasoned, if she worked at a beauty salon it could be fake.

Yeah. That should stop any fantasies before they started. Every time he thought about that hair, he would imagine her taking it off before she went to bed. And he would do the same thing with the camisole.

No!

He just wouldn’t think about the camisole at all.

The blinking cursor on his screen reminded him that he’d been daydreaming again. He swore. He wondered how Kate would have reacted if she’d known who he really was. A reluctant grin pulled at his mouth. He had a strong feeling she wouldn’t care a bit whom she was yelling at once she lost her temper.

Darren dragged his concentration back to the computer once more, but words and images danced meaninglessly on the screen.

He started typing.

He stopped.

He breathed deeply.

Kate was taking off her hair before she went to bed. Underneath it—let’s see—she’d gone prematurely gray and had her own hair in a crew cut.

And he was not thinking about the camisole at all.

“SMELLS FANTASTIC,” Kate’s co-worker and best friend, Ruby, was over for dinner, a tradition they’d started that allowed them to visit inexpensively outside of salon hours.

She affected a bad imitation of a broad Irish brogue. “And you’ll be makin’ some lucky man a fine little wife.”

“Thank you, Ma,” Kate replied in a more authentic brogue. “But don’t be marryin’ me off now, till you’ve tasted it.”

“Here’s to mothers.” Ruby raised her glass in a toast. “How is your mom, anyway?”

“Oh, I don’t know. The same. They’re all the same.”

“Susan and her crew moved out yet?”

She shook her head. Susan, the eldest of the five children, was the only married one, and the only child apart from Kate who’d left home. She’d been married four years and had two children, but when her husband lost his job the four of them had moved back in with her mother and her other siblings. The small two-bedroom bungalow Kate grew up in now housed eight of her family.

“And I thought I’d lived in tenements.” Ruby shook her head.

“You did live in tenements. You’re just not Irish.”

The aromatic scent of lasagna filled the air as she scooped hefty portions onto two plates. A basket of crusty garlic bread and a big bowl of salad lay between the two women.

“Oh, I wish I could cook,” wailed Ruby as she did every time she came to Kate’s for dinner. “Will you marry me?”

Kate shook her head. “I’m looking for somebody with enough money to get me out of hairdressing.”

“Well, that lets me out. What about that escaped bachelor fellow I keep hearing about on the news? Maybe you could find him and pick up the reward.”

Kate snorted. “I never even find my lost earrings.” She vaguely recalled the blond man on the front of Bethany’s magazine. “I’m not sure I’m the type rich men go for.”

“I hear you. Why do people with money always look for people with more money? You’d think they’d try and spread the wealth a little. It’s more democratic.”

“I don’t know. But I do know that you have to rely on yourself. Dreaming of rich guys doesn’t help.”

“What about your bank man? He looks like a guy with money to spend.”

“You mean Brian.”

“Yeah, right. How’s it going?”

Kate sipped wine, thinking. “He’s been working really hard lately and so have I, so we haven’t seen each other that much.”

“Looked to me last time I saw him like he was getting set to propose. You going to marry him?”

Kate broke apart a piece of garlic bread, the crust crunching in the silence. “No. I can’t explain it. Sure, he’s good-looking and has a great job, but I’m pretty sure he wants kids right away.” Suddenly a bubble of despair welled up inside her. “Oh, Ruby, I’m just so tired of looking after people.”

Across the table Ruby’s chocolate eyes were soft with sympathy. “Don’t I know it.”

When the two had met at the beauty salon, they’d become instant friends. As they got to know each other, it was uncanny how similar their backgrounds were. Both came from big families headed by single women: Ruby’s through divorce, Kate’s through her father’s death. She’d quit high school to help her mother out financially, and to look after the younger kids since her mom had to get a job long before her grief had healed. A big chunk of both her and Ruby’s paychecks still went straight home to their mothers even though they had moved out on their own.

Both were willing to make extra sacrifices not to live at home ever again. Living alone meant working extra shifts, skipping breaks to squeeze a few more customers into each day, eating a lot of macaroni and being very creative with little clothing. They both agreed their freedom and the luxury of privacy was worth any sacrifice.

“He doesn’t know about your family, does he?” Ruby asked.

“No.” Brian certainly didn’t know that her mother relied on Kate’s financial support. And he didn’t strike Kate as the kind of man who would ever take on that burden himself once they were married. If she did marry him, how could she give her mother money and keep it a secret?

“Well, don’t rush into anything,” was Ruby’s advice, which was pretty much what Kate had already decided.