Polished Slick (Natural Beauty) Read online

  Ginger was the one who’d come forward and suggested Trinity stay with her. She’d thought it was time for the girl to stay put for a while, and she could provide her with the kind of stability she’d never had. Ginger had promised to give her back after Trinity’s dad returned from his deployment, but by then, no one would dare separate them. No one saw the sense in uprooting Trinity, so she stayed another year…then another…and another…then she went to college. Now she was nearly twenty-five and living with her great-aunt yet again.

  Trinity was digging into her German potato salad with gusto when Ginger nudged her under the table with her foot. She looked up and met Ginger’s mischievous gaze. “Hmm?”

  Ginger leaned over across the small four-top, nearly plopping the reading glasses dangling from her neck chain into her dinner. She cupped her left hand beside her mouth as if to shield her words from nearby patrons, although no one was really paying attention. Christine’s was always loud. That was the rule, not the exception. A person could re-enact the Battle of Gettysburg on a tabletop and no one would bat an eye.

  “Hey!” Ginger whispered hoarsely.

  Trinity raised an eyebrow.

  Ginger darted her hazel eyes sideways toward the bar.

  Trinity turned her head slowly to look. “What? What am I looking at?”

  Ginger bobbed her head toward the bar. “This may sound like an ignorant question, but…is that a man or a really big woman?”

  “Huh?” Trinity scanned the backs of patrons seated at the bar, and snorted when she honed in on the creature in question.

  Ginger squinted at her. “You know, don’t ya? He or she? I can’t tell from the back. Could be a statuesque woman, and I don’t recognize the hair. Can’t be a local.”

  Now Trinity’s snort upgraded to a chuckle. “Oh, it’s a local. Ha. Statuesque.” She wiped away the tears forming at the corners of her eyes, and tried to calm her mounting hysterics with a long sip of her beer. Didn’t work, so she went ahead and let out the laughs.

  Ginger poked her lips out.

  “Sorry.” Trinity dabbed her eyes again, and tried another sip of beer. “I guess from this angle, you can’t see all the piercings and the very prominent Adam’s apple.” She faced the bar again, and studied the blond dreadlocks that fell to the middle of the man’s back.

  Jerry—and it couldn’t be anyone but him—was built like a swimmer. Broad shoulders with long limbs and torso. That was what was evident for everyone to see, but Trinity also knew beneath his clothes Jerry had well-developed calves, firm abdominals, and extensive tattoo work. Not that she’d been looking, but just a month before, the N-by-N staff had their annual retreat on Bald Head Island. Nikki’s friend, Beth—the company’s very part-time trend-watcher—owned a timeshare there.

  Someone had asked Jerry why he didn’t wear shorts more often. He’d claimed his unfinished tattoos didn’t make sense without color, but Trinity thought that was bullshit. They were obviously waves…not that she was looking. Nope, Trinity wasn’t looking at all. It wasn’t like she had a calf fetish or anything.

  Never.

  Jerry’s legs were hardly a blip on her radar screen. Just like that little silky trail of hair between his navel and the top of his swim trunks had been completely not worth her attention. Same applied to the dimples in his back, just above the top of his sagging shorts that acted like neon arrows pointing down to his ass. They seemed to instruct a person inclined to do so to “grab me!”

  Nope, not sexy at all.

  Hell, if it had been anyone else but Jerry, maybe she would have allowed herself the fantasy. But Jerry?

  “You got the wall, muh-fucker!” Brock Lane shouted from the corner nearest the bar. His was one of the few disturbances at Christine’s worth noting. No one wanted to be stabbed by a dart, after all. He was swaying, and one of his eyelids drooped as if every part of him, excluding the other eye, was drunk to the point of being pickled.

  Jerry turned to look at the commotion from the side of the room and the corner of his mouth turned up into a smirk at the show.

  “Look,” Trinity said to Aunt Ginger. “See?”

  Aunt Ginger squinted him. “No. Sorry. Can’t tell. I think I’m due for a pair of bifocals.” She put the offending glasses on and sighed.

  Trinity looked again and shrugged. Admittedly, Jerry was rather androgynous in profile, sort of like a David Bowie in his Ziggy Stardust days, only more Rasta. He was always meticulously clean-shaven, even when his clothes were wrinkled and eyes bloodshot. She’d once overheard him telling Juan one morning the only reason he managed it was because he kept his electric shaver in his Jeep. His lack of facial hair and blemish-free skin made him seem almost pretty in comparison to the rough and tumble farmers and fishermen flanking him at the bar. The facial jewelry seemed to offset the effect somewhat, however.

  “Ah.” And just like that, Trinity thought she’d solved the mystery of why a man as beautiful as Jerry would put studs and barbells in his face. That damned facial flush that always seemed to strike her when he was close in proximity frustrated her. She turned from the bar. Even if Ginger had noticed Trinity’s flush, there’s no way she could have known what triggered it.

  Trinity cleared her throat. “That’s Jerry Rouse.” She picked up her spoon and dipped it into her potato salad. Food was always a good distraction. Perhaps it would have been more so if she’d ever been the one cooking it. She couldn’t cook a thing, but she knew how to blend the hell out of a daiquiri. “He’s the tech guy at Natural by Nicolette. He handles all the logistical stuff.”

  “Oh!” Ginger exclaimed. She rubbed her chin and stared at his back. “He’s pretty for a man, huh? Lucky duck you are to have such eye candy at work.”

  That damned flush returned. This time, Trinity crossed her arms over her chest and stuck her chin out. “If heavily-pierced is your type. I doubt he can make it through airport security without a strip search.”

  “Oh, I don’t have a type.” Ginger gave Trinity a dismissive flick of the hand, then picked up her brat sandwich. She took a healthy bite, and chewed for a while, thoughtfully. “I’m completely switched off in that way and you know it.”

  Sad, but true. Ginger’s husband died fairly young, and she’d never remarried. Everyone in town knew she was still carrying a torch for him, and always would. They were soul mates if there was such a thing. Even Trinity knew it as a six-year-old, watching the way he’d push Ginger on the swings at the downtown park in Edenton, or the way he’d put his hand on Ginger’s shoulder when they were sitting on the sofa for no other reason but to say, “Hey, I’m still here.” They were two people who just wanted to be around each other, even if they had nothing to say. For Trinity, it was an entirely different sight than the frigid way her grandmother Irene, fifteen years Ginger’s senior, interacted with Trinity’s grandfather. She’d long known Ginger was the better influence in things on love and life, even if her advice on it was scandalizing when she dispensed it.

  “I’m asking for a picky young woman I know.” Ginger batted her red eyelashes at her great-niece, and Trinity closed her eyes.

  She shook her head emphatically. “Nuh-uh. No way.”

  “Well, why not? He’s gorgeous and…” She squinted at Jerry’s back. “…he’s tall. Tall is nice. You know, love and sex aren’t necessarily a package deal.”

  Trinity thumped her forehead against the tabletop a few times and groaned. When she was done punishing herself, she tilted her face up a few degrees and retorted, “I could be his boss someday. Also, yuck.”

  “Why yuck?”

  Trinity rolled her lip into a sneer, and immediately pulled it down. That was habit she was trying desperately to stop ever since Gabby tagged a picture of her online in which she was doing it. She had no idea her gums were so pink. “Um. Well, he just makes lifestyle choices I don’t agree with.”

  “Like what? Smokes a little weed?” Ginger shrugged.

  Trinity’s jaw dropped. “How’d you know? I thin
k he does. His eyes are always red and he’s way too damn chill. I’ve never smelled it on him, but he looks like the type.” She twiddled her napkin, not wanting to make further eye contact with her sage aunt. She could predict where the conversation was going and she wasn’t having it.

  “You’re such a prude, Trinity. Even if he does smoke pot, it’s a pretty harmless recreational activity assuming he doesn’t do it while driving.”

  “Okie-dokie.” Trinity threw her hands up. “God, Aunt Ginger. It’s illegal! Grandma Irene would have a cow if she were sitting in on this conversation.”

  Ginger blew a raspberry.

  “Oh!” Trinity lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper and leaned in close. “You know she wanted me to hook up with Josh Boylan? Bet he wouldn’t know the difference between cannabis and kale.”

  “I’ll say ‘yuck’ to that. Good thing it’s me and not Irene then, huh? I know those Boylans. Wife beaters, the whole lot of them. Of course, all the ladies keep it hush-hush like it’s some big secret. Everyone knows about it, though. It’s impossible not to know. Also? We all smoked a little weed back in the day. Don’t let Irene make you think otherwise.”

  Trinity could only stare in response.

  Ginger chugged about two inches of her beer, and stood.

  “Hey, where are you going? Bathroom? Want me to watch your purse?”

  “Nope.” Ginger walked away without explaining.

  When Trinity realized Ginger was going to the bar, she quickly scrambled to the adjacent seat so her back was to Jerry. It was either move, or Jerry would see her blush. She figured making a fast sprint for the door without paying the bill would be most uncool, so it was the best she could do.

  So there she sat, trying to control her breathing much like she had watched Nikki do over the past few months.

  In and out. In and out. Deep cleansing breaths.

  Wasn’t working. She didn’t want to breathe. She wanted to vomit.

  Please don’t come over. Please don’t come over.

  Ginger returned five fretful minutes later, and thankfully for Trinity’s fragile nerves, she was alone. “He’s got beautiful teeth,” she said. She picked up her frosty pint mug, shaking her head with adoration.

  Trinity narrowed her eyes at her. “Uh-huh. What’d you do, Aunt Ginger?”

  Ginger put a hand up to her chest and gasped. “Why, nothing! I was truthful. Told him I was trying to see if he was a man or a woman. He thought it was funny. He’s got a sexy little chuckle and a nice deep voice. No lack of testosterone there.”

  Trinity closed her eyes tight and counted to ten in her head. “Oh my god. This is humiliating.”

  Ginger ignored Trinity’s distress and dropped her voice to a whisper. “Did you know he used to model?”

  “Huh?” That was worth Trinity opening her eyes for. She even turned all the way around to look at Jerry, but caught him watching her in the mirror behind the bar. He winked at her then went back to studying the stack of papers he was shuffling through while he grazed at a basket of fries.

  Trinity shrieked and whipped her body back around.

  “Oh, yes. Dropped out of college to surf professionally, and then got tapped to do some beachwear campaigns. He didn’t like doing it, though. Didn’t like the attention.”

  “Huh.”

  “Yeah. Never did go back to school. Didn’t feel the need to.”

  That explains a lot. “You learned all that in a five-minute conversation, huh?”

  Ginger shrugged. “People love talking to me. I know all the tricks to get people to keep on yakking. How do you think I manage to get all the kids to admit they haven’t been flossing?”

  “Oh, that’s easy. You bribe them with balloons and stickers.”

  “You’re such a cynic, Trinity.”

  “I learned it from you.”

  After diverging paths at Christine’s, Aunt Ginger headed home to prepare for a long day of work, and Trinity drove to Tyner to babysit Nikki’s last batch of nail polishes.

  Trinity was absolutely vested in the project, and thought the Polished Slick line was some of Nikki’s best work to date.

  The nail polish was going to be different than any other natural product available, because it was going to be sold without color. One of Nikki’s biggest pet peeves with cosmetics was buying polish that looked a certain way in the bottle, but once she got it home and applied it, the stuff would either be too translucent or too opaque. So, she decided to make her polishes customizable. Customers would purchase the special eco-friendly syringe just once to use for repeated applications. They’d fill it with a specified amount of clear, pearlescent, or opaque white base, then add as much pigment as they desired. Next, they’d twist on the disposable brush end, shake the polish syringe to mix the color, and depress the plunger to work the custom polish into the brush. Then they’d paint their nails as usual.

  Most of the beta testers they’d used liked the syringe a lot because it was far more ergonomic than those tiny brushes that came in traditional bottles. They could actually polish both hands with almost equal skill, although Trinity had tried and sucked at it. She just wasn’t good at the girly stuff.

  Mercedes had been testing the design at the salon, too, and was pretty geeked about the syringes since her manicurist had stopped complaining about her hands cramping up. “You have no idea how much that woman complains, Nikki,” she’d said. “All goddamn day long, yakyakyakyakyak.”

  The only thing left to decide was the colors…and they couldn’t test the colors if the test formulas kept running amok after the close of business.

  Trinity parked in the dark, unpaved area behind the modern barn Natural by Nicolette used as its base of operations. Normally the staff parked out front, and Nikki simply walked back from her house up the path.

  The barn was located on a functioning cotton and sheep farm owned by Nikki’s in-laws. Charlie, Nikki, and Gabby lived about a quarter mile up the path, and the elder Mitchells had a separate house up near the road. The barn had initially been built to house Charlie and Chuck’s tractors, but they relocated those to a lean-to when Nikki went on the hunt for a home base.

  Trinity let herself in through the back door, and closed it quietly behind her, taking off her shoes at the mat to minimize the echo as she walked.

  The facility was unlit except for the dim lights she’d left on at her workbench, and the glow of Jerry’s computer monitor’s LCD power indicator. He’d taken his laptop home, so the monitor wasn’t displaying anything beyond a black screen.

  She padded over and killed the little orange light.

  Nothing in the lab seemed out of place, at least cursorily, and she breathed out a ragged sigh of relief. She’d been the last one to leave, right after Juan. He’d had to stick around later than usual to load up a large shipment of Shake Well that needed to be in the mountains by morning.

  Just to double-check before hunkering down for the night, she ambled to the storage drawers for a peek at the vials she’d personally watched Nikki store before the boss lady waddled up the path.

  Trinity opened the main drawer carefully so as not to clink the glass contents together, then froze with her hand still on the handle.

  They weren’t there.

  She put her hand out to turn on the task lights above the large cabinet. Before the pads of her fingers could make contact with the switch, the exterior door of Nikki’s office thumped against the interior wall with enough recoil to swing it back the other way. Before it did shut, however, the click of a shotgun hammer being pulled back made Trinity drop to the floor and cover her head.

  “Don’t shoot!” she shrieked, nose mashed to the polished concrete floor and eyes tightly shut.

  “Fuck, is that you, Trinity?” The overhead lights crackled, then burned bright, turning the inside of Trinity’s eyelids from black to red.

  She opened her eyes and slowly pushed up onto all fours. “Charlie?”

  “Yeah, it’s just me.” She sto
od up slowly and showed him her hands were empty, not that he’d ever assume she wasn’t harmless, but that’s what people always did on television when they had guns pointed at them.

  Charlie sighed and lowered the gun from his shoulder. He was in his pajamas…or least the bottoms of them. Up top, he was delightfully shirtless and showing off the remnants of what must have once been a very nice eight-pack. Charlie hadn’t exactly gone soft since marrying Nikki, but he’d definitely started outsourcing some of his heavy lifting. He only had six left in the pack.

  Trinity tried not to fixate on that area. Charlie was taken, and loved being so.

  “I was in the kitchen. Saw someone driving past the house with their lights off,” he explained while un-cocking the gun hammer he’d pulled.

  Trinity thumped her forehead with the heel of her palm. She’d been so focused on busting the saboteur, she hadn’t thought about the folks in the houses. She blew a raspberry, and slumped. “Sorry for waking you. I didn’t think this through very well.” And then there was that small distraction at Christine’s… “I just wanted to double-check the nail polish to make sure it’d be ready for tomorrow.”

  She slammed the empty drawer shut and turned apologetic eyes toward Charlie.

  His posture relaxed, shoulders fell. “Go on home, Trinity.” He toggled off the bright overhead fluorescents and propped his gun against his shoulder. “Oh, FYI. Nikki sent Gabby over to get the bases after dinner. Figured she might have to start storing stuff at the house until we get a security system installed out here.”

  She cringed. “Yeah. This must look really bad for me.”

  He shrugged, and pushed the exterior door closed. Before it latched, he said, “I won’t say anything to Nikki about you being here. She’s sleeping like the dead right now, and I’m not dumb enough to wake her over this. You’re her second banana. I trust you’re doing the right thing. If not…well, the bad’ll shake out.”

  Yikes.

  “I am! I mean… Shit. I’m trying to do the right thing, I mean. Hard to know what that is, sometimes.”