Page 18 of Making Over Maris

Or a slow boat.

Anything but a plane.

He hated the thought of her thirty-thousand feet in the air in a nine-hundred-thousand-pound metal deathtrap—

Kenny interrupted his gloomy ruminations when he burst into Jack’s office—four hours late for work—and dropped into the chair beside his desk.

Jack didn’t yell at him because Kenny was pale and shaking. And he was kind of glad for the interruption.

“What’s wrong?” He moved the spider bot he was building out of reach. When Kenny was upset he had a tendency to fiddle with things and when he fiddled with things he broke them.

“It’s Calvin.”

“Christ.” Jack dragged his fingers through his hair. “What now?”

Kenny bounded from the chair and began to pace. “I came home from work last night and he was smoking pot.”

Fuck. When Calvin smoked pot or had a drink or took a fucking Vicodin, his resolve crumbled. “Was…that all he did?”

“Yeah. But Jack—”

“I know. I know. Where is he now?”

“Home. Still sleeping.”

Jack sent a quick email to Tristan letting him know he was leaving for the day, grabbed his phone and shouldered into his jacket.

“Are we going?”

“Yeah.” Jack clapped a hand on Kenny’s slender shoulder. “Let’s go have a chat with your brother.”

He could only hope it wasn’t too late.

The next day was Saturday. Jack had just finished booking The Trip to Paris, with a couple interesting embellishments, when Sara called to inform him they were going to spend the day together. He was excited…until he arrived at the address she’d given him to discover they were meeting at a hair salon—a hair salon, for God’s sake—to have a stylist make him over.

The guy was fruitier than a Carmen Miranda headdress but seemed to know what he was doing. Jack closed his eyes as Kriss (with a K) took an enormous pair of shears to his beard—his baby. He couldn’t watch as his longtime companion fell to the floor in unruly hanks. Each snip scored him like an electric jolt.

He kept his eyes closed most of the time as Kriss trimmed his sideburns and his hair and—holy hell—his eyebrows. The ordeal was all too painful.

Sara sat in a chair on the other side of the room and every once in a while would pause flipping through her magazine to chuckle. She was an evil wench.

But it was worth it.

It was all worth it.

Because when Kriss was done and he spun the chair around with a flourish, Sara looked at him.

Looked at him.

Her eyes widened and her mouth formed an enchanting little O and she sighed.

She stood and drifted across the room, coming at him with an expression he’d only ever imagined. And then when she was close, she reached out her hand and placed it on his cheek.

He shuddered.

It was the first time, the only time—in all the years they’d known each other—that she had touched him. On purpose. Shivers skittered up his spine. His cock stirred.

“Oh Kriss. What did you do? He looks…” She paused and shook her head, her eyes shining.