Hannah Morgan's life is at a standstill. Her dreams of becoming an artist vanished with the sudden death of her grandmother and mentor. To appease her distant and disapproving mother, Hannah gets a respectable job at a high-end day spa.
Instead of painting masterpieces, Hannah spends her days painting nails and giving facials to wealthy women. Her dreams for the future have become a hideous nightmare. And it just keeps getting worse. She catches her boyfriend cheating, loses her job, and has to watch from the sidelines as her best friend, Jasmine Blue, goes after her own dreams of owning her own salon.
Then she meets Aaron, a working artist, and finds in him a kindred spirit. And, to her surprise, she finds the courage to follow her dreams. When circumstances beyond her control threaten to destroy both her relationship with Aaron and her dreams of a bright future, Hannah fears her mother was right-that some dreams aren't meant to come true.
“As a small child I dreamed of growing up to be a chestnut mare. I was terribly disappointed when I found out people couldn’t magically transform into animals but I got over it by immersing myself in the world of fairy tales and thus began my lifelong passion for reading and make-believe.”
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Chapter One
Oh my God! What did I do?
I stared down at the waxing strip in my hand.
Just take
another look. Maybe it’s just a trick of
the light. I tried not to panic.
I stole a quick glance at my client’s face, at her
eyebrows in particular, and confirmed my worst fears. It was not an illusion caused by bad
lighting. I had removed Mrs.
Weatherbee’s entire left eyebrow.
I held the strip up to my face, squinting at it just
to be sure. There, embedded in the wax,
was her missing eyebrow.
“Why have you stopped?” Mrs. Weatherbee opened her eyes and looked up
at me from the treatment table. “Is
there a problem?”
Was there a problem?
Well that depended on whether or not she thought walking around with one
eyebrow was a bad thing. Maybe she could
start a new fashion trend.
“Uhm.” I
quickly threw the offending wax strip in the garbage. Maybe if I just drew the missing eyebrow back
on she wouldn’t notice.
“Hand me a mirror.”
Mrs. Weatherbee heaved her considerable bulk up from the treatment table.
I obeyed, passing her a small silver mirror. I looked down at my hands while she examined
her face. Perspiration beaded my
forehead and trickled down my neck.
Terence was going to kill me.
“You stupid girl, what have you done?” Mrs. Weatherbee shouted, fingering her
forehead where her eyebrow used to be.
“I have a charity event to host tomorrow. I can’t go out looking like this!”
“I’m really sorry, Mrs. Weatherbee, it was an
accident.”
“An accident?
Do you realize what you have done to me?
I want to speak to Terence!”
I couldn’t move.
“Now!” she screamed, her voice reaching an even higher
pitch of hysteria. She looked down at my
nametag, “Hannah!”
Startled into action by the sound of my name, I nodded
and hastily retreated from the room.
Maybe, if I just kept on walking and headed out the front doors, no one
would notice. But, then what would I
do? Where would I go? I could join the circus and work as a trapeze
artist, or maybe I could be a spy for the Canadian Government. Do we even have spies in Canada?
Instead of running for freedom, I headed down the
hall, through the Great Room, where several robe-clad guests were relaxing
between services, and around the corner to Terence’s office. I stood there for a moment staring at the
brass nameplate on his door. Taking a
deep breath, I knocked softly. Maybe he
wasn’t in today. Maybe he’d won the
lottery and quit his job. Even better,
maybe he contracted scarlet fever and wouldn’t be in for months.
“Enter,” Terence’s voice commanded.
I opened the door and stepped in. Terence was sitting behind his desk typing
madly on his computer, his long spider-like fingers scuttling furiously across
the keyboard. His thick black frames
were perched at the end of his pinched nose while his eyes, so dark they looked
like tiny chunks of coal, remained glued to the computer screen.
I looked over his shoulder at the large Carrico print,
entitled The Unknowable, hanging on the wall behind him. I loved the precise lines and balance of the
white geometric shapes floating against the slate blue background. But I cringed inside because I knew that
Terence chose the picture, not for its beauty or purity of form, but because it
matched the cool blues and silvery grey tones of the minimalist decor in his
office.
“Sorry to bother you but—” I said.
“Make it quick, I’m in the middle of something.”
“It’s about Mrs. Weatherbee.”
Terence’s fingers stopped in mid-air. He looked up and pinned me with his beady
eyes, his normally baby smooth forehead furrowed with wrinkles. “What have you done now?”
“Nothing, really.
I was doing an eyebrow wax on her, and I seem to have accidentally
removed too much. And... she wants to
see you.”
Terence stood up and moved towards the door with
lightning speed.
“Mrs. Weatherbee is one of our Gold Card Members. If you did anything to jeopardize the
reputation of this spa, I will have your head on a platter.”
“But I didn’t mean to do it!”
“Be quiet and follow me,” he barked, heading out the
door. Terence sped down the corridor to
the waxing area with me following behind.
“What room is she in?” he asked over his shoulder.
“One,” I replied, finally catching up to him.
Terence knocked on the door, called out Mrs.
Weatherbee’s name, and walked in without waiting for her to reply. Mrs. Weatherbee sat on the edge of the
treatment table where I’d left her, still holding the mirror in front of her
face.
“Mrs. Weatherbee,” Terence’s voice softened and filled
with concern. “What seems to be the
problem?”
She slowly lowered the mirror onto her lap.
“Oh my!”
Terence took an involuntary step backwards bumping into me. I stumbled into the wall but managed to stop
myself from falling. He turned to me,
his eyes narrowed and his nostrils flared like an angry bull. “Wait outside.”
I scrambled out of the room barely making it over the
threshold before Terence shut the door.
I stood out in the dimly lit hallway awaiting my fate. After a few moments, when Terence hadn’t come
out, I closed my eyes and listened to the music floating down from the speakers
hidden in the ceiling. I tried to let
the gentle surf sound and Celtic harp music calm me. I listened to the hushed voices of people
talking in the Great Room and wished I could be anywhere but at work. I wished I could start this horrible day over
and make the outcome different.
Earlier, I thought my day couldn’t get any worse. Now I was going to be canned. All because of one little eyebrow. It wasn’t like I scarred her for life or cut
off a limb.
Maybe I’d get off with a slap on the wrist. I had worked at the Serenity Day Spa for
almost three years, and this was the first time I had done anything really
bad. I mean, calling in sick because of
a hangover or forgetting a client in a mud wrap and going home didn’t really
count. I clung to that thought.
Fifteen minutes later, the door opened and Terence
stepped out. At five foot nine, Terence
wasn’t much taller than I was, but as he walked towards me, his anger
transformed him into a towering menace.
“You,” he whispered, jabbing his finger in my face,
“will report down to the laundry room for the rest of your shift. I’m moving your clients over to the other
girls. I’ve done what I can to smooth
things over with Mrs. Weatherbee. You
can consider yourself lucky that I didn’t fire you on the spot.”
I relaxed a bit.
“Well, what are you standing around for? Go! Go! Go!”
Terence waved his hands in my face, shooing me away.
I turned to leave, but Terence stopped me before I
could even take a step.
“And Hannah, you will report to my office tomorrow at eight-thirty
a.m. sharp. Understood?”
“Understood.”
I should have expected this. I had gotten off way too easily. I knew Terence wanted to prolong my
punishment and state of panic as long as he could. He got off on seeing other people squirm.
I straightened my shoulders and headed through the
spa, past the Great Room, and down the small corridor that led to the basement
stairs. As I passed some of my coworkers
in the hallway, the heat rose in my face and I struggled not to cry. They looked at me curiously, but no one had
the nerve to say anything. One of the
strictly enforced rules at Serenity was no unnecessary talking or socializing
amongst the staff while on the floor. Besides,
the whole spa would know what happened by the end of the day.
The thing about working with a bunch of women was that
gossip was more popular than the chocolate body scrub on Valentine’s Day and
spread through the spa in less time than it took to remove an eyebrow. I admit that I enjoyed my fair share of
whispering in the halls and passing on juicy tidbits about the love lives of my
co-workers or which client had recently had plastic surgery. But now I was about to be the subject of
conversation. I could already imagine
the hushed giggles that would stop abruptly to be replaced by that
uncomfortable silence that lets you know you’ve just walked in on a
conversation about you. Somehow,
gossiping didn’t seem like such a harmless pastime when I was going to be the
topic.
I heaved open the heavy, metal door that led down to
the basement. As it swung closed behind
me, hot, angry tears spilled down my cheeks.
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