Laredo's Sassy Sweetheart. Tina Leonard

face will look like a race track,” Hannah instructed.

      “I told Becky everything a girl tells her best friend. Just like I tell you. She also knew that Stanley didn’t like to kiss me.”

      Hannah stopped sewing. “What?”

      “Stanley didn’t like to kiss me. Why are you looking at me like that?”

      Hannah shook her head. “Why didn’t he?”

      “He said it was too much temptation, since we couldn’t…um, you know.”

      “And Stanley’s family is wealthy?”

      “Right. Stanley Peter St. Collin III, of St. Collin Faucets and Hinges.”

      “Oh, of course. Naturally.” Hannah grimaced. “And Becky’s family was where on the social register?”

      “Well, way below ours, if you must use social register terms. Her mom and dad divorced a long time ago, when she was a child. And her mom worked as a waitress at night to make ends meet. Becky worked two jobs, too, after we graduated from high school.”

      “And your parents were the Goodnights of Goodnight Protective Arms, starting with well-heeled British immigrant parents and going back three pedigreed generations in your hometown. And you dutifully and impressively went to college and obtained a degree in chemistry.”

      “Well, it was the easiest thing to do,” Katy said. “Chemistry is much easier than economics or something.” She shuddered. “Columns of figures and business principles, or putting cool stuff like hydrogen chloride into test tubes and seeing what blows up. Protons. Dissection. No contest there, huh?”

      “Oh, yeah. I can see where chemistry is the easy answer. Miles and miles of chemical configurations.” Hannah went back to sewing.

      “After I sort myself out—and I’m just about done, thanks to Miss Delilah—I’m going to teach chemistry at Duke in North Carolina in the fall. Of course, my original plan was to marry Stanley and become a perfectly manicured, Mrs. St. Collin III. Luckily, I’d sent out lots of applications after I graduated from college and before Stanley proposed. He didn’t like me interviewing at Duke. Did I tell you that I was invited to interview at Cornell, too?”

      “Peachy. Turn.” Hannah moved the needle in and out without glancing up. “These pretty legs are wasted on a chem prof.

      “So, Duke in the fall.”

      “Yes.” Katy sighed. “I should never have given up chemical calculations for a man.”

      “Not Stanley, anyway. But you can’t throw marriage overboard and closet yourself in a lab.”

      “Look at me, Hannah, please.”

      Hannah complied, and Katy smiled at her friend.

      “You have all been wonderful to me. But it’s time for me to strike out on my own and realize my true potential. I’m not man savvy. I’m not sophisticated. I spent too many years studying while my girlfriends were hanging out at frat houses to have learned the feminine ropes. If life is based on sexual chemistry, I got an F in the sexual and an A plus in the chemistry. But being smart means I can take care of myself. I think I might have gotten a little nervous about my life, and when Stanley proposed, I jumped at it. Maybe I didn’t want to be the smartest virgin spinster.” She sighed, looking down for just a moment. “In a way, Stanley dumping me at the altar was the best thing that could have happened. It made me realize I’m much safer if I just rely on myself.”

      Hannah shook her head. “I think if you hadn’t told Becky that Stanley didn’t like to kiss you, she still would have stolen him. She needed a way out of her life, and you only thought you did. I think you subconsciously gave her the invitation to steal him.”

      Katy stared into the mirror, seeing the miracle Hannah had wrought with her dress. She looked like a different person. Sexier. Hipper. “Maybe I had some unconscious motive I didn’t recognize, but I wouldn’t have picked my wedding day to be dumped.”

      “That was unfortunate, but she was probably plagued by guilt, which caused her to wait until the last minute to act. She’s probably not enjoying her honeymoon at all, thinking about you crying your eyes out.” Hannah stood. “I haven’t seen you cry at all, Katy. And I think all this talk of sexual dysfunction is a cover-up. Maybe you just wanted to keep men on the periphery of your life.”

      “If I didn’t then, I do now. It’s humiliating when the maid of honor marries your fiancé, wearing the hot pink dress you picked out for her. It’s like, here’s hot and sexy and here’s plain and virginal. Which do you think most guys want? I don’t know,” Katy murmured. “You sure have a lot of insight into people, Hannah. How did you develop that?”

      “I’m a hairdresser. I’ve heard lots of stories over the years. Be still.” Gently she took hold of Katy’s below-shoulder-length hair, slicked it into a smooth, high ponytail, then took one strand which she wound around the rubber band and pinned down. “Now a touch of red lipstick,” she said, applying it to Katy as she spoke, “and whammo! Instant femme fatale.”

      Katy inspected herself in the mirror. “Maybe it’s fatal femininity.”

      “Think confident. Be confident. I’m confident that you’re a woman not to be overlooked. Anyway, the plain-vanilla you is all but a memory.” Satisfied, Hannah put away the needle and thread and the hair-brush and lipstick, glancing with cool smugness at Katy’s dress. “See how easy it is to be daring?”

      “This is daring?”

      “For you? Yes. It’s a start. Let’s go have lunch at the cafeteria, Virginity Barbie. All this thinking’s made me hungry.”

      LAREDO HESITATED outside the door of the Never Lonely Cut-N-Gurls Salon. If Katy saw him going in here, he was toast. Unfortunately, he needed Ranger, and he needed him now.

      Glancing guiltily across the street at the Lonely Hearts Salon, he pushed open the door.

      KATY GASPED as she saw Laredo go inside the enemy camp. She and Hannah stepped back inside the door quickly, staring at each other in surprise.

      “Whoa,” Hannah said. “I have to admit to being caught off guard.”

      Katy’s heart felt as if it bled a drop as red as her newly short dress. “I told you. It’s a dysfunctional thing. Those girls have allure—and I do not.” Why should she even care? she asked herself. She didn’t like him anyway.

      Did she?

      “Boys will be boys, I suppose,” Hannah said. “You could go rescue him from himself.”

      “I’d rather join Marvella’s payroll. Come on. Let’s go eat at the cafeteria. Only, we’re taking the back door. I wouldn’t dream of allowing Mr. I’ll-Ride-That-Bull-For-You to know we saw him slinking into the competition’s bunker.”