Chloe knew when she was beat. With a sigh, she turned off the shower. She reached past the curtain to pull one of the white hotel towels off the metal rack above the toilet. Like all mass-laundered hotel towels, it was scratchy and barely reached the tops of her thighs when she wrapped it around herself.
The TV went silent as she stepped out of the tub. There were some muffled noises she couldn’t quite place, and then the squeaky floor betrayed Ben’s presence.
Chloe froze.
He was walking toward the bathroom.
Her hand flew to her chest, gripping the tiny towel in a tight fist. Her skin buzzed. Her heartbeat picked up. The light seeping under the bathroom door was interrupted by his shadow. There were only two inches of ramshackle door and a threadbare towel separating them. He was right...there...
“Chloe? You okay?”
Oh, man. His deep voice hit her right in the estrogen and her body picked up where it had left off in the shower. All that delicious heat flared back up. “Fine. Dropped something.” The ability to form full sentences had deserted her.
“Okay. Well, good news. According to the weather forecast, the storm’s moving quicker than they thought. It’s already stopped snowing out there. We should get out of here on time tomorrow.”
“Great.” She hoped the word didn’t come out as breathy as it had sounded to her own ears.
“I’m going to head downstairs and see a man about a cot. Or a woman. I’m not picky. Judging by the ominous ‘no one’s available to take your call’ message I just got when I phoned the front desk, it might take a while. Wish me luck.”
“Good luck.” Yep, pretty breathy. Now she felt guilty for forming such a dark opinion of Stewardess Barbie. Maybe the poor girl couldn’t help it. Maybe it had been Ben’s fault the whole time.
Then the hotel room door shrieked open and banged shut.
Chloe exhaled a shaky, disappointed breath.
What had she expected him to do? Bust open the door, profess their chemistry was undeniable, and ravish her like the hero in some old romance novel her grandma kept hidden at the back of her bookshelf? Well, kind of. But dudes got arrested for that kind of stuff nowadays.
With a sigh, Chloe wiped the steam from the mirror and stared at her blurry image.
Barefaced. Plain brown hair.
Maybe it was for the best that Ben hadn’t broken down the door after all.
She barely recognized herself. She wasn’t even in Buffalo yet and she was already reverting to the old Chloe. The one who’d been so desperate to escape. It was as if the closer she got to home, the more of her identity she was losing.
Her mother always said she wore too much makeup. It didn’t matter how many strangers complimented her, or how many friends asked for a quick lesson. Her mother wouldn’t be impressed that she’d worked her way from sales associate to manager of her local Titanium Beauty store in less than two years. Or that customers loved her makeup recommendations, and that the job afforded her a decent apartment and a means to pay her bills. To Fiona Masterson, it would never be more than a menial labor job at a makeup store in the mall.
And sure, her life wasn’t as posh as her childhood had been, but she had a position in an industry she loved, and it was a great learning experience that was going to help her when she finally launched her own business and became a full-fledged makeup artist. She’d even started a YouTube channel where dozens of people thanked her for her tips and tricks on a weekly basis. It wasn’t netting her much money yet, but she’d broken the five-hundred-dollar mark two months in a row. Not bad for a fledgling channel that relied on word of mouth.
Besides, making money wasn’t the reason she had a YouTube channel. Mostly, it was a place for her to indulge her passion for makeup, for teaching women how to apply it, for investigating and reviewing products. Makeup wasn’t just about vanity, it was about confidence, and she loved reading the comments of her subscribers as they discovered their best selves.
She grabbed the tiny blow-dryer that hung on the bathroom wall and attacked her wet hair with the renewed resolve of a woman with a plan. She was done feeling crappy about herself. She had a video to make for her regular Sunday night upload, anyway, so why not kill two birds with one stone?
First she was going to do her makeup.
Then she was going to do Ben.
ONCEHERHAIR was under control, Chloe pulled on some sexy underwear—a black satin push-up bra with matching panties—and added a black T-shirt for modesty’s sake. And socks.
Then she grabbed the cosmetic case and headed back into the room. She set her bag on the desk and liberated her laptop from her giant purse.
While it whirred to life at the touch of a button, Chloe took a seat and turned on the lamp beside her. She rummaged in her bag through the familiar jumble of eye shadow pots, Q-tips, brushes, eyeliners and mascara, making her selections as her computer booted up.
Once she’d settled on her makeup choices, she set to work, using the mirror hanging on the wall to make sure her concealer, foundation and powder were blended flawlessly into her skin. A little blush finished off her base, and she was ready for the fun stuff.
She went for a relatively simple daytime-appropriate look of blue-grays and soft purples.
Once she was happy with how her left eye had turned out, she pulled the laptop in front of her and opened the programs she needed. With the press of a button, her image appeared on the computer screen. She tucked her hair behind her ears and clicked Record.
“Hi, guys, Chloe here. I’m on the road this week, and as you can see,” she motioned at the disheveled bed behind her, “my accommodations are not the most glamorous. But that’s no reason not to look like a million bucks! So here’s a quick makeup tutorial for all you jet-setters out there. A lot of you have been asking me for tips on what to bring with you on a trip. So my first recommendation is to pack a great eye shadow palette. With a palette, you get a lot of variety without taking up a lot of space, plus, all the colors are guaranteed to go together.” She flipped the case full of blues and purples open and angled it toward the camera. “I’m going to be using this eye shadow palette by Jeweled Web—it’s called Suburban Storm.
“For this look, I’m also going to be using an eyelash curler, my trusty brow gel, my favorite drugstore liquid liner, and the Lashes for Days mascara from Titanium Beauty.” Chloe held each product up to the camera as she named it, and the routine of it all calmed her.
“As always, I’ve already done the left side, so you have an example of what we’re aiming for.” She turned her head a little and closed her eye. “So now that we’ve amassed the troops, I’ll show you how to recreate this effect, and then we’ll amp it up so you can see how an eye shadow palette can take you from business meeting to nightclub, even when you’re away from home.”
She fell easily into the rhythm of her makeup routine, chatting confidently at the camera, noticing from the corner of her eye that she was just approaching the five-minute mark as she finished up with her mascara wand. Perfect. Her under-six-minute videos always seemed to pull more views than the longer ones.
“So that’s it.” Chloe angled her head to the side, closed her eyes, opened them and leaned toward the laptop screen. “A dramatic look for a night out, or if you’re like me, any given weekday. As always, if you have any questions, feel free to leave them in the comments. Thanks for watching. I’m Chloe and as I always say, ‘makeup, not war’. Until next time.”
Chloe clicked a few settings in the program, saved the video file, and set her laptop aside. Her weekly makeup tutorial was ready to post to her YouTube channel on Sunday night, as scheduled.
And she was ready for Ben.