fear of what Linc might think was just as bad.
Even though it was Saturday, Shelly had planned to pull out her laptop and finish up the training procedures for Monday’s session. Instead, she found herself looking up Anisa’s hair salon online. It looked like a very swanky place in the photographs, and a quick click on the services page showed that their prices reflected as much.
Shelly made a very healthy salary, and truth be told, she could probably afford to pay a couple hundred dollars for her hair. But her common sense wouldn’t let her do it.
Exiting to her Web browser, Shelly searched for a more sensible option. She found a reasonably priced salon that was only ten minutes from her house. And they even allowed her to make an appointment online.
After requesting an appointment for mid-morning, Shelly headed for the shower, vowing to unpack the rest of her clothes when she returned. It wouldn’t hurt to have some more stylish options for work now that training was getting under way.
Miss Celia’s Salon was not quite what Shelly was expecting when she arrived for her appointment later that morning. From the polished Web site and the high-tech online appointment system, Shelly was expecting the building to possess a degree of sophistication.
Unfortunately, Miss Celia’s Salon had seen better days. Paint-chipped walls and torn leather chairs underscored the salon’s need for a face-lift. Still, Shelly remained optimistic. It didn’t matter what the shop looked like as long as Miss Celia could do some hair.
“Can I help you?” an older woman asked.
“I’m Shelly London. I’m here for my ten o’clock appointment.”
“I’m Miss Celia,” the older woman said, clasping Shelly’s hand between both of hers. The older woman had warm dark eyes and short salt-and-pepper curls. “I know this is your first time here, but we hope it won’t be your last.”
Miss Celia’s pleasant demeanor put Shelly at ease. The woman slipped behind the reception desk and started typing on her computer. “It looks like Tonya will be doing your hair today. Please help yourself to some coffee, and she’ll be right with you.”
The prospect of finally having her hair done properly put Shelly in a good mood. “I really loved your Web site. It’s what convinced me to give your shop a try.”
Miss Celia’s face lit up. “Thank you. My grandson Troy designed it for me. He’s a computer science major at the University of Houston. He swore to me it would bring in new business. Now I can sure enough tell him he was right.”
After Shelly finished her coffee, Tonya escorted her back to the shampoo bowl. A young stylist, Tonya seemed nice enough as she made small talk with Shelly. And she gave her a fantastic scalp massage.
“I’m just going to put in your conditioner,” Tonya said. “Then you can sit up for about ten minutes before I wash it out.”
Just as Tonya started working the conditioner through Shelly’s scalp, Miss Celia, who was shampooing a client two bowls over, said, “Hey, is that my Silky Tresses moisturizing conditioner?”
Shelly’s eyes snapped open at Miss Celia’s tone. Tonya looked at the bottle in her hand. “Yeah. I borrowed yours because mine ran out.”
“What did I tell you about borrowing my supplies?” Miss Celia scolded. “Each stylist is responsible for buying her own products.”
Tonya’s neck swiveled as she spoke, her anger rising. “I didn’t have time to buy my own supplies, because you’ve been overbooking my clients.”
Now Miss Celia, who had seemed so sweet just moments ago, had her hands on her hips as she shouted back at Tonya. “If you can’t handle the work, you know what to do.”
Before Shelly could take that in, a bottle of conditioner whizzed past her face.
“Here! Take your funky conditioner. Too bad your mamma never taught you to share,” screeched Tonya.
Shelly lifted her soaking-wet head out of the bowl in time to see Miss Celia duck the flying bottle. “Oh, it’s on now!” shouted the older woman.
Shelly sat up, openmouthed, as the two women lunged at each other. Tonya had Miss Celia by the waist and was pushing her backward into the wall. Miss Celia reached down, grabbed a chunk of Tonya’s hair and pulled.
Two more stylists rushed around the corner, and Shelly clutched her chest in relief. Finally, someone was going to break this up.
Instead, the two women stopped a safe distance away, and one said to the other, “Aw shucks, there they go again.”
Shelly had seen enough. Without looking back, she stood up and headed straight for the door. Without bothering to remove her cape, she ran across the parking lot to her car, with her wet hair dripping down her back.
Spacecraft simulator maneuvers began Monday morning, and Linc made sure he was early for the pre-training briefing. He couldn’t give Shelly yet another reason to question his commitment to the mission.
He showed up at a quarter to the hour, expecting Shelly to already be there or show up minutes later. He sat down on the table at the head of the room, near where she would likely sit. Propping his heel on the table so he could rest his arm on his knee, he was strategically situated to be the first thing she would see when she walked in.
The effect was lost when the rest of the team started filing in, and Shelly was still nowhere to be found. “Hey, Randy. Hi, Mitch,” Linc said, exchanging hand slaps first with the copilot and then with the mission specialist on the Alpha team.
“There he is, Lightning himself,” Dustin Chambers said, pausing in the doorway. “You know what they say, though, don’t you? Lightning never strikes twice.”
Linc resisted the urge to roll his eyes at the commander of the Beta team, the team that would take over flying Draco if something happened to his team. “It’s just a nickname. Like yours. After all, just because they call you Dusty doesn’t mean they think that you’re old.”
Dusty was ten years older than Linc’s thirty-six years, and Linc always felt the two of them couldn’t get along because the older man resented all that Linc had accomplished in such a short period of time.
That and the fact that if it weren’t for Linc’s space shuttle heroics eighteen months ago, Dusty would have been leading the Alpha team.
After Dusty, the rest of the Beta team–—namely, Vince and Paul—trailed in, followed by Quincy, Jason and Raj from Shelly’s engineering team.
But it wasn’t until nearly twenty minutes later that Shelly finally appeared. She flew over the threshold with two overstuffed binders in her arms.
Linc looked at his watch and clucked in disappointment. “I was starting to think that I was going to have to run this meeting myself. Ms. London, I’d hate to think you weren’t taking this mission seriously, as being late for the first day of training clearly shows.”
Some of the other guys in the room gasped or oohed under their breath.
Shelly glared at Linc, muttering, “My alarm clock never went off.” Setting her binders on the corner of the table, she pushed them until Linc was forced to slip off the edge. “I apologize for being late, team. We have a lot to cover, so let’s not waste any more time.”
Choking down her fluster, Shelly tried not to lose control of the briefing before it started. For the life of her, she couldn’t figure out how she’d become such a total spaz since arriving in Houston. Back in D.C. everyone had respected her. Here, no matter how hard she tried to get one step ahead, she kept falling behind. Shelly was starting to think that Houston was just bad luck.
After her disaster at the hair salon, she’d been forced to wash out the sticky conditioner the hairdresser had half applied to her hair. Since it hadn’t been applied evenly, it created two strangely different textures in her hair. Where