Prescription for Seduction by Darlene Scalera

Author:Darlene Scalera
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2013-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seven

“Nails,” Nadine said.

“Excuse me?” Eden asked, not looking up from the dish garden she was creating. The new stylist at The Hair Affair often spent her lunch hour at the flower shop, visiting with Eden. In a brief period the two women had become good friends. Eden heard the scrape of the wrought iron chair. Seconds later, a set of vixen-length, gold-frosted nails with a black diagonal stripe across each one waved beneath her nose. Eden looked up into the blue eyes of the other woman.

“Nails,” Nadine pronounced once more.

Eden had already learned Nadine never made a point without dramatics if possible. She waited for the show.

“Too long to be proper but short enough not to be classified as lethal weapons.” Nadine spread her fingers, wiggling each one, admiring their glittering tips. “Aren’t they beautiful? Why, every time you look at them, you get a buzz.”

Eden smiled. “They’re you, Nadine.” She gently packed peat moss around a young jade plant.

Nadine walked back to the tea cart and got a potato chip. The crunching sound contrasted with the calm of the shop. Eden felt her friend’s study. She looked up and smiled.

“Don’t give me that.” Nadine bit into the chip.

“Give you what?” Eden wondered if her friend was spending too much time around hair-processing solutions.

“That ‘I’m okay, you’re okay’ smile.” Nadine marched to the design table. “What’s that they call you— ‘Even Eden.’ Except lately they’re saying ‘Even Eden Does It.’”

“Nadine!”

The other woman’s smile was sly. “At least that got a rise out of you. It beats seeing you hanging around this hothouse all the time, wilting away like yesterday’s roses.”

Eden wired a pinecone rose to a philodendron. “I’m working, not wilting.”

“Honey, you’re drying up quicker than a snakeskin in the Texas sun. It makes me just want to sit down and have a good cry after the way you’ve been skipping around these past weeks, flaunting your title of the Tyler Hospital Harlot.”

Eden stiffened. “I don’t flaunt.”

Nadine licked a salt speck from her finger. “But you were enjoying it.”

“Did Tisha wind your rods too tight when she gave you that perm last week?”

Nadine grinned. “It’s okay. I’m not going to spread your secret. Besides, I live outside the town limits so anything I say doesn’t carry much weight, anyway.” She grinned. “Still, that doesn’t mean I’m not right.”

“My secret?” Eden stopped misting the finished garden.

Nadine placed the tip of a glittering nail on Eden’s chest. “Underneath all these still waters, there beats the heart of a sensuous, wild woman just screaming to get out.” She folded her arms across her chest, her expression smug.

“A sensuous, wild woman?”

Nadine nodded. “Screaming to get out.” She looked around the shop, gestured to the arrangements of velvet red roses and spilling ivy. “Sensuous.”

She pointed to the riot of colors clustered together in the corner. “Wild. All this…” She spun around, arms outstretched. “All this—” she faced Eden, her fingernail touching Eden’s chest once more “—comes from the heart of a wild, wanton, sensual woman.

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