Mairi eyed the cushion, and him, with suspicion. “What are you doing?”
“You’re still scratching at your head. Knowing you, you probably still think there are bugs hiding in there. I thought I’d comb it out for you and check it was just as empty as your head.”
“Funny. But I don’t think that’s a good idea.” Although, he could tell she was tempted.
“Trust me, this is as much for me as it is for you. Otherwise you’ll drive us both nuts scratching all night long, and after last night, I could use a decent sleep.”
“You could just go home to your own bed. I’m sure you’d get a decent night’s sleep there.”
“Just get your backside on the cushion and let me do my job.”
“Fine.” She shrugged. If she was aiming for the gesture to come across as nonchalant, then she missed by a mile. “This is going to take hours, you know that, right? I have a lot of hair.”
“Good thing we’ve got three more movies to watch, huh?”
Mairi moved the coffee table out of the way and sat on the floor between Keir’s knees. Her back was ramrod straight as she stretched her legs out in front of her.
“Relax,” he told her. “Watch the movie while I bug-hunt.”
“That isn’t funny. There probably are bugs in there.”
“If there are, I’ll find every one of them, I promise. Now shut up. This is the bit where he jumps off the building. I like this bit.”
Mairi sat tense and straight in front of him, while he swept her wealth of hair back toward him. It was tempting to run his hands through the glorious, thick locks, but that wasn’t what he was there to do. Instead, he used the comb to section off an area of her hair, then held the end while he spritzed it with the detangling spray.
“What’s that?” Mairi clearly wasn’t watching the movie, as he’d ordered her to do.
“Detangling spray.” One he’d picked especially because it smelled like Mairi. Like summer.
“You don’t exactly have a lot of hair, so how come you know about detangling spray?”
“One of the guys in my last job.” Keir started to comb out her long, unruly hair. “He was a single parent. Did his girls’ hair every morning before school. He used to go on about how fast he could braid, and what products were best to get tangles out. He carried around a selection of hair ties and clips. Said the girls were always losing theirs and he was fed up buying new ones.”
“So, just your typical garage tal
k, then.”
“Anyway,” he said, ignoring her sarcasm, “you listen to that stuff for long enough, you pick up a tip or two.”
“Which I’m benefiting from.”
“Which you’re benefiting from.”
“Did he tell you about wide-tooth combs being good for curly hair, too?”
“No, that was the woman in the shop. Now, do you think you could shut up and let us watch the movie? I’m multitasking here. Doing hair and watching TV. It takes concentration.”
With a forced sigh, she went back to watching the screen. Keir worked steadily, section by section, combing through her hair, only stopping to allow Mairi to put on the second movie. As time passed, Mairi stopped sitting stiff as a board and relaxed into the sofa. He inched his knees closer to her, hemming her in. But other than that, all Keir did was what he’d told her he’d do. He combed her hair.
???
Mairi didn’t quite know what to make of Keir’s revelation that he’d gone into a shop and asked for the right tools to help comb out her hair—and all because she was paranoid of things getting stuck in there. She was grateful. Genuinely. Even though she’d washed and combed her hair out, she still wasn’t certain she’d found everything in there. To have someone else checking through it for her was wonderful.
Even if it was Keir.
Or, maybe, especially because it was Keir.
As she relaxed against the couch, with the sensation of his fingers in her hair and him slowly, and meticulously, combing each section out, Mairi admitted to herself that, sometime in the past couple of days, her feelings toward Keir had thawed. In fact, in one area, they’d heated right up.