Canon (Klein Brothers 2)

“Do you want to come with me to get a new cup of coffee and leave these two to talk?”

Reid stood up so quickly I jumped before getting to my feet and leading him to the kitchen. Not wanting to draw attention to my initial reaction, the brothers acted like they hadn’t seen it, but I knew they had.

“I know this will seem weird, but you know the makeovers you guys have been doing?”

The makeovers we were featuring online with Rockie were making us more popular than ever. I rarely stopped to read the comments because some people thought they could act and say whatever the hell they wanted to, and maybe it made them feel good about themselves, but it was just bullshit I didn’t want to know. For some reason, they always directed them at the person getting the makeover, though, like they weren’t already self-conscious enough about whatever the issue they had with their appearance was.

We now had a social media manager who sent us the requests to have a makeover. She also shared the comments that said people had tried the techniques we’d used and it’d worked for them, or the ones who asked us specific questions about makeup, hair, and beauty.

I might hate social media, but if what we were doing helped even one person, I was all for it. The best and most rewarding part for me was seeing the person getting the makeover walk out with a smile on their face. I lived for that moment.

Something else had stood out to me, though. For every negative troll, there were ten people who found us helpful, and that’s what I’d aimed for us to do. It’s what I desperately wanted us to achieve from our platforms.

Frowning at Reid, I looked at him in his uniform. Didn’t the man ever have a day off?

“Are you wanting a makeover?”

“No, no,” he held his hands up and shook his head wildly. “I have- there’s a—” he stopped and looked down at his feet, just as one began tapping on the floor, giving away how nervous he was.

“Reid, take a seat.” I sat down at the island in my kitchen and pointed at the other stool. As he did it, I noticed how stiffly he was holding himself. “Are you tense because of your uniform, pain, or because you’re nervous?”

He winced at my question. “All of the above?”

“Okay, spell it out for me, honey. Who needs the makeover?”

Blowing out his breath, Reid tilted his head to the side, looking at me out of the corner of his eye. “There’s a girl—a woman—and I think a makeover would help her.”

Getting up, I moved around him to the coffee machine and loaded it up for a coffee. “Do you want a fresh one?” I nodded my head at his cup, smiling when he held it out to me.

The reason I was doing this was because I reacted better when someone wasn’t watching me. He was obviously struggling, and me staring at him wasn’t going to help.

Once it was done and I’d added a splash of creamer to it, I handed it back and went about making myself one.

“Okay, so there’s a woman who’d benefit from one of our makeovers. Does she have scars?”

“Most of them aren’t visible, but she has one on her cheek, just under her eye, from some flying glass,” he answered quietly, staring into his cup now. “The problem is, she doesn’t see how beautiful she is and walks around like she’s disgusting. It’s killing me.”

My heart genuinely hurt for both of them. If I was guessing right, this was the granddaughter of Mrs. Gallagher, one of my customers, who’d been in a car accident when she was about eighteen. I vaguely remembered hearing about how it’d happened, but the details hadn’t actually stuck in my head, so I was navigating this blindly.

“She sounds just like my kind of girl. Have you told her about what we can do?”

“No.” He shook his head, finally looking up at me. “I was kind of hoping you could do that.”

With my coffee in hand, I mulled it over. “I think I can do that. We just need to come up with a way for me to be around her so she doesn’t feel put on the spot, and then I’ll woo her over to the bright side.”

Reid’s lips twitched. “Woo her?”

“Oh, yeah,” I drawled. “If she’s self-conscious, I’m going to have to break out the full Bandara wooing powers.”

His laugh was soft, but it was a relief to see it. “Thanks, babe. I appreciate it.”

Leaning over the island, I surprised both of us by grabbing his hand. “You’re not responsible for what happened, you know? I don’t know all the details, but I know some of them, and I can see that you’re holding some of the blame on your shoulders.”