The Off Limits Rule: A Romantic Comedy (It Happened in Nashville Book 1)

One thing is for certain: I shouldn’t be here.

I was doing so good staying away, minding my own business like Drew wants me to, but then he and I met for lunch today, and he casually mentioned that Lucy got a job in a salon that just so happens to be about two miles from my office downtown. Suddenly, it was like someone would have to chain me to my desk to keep me there. I’ve got a good poker face, so I don’t think Drew suspected I completely tuned out the rest of our conversation and was instead mapping the quickest route to her salon in my head.

So, basically, I’m not sure what I’m doing here. Being stupid, I guess. I don’t even need a haircut, but I just wanted to be near her again, and the idea of being near her without Drew also being near her was too much temptation to resist. Plus, when I talked to my mom on the phone earlier and told her my predicament, she practically screamed at me to go see Lucy. Actually, her exact words were, “I WANT GRANDKIDS, COOPER. Go see that woman!”

So here I am.

“Okay, so, do you want to sit down?” Lucy asks with a quivering smile, gesturing toward the chair.

I run my hand through my hair and look down at the chair, really hoping she’s good at what she does. To be honest, though, I think I’d let her buzz my head if it meant I got to talk to her uninterrupted for thirty minutes. “Yeah. Thanks for fitting me in so last minute.” I sit down and run my hands along my pants, realizing my palms are sweating. Weird. When’s the last time they did that?

“No problem.”

She’s stiff as a board and absolutely will not make eye contact with me. I’m guessing it has something to do with that paragraph-long text she sent me—the one I’ve literally read thirty times because it’s so freaking cute I can’t stand it. It’s a painfully awkward message, one other women would have probably spent an hour concocting and cutting down until it read Me too with no hints of their feelings whatsoever. But I’m pretty sure Lucy just typed those words out and mashed SEND without giving it a moment’s thought. I love that. Her honesty and vulnerability were on display; she didn’t cut a single bit of it. Which makes me a complete d-bag for not responding.

But I couldn’t. Everything I typed in response either let on how into her I am or sounded completely weak and apathetic in comparison. I’ll be honest, the last time I let a woman know how crazy I was about her, it didn’t end in my favor. I realize I need to get over it, though. I know I can’t keep licking this wound forever.

I start to ask how she’s doing at the exact same time she asks if I’ve been here before. Our sentences collide in one awkward game of Twister, and we both make eye contact and laugh like gangly teens.

“You first,” I say with a weird chuckle I’ve definitely never done before.

“I was just going to ask if you’ve been in here before,” she says as she turns around to retrieve a cape from her station. In this moment, I’m given the perfect glimpse of her butt (and I don’t mean to look, but it’s just RIGHT there in front of me), and all I can think about is how nicely those jeans fit her curves. This does nothing to help me put cohesive thoughts together.

She stands back up and turns to look at me, maybe catching me checking her out because her cheeks flush when she comes to drape the cape around my neck. “Oh yeah. Totally,” I say.

“You have? Who’s your usual stylist?”

Then I realize what she asked. “What? I mean no.”

She’s just as confused as I am. Her dark brows furrow over her deep-blue eyes. “Huh?”

“I’m not…sure. What was the question again?” Ohhhh gosh, what the freak is happening to me? Are MY cheeks flushing now? That’s definitely never happened before. And man, is this cape hot or what, cause I’m sweating. GET IT TOGETHER, COOP! I feel like I’m back in junior high, trying to talk to a girl. Or no, I definitely had more game back then, unlike this pathetic attempt. Lucy is doing something crazy to my insides. And now she’s smiling with her dimples over my shoulder because she can tell I’m completely losing it, and I wonder if I leave now, could I somehow convince her she was in a car accident and everything that just transpired between us only happened in her coma?

I shake my head, determined to get my act together. “Sorry. This is why I don’t have caffeine after 3:00.” Shut up, shut up, shut up! Women are not supposed to know you can’t have caffeine after 3:00 like you’re a million years old. “Wow. Okay. So, to answer your original question, yes, this is my first time in this salon.”

Her smile is still bright and in place. I’m glad she’s enjoying watching me drown like this. I guess it serves me right for not responding to her text. My mom, however, will be so ashamed when she calls later asking for all the details. “How did you know I work here?”

“Drew told me, over lunch this afternoon. So I thought I’d come by and…” My words trail off when she starts running her fingers through the back of my hair. She begins at the nape of my neck then runs them up the entire curve of my head—over and over. I think there’s a purpose to this other than to get me fired up, but at the moment, I can’t tell what it would be.

She shifts her gaze from my hair to the mirror where our eyes meet, and she smiles softly. “Go ahead, I’m listening. Just checking the angle of your cut to see what your stylist normally does.”

If by stylist she means the burly dude covered in tattoos at the barber shop who slaps a cape on me too tight and then tells me to sit down and shut up while he runs trimmers over my head, then yeah, I have one of those. He provides nowhere near as pleasant an experience as Lucy, though.

She finally releases her fingers from my hair, and as she busies herself preparing her scissors, comb, and spray bottle, I attempt a few other awkward conversation topics—all of which promptly get shut down by Lucy with short, single-syllable answers, and I realize she’s giving me the cold shoulder because of my text freeze-out. I only know her from our afternoon on the boat together and our brief text exchange, but it’s enough to learn that a quiet Lucy is not a happy Lucy.

As much as I don’t want to, I have to bring up the elephant in the room. “Listen, about your text a few weeks ago…”

She freezes, scissors hovering frighteningly above my ear—please don’t chop it off—and grimaces. “Oh no. Please, let’s just forget I ever sent it. Okay? Okay. Good.” Pink is clawing up her neck now, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t like it.

“You have nothing to be embarrassed about. I’m the one who should be embarrassed.”

Lucy grabs a spray bottle and starts dousing me. Less on the hair, more on the face. I feel like a troublemaking cat that’s just been reprimanded. “Oh, oops. Here, let me wipe that off.” She smooshes a plush towel into my face, patting over and over again, seemingly trying to absorb all of my words (or smother me to death).

“It’s dry, Lucy.” She keeps patting, so I finally reach up and grab the towel, tossing it onto the workstation.

Quick as lightning, she brandishes a hairdryer and turns it on full blast. “YOUR HAIR WAS TOO WET. GOTTA DRY IT A BIT,” she yells above the noise.

I can do nothing but sit stunned, watching my hair twist and fly around my head, wondering how long she’s going to make me sit here like this. She lifts both her brows at me with an overly bright smile, and I’m certain she will go to terrifying lengths to avoid talking to me about this.

Sitting forward, I grab the cord of the hairdryer and yank it out of the wall. Deafening silence follows, and Lucy’s eyes dart to the spray bottle again. Oh geez, we’re going to be here all day repeating this cycle.

Before her fingers can make contact with it, I wrap my hand around her wrist, bringing her to a stop and forcing her to look at me. “Lucy, will you listen to me? I’m sorry about not responding, and I really regret it. I’m not very good at heartfelt, honest texts, so I wasn’t sure how to respond to you. But I had fun jumping off the cliff with you, and I definitely want to do it again.”

Her eyebrows are still pinched together in discomfort, but her shoulders ease a little. “Okay,” she says quietly and then says it again one more time as she releases the last bit of stress from her body. “Okay. But now can we just forget I ever sent it?”

“No,” I say, daring to run my thumb across the side of her wrist.

“Why?”

I smile. “Because I liked it.”

She swallows and looks skeptical. “You did?”

“Yeah…I did.”

I like that Lucy wears her thoughts and emotions on her face so openly that I can always know what’s going through her head. I like that she was so nervous to see me again she ducked down and hid behind a cart. Who does that? And I love that she smiles when she runs her fingers through my hair. The list of reasons why I like Lucy Marshall seems to grow every time I’m around her.

Basically, I’m in so much trouble.

Our spell is broken when Lucy’s phone starts buzzing on her station. She peeks at it then looks at me with a sheepish smile. “It’s my son FaceTiming me. Do you mind if I answer really quick? I haven’t gotten to talk to him all day.”

“Of course not. Go right ahead.”

Lucy positions her phone in front of her face, pulls a wide smile over her pink lips, and then swipes to answer the call. I can tell the moment the picture connects, because her face beams. “Hi, baby!”

“Hi, Mom!” That must be Levi. “Grammy wants to know if you’re coming to get me soooooooon.”

Lucy laughs. “Honey, you’ve got to pull the phone away from your nose so I can see you. There! Wait. Ah—no, don’t spin!”

I can hear her little boy cackling like a villain as he, apparently, spins with the phone. Lucy contorts her face to look as if she’s on the world’s most intense ride and the g-force is too much to handle. I’m mesmerized. I don’t want to look away for even a second. I haven’t been ready to pursue a serious relationship again since Janie, and honestly, commitment has been all too easy to avoid. Every woman I’ve met lately seems nice but completely forgettable to me.

That is, until Lucy. She’s incredible, and seeing her here, talking to her son and making him laugh with her ridiculous faces, not giving a crap about what anyone else in this salon thinks…it’s taking me from attraction to full-blown crush. Like I might leave here and research cheesy putt-putt golf places because, somehow, I get the feeling she’d actually enjoy going and wouldn’t pretend to be too cool for it. She might even want to bring Levi—and I’d want her to because I think it would be really fun to see her with him.

Gosh, I need to have a conversation with Drew. Man to man, complete intentions laid out on the table between us. That’s the only way I would ever pursue something with his sister. The problem is, I don’t know if she’s ready for that yet after her breakup and move. And she has a son, which means I need to proceed with even more caution and know my own feelings are for sure before I approach Lucy about it. I’m not too stupid to know a woman like her comes along once in a lifetime, though, so I don’t plan on dragging my feet. What do you do when you’re not in love with someone yet, but can feel the potential for it, but also can’t date her because she’s definitely commitment material and her brother might murder you?

Friends.

Bleh. I hate that word. But it’s my only option right now.