Burning Up. Susan Andersen

her use, she tugged free the blond wig she’d worn beneath it. “I was afraid I’d be crowding you, not the other way around!”

      “Then we’re talking apples and oranges and don’t have a problem. Here. Fork that over.” Janna crooked “gimme” fingers at the wig. “I always wondered what I’d look like as a blonde.”

      Macy tossed it to her, then ran her fingers through her own super-straight hair, which was more caramel colored than the do-me-daddy platinum of her wig. She rubbed her scalp to lift the roots and sighed as a breeze ruffled through the white curtains, combing cool fingers through the freed strands and setting them to dancing against her collarbones. Toeing off her Cuban heels, she kicked them aside, then breathed a long, attenuated “Ahhh,” and wiggled her toes. “Lovely.”

      “I’m glad one of us is,” Janna murmured, making a face as she tugged at the wig and a pale blond strand flopped over her eye.

      “It’s hard being adept in the beauty department without a mirror.” Macy crossed to her cousin and shifted the hairpiece into proper position, then finessed the curls into a sassy style. Standing back, she surveyed her handiwork.

      “You need a little makeup.” Grabbing her purse, she upended it over her bed and picked her cosmetic case out of the resulting jumble. Handing a tube of lipstick to Janna with instructions to dab some on, she applied a pale rose blusher to her cousin’s poreless cheeks, then mixed brown eye shadow into a daub of Vaseline she’d smeared on the back of her hand. She applied the concoction over Janna’s eyelids with a deftness gained through years spent taking mental notes while makeup artists got her camera-ready for this, that or the other video shoot. After smoothing the gleaming eye shadow to just above the crease in Jenna’s eyelid to give her cousin a thirties silent-movie-star look, she finished it off with a coat of mascara, then leaned back to inspect her work. “Now you look like the coz I remember.” Twisting around, she reached behind her for the hand mirror atop Janna’s dresser and turned back to extend it to her. “Here. Check it out.”

      Janna stared at her reflection for several silent seconds. Then, the hand holding the mirror dropping to her lap, she looked up, a slow well of tears pooling in her eyes.

      Remorse slammed through Macy. “Oh, my God, Janny, I’m sorry! I’ll take it off!” She snatched several tissues from the box on the dresser where she’d gotten the mirror. “Don’t cry, it’ll only take me a second to remove it!”

      “No! Don’t you dare.” A choked sound rose from Janna’s throat and she dashed the sides of her hands beneath her eyes. Then she let out a watery laugh. “Well, don’t I feel like an idiot. It’s just…I look like a woman again. For the first time since that car hit me and took off—no, since even before that, when Sean walked out—I look like an honest-to-gawd woman instead of somebody’s patient or a woman whose husband dumped her for a twenty-year-old or, I don’t know, whatever it is I’ve been these past six months. Jeez,” she said. “Can you say overreaction?” Bringing the mirror up to study her reflection again, she turned her head this way and that to take in the full effect.

      And smiled. “I make a pretty hot blonde, if I do say so myself.”

      “Yes, you do. And it’s my fervent hope that the bastard who put you in the hospital and that little prick Sean contract a raging case of the—”

      Janna brought her hands together in a single loud clap. And wiggled her eyebrows.

      Macy laughed. “Precisely.”

      Her cousin sighed. “What is it about men, anyway? You can’t live with ’em and the law frowns on neutering them. It’s not exactly a win-win situation.”

      For no good reason, an image of Gabe Donovan popped into her mind. With his big body and near-black hair. Those gray eyes. His strong nose, strong chin, strong…well, everything—or at least that was how it had appeared to her.

      Damn. She hadn’t even realized she’d been paying such close attention, but here she was with warm blood rushing to places it had no business going and her heart beating much too rapidly. And all because of an unbidden mental slide show featuring a man she’d met for all of maybe two minutes.

      Well, get a grip, girl! She slammed a lid on the images. She had zero time for this.

      As if on cue, the door banged open, bouncing off the wall with a crash and creating a welcome diversion. “Mom, can Charlie stay for dinner—hey!” Macy’s nephew, Tyler, spotted her and his entire face lit up. “You’re here!”

      “Hey, pard!” She closed the distance between them, but rocked to a halt in front of Tyler, uncertain how to greet him. What she wanted was to haul him into her arms. But she was afraid that, at nine, he might have reached the age where he’d rather stick needles in his eyes than have a relative hug him in front of his friends.

      Or not, she thought with a big smile as Tyler hurled himself at her, wrapping matchstick arms around her waist and squeezing with surprising strength. Then, without relinquishing his hold, he leaned back and grinned up at her. “I’m glad you’re here. Mom’s been either in the hospital or that rehabib, rehabibl—that nursing place—forever and she still can’t get around very good. But she says you’re gonna stay with us and take me to my practices and games and stuff ’til she’s better. Dintja, Mom?” He turned his head to get Janna’s endorsement—and did a double take.

      His jaw sagging, he dropped his arms from Macy’s waist. “Mom? Is that—? Wow. You look…uh, you look really—” He blinked at her.

      “Pretty,” said the little redheaded boy who had followed Tyler into the room.

      “Yeah.” Tyler nodded and, once in motion, his head continued to bob like a marionette’s in the hands of a mad puppeteer. “Did you use one of them boxes the ladies buy at Sheppard Drugs to change their hair color?”

      “No, it’s a wig of Aunt Macy’s.”

      “Can you wear it again at my Little League game?”

      “Oh, honey, I don’t know about tha—”

      “Is that my baby girl’s car I see parked out back?” a feminine voice bawled from the kitchen. “Macy O’James, you get your tush in here this minute and give your Auntie a hug!”

      Laughing, Macy left Tyler and Janna to their discussion, whirled on her bare heel and raced from the room. Long-legged strides carried her down the hallway and into the kitchen, where she embraced the woman who had just dumped an armload of grocery bags onto the counter.

      Warm, plump arms wrapped around her in return and when she bent her head to bring them to a more equitable level, Macy was enveloped in Lenore’s signature scent: a combination of comfort food and sugar cookies. This, this, was the reason she braved the condemnation of this town. Because of Aunt Lenore and Uncle Bud and Janna and Ty, this was home. They were her home.

      “Let me look at you.” Stepping back, Lenore held Macy at arm’s length. A wry smile tipped up the corner of her lips. “You get separated from the cast of 42nd Street?”

      She laughed. “You should have seen the full effect before I took off my wig, shoes and sailor cap.”

      “That’s my Macy.” Her aunt reached out an age-spotted hand and brushed Macy’s bangs out of her eyes. “It’s good to have you home, girl.”

      “I’m sorry I don’t get back here more often, Auntie Lenore. It’s just—”

      “Difficult. I know. I still want to skin that Mayfield boy alive every time I clap eyes on him. If it wasn’t for him and his lies—”

      “I brought along some wickedly hot outfits.” Macy grinned, but avoided Lenore’s eagle-eyed gaze so her aunt wouldn’t see the lack of humor in her own. “I plan on giving him and all his sycophants an eat-your-heart-out eyeful while I’m here.”

      “I don’t suppose you could just let it go.”

      Her stomach clenched at the thought