“So Ashley was smart,” he said. “So what? So are you. Boulder wouldn’t have accepted you otherwise. Tell me you’ve since realized that, Lily.”

She shrugged. “It took awhile, but after cosmetology school, I started working full-time at the spa, as low on the totem pole as I could possibly get, of course. That frustrated me,” she allowed. “I did all the grunt work and then finally was given more to do but didn’t get any of the credit for it. So I went back to school at night and took some business classes. By the end I was practically running the spa myself.” Not that she’d gotten credit for that either …

“I hope like hell it hurt them when you left,” he said.

So did she …

“Did you like it there?” he asked. “San Diego?”

She’d thought so. Until she’d come back here. She hadn’t realized in all those years that she’d never really felt like she was home. “I missed the snow.”

He chuckled. “Can’t tell by the car you’re driving.”

“Yes, well, you always were a car snob.” She paused. “And I don’t plan to still be around by the time I need four-wheel drive.”

“You just got here,” he said. “In a hurry to leave already?”

“I’m only here until a permanent job comes through. I’m looking at this as a little break.”

“From the bad press you mean.”

She sighed. She shouldn’t be surprised he’d heard.

His smile faded. “You get a bum rap, Lily?”

She met his gaze, extremely tired of dancing around this subject. “Are you asking me if I ratted out one of my clients for money?”

He shook his head. “I know you wouldn’t rat out anyone.”

The words, unwavering, sucked the air from her lungs. “You don’t know me anymore,” she reminded him.

“I know enough.” This was said with steely certainty.

The blind faith in her actually made her throat burn. Her eyes, too, and for a moment she couldn’t speak, afraid she’d burst into pathetic tears. “But it was me,” she said softly. “My boss asked me to leak it in order to get the salon’s name in the press. But it backfired and so …” She shrugged.

“And so you took the fall for it.”

She nodded.

“So your boss was a real stand-up sort of person, then.”

She’d thought so, at first. Michael had run the salon, been her friend, her sometime lover, and sometimes her boyfriend. And not only hadn’t he stood at her back, he’d fired her and then blacklisted her as well. “It’s actually done a lot,” she said. “Where a celebrity calls ahead and wants their arrival or departure noted in the press. It keeps them in the public eye and relevant.”