Not that he should be looking, but she had asked him out on a date. He was only human. No ring on her finger. She liked to talk, and she was pretty. Why wasn’t she married?

Better yet, why was she asking him out? He was big and ugly and shit at conversation. He wasn’t rich and he had a young daughter and no wife. He wasn’t a prize by anyone’s standards.

Had to be a trick.

Hank glanced at the clock as the minutes ticked past. His phone had buzzed with a few texts, but he ignored it. Seemed rude to act all distracted when this stranger was entertaining his child as she worked. His gaze fell on a neat stack of business cards on the counter, tucked between combs and bottles. Becca Loftis, Beautician.

She looked like a Becca. Not that he’d met a lot of Beccas.

Not that he cared. But he reached over and took one of the business cards anyhow, just in case Libby had another gum incident.

The woman—Becca—didn’t notice his movements. She was too busy concentrating on Libby’s hair as his daughter yammered on and on about some sort of baby shark, her comb gently moving through the mess on Libby’s head. He kicked back, their jackets in his lap, and watched Becca work, since this beat mucking stalls or listening to Uncle Ennis tell another one of his stories. It was kinda nice to sit down for a while and listen to Libby’s laughter as she talked.

And then he nodded off.

He jerked awake a short time later, when a hair dryer turned on. Running a hand over his face, Hank sat up and glanced at the clock. Damn. It was nearly ten at night. Had he fallen asleep that long? Had this woman—Becca—been working on Libby’s hair the entire time? He looked over at his daughter, and her little face was beaming into the mirror as Becca worked the child’s pale curls into big sausage-like rolls and then carefully pinned them atop her head until they looked like puffs. Then she got out a pink canister and sprayed some pink glittery shit all over the kid’s head. He wanted to tell her to stop, that he wasn’t gonna pay for that, but the look on Libby’s face kept his mouth shut.

His little tomboy daughter, who knew how to bait a hook and scale a fish, who played in mud and laughed hysterically when his horse pooped, who had always said she wanted to grow up and be a cowboy like her daddy, looked utterly entranced at her ridiculous pink hair. Her mouth gaped and then she looked over at him, full of joy. “Daddy, I’m a princess!”