Текст книги "Under Locke"

Автор книги: Mariana Zapata

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Under Locke

Mariana Zapata

Under Locke © 2014 Mariana Zapata

All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the author is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. Thank you for your support of the authors rights.

This e-book is a work of fiction. While reference might be made to actual historical events or existing locations, the names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 201 4 Mariana Zapata

Book Cover Design by Jasmine Green http://jasminegreen.net

Dedication

I know this doesn’t cut it,

but I hope you understand

that an infinite amount of gratitude still wouldn’t

be enough.

Amanda, Grace, and Dell—thank you for putting up with me through this.

Chapter One

Pins and Needles.

The business sign loomed ahead of me. Ominous. Foreboding.

Crap. Crap. Crap.

I was going to puke.

And it wasn't going to be a pretty puke like when you're a baby and even farting can be considered cute. It was going to be nasty. Nasty, projectile vomiting straight out of a horror movie.

And if that wasn’t bad enough, immediately after throwing up all over the dashboard of my twelve-year-old Ford Focus, I was going to burst into tears. And exactly like my puking, it was going to be nasty. It wasn't going to be classy or snot-less, and I'd probably sound like a wheezing baboon.

The white number on my dashboard clicked to 3:55.

Holy moly.

My stomach churned at the same time nervous tears threatened to well up in my eyes.

What in the hell were you thinking, Iris?

Leaving the only home I'd ever known. Moving to Austin. Staying with Sonny.

Being broke had made me desperate. The knowledge that my bank account was bleeding a slow death had wrung me dry. It'd stripped me of what made me up; pride, perseverance, and apparently, the ability to make good choices.

Because someone who made good choices wouldn't be taking a job from a man like Dex Locke.

3:56 flickered into place on the clock.

With trembling fingers, I took the keys out of the ignition and slipped out of my car. Luckily I'd found a spot in the lot adjacent to the trendy shopping center the business was found in. With its terra cotta roofing and white stonewashed walls, it seemed so at odds with the reputation a biker-owned tattoo shop should have, especially since it was located smack in the middle of a real estate agency and deli.

I mean, shouldn't it be right by a strip club and some massage place that promised a happy ending?

I shouldn't and couldn't complain. I knew that. There wasn't a reason why I should even think about being anything less than grateful that Sonny had found me this job when I'd gone more than six months unemployed. You had no idea what desperation was until there was less than a hundred bucks left in your bank account and no job prospects.

I guess that was the problem with an associate of arts degree in community college. Too educated for minimum wage and not educated enough for a good paying job unless you were lucky.

And lucky, I was not.

Crap luck was why I found myself hustling across the street to Pins and Needles, eyeing the satin black Harley Dyna parked directly in front of the shop. With the exception of the color, the frame was the exact same as Sonny's. A young cousin of the bike my dad had owned once upon a time.

Which was a route I wasn't going to go down. No, siree.

Big, classic bold font illustrated the name of the shop as I came up to the tinted glass door.

I gagged.

God, my mom would be rolling in her grave if she knew what the hell I was doing.

Sonny had called me two hours before, given me an address and told me to be there at four. I'd scraped through my suitcase looking for work clothes and grabbed the first shirt, pants, and cardigan I found that weren’t too wrinkled. I wasn’t sure how long it would take me to get to the business he was sending me to and getting places late was a huge pet peeve of mine, so I hurried the hell up to get ready. After slumming it for so long, I couldn't help but think his call was kind of a miracle.

Until he threw in Dex's name.

But what other choice did I have? This was why I'd come to Austin.

Now, I wasn’t expecting anything amazing and really, I didn’t need anything great from a job. I'd been perfectly happy answering phones all day and scheduling other people's dream vacations at the cruise line. It was slow but whatever. A very long time ago, I'd told myself that I wouldn't complain about inconsequential things and I wasn't planning on starting now.

I mean, boring and monotonous was safe.

I’d done boring and monotonous since the moment I turned sixteen by working at a real estate agency, then a discount bookstore, followed by sales for a weight loss pill, dog sitting, watching over kids at a daycare center, and filing at a medical practice. I did what I had to do to pay the bills. So as long as I wasn’t prostituting or having to make collection calls, I’d pretty much take whatever I could get.

Only I hadn't anticipated a job with the infamous Dex. A man that I'd heard enough of in ten minutes to know that I wasn't exactly going to be working for the Pope.

Notorious, yes. Bad, yes. Reformed like they made it seem? I doubted it.

We'd thought my dad had been "reformed" and that didn't exactly work out.

Screw it. What was the worse that was going to happen? I'd grown up around a felon. A biker. I'd loved that felon biker for longer than he'd deserved.

My half-brother was a biker but not a felon. And I loved that moron, too.

I knew something much scarier than a big, bad biker with a record. A new job would be nothing in comparison, right?

Right.

"Cajones, Iris," yia-yia would have said in terrible Greek-accented Spanish. So I pushed open that shiny heavy door, ready for whatever was waiting for me on the other side.

What hit me immediately inside was all the natural light in the place. The orange-yellow light streaming in set off the dozens of framed newspaper and magazine articles mounted on the tinted blue wall. One magazine article immediately caught my attention with its glassy, red font proclaiming “Ink of the Year.”

Two black leather love seats were angled against the entrance window with a black lacquered coffee table directly between them. Across from the seating was a flat, very long and modern looking desk that matched the coffee table with a computer in one corner.  I’d barely started taking in two tattoo stations directly behind the waiting area when a male voice hollered, “Hold on a sec!"

I looked around as quickly as I could, noticing two more identical stations to the left.

Another article titled "Up and Coming Sensations: Locke and Company,” was framed right in my peripheral vision.

Could I work at a tattoo parlor?

I thought for a second about the only other place I'd gotten an email back from and the cocktail waitress position at the strip club wasn't exactly appealing. I had a friend who had worked in a salon waxing people's private parts. What's been seen cannot be unseen, she'd told me once.

So, yeah. I could. I didn't have a choice.

"You Sonny's girl?" the deep baritone voice asked from down the hall, in time with the low squeaking thud of boots on tile.

It kind of happened in slow motion. Turning around. Coming face to face with him.

~ * ~ *

It should be said that the first—and only—time I saw Dex Locke had been the week before at Mayhem.

Sonny had dragged me to the bar by sheer manipulation. I'd just gotten to Austin not even two hours before.

And it probably didn't help that I'd just kind of... dropped in.

It'd been a last minute trip. Up until the moment I turned in the keys to my apartment, I hadn't been sure what exactly I was doing. Not that there were many options. I could either drive to Sonny's place in Texas or go up and crash on Lanie's couch in Cleveland. After living with Lanie for a year and knowing that I'd be staying with her and her parents, going to Sonny's hadn't really seemed like much of a decision.

It was inevitable.

But then again, Mom and Dad had kept me on the east coast for a reason. A reason I was clearly dumping into the garbage and possibly setting on fire.

"It'll be fun," he'd said at first.

"A lot of people remember you when you were a kid," he'd kept going, knowing I was a sucker for him.

Sonny wanted to make a point because he kept babbling. "Just because you lived in Florida doesn't mean you weren't born into this."

Like a fool, and because I loved Will and I loved Sonny just as much, even if he wasn't my full-blooded brother, I fell for it. We'd dragged ourselves to Mayhem so he could welcome me into my estranged family.

During the drive, all I thought of was my mom. It was a blessing she wasn't around to strangle me with her bare hands, smiling throughout the process of her choking the life out of me.

Surprisingly, it'd been fine.

Mayhem was smoky and smelled faintly of piss and not so faintly of beer. The place was old, with stained bars and scuffed hardwood floors that had seen better decades. Pool tables were set up on the far side of the bar that smelled like... yep, that was pot. I was pretty sure—only about ninety-nine percent sure—smoking was illegal inside but I definitely wasn't going to complain to the abundance of tattooed and leather-vested men that mobbed the floor.

Like a proud peacock, Sonny had walked me around the floor, through crowds of people that bordered on inebriation and did the splits on the ridiculous. Loud, outgoing, boisterous, young, old, hairy, not-so-hairy, tattooed, not-so-burly. The factors that made up the WMC members varied across the spectrum.

Having been steered toward a stool in the middle of the bar, Sonny and his very blonde, very flirtatious, very bearded friend, Trip, flanked me.

It was a little weird, I guess. Growing up, it'd just been Will and me. Being the oldest, I'd always been the one watching out for my younger brother; the person to threaten to rip organs out of orifices if he wasn't left alone. I'd been the protector. The one who cleaned his butt when he was too little to do it himself without smearing more poop than he actually wiped.

So having Sonny around, worrying about his friends getting too close or giving me looks that he didn't like, was strangely nice.

I'd barely been sitting there a minute, an entire, lonely, miniscule minute in a bar that had been so heavily smoked in over the years that the scent seeped from the wood like sweat on a professional athlete. A bar that was owned by a group of people that my parents hadn't wanted to raise me around. A total of sixty seconds before the noisy crowd burst into loud jeers right by the door.

Trip had groaned, shooting Sonny a side glance, shaking his head like whatever was going on was old news. "Somebody's on his damn rag."

“Quit being all dramatic, he’s not always PMSing.” He cut me a glance. “No offense.”

I held up my hands and shrugged. “Eh.” I’d be a hypocrite if I said that I didn’t turn into a moody zombie on my period.

Trip rolled his eyes at my brother’s comment. “I”m just sayin’, Son, you’d figure he’d have his shit together by now. Don’t they teach better tips than counting to ten in those classes he had to take?” he snickered, glancing over my shoulder. “Dumbass.”

My inner nosey hooker perked up at all the clues they were dropping. Anger management classes? “What happened?” I asked in a conspiratorial whisper.

“It’s cool, Ris.” Sonny shot Trip an aggravated look. “He got in trouble for assault a long time ago. He’s fine now.”

“I don’t know who you’re talking about.” It wasn’t like whatever man they were referring to had ‘Anger Issues’ tattooed on his forehead. I hadn’t even seen him yet.

“Dex.”

I blinked at Trip’s explanation.

“Locke?” he offered like that would mean something to me. It didn’t.

Sonny grabbed the top of my head and shook it. “Don’t worry about it, kid. I’m sure I’ll introduce you sooner or later.”

At that time I thought to myself that it wasn’t like I really cared whether or not I met someone that was constantly pissed off.

~ * ~ *

Shoulders and chest.

The guy was somehow all elegant trapezius muscles and pectorals when I first saw him up close. A tight, black v-neck stretched over broad shoulders, barely hiding two bold tattoo sleeves that ran up from the wrist and disappeared underneath the fitted shirt.

That alone made me go a little brain dead though I should have known better than to let my hormones run rampant. I’d never really had much of an opinion on whether I thought tattoos were that much of a deal breaker when ogling a guy but…from the heat that had flamed up my neck, I was a fan. A big, season ticket holding fan.

I kept looking at him while he closed the distance between us, a portfolio shoved under one long, muscular arm that drew my attention to the inches of colorful red skin the cut of his shirt showed tattooed on his chest.  I'd been too far away at Mayhem to see more than just splotches of heavy color on his skin.

Holy crap.

I should have been glad the cap had hidden his facial features at the bar, so I had time to take in the magnificence that was his tattooed upper body without the added distraction of a face that made my ovaries scream glory hallelujah. His wide shoulders and thickly veined forearms were more than enough to make a girl stare. Because his face… Jesus, shit. Jesus. Shit.

I was going to ask Santa for his good identical twin for Christmas.

“Hi,” I squeaked out. Hot men went on my list of people who made me nervous and therefore had me acting like more of an idiot than usual. Like if knowing I'd be working for a man who had been to jail for assault wasn't nerve-wrecking enough. “I’m his sister, Iris,” I corrected him. My smile was wonky for sure. "Half-sister to be specific."

The guy with the most striking face ever created blinked at me.

Oh boy he was friggin’ hot in a very masculine, raw way. Not like the men I saw so often back home who used more skin products than I did. High, angular cheekbones that looked sharp enough to cut granite were crafted alongside a hard, square jaw that had needed a shave yesterday. The purest and bluest eyes I’d ever seen were deep set above a nose that was just short of straight, and ohmigod lips that I knew had to have been used thousands of times—it’d be a shame if they weren’t. The guy had the most flawless male bone structure I’d ever seen.

Those blue eyes locked on my face, unblinking and expressionless.

Had I done something wrong?

I looked down at what I was wearing: a tan cardigan went over my short-sleeved light pink button-up shirt that was miraculously missing wrinkles—thank goodness—and dark brown work pants. It was something I'd wear to one of my old jobs. I looked closer to make sure that my clothes weren't stained.

They weren't.

Still he stared right at me looking completely indifferent. So absolutely different from the scowling, bleeding man I'd seen tugging a petite blonde behind him as he left Mayhem last week. There was only a small crusty fleck on the edge of his eyebrow that served as a reminder of that night.

"You're late."

Uhh, what?

I glanced down at my cheap, electric blue watch to see it was four in the afternoon on the dot. "Oh. I thought I was supposed to be here at four."

Wasn't that what Sonny had said? I thought back on the call. There was no way I'd heard differently.

He looked at me, his expression unmoving. That handsome, hard face was a block of stubbled concrete. "I have a business to run, girl. I'm doin' Son a favor by hirin' you. The least you could do is show up on time."

Cue my mouth gaping wide.

Was this guy insane?

"I'm sorry," I told the man, eyeing the blue-black hair that went in ten different directions, only slightly tamed by the cap on his head. There was no way I got the time wrong, I knew it, but what was the point in arguing with him? I needed the job. "I really thought he said four." I flashed him a careful, wary smile. "It won't happen again."

He didn't even bother responding. Flicking two tattooed fingers at me, he waved me forward. Leading me toward a life I wasn't so sure I'd been destined for. "C'mon, I don't have all day to show you how to do shit."'

Chapter Two

"I need you to update this every Friday. Got it?"

Got it? Got it?

Ef me. No, I didn't have it.

How the heck does someone go through the inner workings of QuickBooks in less than twenty minutes? I was going to need someone to explain to me how that was possible because I had no clue.

I wasn't an idiot, or slow by any measure—or so I liked to think—but he'd blown through the program with mouse clicks quicker than my poor eyes could keep up with. One minute he was explaining something about expenses and the next he'd started babbling about saving the files into a specific folder. I'd caught onto...maybe half.

Okay, realistically, more like a quarter of it.

For a brief moment, when I was looking down at the legal pad he'd slid across the desk when I'd followed in after him, I thought about asking him to show me one more time so I could write better notes. Because that wasn't uncalled for, right? I mean, who learned things perfectly the first go around? It'd taken me at least three tries to figure out how to use the cubed ice feature on Sonny's refrigerator correctly.

And then I glanced up at him, Dex Locke. His big body leaned over the edge of the dark brown desk, a red tattoo peeped out at the world over the collar of his shirt, the side of his surprisingly full mouth twisted just barely to the side...and I balked.

"Got it."

What. A. Liar.

A little coward of a liar. Pathetic.

He nodded at me briskly and started pulling up a file on his desktop that said 'Waivers' on it. We were off again.

Curt words. Brisk nods. All business.

At one point, he got up to "go take a piss" and I took the opportunity to look around for the first time after following behind him like a lost puppy. When I'd come in, those hard, pure blue eyes were some form of impatient so I focused in on sitting at the chair he'd dragged over around the desk, and followed along. My chance to snoop had finally presented itself.

The office wasn't at all what I would have expected. The walls were a plain bright white, nearly empty with the exception of two framed pieces and… were those television screens mounted in the corner? Maybe. He didn’t seem like the type to watch daytime soaps though.

The colorful art was the first one to catch my eye. An angry, flaming red octopus looped across the paper in what looked like oils. Tentacles swirled and curled in bisecting lines. Bright and full of so much life, it seemed strange to be held captive on paper.

The other frame, directly next to the octopus, was done in black ink. Black ink that sketched out an immaculate replica of the Widowmakers' Motorcycle Club insignia. The one I'd seen bearing down on my father's bicep for years. The one that up until coming to stay with Sonny had only been a sign of the supposedly terrible things I'd been shielded from.

Bad things my mom had told me about to keep me fearful but I pushed that thought away and kept looking around. My mom's memory was meant for a different time. She already took up so much room in that designated little area I let her memory rest in. A place that I didn't want to get sucked into.

The rest of the small office consisted of the large desk, two matching padded chairs, and a cabinet that crowded the corner.  It was almost immaculately clean. There was also a hint of cigarette smoke that clung to the air.

Huh.

"It smell in here or somethin'?" that deep, husky voice I'd heard for the last hour asked from the door.

I looked up at him and smiled. Did he smile in return? No. But I brushed it off and lifted a shoulder. "Do you smoke?"

Dex took a breath so deep and long that it seemed to last a solid minute in length. "When I want."

I almost scrunched up my nose. Almost. Because I hated cigarettes though I doubted the barely-there trace would bother me. I nodded at him again, taking in the dark Rangers cap he had pulled down tight over his head, the ends of his raven hair peeping out in tufts. Realizing that my hands were still damp, they hadn't stopped sweating from the moment I'd been in the car, I wiped them over my pants.

He blinked, breaking the silence. "You got legal ID?"

There were illegal IDs? Yeah, I wasn't going to ask for clarification.

~ * ~ *

I left Pins and Needles at seven that night. In a little more than three hours, we’d crammed a tutorial on how to use the appointment log and calendar on the computer by communicating via two-word groupings of instructions and grunts after our marathon accounting overview and paperwork for payroll. Dex had then pointed at a digital camera sitting on the edge of his desk and said I needed to upload pictures onto the computer and hard drive daily.

Did I ask where to upload the files? One look at that twist of his mouth had me agreeing to the job. Nope.

I learned where everything was hidden in the studio by watching where he pointed: inks, needles, gloves, water bottles, paper towels, disinfectant, cleaning supplies, everything. Dex briefly explained how to time appointments. How to handle walk-ins in every situation. What to say and not to say to clients. He mentioned that there were four tattoo artists that worked in the studio including himself. The only other person I got to meet was a nice bald man named Blake, who had a double piercing through thick black eyebrows and multicolored tattoos that went up to his jaw.

Everything seemed easy enough.

I still couldn't get a solid feeling about the job and much less Dex since he hadn't so much as smiled once, but oh well. The job wasn't worth jumping for joy over but I wasn't exactly dreading the idea of going back. And it wasn't like I had any other option after looking at my bank statement.

I'd take what I could get, damn it.

Plus there was something about the shop that called to me. Maybe it was because I'd been expecting some seedy place with customers that were stinky, old men that got into fights over old ladies, and had more body hair than I had on my head.

Then again, was Sonny what I'd imagined a biker to be? Sonny with his gaming system obsession. Sonny who I'd caught watering his potted plants one morning. Sonny who made me tofu recipes without batting an eyelash.

No. He wasn't.

So I tried to push my worries to the back of my brain, accepting the fact that maybe I'd been wrong to be worried. Maybe.

~ * ~ *

Sonny’s bike, a sleek deep red Harley that cost as much as my car, was in the driveway when I parked in front of his house a few minutes later. Sonny's bungalow was small and located in an old, lower middle class neighborhood. Families and young couples populated the homes up and down the block, loud and constantly in motion.

It was nice and I liked it. After living in an apartment where the walls were so thin I could hear every television show my neighbor watched, his place was friggin' great. The house was painted a deep tan with a front yard that would've been nice if he mowed it more often than every leap year, and comfortable. It wasn't exactly what I'd envisioned him living in before I'd punched his address into my GPS. While he wasn't necessarily neat, it wasn't a pig-sty but it was nicer after I'd spent two days cleaning the floors for what seemed like the first time since he'd bought it seven years before.

I whipped out the key he'd given me the day I showed up, and let myself in. The television blared from the other side of the wall.

Sitting on his favorite recliner, Sonny grinned at me the minute I closed the door. He leaned forward, clutching the remote to his PS3 in one hand. "You survived, Ris?" he asked, his grin widening so much it made his thick, auburn beard twitch with the movement of his facial muscles.

The resemblance slapped me out of the blue. When had he started looking so much like our dad? Not that I would ever ask that out loud while he was around unless I was in the mood to get pinched.

Instead I smirked, plopping down on the couch perpendicular to him. "Barely."

He laughed, loud and deep. Curt Taylor all over again. I wonder if he even knew how much alike they were? Probably not. I'd only gotten ten years out of the old man before he'd taken off, and that was ten more years than Sonny had gotten. And while I wasn't exactly our dad's biggest fan anymore, Sonny had fallen out of love with him a lot sooner than I had. A shitty father who only showed up once a year wasn't going to win any awards, much less one that disappeared out of the blue leaving a wife and two kids behind.

As much as I wanted to, I had to beat back calling him an asshole even in my head. I'd promised myself I wouldn't do that anymore. Another promise I'd lined up neatly in a row along the way.

"That's just the way he is," yia-yia had said time and time again despite how much mom and I had wanted to fight his true nature.

So, so ignorant to the fact that you can't fight a person's instincts even if they were awful, even if they caused bad and painful things to those they should have cared about.

"I knew you'd be the one to make it through the whole day," Sonny claimed in his own individual voice that resembled nothing like our dad's gravelly draw. Thank God.

Wait a second though.

"What do you mean?" I suddenly had a feeling that my brother had fed me to the heavily tattooed wolves—well, one wolf in particular. On friggin' purpose.

Sonny looked at me, his hazel eyes—the color that we'd both inherited from our sperm donor—narrowed. And then he coughed. "There were a few people before you, kid."

He'd been calling me kid for so long that it didn't even faze me anymore. Even if it did, he'd probably call me that more often. What did faze me was the gnawing feeling he was hiding something. "And?"

"Most of them didn't last past the introduction. Much less a couple hours." He flashed that lazy grin again. "I knew you would though."

It was my turn to narrow my eyes at him. Sonny had never lied to me before. He was unapologetic about everything he did. If anything, it'd been me who had kept things from him until the absolute last minute. Even past the last minute, and yet, he'd always forgiven me for lying.  At least eventually he did. I wasn't going to think that he'd start spouting crap now.

"I don't think that he likes anything very much."

Sonny snorted. "Last I heard from Trip, he'd called six people into the shop to get interviewed for that job."

Six people? Oh boy.

Before I could focus on the idea of six individuals before me getting the boot, he thrust a game controller into my hand and tilted his head toward the massive flat screen mounted to the wall. If it was strange that he was changing the subject so abruptly, I didn't catch onto it. "You can survive anything, kid, right?"

Damn him. Those were the same words I'd thrown back at him each time the rabbit hole had seemed to pop out of nowhere.

Chapter Three

"So you just moved from Florida?"

I smiled out of the corner of my eye at Blake, who was sprawled out on the empty couch by the reception desk, casually.

It was only my second day at Pins and Needles. Dex had already been waiting when I'd shown up ten minutes until four. Under the natural sunlight, his tattoos seemed to pop out even more starkly against the smooth, lightly tanned skin beneath the ink. Blues and reds and blacks fought a battle I didn't think any of them were capable of winning on the majestic scale.

Especially not when they were stamped onto the nearly flawless, somewhere around six foot three form.

Why couldn't he have been ugly at least? For some reason, dealing with an impatient, unattractive person seemed easier to swallow than a smoking hot one.

He was standing outside of the building—why, I didn't have a clue. He had a key, he could have gone in but I wasn't going to bother asking. The less interaction we had the better, it seemed.

His fit frame leaned against the stonewashed walls that separated Pins from the real estate agency. He had a cigarette nestled between two fingers, taking deep drags as he faced forward. Just like the day before, his black t-shirt stretched across his chest and arms, the only light color on him was the faded denim jeans that molded to his legs.

Nice legs. Thick thighs. But most importantly, the thighs of a jerk.

“Good afternoon.” The words had barely left my mouth and I was cringing. Had I really just said good afternoon? Awkward, so friggin’ awkward, Iris. I had to shake myself out of thinking about his thighs and how uncomfortable I’d made myself feel as I pulled my purse closer to my chest and forced a tight smile on my face.

The moment I was close enough to him, he flickered his gaze over in my direction and glanced at his watch. "I don't like waitin' around." Dex took another pull from the cigarette before dropping it on the ground, crushing it with the sole of his motorcycle boot.

What?

For a split second, I got the urge to check my watch but I didn't. I knew what time would be on the face. Three-fifty. Not four o'clock. Three-fifty. What in the heck was this psycho babbling about?

"I'm ten minutes early," I told him, standing five feet away so that I wouldn't come in contact with the fumes from his smoking.

Dex raised an eyebrow. "Yeah, and I've been here for ten minutes."

Something mean tickled my lips, teasing me to take the bait and be as callous with him as he was with me. I couldn't do it though. I couldn't risk pissing off a man with very little patience that I needed a paycheck from. So I swallowed hard and in the blink of an eye, hoped that he'd get explosive diarrhea at some point in the near future.

"Okay."

God, I was such a friggin' pushover.

Dipping a hand into the front pocket of his jeans, he pulled out his keys, giving me a once over before tilting his head up. "And quit wearin' that fancy shit. I know you ain’t got any ink but you don't need to look like some sorority girl either."