And I did. I bolted out of there as fast as my legs could take me, before I did something else stupid, like take Gus Harper up on his insane proposition to use him.
Chapter Eleven
AUGUSTUS
I think my heart was broken. Not in the wax poetic, painful kind of way but in the it wouldn’t stop beating like I was running a marathon kind of way.
Ever since I’d had Alta Fernandez in my hands, body pressed against mine and her sweet little lips giving me the softest kiss I had ever received, I’d been functioning like an addict without a fix.
I felt terrible that day in the shop after ruining whatever big chance she was going on about. My emotions had caused me to react before my brain could offer any kind of alternative. Even though sound logic was right there in front of me, I couldn’t stop the adrenaline from pumping through me like a drug.
Anger, aggravation, annoyance? I’m not surewhat exactly it was that sent me out there in a fit of indignation, all I knew was seeing her smiling and laughing and having a grand old time with some other guy suddenly made me want her to stop looking at me like I was the devil incarnate.
I mean, c’mon. I saidonebad thing thefirsttime we met. I was sick of that bad impression determining what she thought of me, especially when she could just laugh it up with every other guy on the street.
How that turned into me asking her to kiss me, I had no clue. If I had to guess, it had something to do with making up for the way we met. Back then, I made her feel bad somehow. So now, I offered to make her feel good to make up for it.
That was it.
That was all it was going to be.
So why the hell did it feel like the moment she put her lips on mine, every wrong thing in my world suddenly didn’t matter? Like itcouldn’tmatter. Not when I had something so right standing there in front of me.
Shit.
I’m glad she left. If she hadn’t, I might have been made into a liar right then and there. I promised just one kiss, but if she would have stayed in front of me with her soft hands, and perfect little curves, and her skin that smelled like fucking cucumbers that day, I don’t think I could’ve stuck to just one.
Still, I couldn’t believe I propositioned her to kiss me. I’d been trying to forget about my acute lack of common sense ever since, but the memory of my thundering heartbeat as she disappeared was making that difficult.
At least I had a full day of work ahead of me to take my mind off it.
The sun was bright on the day of the first annual Seaside Waterways Women’s Festival. It was warm for October and everyone and their dog were out to enjoy what might be the last warm day of theyear. I was glad we would be able to take advantage of it by being outside most of the day.
Vendors were required to be at the Seaside Park early for set up. The festival doors opened at eleven, so all working entities had to be set up at least thirty minutes beforehand for checks and inspections. Alta had given us the option for earlier drop off slots so we wouldn’t have to be stuck in the fray of delivery trucks unloading equipment for other booths.
We took her up on it. I’d been to my fair share of tattoo conventions, and from my experience, almost every single time something went awry.
“Where’s the generator?” I asked, looking over our booth with an assessing eye.
The artisan booths were set up in a row of tents off to the east side of the park. Somewhere in the middle was a large stage decorated by a view of the water behind it, which left food booths to the west. Our setup spanned the size of two tents. Alta had given us more space since we were offering the option to tattoo onsite and to do so we needed an enclosed space.
Parked directly behind our booth was a twenty-by-twenty foot trailer that held the two chairs we had available for work. In front were simple fold up tables with our shop’s image booklets on display, our participating tattoos for this event plastered around the booth walls with our name printed onto a large vinyl sign.
Everything seemed accounted for except the…
“Generator, generator…” Ryan said as he toed around the small area. I watched as he bent at the waist to peek under the tables as if he would discover a generator the size of a lawnmower had simply rolled under one of them.
I sighed. “Ry, buddy, it’s not under there. Who was in charge of loading the machinery?”
“Quis was!” he said, perking up slightly.
“And who was in charge of the final check?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.
He paused, then his shoulders deflated. “Me.”
Slapping a hand on his shoulder, I gave it a pat. “You gotta go get it, buddy. Quickly too please, before the boss shows up.”
“Scared of facing her after acting like a maniac the other day?” Jules scoffed as she arranged the flyers on the front table.
