“When you’re out here strangling the shit out of that stupid Pompei grass or whatever the fuck I had to pay the HOA out the ass to get,it concerns me,” he said.
I crossed my arms over my chest, looking away. “It’s called Pampas Grass. It’s a good investment, people like the ambiance of it.”
“Don’t care—” he started but stopped as soon as I whipped a look straight up to his eyes, brown abyss be darned. He was used to that look. It was one I’d been giving him since the very first time I walked into his shop and he’d turned his nose up at me. It was the one of a kind,‘you better not finish that sentence’look. One of a kind because it was only ever administered to him, and every time I tried to replicate it with somebody else it came out peppered with regret and hesitation. His familiarity with it was probably what brought his hands up in placating surrender. “Sorry, Boss. I care about the marketability of the shop, please no more lectures. What I meant was, that’s not important right now.”
“And what is?”
“Getting to the bottom of what’s driving the nicest girl in town to plant murder outside of my shop,” he said. There was a beat of silence. One in which I felt dark eyes steady on me. I ignored them which led to a deep sigh. Suddenly, his voice went serious. Not a playful note in earshot. “You’re going to worry people if you go in there like this, Alta.I’mused to it, but nobody else is. So let’s sort it out. Yeah?”
Chapter Two
AUGUSTUS
I knew she wouldn’t tell me.
Even if she hadn’t already looked at me with those big brown eyes full of exasperation or wore the tight little frown she’d been giving me and only me since I met her, I still could have told you that she wasn’t going to admit to me what had gotten her so worked up.
Why?
Because Alta Fernandez hated me.
To anyone who knew the girl, this might sound like a gag. A joke. A hoax. Because to the casual bystander, Alta wasn’t capable of hating anyone. Everything from her perpetualsmiles to her angelic presence to the way she looked concerned for every single person she came across, she was through and through a sweet girl.
It wasn’t just the way she looked either. I’d only known the girl for less than a year and already, I’d seen her be so kind to people.Otherpeople.
In winter, she brought in hats for the homeless to display near the front desk, “just in case.” In the Spring she organized Easter Sunday meal drives in front of the stores. In the summer she could often be seen flagging down dog owners to offer them the free biscuits I tried to tell her were forcustomersonly, passing out treats for simply walking by. And now that it was fall, she’d already peppered me with pitches for some costume party ideas and events to raise money for her sister’s new charity.Again.
And if that wasn’t enough, the girl was incapable of seeing the bad in people. I once intervened in a conversation between her and a mouthy customer in my chair asking her inappropriate questions. It was okay when he was just asking her if she had any tattoos, I was even okay when he followed it up with the next plausible question in this industry,“what about piercings?”Her distracted“nope”had somehow pleased me even more as she was too focused on taking photos of his tattoo job to pay him close attention. But my irritation immediately sparked when his eyes turned leering as he watched her, and my vision turned red when he had the gall to ask,“Waiting on someone special to stick you?”
I was too professional for my hand to slip while I was holding a tattoo machine, but not enough to stop myself from saying, “Hey! Don’t fucking talk to my people like that, man.”
Customer or not, I didn’t play that shit.
But you know whatshehad to say about it? “Don’t be rude, Mr. Harper. He’s just curious.” And then she answered his disgusting question, unperturbed.
I had to have a talk with her later about innuendo and how she should brush up on it, stat.
So if she was that nice, and that selfless, and saw that much good in everyone—how the hell had she come to hate me?
Well, I’m pretty sure it had something to do with the first day we met.
It all started when, on an otherwise normal morning in my tattoo shop, in blew this bustling, shivering little thing in a pencil skirt and heels straight out of the snow and onto the front mat.
She had her back to me, giving me a view of long wavy hair that reached far enough down that it guided my eyes straight to her round ass in that skirt. And though it was magnificent, her body didn’t hold my attention for long. Not when she was looking at herself in the glass of the front window and giving herself a pep talk.
She was whispering, so I didn’t hear much of what she said. But I did manage to catch remnants of“you can do this”and“c’mon, Al”and“be brave.”Audible encouragement to the point that I was sure when she finally did turn around, I would be met by a complete whack job.
That’s not what I got.
When Alta Fernandez finally turned her big doe eyes on me for the first time, I was met with a visceral shock to my senses.
Suddenly, I sat up taller, my arms crossed tighter around my chest, and my every awareness was on high alert at the sight of an absolute angel standing right there in my doorway.
Everything about her called to me. From her round face that was red from the conditions outside, to her lean, defined body that was more visible now that she’d faced me head on. I even liked her soft expression as she skated curious eyes all around my shop.
But just as well, nothing about her belonged in my tattoo shop where pictures of skulls, pin-up girls, grim reapers, and blood decorated almost every drawing hung up on the walls. She seemed to glow in her spot at the doorway, looking all innocent and happy andsweet, while one step inside—closer to me—could instantly taint her.
She was probably in the wrong place. Or lost. Orsomething. She couldn’t have wound up here on purpose. A girl like that would never come looking for a guy like me. And if she was, she’d never stay long.
