Chapter Three
Luke
“Morning, Granny Franny,” I said as I stepped into the seniors center. It was early as hell, but apparently anyone over seventy didn’t sleep past sunup.
“Luke, morning.” Franny got up and gave me a long hug. Her familiar lavender smell calmed my nerves. Normally, she would be sitting having coffee with a group of other seniors, but I’d caught her alone. That was good because I needed her today.
“I brought you your favorites,” I said, handing her a box of shortbread cookies I’d picked up on the way.
She opened the box and offered me one. “You know you don’t have to bring me things.”
I nodded and shoved a cookie in my mouth.
“What brings you here today, hun? You look tired.”
She could always read me. Franny wasn’t actually related to me, even though I called her Granny. She had been my first grade teacher thirty-plus years ago.
“Problems at Think Ink.”
She gave me a sympathetic frown, and I filled her in on the potential problem. She took a delicate bite of her cookie before setting it down and putting her hand over mine. “Do you remember when I gave you your first sketchbook and pencil set?”
I nodded.
“You were such a tiny little thing. Not big and strong like you are now.”
I felt myself blush under her praise.
“Your parents were letting you run wild, not keeping you fed and loved like you needed. I never could get you to sit still for math or reading, but when you had free time, it was right to the crayons you went.” She laughed at the memory, and I squeezed her hand.
“That sketchbook saved me, you know that?”
She shook her head. “You just needed some kind of outlet for what you were feeling. Something that was all your own, that’s all. You’ve been paying me back for five dollar’s worth of paper and crayons for three decades.”
“It was more than that, Franny, and you know it.”
She took another bite of her cookie. “This tattoo place is just a brick and mortar version of that old sketchbook for you, isn’t it?”
I nodded. “I don’t know how to make sure it stays in business.”
She patted my hand. “Things have a way of working themselves out, and if they don’t, I’ll go to the dollar store and get you another sketchbook.”
I hugged her goodbye and jumped in my truck. I needed to get to Think Ink for a staff meeting about what had happened with the review bombing, and I could see by the clock on my dash that I was going to be late.
I found parking, which was a miracle of its own, and flew through the door of the shop only ten minutes late.
“I’m here, sorry.” I said as I skidded around the corner and into the staff room.
“And last but not least, this is our apprentice, Luke,” Roxy said, gesturing to me, but talking to the woman next to her.
Meredith.
Of all the tattoo parlors in all of Canada…ah, fuck. Somehow I’d pissed off a potential customer, got the shop a shit-kicking in the ratings and the solution to the problem happens to be the only one night stand I couldn’t forget.
I froze. She wore trendier clothes than I had seen her in before.
Tight jeans over generous curves, a tight black tank with a hint of cleavage, and a jean jacket.
Her dark, shoulder-length hair danced around her face.
She looked gorgeous, but I couldn’t help but notice the dark circles under her eyes.
What had brought her back to Springwood? What had kept her up last night?
“Good to see you again,” I finally blurted out.
“Oh, you two know each other?” Nova asked around a bite of muffin.
Meredith smirked. “Oh, yes. I met Mr. January here when he was posing for the charity Hunks of Road Ready Mechanics calendar.”
“Wait, what?” Dax asked, shoving my shoulder lightly. “I didn’t realize you were a model.”
I fought back a blush.
Most of the people I knew had seen the calendar by now. Asher ran an after-school club for kids who had nowhere else to go. It was close to all our hearts, but there were never enough funds to go around. The calendar sales were helping with that, even if we’d had to strip down to make it happen.
“A diva, too,” Meredith added with a laugh. “I was assisting the photographer on the shoot. Insisted we get his good side.”
I shot her a look. “You know my month was the best one… all downhill after January.” One thing that I had loved about Meredith right from when I’d met her was her sense of humor.
Getting ready for that calendar shoot—and worrying we wouldn’t raise enough money for those kids—kept stirring up old things from my childhood I thought I’d buried.
My parents weren’t what parents should be, but I had Franny.
Who did these kids have if not the guys at Road Ready?
Then Meredith appeared. Her organized, no-nonsense manner put me at ease.
I’d immediately tried to break her of the no-nonsense part and discovered she had a sarcastic, witty side that I loved.
Once we started joking around, we didn’t stop.
We flirted and touched until she wasn’t needed on set anymore, and then I’d taken her back to my place.
And once again, when something important to me was threatened and I was rattled in a way I could never admit out loud, she appeared. Hopefully full of ideas that were going to save me from myself.
I realized it had been way too long since anyone had said anything, so I cleared my throat. “Well, my photogenic ass isn’t why you’re here today.”
She smiled, but those little stress lines around her eyes gave her away. Was it awkwardness, or was she replaying our night—like I had, damn near a hundred times—since she went back to Vegas?
“Right, be a diva on your own time, apprentice. Let’s get to work,” Roxy said, her words bringing me back to reality. “You all know why we’re here.”
My stomach rolled with guilt.
“To be clear, Luke was right to turn the customer away,” Dane added as if reading my mind.
“Abso-fucking-lutely. We’ve brought Meredith in to get us past this. We only have her for a month, so let’s not waste her time. We’ve got an hour before we open. Let’s fill her in on who we are and what we do and brainstorm how to fix this shitshow.”
Meredith went around and talked to each staff member individually. Having her in my space, her perfume cutting through the smell of the disinfectant we used, was distracting to say the least.
She saved me for last, finally plunking down at my workstation ten minutes before we would have opened. “How have you been, Luke?” she asked.
I nodded. “Good. Yeah, this place keeps me going.”
She cocked her head. “Why’s that?”
“Everyone needs that one thing that helps them get through, drugs, booze, a pet, a friend. Art is mine.” I realized I’d let my usual goofy-guy mask slip more than I’d intended and dropped my eyes. “You know, when I’m not dazzling the regular folks with my model good looks.”
She smiled and then readjusted her position in the chair. “Is it okay that I’m here?”
She spoke clearly but was fidgeting with a ring on her thumb. “I wasn’t expecting to see you, and I’m sure you weren’t expecting to see me.”
I hadn’t expected this conversation. Clearly, she was a bigger adult than I was.
I leaned back on my stool and stretched my shoulders, giving myself a minute to come up with a reply.
My feelings about her being here were a jumbled mess, and even if they weren’t, would I tell her about them?
Finally, I decided to be professional and detached. “I’m glad you’re here.”
She pursed her lips and nodded.
“We really need help to get out of this mess.”
“Did you work here when I was in town over the summer?”
I nodded.
“Surprised it didn’t come up.”
“Well, once I met you, I had something else that kept coming up, and it was a little distracting.”
“It was a little distracting for me, too.” Meredith’s cheeks turned pink, and she fought hard to keep back a smile.
“Not too little, I hope.”
She laughed. “You know the answer to that.”
Shit, we were flirting. We weren’t supposed to be flirting.
She jumped up from the chair at the same time I stood from mine.
We ended up face to face, our bodies only inches apart.
She was shorter than I was, and I knew from experience that if I took her chin between my thumb and forefinger and tilted it up, I could kiss her luscious pink lips and still be able to thrust my hips against hers.
Her tongue snuck out to lick her lower lip, and I suppressed a moan.
I knew what that tongue was capable of. I knew how it felt in my mouth, on my neck, on my cock.
The organ in question twitched in my jeans.
It was all too much — her heat, her perfume, the memories.
I took a step back, then another. It was my workstation, but I was retreating.
It had only been an hour that she had been here, and I was ready to throw out every concern I had for the shop and bend her over my table.
That couldn’t happen. The non-dick controlling part of my brain knew that.
“Luke,” she said with a question in her eyes.
“I, uh, got to get something before we open,” I finished lamely. “I’ll see you around.”