My stomach tightens at the thought. For unknown reasons, Declan makes me feel off-kilter, like I can’t find my footing. It’s thelast thing I need right now, when I’m trying to get a business up and running.
When I catch myself glancing in the rear-view mirror, checking to see if he’s still on the sidewalk outside the building (he’s not), I give myself a mental shake. This behavior isn’t like me, and Declan is very muchnotmy type, regardless of the way my pulse raced when his skin touched mine.
Grace and Olivia are wrong.
But just in case they’re not – I need to stayfaraway from that man.
CHAPTER 8
Declan
I underestimated just how often I’d end up back in Port Myles before moving to town. Every time things seem to settle, something else pops back up that Sean needs my help with.
A meeting with the designer who’s working on our logo and branding. Giving input on flooring and cabinets and paint colors, things that are hard to visualize without seeing samples in person. A goddamn photo for the local newspaper to accompany the article letting people know that a new business is coming to town. I tried convincing Sean that I didn’t need to be in it, but he’d insisted.
The article was actually about both businesses, our studio and the flower shopsheis opening next door. I hardly know a thing about Elsie, but somehow, the thought of her being a florist seems right.
Today’s crisis that called me back to town is an impromptu meeting with the Campbell County Chamber of Commerce. Sean didn’t explain much when he called to tell me about it; somethingabout a competition for local businesses that we can opt into if we want. The meeting is to find out more about it, I guess.
Despite promising Sean that I wouldn’t be, I’m late. My morning tattoo appointment ran later than it should have, because the polo-shirt-wearing, overly-spray-tanned dude who was awfully confident when he sat down had to keep taking breaks because of the pain. Nothing out of the ordinary, but I get a smug kind of satisfaction when it happens to the douchey frat bro types.
Not when I’ve got places to be, though. I know people think I don’t give a fuck in general – and to be fair, I usually don’t – but I don’t like to keep people waiting. I know how it feels to wait around for someone who never shows, or who shows too late, and I try not to be that person.
I park my bike in the small lot outside the town’s municipal building and hurry inside, double checking the text from Sean to see where I’m going.
Sean:Noon at the town building. First floor conference room. It’s at the end of the hall on the right.
Beneath that is a text I hadn’t seen yet, one sent just a few minutes ago.
Sean:ETA ??
I pocket my phone and find the room I’m looking for. The door is slightly ajar and I can hear a man’s voice booming from the other side.Fuck, they’ve already started.
I ease the door open and slip inside, hoping Sean isn’t ready to wring my neck for being late. I’m prepared to grab a seat and make my excuses for being late. What I’mnotprepared for is a conferenceroom full of people. I thought this meeting was just with Sean, myself and maybe a couple people from the Chamber of Commerce. Instead, the conference table is nearly full.
My eyes immediately zero in on Elsie, drawn to her by some magnetic force I don’t quite understand. She’s glaring at me, probably thinking I’m rude as fuck for showing late and disrupting the meeting.
“Sorry,” I mutter to the room full of people, taking an empty seat down at the end. Sean is leaned back in the seat across from me, arms crossed over his chest. He nods as I take my seat, apparently unperturbed. He knows by now that I don’t make a habit of being late.
“Welcome,” the same booming voice I’d heard from the hallway calls out. “I’m going to take a wild guess and say you must be the other half of the tattoo shop duo?”
A couple people around the table chuckle. I get it. I’m covered in tattoos. By now I’ve more or less gotten used to the comments people like to make, whether snide or condescending or just flat out dumb. A handful of years ago I might have gotten offended by his assumption, even if he’s right.
When people find out I work as a tattoo artist, there’s always a moment of recognition and relief that washes over them, at least for a split second. Like,ah, that makes sense. Because what else could a heavily tattooed guy like me possibly be doing with their life?
Ignorant fucks.
I’d love to make a sarcastic comment back, but instead I say, “That’s me.” I’m really trying my hand at this whole business professional thing, but only for Sean’s sake. If this is all part of our trial to see if I can handle being his business partner somewhere down the line, I can handle it. If I have to kiss ass and shake hands with idiots like this once in a while, I can do it.
I think.
“Excellent,” the woman to his right responds. “You haven’t missed much. We were just introducing ourselves before we give everyone the rundown about our annual contest.”
The four Chamber members introduce themselves again for my benefit and explain that this meeting is for all the new business owners in Port Myles. I try like hell to pay attention as they give their spiel for the contest, which is open to any business that opened its doors between September first of last year and August thirty-first of this year. It’s only May, so any business owners planning to get their place up and running before the end of the contest period are included. I think it’s just Elsie and Sean that haven’t opened yet, from the sound of the article that ran in the paper last week.
I catch all the important parts – an annual contest, one for each town throughout the county and then one big, county-wide one after that. Competing to be named Best New Business in Port Myles, and the winner will go on to compete for Best New Business in Campbell County. From what I can tell, the other people seated around the table are the other business owners in Port Myles that Elsie and Sean will be competing against.
I try to focus, but my attention keeps getting snagged by the brunette at the other end of the table. Elsie’s long, dark hair is loose around her shoulders this time, the first I’ve seen that it hasn’t been tucked back into a braid. It’s distracting. I want to run my hands through it and find out what the strands feel like between my fingers.
