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“Kind of like you’re doing with me?” the vampire drawled knowingly.
Nova stared at him, refusing to take his bait. Ozzy didn’t give her the chance anyway.
He walked over to join her at the counter. “I got a business to run here, and Nova’s got a customer waiting on her out back. Like I told you, we don’t take walk-ins and we don’t have time for questions. Least of all, questions about our clientele. If the Order wants to conduct some kind of investigation, I’ll thank you to do it on your own turf, on your own time.”
It took the warrior a moment before he acknowledged with a tight nod. “Fair enough.”
He reached for a pen that lay on the counter, and jotted something down on an errant scrap of paper. He pushed the note toward Nova. “In case you change your mind and want to talk more. You can reach me anytime.”
She kept her arms at her sides, her eyes steady on the shrewd gaze that seemed more suspicious than he was letting on.
Finally, the warrior turned and walked out of the shop.
Nova stood unmoving as he stepped out the door and into the night. Then she waited some more, until she was certain he was gone and wouldn’t be coming back.
Only then did she reach out to retrieve the scrap that held his bold, efficient handwriting.
He’d written down a phone number and his name.
Mathias Rowan.
Nova stared at the note for a long moment.
Then she crushed the paper in her gloved fist, and dropped it into the trash bin under the counter. She had no intention of ever calling the number.
If she were lucky, she’d never run into the warrior again.
She glanced over at Ozzy, her voice quiet as she spoke. “Do you think he believed me?”
CHAPTER 3
She lied to him.
Mathias had known it even before he left the tattoo shop a couple of hours ago.
Hell, he’d known it almost as soon as the petite, pierced, walking, talking work of art had opened her tough little mouth.
Mathias’s Breed senses had lit up about a block from Ozzy’s studio, and the imprint of violence had only grown stronger the closer he got to the door.
Something bad had occurred inside that shop last night.
Something more volatile than a simple confrontation between Nova and the angry drunk later pulled out of the Thames by Gavin Sloane’s unit.
Whether it was the man’s actual murder or an event leading up to it, Mathias couldn’t be sure. His ability didn’t translate into such neat black-and-white terms. But after talking with Nova and her surly old boss at the tattoo shop, Mathias was certain the pair were hiding something.
He meant to have the truth.
To get it, he needed to talk to Nova again--preferably without the old man there to hover over her like a snarling guard dog. It was obvious the pair’s relationship went deeper than colleagues or friends, and based on the shop owner’s age alone, Mathias doubted a fiery twenty-something like Nova would be sharing the man’s bed.
No, it was a protective, familial kind of bond between them, not physical. Why that should stir even a small sense of satisfaction in him, he didn’t want to consider.
And there was more to the young woman than met the eye too.
A lot more, Mathias was certain.
She was young, but a hard one to rattle, hard to figure out. The myriad tattoos and piercings were more intriguing to him than off-putting, giving her an unusual beauty he found hard to ignore.
There was something about her--those layers of secrets in her eyes and on her skin--that made the investigator in him curious enough to know more, even if his tastes typically ran toward more conventional-looking females. The kind who were attractive enough to be on his arm or in his bed, but easy enough to forget once his work called him back to the only true passion he’d known.
