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Mira breezed in with her purple-and-black dreads up in a wild bun. “Hey, sexy,” she purred to me with a wink as she double-checked her schedule with Faith and Soleil. Then she buzzed back to her room where I could hear her setting up.
Feeling Soleil’s gaze like it was a physical touch, I shifted my attention and caught her staring. More like glaring. I wanted to smirk because if she was jealous of Mira and her harmless flirting, it meant she cared.
Mira returned to the front desk. “Hey, everyone. How’s your morning been so far?”
“Pretty good,” Faith responded while Soleil and I remained mute.
The two of them chatted for a bit until Mira’s first client of the day arrived. I’d seen him in here before—he was one of her regulars. She worked the day shift with Chains because she had kids in school. As I thought about it, I wondered if I should tell Venom we should look into opening a daycare. Fuck, with all the kids my brothers were making lately, we could practically fill it with our own kids.
Theirkids, I meant, not my kids. That was something that was unlikely.
“Well, at least the view has been nice in here for the last several days,” Faith teased with a smirk as I looked up from the magazine I’d been flipping through. I snorted, but my eyes dragged over Soleil’s features.
She seemed to be intentionally ignoring not only me, but Faith’s remark as she poured over the policy manual like it was a New York Times Bestseller.
“Yeah, it has,” I replied, focused on Soleil.
That got her attention, and she lifted a frowning gaze to Faith, then me, but when she saw she was what held my unwavering stare, her cheeks flushed bright pink. She was suddenly riveted on the manual again, and I chuckled.
Faith grinned as her attention bounced between me and Soleil. Then she gave me a mischievous wink and held her belly, moaning. “Oh my God. The baby is going to be the death of me. I have to pee something fierce. Think you can hold down the fort until I get back?”
Soleil gawked at her but nodded. Faith gave her an exaggeratedly grateful smile and rushed to the back. I rolled my eyes at her over-the-top behavior. Fucking women.
Taking advantage of the moment as she intended, I grabbed myself by the balls—metaphorically, of course—and approached the counter. The entire time, Soleil kept her nose glued to the manual. I leaned my elbows on the glass and tipped my head in an attempt to get her to look at me.
Finally, she huffed. “What, Sabre?”
“You look beautiful today,” I told her with a half smile. The color bloomed in her pale cheeks again and I had a sudden vision of how that same pink flushed across her chest when she… fuck. If I didn’t stop that train of thought, I’d be sitting in the lobby with a goddamn boner the rest of the day.
I wasn’t lying. She had her deep red hair pulled up with loose tendrils curling around her ears and neck. It took everything in me not to run one of the silky pieces through my fingertips. She was ethereal.
“That was important enough for you to come up here and tell me?” she mumbled.
“Yeah, it really was,” I replied. “I was thinking that maybe after work, we could—”
“Hey, fucker,” Price called out as he came from the back, a cup of steaming coffee in hand and Faith on his heels. He was another of the tattoo artists. We had talked about approaching him as a potential prospect, but he had too much shit going on between working and taking care of his sick dad.
“Hey, man. What’s up? You aren’t usually in this early,” I observed, sorry for the loss of my few moments alone with Soleil. Price usually pulled the later shift along with Devlin, and when she worked, Ghost’s ol’ lady, Laila. We inherited Leo and Devlin with her when the owner of the shop where they used to work shut it down and moved to California. Laila was working part-time for us and had asked Chains if they had room for two more artists. Since the club was using the back two rooms for storage overflow, we just cleaned it out and stashed the shit in the attic over the strip club.
The way we looked at it, extra stuff wasn’t paying rent, whereas two artists would. We had a busy shop, and they were a great addition, even though Ghost was a grumpy fucker about Laila working around Devlin again. It was almost humorous to see him get all territorial when he stopped in to see her. Something must’ve happened between them that I wasn’t aware of—not my business, though.
Price rolled his eyes. “Fuck, I know. But I have a new client that was a referral, and this was the only time he could come in. I don’t know how people function this early in the morning,” he grumbled. “And this coffee tastes like shit. Who made this dragon dump?”
“Fuck off!” Chains called from down the hall. Price snickered, and Faith rolled her eyes.
He set his cup down on the front counter and leaned on his elbows to grin at the girls. “Now, this is a beautiful sight. I would wake up a happy man to this view each morning.”
A rumble started in my chest as I glared at him. He cast me a knowing smirk. I swear, everyone and their brother wanted to fuck with me today.
The door chimed and I saw a tall, skinny guy enter.
“Hey, Dirk. You ready to get this started?” Price asked him as he stood upright and faced him.
“Yeah, totally,” the dude replied with a nod as he shook Price’s hand. He followed Price back to his room.
“What should we do for lunch?” Faith asked, rubbing her huge belly.
“Jesus, woman. It’s barely past breakfast,” I shot back as I gaped at her.
