Under Locke(18)

I figured I probably shouldn’t waste his time based on the fact that he didn’t look happy to see me and probably didn’t look happy to see anyone, period. Ever. Moving my focus back and forth between Trip and the man I assumed to be Luther, I raised the envelope up.



“I’m looking for Luther.”



The old guy took three steps toward me, reached for the envelope with a grunt of a “Thanks” and turned around to open it, shielding me from its contents.



Trip and I both looked at each other and shrugged.



“I’ll see you later,” I told Trip, who looked even more attractive during the day than he had when I saw him at night the week before. In the natural light, my guess was that he was probably a handful of years older than my twenty-four. He had on the same thing that Luther and the other two guys back at the parlor except his t-shirt was black and his jeans looked pretty new.



Trip was pretty friggin’ handsome. Long legs. Nice yellow blonde goatee. Easy smile.



So I knew right then that I really needed to get my ass back to work before I thought any longer about how nice and handsome Trip was. Because it then reminded me how hot and asshole-ish my boss was, and I knew that would only make me bitter.



No thanks.



“You comin’ to the party tomorrow, gorgeous?” he asked when I took a step back.



“There's a party?”



He nodded.



"Well, this is awkward." Both of my eyebrows shot up. I whispered, "I wasn't invited."



Trip laughed. “You're invited. Sonny only parties in one place, and that's with the Club." He crossed his arms over his chest and lifted his chin. "You hafta come. You got it in your blood."



Sonny had used those same exact words to con me into going to Mayhem with him last week. You got it in your blood. Then why the heck had my parents taken me to Florida?



"Me and your boy won't let anybody mess with you," he offered. "You'll come?"



Oh, what the hell. I hadn't been out in almost a year with the exception of the last trip to Mayhem. "Yeah, sure."



Trip grinned.



Glancing down at my watch, I sighed. It'd been twenty minutes since I left the shop and the last thing I wanted was to get in trouble when I got back. "See you tomorrow?"



He nodded, still grinning. "Sure will."



Waving at Trip, I kept taking steps backward. “Bye, Trip.” He winked at me right before I waved once more and speed-walked down the forecourt.



I spotted Sonny bent at the hips with his entire upper body suspended over the motor of a Chevy and since I didn’t see Luther—more than likely the boss— around, I yelled at him. “See ya, Sonny!”



He didn’t move but I heard him call out after me, “Later, Ris!”



It might have been because Trip was a handsome flirty bastard, or it might have been because Sonny went above and beyond the call of being a half-brother who had spent less than a year of his total life with me, but I smiled the entire—short—walk to work.



~ * ~ *



“You ever thought about getting a tattoo?” Slim asked me.



It was a little after ten. Blake was working on the same piece he’d been going at for two hours and Blue had just gotten saddled with piercing a cute but barely legal girl's tongue. I had a feeling she was going to regret that thing tomorrow, but I kept my mouth closed.



Rule number one in working at a tattoo parlor according to Blake—don’t talk customers out of services unless they were a really, really bad idea. Which meant I really, really needed to find out what they thought a bad idea was. Maybe a facial tattoo?



Slim and I had just given each other bug eyes when Blue walked off with the nervous girl and we'd followed after them with our eyes until they disappeared into one of the private rooms. Earlier, a woman well into her thirties had come in requesting to get one nipple pierced. Blue had been in the room with her for ten minutes when a scream pierced through the parlor, scaring the crap out of all of us. It was a miracle that Dex hadn’t messed up the tattoo he’d been working on because I’d whacked the computer mouse across the room in response.



I was fondly starting to call the private room the “torture chamber” in my head.



I nodded my head at Slim. “I wanted to get a tattoo on my lower back when I was eighteen.”



He raised an incredulous eyebrow. “A tramp stamp?”



The guy enunciated the words a little too carefully. Smart ass.



For that, he earned a smirk. “For the record, I didn’t know they were called tramp stamps before I wanted to get one,” I gave him a flat look. “I just thought they were kind of cool.”