Page 27 of Sugar & Ink
“Fantastic,” I muttered.
The truth was, I’d been thinking about getting a tattoo for years. Not a big one. Nothing dramatic. Just something small. Something that was mine.
Bruce hated tattoos and he used to call them trashy. He said women ruined their skin with them.
That should’ve been my first clue we weren’t compatible.
The man thought mayonnaise was spicy and had opinions about what women should do with their own bodies.
Idiot.
The front door of Bad Habit suddenly swung open.
I jumped and Rome leaned against the doorframe with his arms crossed.
“You planning on standing out there all night?” he hollered to me.
Heat rushed to my cheeks. “I was just...”
“Being weird?”
“I wasn’t being weird.”
He raised an eyebrow. “You’ve walked past three times.”
I stared at him. “You saw that?”
“I have windows.”
I groaned. “Oh my God.”
“You gonna come in or keep pretending you aren’t interested?”
I narrowed my eyes. “In the tattoo shop. I’m interested in the tattoo shop.”
“Sure.”
“You knew that’s what I meant.”
His grin flashed.
That stupid grin was becoming a problem.
I huffed out a breath and crossed the parking lot.
The closer I got, the more nervous I became.
Which was ridiculous since I knew Rome.
Sort of. Well, enough.
The man had eaten ice cream in my shop for days in a row. He’d brought me dinner. He knew I preferred peanut butter cups over gummy bears because apparently that had come up yesterday. I knew he hated olives.
We weren’t friends exactly. Not really, but we weren’t strangers anymore, either.
I felt it every time he looked at me a little too long.
Every time I forgot what I was saying halfway through a sentence. Every time he smiled. Which, annoyingly, was happening more.
