“Edgar talked about you. You grew up around here?”
“Scott was my mortal enemy,” Sam chipped in. “It was a real Batman and the Joker situation.”
The big man looked impassive. “Bet I know which you were.”
She smiled, a wicked little smile. “You’re right, but unlike Batman, Scotty had no idea how to handle me.”
Noah grunted something, but Scott didn’t hear it. Now that the shock of seeing Samantha had worn off, the memories were coming in thick and fast—the flaming bags of dog shit Sam and her sisters left outside his house, the times they’d taken the wheels off his bike and spray-painted his schoolbag pink. He’d retaliated, of course, but he’d never had the energy, or the numbers, to beat them. Also, he’d never understood what they were fightingabout. The pranking had tapered off as he and the twins hit their teens, but the contempt was far from over. Sam flipped him off whenever she saw him, called him Galahad and made it clear that the pounding, heart-stopping feelings he had for her were unreciprocated. Then came The Thing that almost got them both arrested…
But he didn’t want to think about that.
No, he’d rather think about how he wasn’t an awkward stammering virgin anymore, dammit. He’d had sex. He’d hada lotof sex. He knew exactly how he’d handle her. He’d tear off her clothes and slam her back into the wall, kissing her deep the whole time. He’d suck her nipples and stroke her panty-line until she was panting with need, then he’d bend her over and show her he was far from the boy she used to know. In fact—
“Scott?” Sam interrupted. “You thinking about all the ways I owned you?”
“No, I’m thinking about all the ways I’d handle you, now.”
Samantha’s mouth dropped open, not wide, but a definite part. Fucking hell, had he actually said that?
The big man cleared his throat. “I’ll uh, see you inside, Sammy.”
He turned and walked toward the storefront leaving him and Sam staring at one another.
“So…” Scott said, willing himself not to blush. “This has been nice. Seeing you again I mean?”
Idiot.
Sam shoved her hands into her jean pockets. “Likewise. So, you came, you saw, you almost apprehended a thief. Are you going somewhere else?”
Time to do what he came to do. “I was hoping to have a word with your father.”
“You can’t.” She straightened her spine and Scott willed himself not to stare at the firm swells of her tattooed breasts.
“Okay…should I come back later?”
Samantha gave a humourless smile. “No, I mean you literally can’t. He’s gone. I own this place now.”
Chapter 4
Chaos. It wasone of those forces that sounded so cool, so metal, so fucking 1974 and in reality had nothing going for it. Sam had considered herself a child of chaos; even considered getting a tattoo above her pubic bone to that effect, but that was a complete and utter joke. She was a child of chaos like Dora the explorer was a child of Satan.
Ever since her dad left, lifehadbeen chaos—a disordered whirlwind in which problem after problem kept swirling up and hitting her in the face. The biggest and most pressing was finances. She’d known business was a little slow, but a close look at the finances showed Silver Daughters Ink was well into the red. They were losing clients, failing to find new ones and she still needed to pay salaries and order supplies. Sam didn’t know if her dad had some secret way of making free greywash appear in their storage cupboard, but under her command, Silver Daughters edged closer to bankruptcy every day.
Their second biggest problem was bad PR. SDI’s online presence was minimal. Their website sucked and they had no social media accounts. Sam hadn’t minded—she was a pin-up girl for anti-social media sentiment—but she needed to get new customers into the studio and right now that was like trying to move a boulder by flicking it with a tea-towel. The studio’sbadpress had more force behind it; customers whose buyer’s remorse had translated into impetuous little Facebook groups warning other customers away.
Problem one and two were ugly, but problem three threatened to shake Sam’s sanity clean from her head. Some fuckstick, some absolute moron had petitioned to get her dad’s property listed as a heritage site. Apparently, recently uncovered records showed the building had been used as Yea Olde Mafia Clubhouse in 1912. That was fine, cool, even, but the restrictions a heritage listing would put on the business was not. They’d be subject to draconian maintenance laws and unable to change the façade or renovate. She could even—according to the barrister she’d shelled out more precious money for—be forced to take down their signage or shut the business in favour of tourist interest. The barrister assured her this was unlikely, but he also assured her she needed to be ready to go to court if the matter progressed, and she did not have the time or the money to go to court.
Chaos.
Three problems, and from them a million offshoot problems, a trillion sources of stress and panic. Sam felt like the newly elected captain of a leaky ship. Last night, she’d dreamed she burned Silver Daughters Ink to the ground before fleeing interstate like her coward mother. Noah kept telling her to call her sisters, but that wasn’t happening. When she texted them to say their dad had gone on a trip to an unknown location, Tabby sent back a thumbs up emoji and Nicole asked if he’d taken his bottle of B-vitamins. Neither was equipped to deal with the fallout of the business and she didn’t want them to be. Her dad had leftherin charge. Silver Daughters was her responsibility and if she had to go down with the ship, so be it.
At least, that had been her thinking when Frank ran out with five hundred bucks worth of stolen ink on his back. She chased and not only failed to apprehend the thief, but ran smack-bang into another problem—an offensively gorgeous Scott Sanderson.
He’d always been a pretty fucker, a hot nerd along the lines of Seth Cohen, but he was even better-looking, now—taller, broader,manlier. His smile lines enhanced his otherworldly blonde-hair/black-eyes deal and his shoulders filled out his jacket in a way that made her want to climb him like monkey bars. Except he wouldn’t let her, obviously. In the ten years since she’d seen him, he’d gotten one hundred percent more posh. His accent was pure Mr Darcy, his thick mop of hair was artfully cropped and his suit was designer, if not bespoke.
What did he think of her tattoos and leather halter? That she was trash, probably, but God her body didn’t care. Of all the reactions she could have had to seeing her old nemesis for the first time in a decade, ‘horny’ was the most ridiculous. But it appeared she didn’t have a say in it. Her eyes locked on the pretty swell of Scott Sanderson’s mouth and all she could think about was sex.
She hadn’t been with anyone since Marc. Her sex-drive had flamed out the day she inherited the business, which meant she’d been celibate for seven—no, eight—weeks. Now, looking at her old neighbor, it felt like all that collective energy was manifesting at once—making her skin tingle and her nipples prick up. That was bad, but Sam could feel worse things fighting to slip from under the lid of her emotional Pandora’s Box. There was trembling relief that he was okay after all these years of radio silence. There was anger, because why the fuck was he here after all these years of radio silence? There was shame, too, wafting fresh life into memories of what she’d done to him—things of such breathtaking childishness it made her cheeks burn. But worst of all was the throbbing hurt, like a toothache in her chest. He’d left. That hadn’t been the deal. They’d been enemies, the fun kind of enemies, but he wasn’t supposed toleave. That wasn’t fair. It wasn’tright.