He might as well have said ‘I’d like you out of it.’ They both knew that’s what he meant. Nicole inhaled and her breath felt like it was coming in through a straw. “Thanks.”
“Anytime.” Noah leaned in, eyes gleaming. “What are you doing for lunch?”
Okay, she needed to breathe. Dizziness was making her think Noah was about to ask her out, which he wasn’t because dating wasn’t his thing. Letting her touch his dick in his van and being weird about it afterward was his thing.
“Nikki?” A line had appeared between Noah’s eyes. She wanted to touch it. She swallowed, trying to focus. “Um, I’m not doing anything for lunch. I mean, I’m thinking of skipping it. Doing some intermittent fasting. It’s good for your metabolism.”
Noah rubbed the back of his neck, exposing a tattoo of a tree with a trunk shaped like a naked woman. Was it stupid to be jealous of a tree woman tattoo? Itfeltstupid, but she was doing it. Did that make her stupid?
“Let’s go to Greens,” he said.
“Excuse me?”
“Let’s go to Greens and get a burger. Fuck this fasting thing.”
Nicole’s heart pulsed into her mouth. Hewasasking her on a date. Or something like a date. At the very least, he was asking her something. “I…”
The door to tattoo room four banged open. “Hey, did I hear something about Greens?” Gil called. “I’m fucking starving.”
The intimacy between her and Noah burst like a bubble. Nicole shrank back into her dad’s office. “I think I’ll just stay here for lunch.”
Noah took a step away from her, his face impassive. “Okay.”
“Let’s go to Greens, big guy,” Gil said. “I’m almost done with Kurtis. Wait fifteen?”
“Nah,” Noah said, his gaze locked on hers. “Got stuff to do.”
“Fuck ya, then.” Gil’s door slammed shut.
Nicole compressed the mug between her fingers. “He shouldn’t leave his client alone in the chair to ask about burgers.”
Noah shrugged. “Happens.”
And just like she was a square. A buzzkill. She wasalwaysa buzzkill here. In Adelaide, her colleagues followed her on Instagram and asked her advice on tricky consultancy projects. Here everyone thought she was an anal-retentive weirdo for updating the waiting room magazines and investigating missing money.
Because why be professional when you could just swear and lose thousands of dollars and be covered in tattoos and—
“Nikki?” Noah’s forehead creased. “You okay?”
Nicole gripped her mug tighter. “You know what? No. I work two jobs and I just got dumped and I can’t figure out where eighty thousand dollars went, and my dad has been missing for almost a year and no one cares what I do, even though they always ask for my help and I’m sotired.”
Noah looked up at the ceiling, clearly at a loss for what to say.
“Exactly!” she snapped. “You don’t really want to know, so please stop asking. I’ve got work to do.”
She closed her dad’s office door, relieved to put something solid between her and Noah.
Two hours later, her stomach hurt with hunger, but it was good. It felt like focus. Her Skype call with Francine had gone okay. Her boss wanted her back in Adelaide, but she was happy with the work she was sending in remotely.
“This is good preparation for when you go on maternity leave,” Francine teased.
Nicole smiled, though her words felt like a punch in the uterus. How was she supposed to tell her boss that her sparkly future had been cancelled? How was she supposed to tell anyone? This wasn’t supposed to be her life.
But getting depressed about being single and living in her childhood bedroom wouldn’t help. She needed to focus on fixing her problems—starting with the suspected bikie tattooing in the room across from hers. She needed to confront him about The Rangers. She checked the staff e-roster and saw his break was over and he was tattooing a twenty-two-year-old, Daniella Bright.
She hated the burst of jealousy that went through her when she read that name. Tattooing required seeing and touching a lot of skin. Her sisters worked hard to be taken seriously despite that and she owed Noah the same respect. Only… she couldn’t stop her insides from twisting up like eels. Daniella Bright was a pretty girl name and when she opened the door, she heard happy, girlish laughter coming from Noah’s room.
What do you want?she asked herself, but no answers came, just nausea. Her phone rang and, eager for distraction, she picked up without looking at the name.