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“You remember Lucas Warner?”
I didn’t have it in me to give a warm smile to the guy who essentially told his daughter I wasn’t good enough for her.
“I remember,” her father said. “Welcome back, Lucas. Heard you were in town.”
I bet.
The guy didn’t miss a beat. “Back to stay?”
As connected as he was to local business interests, there was no doubt he knew the answer to that question. I’d leased the building that held my shop and apartment, got a permit to operate a tattoo parlor, and he fucking knew that.
“I am. Setting up shop downtown. A tattoo parlor,” I said for shits and giggles.
Not surprisingly, he didn’t flinch. Looked back to Charlee as if he wanted to ask her right then and there what the hell she was doing getting out of my truck. But he refrained. For now.
“We have a meeting to get to,” Charlee said to no one in particular. “Talk to you later, Lucas?”
“Sure thing.”
“Good to see you,” her father said, not meaning a word.
No matter. I knew who he was and what I stood for, and approval from the likes of Charlee’s father was the last thing I needed.
Charlee smiled at me and slammed the truck door shut. So, no kiss, but I supposed dropping her off here was enough of a signal to her father that we were together.
I watched the two of them enter the front doors of Taughannock Falls and disappear. I had a bunch of errands to run to get ready for this afternoon, and by the time my first client walked through the door, I not only had a fully functional shop but even an administrative staff consisting of one person. When Gian DeLuca walked through the door, Alex greeted him with a smile and brought him back to my chair.
“Off to class. See you tomorrow,” she said to me. “Nice to meet you,” she added to Gian.
Yeah, she was going to work out perfectly.
I stood and stuck out my hand to shake Gian’s. “All ready for your first ink?” I asked him.
“Why do I feel like you’re laughing inside?”
I fetched the design I’d come up with based on what Gian had sent me.
“Because you said you’d be one and done.” I turned on the iPad. “It’s rare that happens.”
“We’ll see.”
If I were a betting man, this was one I’d take. A second tattoo was as close to a sure bet as it got. “In the meantime, what do you think?”
Gian had wanted a Sicilian Medusa, actually called the Trinacria, on his shoulder as a tie to his heritage and nod to his summer in Sicily where he met Mazzie.
“Holy shit, Lucas. That’s incredible.”
I did like this one. “You’ll notice the features on Athena in the middle. It’s subtle.” I handed the iPad to Gian, who lifted it closer to his face. When he looked up, the man’s jaw was nearly on the floor.
“Are you shitting me?”
“Too much?”
“Hell no.”
It wasn’t obvious at first glance, but this particular Medusa had some very subtle nods to Mazzie’s facial features.
“She’s gonna go crazy for this.”
