CHAPTER 16

DAMN FOOLS

Brandon

When I pulled up outside the bakery, I could see Charlie inside running her hands through her hair. There was a cable company van parked out front and two men who looked like they were barely working inside the bakery.

She looked up at me as soon as I walked in the door.

“What are you doing here?” She picked up plastic off the floor behind the guys installing her internet.

“You told me that you had lots of work to do today. So, here I am.” I shrugged my shoulders like it was no big deal.

“Don’t you have to work?” She looked at the wall to her left as if she could see through it.

“I blocked out my schedule.”

She stood up then and looked me directly in the eye.

“You cleared out your schedule to help me?”

“Yes,” I said hesitantly. “This bakery isn’t going to open itself. Let’s get to work.”

She smiled at me then. A smile that ripped the breath out of my chest.

“Well let’s get to work.”

I wasn’t expecting her to make me work like a slave, but she took full advantage of me. She put my ass to work like she was paying me.

“How many different sprinkles do you have?” I was pulling sprinkles after sprinkles out of a box and stacking them exactly like she wanted them. Trust me. She had given me explicit instructions on how she wanted the colors organized.

“About a hundred I would guess.” She shrugged as she moved a box on the counter that looked like it had about every shape of cookie cutter that you could imagine.

“That’s just excessive.” I shook two different containers of blue sprinkles that I could have sworn were almost identical.

“Oh yeah.” She rolled her eyes. “Because I’m sure that you only have a few different shades of ink for tattoos, right.”

“You make a valid point.” I placed both of the sprinkles on the shelf.

“That’s what I’m here for.” She bowed dramatically, and I noticed a smattering of freckles on the back of her neck that I was dying to taste with my tongue.

Think about anything that didn’t involve licking her. I reminded myself over and over in my head. “Are your parents going to be here for the opening?”

“Yeah. They wouldn’t miss it.” She glanced up at me, and I could see that she was dying to ask a question.

“Go ahead.” I nodded my head at her.

She blushed and tucked her hair behind her ear. “Are you close with your parents?”

“Not as close as you and yours.” I chuckled. “But yeah. We’re close. They live a few hours from here in my hometown. Right outside of Nashville.”

“What made you move here?” She didn’t even look up as she continued to stack cookie cutters in a drawer.

“A tattoo apprenticeship.” She looked up and I nodded my head. “Parker and I were actually apprentices at the same place. I had planned on moving home when I was finished, but Parker asked me if I wanted to open our own place together and the rest is history.”

“Best friends and business partners, huh?” She cocked an eyebrow and waited for some juicy gossip.

“For sure.” I put the last of the sprinkles on the shelf and broke down the box. “Even if we weren’t best friends, I would have opened the place with him. He’s crazy talented. He was better than the guys we were apprenticing for from the very beginning.”

He was too. Parker’s talent was rare. Anyone who ever saw it knew it too.

“Is he better than you?” She handed me another box and pointed to the cabinet next to the sprinkles. This one contained almost every color of food coloring you could imagine.

“I know that you think I’m an arrogant bastard.”

She scoffed.

“But I can openly admit that Parker is by far the most talented tattoo artist in that shop.”

“Oh.” She rubbed her hands together. “Even better than Staci?”

I waved her off. “Please, I’m better than Staci.”

“Mr. Modest, ladies and gentlemen.” Charlie waved her hands in my direction like she was Vanna White.

We both settled back into our tasks at hand, but it only took her another minute before she was asking more questions. “Any siblings?”

“Only child.” I shook my head. “It must have contributed to that cocky thing.”

“Not true. I’m an only child, and I’m perfect.”

“Yes,” I nodded my head in agreement, “and clearly not arrogant.”

She laughed, an easy-going laugh, that I had rarely heard from her since meeting her that first day. She always seemed so calculated. So under control.

“You are gorgeous when you laugh like that.”

I could see her tense. Me putting her on the spot making her uncomfortable. “Thank you. If you really want a show, just wait until I snort.”

I rubbed my stomach as I laughed. “You snort?”

“Only when something is really, really funny.”

I put my hand over my chest, completely offended. “Are you telling me that I’m not really, really funny?”

She held up her hands in defense. “Maybe you just haven’t been on you’re a game in front of me.”

“I am offended, Freckles.”

“It’s not my fault.” She pushed off the counter and grabbed another box. “Some people just aren’t that funny.”

I made a choking noise. “You’re killing me here. I thought girls were attracted to me for my humor.”

She snorted then. The most unladylike sound I had ever heard her make. “Now that right there. That was funny.”

…

It was five o’clock by the time we finally got everything in its place. I could tell that some stress had been lifted off Charlie’s shoulders by having everything done and moving a few appointments around to be able to give her that was worth it.

There was a stack of empty boxes as tall as I was behind the building, and I was still trying to wrap my mind around how Charlie was going to be able to run this all by herself. I couldn’t even imagine it.

We had just sat down at the little Asian restaurant down the block from our shops. I was absolutely starving after all the work she had me do, and when we finally got to a stopping point, she told me that she owed me dinner.

There was no way in hell that I was going to object.

Even if I wasn’t hungry.

I was famished when it came to her.

“If I order sushi, will you share it with me?” Her eyes scanned over the menu.

“Of course.” I kept myself from telling her that I would have agreed to anything she asked me.

“What do you like?”

“Whatever you like.” Please don’t order raw fish.

The server came to the table, and we ordered our food.

“My mom wants to come get a tattoo from you by the way.” Charlie rolled her eyes.

“Does your mom have any tattoos?” I didn’t like to make assumptions, but I couldn’t imagine that she did.

“No.” She sounded exasperated. She just wants to get one from you because she thinks you’re so handsome.”

I was flattered. “She’s a smart woman.”

“She’s a bit crazy. It’s okay. You can say it.” Charlie crossed her eyes.

“I’m not going to bite the hand that feeds me.”

Charlie scoffed and took a sip of her drink. “How hard is it to get scheduled in with you? I told her I would ask, and I know she won’t leave me alone until I do.”

“For your mom, it won’t be hard at all. I am booked out a couple months though. I think I have a few hours blocked out before our trip though.” I pulled out my phone to look at my schedule.

“What trip?” She looked down and twisted a thin gold ring around her pointer finger.

“We’re going on a weekend camping trip next weekend that Livy planned.” And just like that everything fell together. “You should come.”

“No way.” She shook her head and a few curls fell out of her ponytail.

“Why not?”

“One, I wasn’t invited. Two, I’m not really a camping kind of girl.”

“I just invited you.” That problem was solved. “Have you ever been camping before?”

“A very long time ago.” She looked uncomfortable like it was one of her worst childhood memories. “I got poison ivy on my eye.” She pointed up to her left eye and her eyes practically bulged out of her head.

“How is that even possible?” I laughed.

“It’s not funny. It was swollen shut, and I looked like a complete freak. My seventh grade self did not need the help.”

“I bet you were the hottest seventh grader.” I would have definitely been trying to date her, and she would have rejected my braces wearing ass. Middle school years were not my best.

“You would be on the losing side of that bet.”

The server dropped off our sushi and Charlie thanked him before she shoved a piece in her mouth. It was one of the things that I loved about her. She was never scared to eat in front of me. In front of anyone really.

“This is delicious.” She pointed down to the sushi with her chopstick.

“You mean to tell me that you were an awkward middle schooler?” I grabbed a piece of the sushi. She was right. It was fucking delicious.

“Well, I didn’t gain all of this awkwardness with puberty. It just stuck around for the long haul.”

She was so full of shit. Sure, she seemed nervous about seventy percent of the time I was around her, but she wasn’t awkward. She was intriguing.

“If you want to see an awkward middle schooler, you should take a look at my yearbooks.”

“Oh, please.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “I bet you were Mister Popular. Probably a star football player or something.”

I shook my head. “Artist, remember?” I pointed to my chest. “Girls weren’t into that until high school.”

She leaned a fraction of an inch closer to me. “I bet they were so into you though, huh?”

“I didn’t do so bad.” I shrugged my shoulders. “I don’t want to hear it though. I bet you had boys all over you.”

“Ha.” She fake laughed. “You are getting funnier and funnier as the night goes on.”

“Bullshit.” I let my gaze run over every inch of her. “There is no way you just suddenly got smoking hot when you got out of high school.”

She smiled at me and I watched her cheeks flush. “It’s good to know that you think I’m smoking hot, but that wasn’t the popular opinion back then.”

“Then they were fools.”

She lifted her glass of Coke in my direction. “To a bunch of damn fools.”

“Did you just say damn?” I whispered in shock.

She rolled her eyes and nudged her glass farther in my direction.

“To fools.” I held up my glass and touched hers. “And to smoking hot dinner dates.”