She glanced at the CCTV cameras in the corner of the room and then grinned. “Have a good night.”
CALEB
The flowers turned up two days later. A dozen black roses with all of their heads chopped off and scattered around the thorny stems. They arrived at the studio in a long, gold box with a card attached that simply read Caleb.
The message was a dark one. Whoever was sending me these gifts was pissed.
At first I thought it was Lulu. Was this her idea of payback for turning her down?
But one look at the card and I knew the writing was the same as the card attached to the box containing the lacy thong and Polaroid.
Without knowing how, I’d pissed off my admirer.
“Wow, she’s angry,” Pandora said, walking into my office and perching herself on the end of my desk.
“Who’s pissed off?” Cade asked, walking in after her.
“Her,” Pandora replied. “His secret admirer.”
“Stalker more like it,” Cade said, looking at the box of severed rose heads.
“Who dropped the box off?” I asked Pandora.
“It was waiting by the front door when I opened up this morning.”
“You want to take this to chapel?” Cade asked.
I cocked an eyebrow at him. “You’re kidding, right? And get laughed out of the club because of a box of severed flowers? No, thanks. It’s just some crazy Jane who will eventually own up or stop.”
“Either that or she’ll put your head in a box,” Cade said with a frown.
“Well, I think it’s sweet. I mean, not the dead flowers, but everything else has been nice.” Pandora looked at the Easy Rider movie poster behind me. “Maybe the flowers are from someone else. Lulu, maybe?”
“I thought of that, but I doubt it. Lulu doesn’t come across as being that committed to a cause.”
“I don’t know, she seemed pretty pissed off when she stormed out the other day.”
Cade looked at me. “What did you do to Lulu?”
“He did nothing to her. That’s the problem.” Pandora pushed off the desk. “Anyway, I came in to tell you your last appointment has canceled.”
My last appointment was a three-hour appointment to finish off a sleeve. The client was a regular called Kitty Kat who was a hostess over at the Red Room, a fetish bar in Humphrey. She was no stranger to a tattoo gun and I’d done so many of her tattoos she was like a walking portfolio of my work.
“Damn, did she reschedule?”
“Of course. But not for a couple of weeks. She’s come down with mono.”
“Okay. Send her some flowers with a note to get well.” I was big on looking after my clients no matter how cheesy I had to be. “But not flowery flowers.”
Pandora cocked an eyebrow at me. “Right. Flowers that don’t look like flowers. That should be easy.”
“You know what I mean. Something weird. Go with something you would like.”
“What I would like?”
“Yeah, something, I don’t know, strange.”
Her red lips gaped at my use of the word strange.
“You know what I mean. Unusual. Interesting. She’s a dominatrix, for heaven sakes.”
Cade held up the box of decapitated black roses and shook it.
“Not my style,” Pandora said, unimpressed.
I took the box off my brother and threw it in the dumpster in the alley behind the studio. When I came back inside, Pandora had returned to the front counter but Cade was still in my office, leaning against the tattoo bed, his legs crossed at the ankles.
“The new girl you’re seeing, do you think she’s involved with these gifts?” he asked.
“Who says I’m seeing anyone?”
“You suddenly move in with a girl none of us know anything about and you seriously want me to believe she is your roommate and nothing else?”
I shrugged it off. “I couldn’t live at the clubhouse forever.”
He gave me a don’t bullshit me look. “Try again, little brother. That doesn’t make sense. There has to be another reason—”
“She’s pregnant,” I interrupted him.
I didn’t see the point of lying to him. He would find out soon enough.
Plus, I wanted to get home to Honey. She was home because she’d had a couple of big days at the store and was exhausted. Now that Kitty Kat had cancelled, my afternoon was free and I figured maybe we could spend some time together.
I looked up to see Cade’s jaw drop. Slowly his brows rose and he let out a deep breath. “And it’s definitely yours?”
I explained the situation to him. The one night in the motel. Her roommate stealing all of her stuff. Honey’s determination to keep things uncomplicated by not being romantically involved. I told him about the break-in and my priority in keeping Honey safe, and he listened quietly, then slowly nodded in agreement, because put in a similar situation, my brother would do exactly the same.
“Have you told Honey about the gifts?” he asked.
“Are you kidding me? She’d freak out.”