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“It means we don’t all live a charmed life, Cassie Gentry.”

I bristled. So Curtis Mulligan assumed I was some spoiled, clueless brat. That was rich.

“But most of us live a law abiding one,” I shot back.

He stared at me. I didn’t flinch. This had been a mistake, coming in here to talk to him. For whatever reason, we clashed every time we said hello.

Curtis crossed his arms and studied me. I tensed, ready for a sharp rebuke but he merely sounded sad when he said, “You don’t know the first thing about me.”

Our standoff only lasted a minute. Curtis sank down into a chair, set his elbows on the table and held his head in his hands. He was obviously upset about something and I doubted it had anything to do with me.

I kept an eye on him as he sat there quietly while I brewed the coffee. I removed a mug from the cabinet above the sink and filled it nearly to the brim. This guy could obviously use the maximum amount of caffeine.

There were voices coming from the lobby now, the other staff arriving. Most showed up at noon but there were a few who had morning hours. Scratch was one of the few tattoo parlors around that opened early.

Curtis didn’t look up when I quietly set the coffee cup in front of him. I wasn’t expecting gratitude. I didn’t need it. Sometimes it just felt good to do something small for someone else without expecting anything in return.

“Thank you, Cassie,” Curtis said and there was a different tone in his voice. A deep weariness. It was almost enough to tempt me to reach out and touch his shoulder as a gesture of comfort but I stopped myself and instead returned to my desk.

I’d barely sat down when my father walked in. He smiled, obviously happy to find me at my desk and ready to work already.

He held up a small paper bag. “Your mom insisted that I bring you a muffin. It’s her worst fear that you left the house this morning without eating breakfast.”

I accepted the bag gratefully. “Thanks. Hey, I thought she’d be here, shadowing you all week as research for her book or something.”

“Maybe tomorrow. Today she’s hard at work putting together the perfect care package to send to Cadence. Apparently the camp washing machine ate most of your sister’s socks. So your mother took that as an invitation to fill a giant carton with approximately seventy five pairs of socks and she’s also driving to north Scottsdale as we speak to get Cadence a box of cookies from her favorite bakery.”

I smiled. “Mom misses her baby.”

“All three of you are her babies forever.” He started walking away. “You’d better eat that muffin. I’ll get blamed if you don’t.”

I was still smiling when I turned the phone off voicemail. It rang almost immediately, one of Zach’s customers who needed to get his dragon chest tattoo finished. I kept glancing over in the direction of the break room to see if Curtis would emerge. He must have made his exit at some point without me noticing because the next time I saw him he was in the company of my dad and they were discussing the upcoming Scratch merchandise line. Most businesses would outsource the production but my dad was determined to keep it in house using local materials.

I listened quietly while my father told Curtis he needed him to go downtown and visit a warehouse to check out the product samples.

“Bring back the best ones and we’ll make a decision about what will work,” he said. “We want good quality.”

Curtis nodded. “Will do.”

“And then later today we can work on getting the supply closet outfitted as a work space now that all the shelving has been removed. Deck will be here this afternoon so he can help us sort that out.”

“Sounds good,” Curtis said.

My dad had already started the walk back to his office so there was nothing keeping Curtis standing there, just three feet away from my desk. Yet he lingered for a moment, staring down at the set of keys in his hand. There were two customers waiting in the lobby so it was not a good time for us to have another round of verbal sparring but I got the impression he was earnestly trying to think of something to say.

I changed my mind a second later when he hurried through the door and out to the parking lot without uttering another word. He probably had more serious things on his mind than making conversation with the receptionist.

With a shrug I returned to answering Scratch’s social media comments. Yet as the hours passed I found that I was unable to dismiss the image of Curtis’s broad shoulders.

I was in the middle of discussing pricing with a nervous customer when he returned. He was carrying a big cardboard box and he went straight to my dad’s office. They were still in there when five o’clock rolled around. Scratch was open until nine tonight and Marian arrived right on time to claim her post.

“How’s it going, Cassie?” she asked in her throaty voice. She was missing her front two lower teeth but that never stopped her from smiling. Marian was a nurse’s aide during the day and only took these evening shifts at Scratch because she loved being part of things here.

“Pretty good,” I said, zipping my school backpack closed. I’d started the day meaning to take a look at the statistics curriculum whenever there was a lull in work. Unfortunately, that had never happened because I’d been too distracted with watching for Curtis. I still kept thinking about the way he had lowered his head to his hands this morning, as if he had the weight of world in there. Maybe I should have said something nice to him, let him know that I was willing to listen if he wanted to talk.

After a quick drive thru taco dinner I went straight to school. I hadn’t forgotten about Parker Neely, yet I was still a little startled to see him walk in and select a seat by the door. He scanned the room and met my eye. When I didn’t look away immediately he smiled and offered this odd little salute. I nodded but didn’t smile back.

If there was anything duller than enduring a three hour lecture on statistics then I sure hadn’t heard of it. After half an hour I was desperately wishing I’d sucked back a liter or two of caffeine before sitting down because every ninety seconds I was stifling a full blown yawn. It was a relief when the instructor ended the class fifteen minutes early. Parker had exited swiftly and was already long gone by the time I reached the door. I was glad he was keeping up his end of the bargain by not expecting an awkward conversation to happen every time we ran into each other.

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