Page 88 of So Wild

Scott’s jaw tightened. “It should be because you’ve decided you can trust me. Until you trust me, there’s nowhere we can go together that isn’t ugly and you don’t deserve ugly, Samantha.”

I do, Sam thought, but before she could say it he’d opened her window and slung himself into the night.

Chapter 16

‘Until you trustme, there’s nowhere we can go together that isn’t ugly.’

Sam sighed aloud at the memory of his eyes boring into hers like black holes. He’d been boy and man at once, asking her for something no one had ever asked because no one had a chance of getting it. She trusted her sisters and she trusted her dad and three was enough. It had always been enough. Three was a magical number. Four was too many. Besides, what she and Scott felt was just lust and nostalgia, just infatuation. It faded and left you with an aching heart and a mouthful of ashes—

“Sam, what do you think of the new storage system?”

She looked up to see Nicole and the rest of the Silver Daughters Ink team gaping at her. Shit. They were having a breakfast meeting and in spite of the seven cups of coffee she’d drunk, her concentration was flagging. Time to be generic as fuck.

“Yeah, it’s uh, good. Top work.”

“Top work?” Nicole repeated.

“Yeah, your work…it’s tops.”

Tabby and Gil sniggered and even Noah looked up from his pancakes to give her a‘get your shit together, man’glance.

It was the morning and she and the rest of The Silver Daughters Ink team, plus Nicole and Tabby had come upstairs for a breakfast meeting. Nicole had cooked so the table was groaning under platters of fresh fruit, yogurt, bacon and scrambled eggs. Sam was trying to be grateful and eat as much as possible but her stomach was tight and her appetite was negligent.

“I’m sorry,” she told her twin. “I didn’t sleep well last night.”

Nicole gave her a look that said they’d be discussing this later.

“Okay,” she said to the rest of the table. “The next item on our agenda is…” She looked down at her tablet. “Fadeout Festival. Sam, have you heard anything about your ballot entry? The results were meant to be up yesterday. Do you know if you’ve made it into the next round?”

Sam’s stomach curled up tighter than an echidna. “Nah, there’s nothing up yet. I’ll check again as soon as we’re done here.”

“Good,” Nicole said, making a note on her tablet. “Now, let’s talk about the storage room. Someone keeps mislabelling the inks when the orders come in—”

“Here’s an idea,” Gil interrupted. “Why don’t we talk about the heritage thingy? You know, that you had? We won’t need to worry about where the inks are going if this place is a museum, thanks to your old neighbors.”

Sam’s tiny peach-pit of a stomach flipped over. “How do you know about the Sandersons?”

“Tabby told me about the blonde one coming in to see you,” Gil shot back. “I want to know what the fuck’s going on. Why do these people want to buy the building—”

“The heritage application is no longer a problem,” Nicole said smoothly. “That’s all you need to know. Anyway, the next topic on the agenda is the website.”

Gill scowled. “Hang on—ow!”

He threw a dirty look at Noah, who piled more pancakes onto his own plate. “What were you saying?” he asked Nicole in his gravely, barely-used voice.

“Um…” Her twin glanced down at her tablet and though her hair swung in front of her face, Sam could see she was blushing.

“The website,” she said loudly, lifting her chin. “Tabby, how’s the upgrade coming along?”

“Pretty good,” Tabby said through a mouthful of bacon. “I’ve finished updating it. Has everyone here seen it?”

“Hang on, I’ll pull it up so we can all look.” Nicole tapped into her tablet and then held it up. “Nice, isn’t it?”

Nice didn’t begin to cover it. What had once been an embarrassment of AOL email address proportions, was now a sleek, functional website. The palette was monochrome and it featured glossy artist profiles, a timetable, price guides and a slideshow of the tattooist’s best work. As Scott Sanderson could attest, Sam was no stranger to building websites, but she could never have pulled off what Tabby had accomplished. The page didn’t just look professional, it lookedexpensive-professional.

Nicole beamed. “Oh, Tabs, it’ssogood.”

“Decent,” Noah agreed, which from him was basically a handjob.

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