Page 39 of Maverick
I nibbled my lip. “Is it all yours? I saw the Exiled Reapers logo up front.” I hoped she wouldn’t kick me out mid-manicure for being too nosey, but I was desperate to know more about the club.
Ivy didn’t miss a beat. “My old man is part of the club. They helped me set it up, but it’s all mine. Stitch insisted on the logo as a warning, in case anybody decided to rob me.” She rolled her eyes. “It was probably more so nobody would hit on me.”
Oh, this was getting good. “Which one are you dating?”
Her eyes softened. “Stitch. He’s their medic.”
“I don’t think I’ve met him. My dad lives next to their compound.”
Ivy’s eyes lit up. “Wait, are you Noodle’s sister?”
I laughed. “Yeah, I guess so.”
Her mouth turned into a smirk. “I’ve heard about you. The pretty girl next door. Uh-huh. I also offer waxes.” Her eyes drifted to my lap.
I barked out a laugh. “Ivy!”
She shrugged. “Just putting it out there. Bikini, Brazilian. Strip, no strip. You just let me know.”
I took a deep breath, drawing up my courage. “And you and the medic are… good? Like you’re okay with the… things they get up to?”
Ivy paused and pulled her hand with the polish away, giving me her full attention. “One hundred percent. The world is pretty fucked up, and part of the reason is because the people in power get to play by their own rules. So why shouldn’t some of the good guys get to do the same?”
“The good guys?” I raised an eyebrow.
“Yes. Trust me. I came from another club where my stepbrother was president. They were awful, and these guys helped me get away and made it so that I am the happy and healthy business owner you see today.” She raised her arms with a flourish and returned to my nails. “Now, what about you? You seem like the business woman type. Do you own your own business?”
I took the hint. I was dying to ask more questions, but the subject was officially changed.
“No. I work for a company. Being my own boss is appealing, but I’m not sure I’d be able to take that risk. What if I couldn’t book clients? What if I set my prices too low? Or too high? What if I needed the IT department to fix my computer?”
“Oh, I get that. Trust me. It would be much easier to rent a booth somewhere. To cut hair, clean my tools, and go home without the extra worries of paying bills, doing payroll, and all that crap. But I had a specific vision for the salon I wanted to work in, and the only way I could have that was by creating it myself. Okay, these are done, now for your toes.”
I leaned back in the chair and admired my sheer bliss nails. “I’ve been called a control freak from time to time, so if I could get past the worry, I’d probably love working for myself. As a CPA, I could accept only the projects I was interested in.”
“What kinds of projects? I would have thought numbers were numbers. Is there really that much difference?”
Ivy tossed the dirty cotton ball with my old polish into the trash placed my feet in the mini tub. I sighed, enjoying the way the mini jets massaged my feet.
“It’s not so much the what as the who. If I was on my own, my overhead would be pretty low, so I could keep my prices down for small businesses and nonprofits. Like an on-call CFO for the little guy.” I thought back to the business plan I’d made for my senior seminar. It was a naïve pipe dream, but it had earned an A. And that was the only reason I still held on to it, flipping through its pages every so often.
“Sounds like maybe you have thought about it.” Ivy wiped my feet dry and pulled out the polish. “Let me know when you start and I’ll be your first customer.”
“Oh, it’ll probably never happen. But it’s fun to dream.”
Ivy smiled and turned her attention to my toes. “It can be. But take it from someone who spent most of her life dreaming, the real fun happens when you wake up.”
24
Maverick
Ispent the afternoon with Larry. He was agitated but calmed down eventually. He was angry about the people who kept showing up in his garden because he was growing those vegetables for his friend Ivan. I had no clue who the fuck Ivan was, or who was taking his veggies, but I promised to have the boys look into it.
Fuck, dementia was a shitty disease. I’d found a few websites and was reading up on it. Just trying to be a good neighbor and all. They said it was normal for him to go in and out like this, but eventually he’d be more out than in. So fucking sad. Kat was working on getting him a doctor and medication to slow things down. It gutted her every time he recognized me but not his own flesh and blood.
Larry wanted to get out of the house, so we walked to the clubhouse for an early dinner. I texted Kat to let her know, but it was getting late and she still hadn’t gotten back.
“Hey, Pixie?” I excused myself from the table and walked over to the bar where she stood.
