Page 30 of Leave a Mark
If he brought home a puppy, Marcelle would fall in love — eventually.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
ON TUESDAY, WRENwent to the studio and stayed until closing even though she wasn’t scheduled to work. She did the same on Wednesday. Working was really the only thing that kept Lee Hawthorne and Monday’s stinging humiliation off her mind.
But on Thursday afternoon, business was slow, and when Wren started reorganizing Rocky’s sample albums, her boss put his foot down.
“Stop doing that. What is wrong with you?” Rocky snapped, pulling his gun away from Angel Delacroix’s angel wings.
Wren sighed and stepped away from the table of albums Rocky kept for clients to browse. “I’m restless. I need something to keep me busy.”
“You need a boyfriend,” her boss muttered, and Wren shot him a glare. She thought she saw Angel’s mouth curl in a tiny smile, and she aimed her glare at him, too. Even with a flattened nose, the boxer had a baby face that matched his personality. He looked away. The ring was the only place he was scary.
“Ido notneed a boyfriend,” she told them both. “I need a project. Let me organize your albums. They’re all chronological. Let me group them by category.”
“No!” Rocky barked. “I let you clean up my deskone time, and I still can’t find everything.”
Wren rolled her eyes.
“Hello? Everything’s in the file drawer where it should be.”
Rocky brought his attention back to Angel’s wings. “I have a system of piles. You may not like it, but until you buy this place and retire me for life or leave and run me out of business, I’m still the boss.”
Wren grabbed the album closest to her and began flipping through the pages in a huff, too quickly to study the tattoos.
Rocky tsked. “What is your problem? You’ve been a little shit all week.”
She didn’t look up or mount a defense; Rocky was right, and she could always count on him to speak the truth. She had been a little shit. Edgy. Sour. Distracted. But even though Rocky was right, she wasn’t about to explain why.
“Sorry… I just need to clear my head,” she muttered.
“Well, go home,” Rocky told her. “You’ve already worked a full shift, and things are slow today.”
She sighed. “I really don’t want to go home." She staggered to her empty station and slumped onto her table.
Rocky’s cell rang. He checked the screen and pulled off a latex glove before picking up the phone.
“Hey, babe.”
Shelby,Wren thought with a smile. She wouldn’t mind talking toher —if the woman ever had a free moment. With Amy, Sarah, and Emily, Rocky’s wife was always in the car headed somewhere — soccer, play dates, doctor’s appointments. On top of that, Cherise hadn’t been able to meet for their usual Thursday breakfast that morning, and Wren was missing her girl-talk fix.
Even though she didn’t relish the idea of sharing her pie-mortification story, she needed another woman’s perspective. Wren hadthoughtthere was something between her and Lee. The signals had been there. Hadn’t they? Every time they talked, they’d flirted a little. And better than that, they’dconnected.
Or so she thought.
Maybe she’d misread everything. His smiles. His attention. His obvious delight when they’d bumped into each other at Albertsons.
“Well, I can’t do it right now. I’m in the middle of a job…” Rocky was telling his wife.
Wren’s ears perked up. If Shelby needed a favor, maybe she could help her out and have a chance to catch up with her afterward. She needed to talk to somebody, and Cherise worked until eleven tonight. If Shelby couldn’t spare her a few minutes, Wren thought she just might go camp out at Agave bar and steal whatever free time Cherise had.
Wren had replayed the awful visit to Lee’s house a thousand times in her mind. It wasn’t like her to be so hung up on a guy. If she was interested in someone, and he wasn’t available or the feeling wasn’t mutual, Wren just moved on. No drama. No sweat. She’d never spent days thinking about a man. For that matter, she’d never made pastries for a man, either.
And she wasn’t just thinking about him. She was pissed at Lee Hawthorne. If he was with someone else, why had he looked at her as if he wanted to know everything about her? He’d given her that look when he left her apartment the day he took her home, and it had been the same before they parted at the grocery store.
But what she couldn’t forget was the way he gazed at her from his front yard. Barefoot. Shirtless. His hair curling in the evening breeze. He’d looked at her as if she held a piece of his heart in her hands.
“I know we need to find homes for them, but maybe he could come another night…” Rocky sounded frustrated.
