Watching Blaze, I asked, “You got any appointments tonight?”
Blaze dropped her feet to the floor, adjusted the clip on her head, and sat up straight. “Yep,” she said. “But as usual, they’re late. You know if Charlie’s stayin’?”
There were no set hours since foot traffic into the shop made all the difference and Friday and Saturday nights were always the busiest.
“That’s what she told me,” I confirmed. “And Shawn’s upstairs.” I looked up to meet Blaze’s eyes. “Blue should be back any minute.”
As though he’d been summoned, the bell over the door rang, and I heard Blue announce he was back.
After getting to her feet, Blaze spun around and peered at herself in the mirror on the far wall before turning back and grinning at me. “Well, while you finish this shit up here, I’m gonna go flirt with the cute kid with the food,” Blaze said, grinning at me over her shoulder.
Oh, shit.
“Don’t you dare touch him,” I warned. “He’s too young for you.”
“He’s eighteen, bitch. That makes him the perfect age.” Blaze’s mischievous chuckle followed her out into the hall.
With that, Blaze disappeared, leaving me with the mess on my desk and a silent prayer for Blue, the guy who’d begged me to let him apprentice out of my shop. The same guy who didn’t know what he was in for once Blaze set her sights on him.
Chapter Three
Jake
No sooner had I hung up with Liz and closed out of the article about my whereabouts than my cell phone rang again.
I glanced at the caller ID.
My mother.
Nope. Not doing it.
As much as I loved that woman, I couldn’t deal with her tonight. I knew she only wanted to get my ironclad agreement that I’d be over for dinner this week, and I already knew how that conversation would go. She would ask if I was coming, I would confirm I was, then she would ask me again if I was sure, I would tell her yes … so on and so forth until my ears were bleeding and I wanted to toss my cell phone out the window to the street seventeen floors below.
She was my mother. What could I do?
“Not answer the phone,” I said aloud, letting it go to voice mail.
I shouldn’t have answered when Liz called, but I had ignored the thirteen other times it had rung since before dawn this morning, and I knew she wouldn’t stop. As for my mother, well, she would just have to wait. As would my agent, my publicist, my sister, that chick I’d banged last night in the back room of that club, and any reporter who wanted the inside scoop, for that matter.
If I were going to talk to anyone else—which I wasn’t—it would be someone who didn’t want to ask about my next book. As it was, I was lucky that Liz hadn’t read me the riot act since the first draft of my latest novel wasn’t waiting for her in her inbox, nor did it look as though it would be anytime in the near future.
Leaning forward, I peered down into the white ceramic mug on my desk—the cheesy one with the argyle pattern and the blue J on the front that my niece had bought me for Christmas two years ago.
Empty.
Huh.
Just like the page on the screen.
But an empty coffee cup… This I could do something about.
Grabbing the mug and my phone, I got to my feet, peering around my office, wondering if there was anything else I could clean or fix. Or both. I looked at the bland, off-white walls. Maybe I should paint. Some color probably wouldn’t hurt.
I made a mental note to ask my assistant to get someone to paint the condo.
“Not helping,” I muttered to the procrastinating devil that had evidently taken up permanent residence on my shoulder feeding me task after task, none of which would make me any money. The little fucker had been sitting there for… Damn. It’d been a long fucking time.
If I’d been smart, I would’ve evicted his annoying ass by now. But no. Apparently, not only was I mysterious, I was also masochistic.
Rounding the corner into the overly bright kitchen with the now gleaming stainless steel appliances, shiny sapele (whatever the fuck that meant) mahogany cabinets, and glossy white and gray marble countertops—all of which I’d hand waxed that morning—I frowned. Cleaning was definitely not conducive to writing a book. Not to mention, when Linda came over—the woman who cleaned my