Tattooed Troublemaker - Elise Faber Page 0,55

and had empathy. I didn’t want anyone to die.

Well, I supposed there was a special place in Hell for some people.

And your grandmother has been paving her path for a while now.

My mental voice sounded like Tig, and honestly, I was grateful. It was the reminder I needed. No, this wasn’t like the night of the accident. Yes, I could leave whenever I wanted. No, I wasn’t sad and scared and alone.

I had people.

I had family.

I. Had. Family.

Duh. I was sitting here spiraling, and I had people in my life I could call, people who’d be here just because I asked, and while they might not understand why I’d come, why I’d stayed, they would still be here.

Settling, I pulled my phone from my pocket and had just started to press the button to call Tig when the sliding doors opened and—

Every cell in my body stood at attention.

Garret walked through the doors, a cup of coffee in his hand, a baseball cap on his head, and the gorgeous lines of his tattoos on full display.

My breath caught, my pulse that had been settling sped right back up again.

His gaze arrowed toward me, and his body followed. Heat spread over me, soaking through from my T-shirt down to my steel-toed boots in equal measures, my nerves remembering how his hard chest had felt pressed against mine, his arms banding around me, his lips dancing with mine.

God, he still had so much power over me.

Even though he’d killed any hope of me finding my Plan C.

“Hey, sweetheart,” he said, extending the cup.

My numb fingers took it. “Hey.” I glanced down at the green letters printed on the front, the scrawled ‘Garret’ on the back.

“You okay?” he asked, sitting next to me.

“Why are you here?”

He winced, probably because my tone was cold enough to freeze off his balls. “I was at the shop when Delia called Tig and said she’d seen you on the news. Tig was in the middle of a piece and I was done, so I volunteered to come and make sure you were okay.”

I set aside the part where he’d volunteered to come see me. After the previous week’s interaction, I knew that was pure kindness on his part.

Kind of like the empathy that had me sitting in this uncomfortable chair.

But . . . Delia had seen me on the news.

That couldn’t be good.

“They’re calling you a hero,” Garret murmured. “Said you caught her and sprang into action, clearing the crowd, getting an ambulance there.”

“Must be a slow news day.”

“Was it really your grandmother?”

I nodded, lips pressed flat. “Unfortunately, yes. It was Fran Hancock.”

“Well, that’s shit luck.”

“Not so much luck as the culmination of me fighting with her up in my attorney’s office.”

He froze then asked carefully, “You guys talked?”

“If you can call her ambushing me because she didn’t approve of the plans I’d made with my lawyer then having a heart attack on the street corner because she wanted to continue dishing out disapproval, then yes, we talked.”

Garret winced. “Shit, I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, me, too.” I leaned my head back against the wall, trying to make sense of the mess in my head, the one in my heart. Maybe Fran no longer had power over me anymore, but that didn’t mean the man sitting next to me didn’t. Just being close enough to feel the warmth from his body, the spicy scent of his smell had my heart clenching.

I missed our morning chats. I missed the man I’d gotten to observe at work, to tease over lunch and burrito bowls, and most of all, I missed the way this man made me feel.

Before the whole pissing on Plan C thing, that was.

“What are you going to do?”

I shrugged. “Same as I was before. I told her the estate would go to charity if she left it to me, or that she could choose someone else.”

“Think she’ll choose someone else?”

“Only if she can find a way to spite me in the process.”

“I’m sorry.”

I shrugged, took a sip of coffee. “For what? You didn’t make her the way she is.”

“But part of you had hoped for something different,” he said softly, hand coming to rest on my arm.

“Yeah,” I admitted. “I suppose I did.”

We sat in silence for a few minutes before Garret spoke again. “My brother, Lane, and best friend, Sam, were in town over the weekend.”

Oh wow. That was big. “That’s great,” I said, meaning it. “You guys were able to mend the last of your fences?”

“You could