DOM (Brothers In Ink Romances Series Book 1) (2 page)

The door to the bedroom opened. “Dom! Don’t you know how to knock? Geez, I’ve got ...” He paused, a grin spreading across his face. “I’m a little busy at the moment, man.”

“She can wait.” It came out colder than it was meant to. I lowered my voice so I was sure it was just the two of us. “Jacob found him.”

I couldn’t take my mind off him. It had been days since he up and stormed out on me, and I still couldn’t stop thinking about him, so I was going to do what I should have done ages ago. I was going to find him myself.

I stopped at the shop I’d been to earlier that week. The bell rang as I stepped inside and looked around.

“Hello, can I help you with anything?”

“Yes. I’m looking for someone who works here. Dom?”

The man gave me a wary look. “What do you want with Dom? He hasn’t gotten in any trouble has he?”

“I just … wanted to see him. I was hoping you could give me his address, or his phone number or something.”

He looked me up and down, shook his head. “No.”

I sighed. “Oh. Okay … well, thank you.” That had been a waste of time. I turned on my heel as he spoke again.

“I can take a message for you, but Dom wouldn’t like me giving out his personal info, not even to a beautiful woman.”

Turning back to face the man, I said, “Just …” I crossed over to the counter he stood behind, grabbed a loose pen and an old receipt from my purse, jotted my number down on it and handed it to the man. “Give him this, please.” He nodded. “Thank you.” I turned on my heel and headed for the door.

As soon as I dropped down into my small car, I closed my eyes.
What were you thinking?
Giving some random guy my phone number to give to another random guy. It just sounded so … unsafe.

But what else was I supposed to do? Sit around and wait for him to come into work? I had no clue when that was going to be.

I looked down at my watch and let out a groan. I was going to be late, and she was going to kill me.

***

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” Her mouth hung open ready to give me shit. “I lost track of time, and then I had to stop at an auto shop.”

“Why? Is your car okay?”

“Oh yea, it’s fine.” I dropped down into the seat across from her. “So, how are you doing?” I quickly tried to deflect the conversation away from me. I didn’t need my sister knowing that I was giving my phone number out to a mechanic.

“Oh nothing. I don’t think John and I are going to work out.” Jen scowled. “He just … he never wants to do anything with me and shopping can only cure that for so long.” Her frown deepened. “And I’m pretty sure he’s sleeping with another woman.”

I stared at her, aghast. “What? No! John wouldn’t do that.”

“Well, unless he’s started wearing woman’s panties, I’m pretty sure he’s cheating on me, Kat.”

My jaw fell open. “You found …?”

“Yup. In his work bag.”

I reached out, touched her hand. “Oh Jen … I’m so sorry.”

“It’s alright,” taking a deep breath, she added, “it clearly wasn’t working so there is no point in pretending anymore. I’m going to go to New York one last time for a shopping spree and then I’m done. I’ll move out when he’s on a business trip …” Crap. “You don’t have a roommate do you?”

“No, but I’m not really ...” Oh heck, I knew what was coming next ...

“Oh good! I might need to borrow your couch for a couple days.” Managing to suppress my groan, I heard her continue, “I promised it will only be a couple days until I can get back on my feet.”

She always promised it would be a couple days until she could get back on her feet. What she actually meant was a couple months until she could find a new rich man to date, and then a couple more weeks until she could convince him that they should move in together.

“You know I’m not always going to say yes,” I muttered as I flagged down a waiter.

“As long as you say yes this time I don’t care,” Jen beamed as she took a sip of her iced tea. I rolled my eyes as the waiter approached us.

“Could I get water, please?”

“Of course, are you two ready to order?”

“I’ll get a salad.” Jenn smiled.

“Chicken burger, please. Extra gravy with the fries.”

Jen shook her head.

“Hey,” I pointed at her. “I don’t lecture you about your boyfriend or your car, but that will change if you so much as think about doing it to me and my food.”

“I just don’t see why you don’t try to eat healthier.”

“And I don’t see why you pay someone to put your summer tires on,” I snapped, but then shrugged. “But that’s okay. It doesn’t really affect me.”

I froze as I saw him. He was in the middle of the sidewalk, not moving and just staring at me unblinkingly.

I felt my cheeks burn as I realized what he was holding in his hand. The piece of paper with my number on it.

“Kat? Katie?” My own name brought me back to reality. Jen turned in the direction I was staring.

“Ohhh my. I can see why you weren’t paying any attention to me.”

“I just know him …” I muttered. I forced myself to turn away from him as the waiter brought my water over. “Thanks.”

“How do you know him?” Jen raised an eyebrow.

“I got tires from his shop,” I said flatly.

“Oh really? He’s like a mechanic then?”

“Something like that.”

“My car has been giving me trouble,” she said tapping her fingers on the table.

“Of course.” I tried to force myself not to be affected by it. I’d been telling her for months she needed to get the car checked out, but she’d just told me to stop going on about it. Now that there was a cute mechanic she could go to, and her and John were splitting up, she wanted to get her car checked out.

“You should wave him over here.”

“I’m sure he’s too busy for that.”

“Oh come on, for me?” She gave me a pleading look. The one I knew all too well. The one that I knew would lead to begging if I didn’t do it soon. I rolled my eyes and waved over to Dom.

He waved back, paused and came over to me.

“Hey.” He sounded like it had been hard for him to say it.

“Hi. How’s it going?”

“Alright, you?”

“Good … good … just …” Great, we couldn’t even get small talk right. I stared at him. I wanted to make him feel bad for standing me up, but that would mean admitting we’d been on a date in front of my sister, and I didn’t want that. It would also mean admitting that I was still upset. And I wasn’t going to do that.

“I’m Jen,” my sister announced, turning the attention towards her. She held her hand out to him as she leaned over the table, revealing her best assets. I felt jealousy spike and tried to ignore it.

Suddenly I felt like I was 15-years-old again and all the boys wanted to date my sister, not me. I took another deep breath and turned my attention to her.

Trying to push my past feelings away, I forced a smile as they shook hands, and Dom turned his attention back to me. He opened his mouth but nothing came out for a second, and then after closing it, he tried again. “Anyways, I’d better get going. I’m just supposed to be grabbing coffees for everyone, and if they don’t get their coffee soon they’ll probably get mad at me.” He gave a forced laugh.

“Well, I won’t get in your way any longer.” I smiled.

“I’ll … bye.” He gave me a weak wave before turning his back on me and walking away.

I felt my heart drop into my stomach. Why would I be so hurt about this? It’s not like we even had a proper date to begin with. I mentally shook myself, snapping back to reality, and found my sister staring at me.

“So, what’s the deal with you two?”

“There is no deal,” I said curtly.

My sister snorted. “Really?”

“Yes, really.”

“So you don’t mind if I ask him to take care of my car?”

“Why would I?”

“I just wanted to make sure.” My sister shrugged as the waiter brought us our food.
 

***
 

I stared down at the ten numbers. All I had to do was dial the phone number and hit call. That was what I wanted to do, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t risk getting attached to her, or her getting attached to me. It was stupid enough that I’d stopped by the other night.

It wasn’t fair to her.
Anyways, the last time you even got half this close to a girl you ended killing her.

I froze. My own words shocking me. It shouldn’t have surprised me that I would think it. I knew I thought about it all the time, but this wasn’t the same. I tried not to think about it. I tried not to think about Becky at all … of course that was a little hard with what I was planning on doing, and being in jail because of her for the past 10 years didn’t do much to help that.

I mentally shook myself as I reached for my coffee, took a long sip and crumpled the piece of paper into a ball. It hit the garbage on the first try.

Micky raised an eyebrow at me. “You call her?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because …” I couldn’t risk it.

“She doesn’t know about your past, does she?”

“No, but it doesn’t matter. It wouldn’t work out even if she did know and decide to accept it.” I wasn’t going to have time for a relationship. I didn’t plan on going back to jail once I was done with this mess.

Micky stared at me. “You know, she seemed very interested in you. Almost like she missed you or something.”

“I’m sure she didn’t.” I felt guilt tug at me as I said the words.

I didn’t want to hurt her, but it seemed like no matter what I did, it would hurt her. If I didn’t call her then she would think I didn’t have any interest in her, but If I did call her, and everything went according to plan, I wouldn’t be around in a month and that would hurt her too. Either way it wasn’t fair to the girl.

I let out a deep breath, running my fingers through my hair as Micky walked away from me and back towards the back of the garage where we were working on a Ford Mustang for the owner.
What have you gotten yourself into Dominic?
I asked myself, letting out another deep sigh and closing my eyes.

For a split second, the idea of calling it all off, or just bailing on the other guys, popped into my head. No, I couldn’t do that. That wouldn’t be fair to the guys. My eyes snapped open as the doorbell rang and a couple walked in. They smiled as they approached the counter.

“Hello, how can I help you?” I asked as I forced a smile.

Before I pushed myself away from the counter to help these people, I took a deep breath, promising myself that I wouldn’t do anything stupid.

I really only had one option.
 

***
 

He never texted. He never called.

After two days, I’d given up on ever seeing him again. Chances were my sister rushed over there and got him to do the work on her car, and then one thing led to another, and he was doing some work on her now. So, here I was … on my couch with my cat curled up to me and watching old movies. I hadn’t heard from my sister, and I wasn’t expecting to until she and John broke up.
I shouldn’t let her stay with me,
I thought, but I knew I would. I couldn’t bring myself to be mean to her; despite everything she’d done to make my life hell when I was younger, she was my sister, and we were trying to work through our issues.

Bang, bang, bang.

My heart skipped a beat. For the second time this week I pushed myself up from the couch wondering who the hell could be at my door. My fingers curled around the handle as I pulled it open. “Oh.” I stared at him. “What do you want?”

I wondered if I should just slam the door in his face and be done with it, but I couldn’t bring myself to. I took a deep breath and waited for my answer.

“I … I wanted to stop by and try to make up for storming out on you the other day.” I looked him up and down, saw that he held a pizza box and a plastic bag in his hand. “I brought Pizza,” he offered weakly.

“Fine.” I stepped out of the doorway and let him come inside. “But pizza isn’t going to make up for standing me up.” I promised myself I wasn’t going to let this slide so easily.

He slipped out of his boots and padded to my couch. “Fight Club?”

“Yea, I’ve seen it a couple dozen times, but there was nothing better on, and I wanted some background noise.”

“Did I catch you at a bad time?” he asked as I sat down beside him.

“No.” I was utterly aware of my yoga pants, the fact that I had no bra on and my dirty white tank top. I pushed the thought out of my mind.  “So, are you going to tell me what that was all about or are you going to expect me to forgive you without you actually giving me a reason for what you did?”

“I … it’s com—”

I stared at him. “I swear if you tell me it’s complicated, I will kick you out of my house.”

He paused. A thin smile spreading over his lips. “I can’t tell you what’s going on, but I can tell you that it’s something to do with my friends … and the tattoo on my knuckles.”

I mulled over his words. Yes, it made sense, I guess. “I don’t expect you to tell me all the details of your life, but I do expect you to at least be honest with me when you tell me stuff.” I paused to give him time to let this sink in. “I’m not … I’m not saying that one date means you have to tell me everything I want to know, or even tell me anything at all, but if you’re going to tell me something, at least do me a favor and not lie to me outright?”