“If you’ll excuse me, you two, I need to make a quick phone call. I have to check on my cooking class schedule for next week.” Marj stood and walked from the room.
Shit. Now what?
“So, Talon, what’s going on with you?” Julie asked. “I thought we had something special between us.”
Chapter Ten
Jade
Haley had drawn up a beautiful image of the phoenix and had transferred the ink outline to my back, when my phone rang.
“You need to get that?” she asked.
“No. Let’s go ahead and get this done tonight. I’m really excited.”
“Awesome. Let me get the colors I need, and then I’ll start the outline. You’ve never had a tattoo before, right?”
“Nope.”
“Okay, it’s going to hurt, but it’s not quite as bad as most people think it is.”
“I’ve heard it feels like a bunch of pinpricks. I want to do it anyway. I feel really strongly about this image. It resonates with me right now.”
“Good enough.”
Then my phone started again.
I let out a huff. “Let me just get that and then turn the damned thing off.”
I grabbed my phone. Marj. “Hey, Marj, what you need?”
“Jade, you have to come out to the house.”
“I’m kind of in the middle of something right now.”
“Get out of it. This is an emergency.”
My pulse sped up. “An emergency? Are you okay? Is everyone okay?”
“Yeah, but Talon’s got a girl here, and I need you here.”
“A girl?” Jealousy knifed through my body.
“He didn’t invite her here. She just showed up. Some cocktail waitress skank from the city. You need to get out here now before he falls in bed with her or something.”
“Why didn’t he just kick her out?”
“Well…I invited her to dinner.”
“You invited her to dinner? Why the hell would you do that?”
“Because I wanted to find out what was going on between her and Talon.”
I shook my head and rolled my eyes. “Marj, I don’t have time for this. I’m in the middle of getting a tattoo.”
“A tattoo? I thought we were going to do that together sometime.”
“We’ve been saying that for seven years. We haven’t done it yet. I was just passing by Toby’s, and I got an itch. I saw a tattoo a couple nights ago on my mom’s boyfriend that I really liked, and I wanted to duplicate it. It’s perfect for me right now and matches how I’m feeling about myself.”