Mathias held her troubled stare. “You didn’t have to. I can sense something violent happened in this shop. Even if I couldn’t sense it, I’d know something more than what you described took place.” He moved closer to her, then. Swept some of her black-and-blue hair away from her eyes when she made no move to do so. “Looking out for people who need my help is my job, Nova. I’ve spent the better part of my life taking monsters off the street--Breed and human alike.”
She scoffed lightly and drew away from him, shoving her hands into the pockets of her black jeans. “A regular Galahad, is that it? White horse and a gleaming sword?”
He ignored her jab. She wasn’t the first woman to accuse him of having a hero complex. Usually the charge accompanied the angry tears of a neglected lover who didn’t want to believe him that his job, and the duty it demanded, came first. Above everything else.
With Nova, he knew her doubt in him was coming from someplace deeper. A place of real pain. A place of dark secrets that still had the power to haunt her.
“If you’re in trouble, Nova, I can help you. If you’ll let me.”
“I don’t need your help.” Her reply was swift, automatic. Defensive. “I do just fine looking out for myself.”
At that same moment, light footsteps sounded from a stairwell near the back of the shop. A red-haired boy came halfway down in bed-rumpled sweatpants and nothing else. His chest was scrawny, marred with old scars from abuse he must have suffered at a very young age.
“What’s goin’ on, Nova?” The kid’s sleepy expression tensed when he saw Mathias standing in the studio. “Who’s that?”
“It’s okay, Eddie,” Nova interjected quickly. Her voice was warm, all of her chill seeming to be reserved for Mathias. “He’s just a...client. And he’ll be leaving soon. Go on back to bed now. Everything’s all right.”
When the boy was gone, Mathias glanced at her. “Brother?”
“Close enough. Oz took him in last year when he found Eddie eating out of Dumpsters, living on the street by himself in the middle of winter. Now Eddie lives upstairs with Ozzy.”
“You live with them too?” Mathias asked.
She gave a faint shake of her head, the sharp cut of her dark, two-toned hair swishing against her delicate cheek. “I have my own place on the floor above them. Ozzy rented it out to me once I turned seventeen.”>It took the warrior a moment before he acknowledged with a tight nod. “Fair enough.”
He reached for a pen that lay on the counter, and jotted something down on an errant scrap of paper. He pushed the note toward Nova. “In case you change your mind and want to talk more. You can reach me anytime.”
She kept her arms at her sides, her eyes steady on the shrewd gaze that seemed more suspicious than he was letting on.
Finally, the warrior turned and walked out of the shop.
Nova stood unmoving as he stepped out the door and into the night. Then she waited some more, until she was certain he was gone and wouldn’t be coming back.
Only then did she reach out to retrieve the scrap that held his bold, efficient handwriting.
He’d written down a phone number and his name.
Mathias Rowan.
Nova stared at the note for a long moment.
Then she crushed the paper in her gloved fist, and dropped it into the trash bin under the counter. She had no intention of ever calling the number.
If she were lucky, she’d never run into the warrior again.
She glanced over at Ozzy, her voice quiet as she spoke. “Do you think he believed me?”
CHAPTER 3
She lied to him.
Mathias had known it even before he left the tattoo shop a couple of hours ago.
Hell, he’d known it almost as soon as the petite, pierced, walking, talking work of art had opened her tough little mouth.
Mathias’s Breed senses had lit up about a block from Ozzy’s studio, and the imprint of violence had only grown stronger the closer he got to the door.
Something bad had occurred inside that shop last night.