Baby Cakes - A Vegas, Baby Novella

Any thought I’d had of suggesting that Belle could take my car and leave me here flew out of my head at the mention of my adorable niece’s possible milestone. “I guess we’d better get going then because I don’t want to miss it, either!”

“Definitely, but first I have a bone to pick with Maddox.” Belle shot an accusing glare in his direction. “Wendy won’t let me pay for my tattoo. She said you sent her a text and told her that if I put up a fuss, she should just tell me to tip Candice what you’d normally charge for my session.”

“Yup.” He leaned against the counter.

Belle’s eyes narrowed. “Griffith pays you for his ink, right?”

“Yup.” His lips kicked up in a small grin, and I had to stifle a giggle at how he was torturing my sister like he’d known us forever.

“Then I don’t understand why I can’t pay for mine.”

Maddox shrugged his broad shoulders. “And I don’t get why this is such a problem for you.”

“Because you can’t just give me a free tattoo!” Belle stomped her foot.

Their argument was going round and round in circles with no end in sight, so I raised my hand like I was a student in a class who had a question. I waited for both of them to look at me before I asked, “Is mine free too?”

“Probably, since Wendy wouldn’t let me pay for yours either,” Belle grumbled.

Maddox’s blue eyes flared with an emotion I’d only really ever seen in Griffith’s when he looked at my sister. “You’re sure as fuck are not paying to have my ink on your skin.”

“Fine. I get it. I’m guessing that you’re not going to budge on this since I recognize that caveman look in your eyes. I see it all the time from Griffith,” Belle huffed. “As long as you keep it aimed in my sister’s direction, my hubby might get over the fact that another guy paid for something for me. Maybe.”

“Trust me, he’ll get it.” Maddox kept his eyes locked on me as he walked over to the door and held it open for us. Then he followed us out to my car and waited until I was buckled in my seat to bend down and whisper, “I’m sure I’ll be seeing you soon, little mermaid.”

After he shut my door, I watched him walk across the parking lot and back into Ink Addiction before I started up my car and pulled out. My sister only managed to wait about two minutes before she started in on me.

“So.” Belle’s brown eyes twinkled with humor. “You let him call you little mermaid? I thought you hated that nickname?”

“Don’t even go there,” I warned. “If you even think of using it, I’m going to go out and buy you every single piece of Beauty and the Beast memorabilia I can find. Then I’m going to tell your hubby how much you love the music from the movie so that he starts singing it to you all of the time. And how much you want him to role play as them…in bed.”

She held up her hands in a gesture of surrender. “Geesh! Pull out the big guns, why don’t you?”

“Yeah, well. I didn’t want you to get any ideas.” I’d gotten a lot of The Little Mermaid jokes as a kid, which she was well aware of. “Just because I let a super-hot guy call me ‘little mermaid’ doesn’t mean I’m going to let anyone else get away with it.”

“Since I have a super-hot guy of my own, I totally understand where you’re coming from,” she conceded.

“But Maddox isn’t mine,” I denied. “We just met a few hours ago.”

“Yeah, and I noticed you guys were holding hands when you came back out after your session with him. Did anything else interesting happen back there?”

“No, of course not! Why would you even ask me that?” I protested, my cheeks heating.

“What?” She blinked her eyes innocently. “I just figured there must’ve been a reason that he took you back to his private studio.”

I didn’t understand the point she was trying to make. “Where else was he supposed to do my tattoo?”

“He has a station a couple of doors down from Candice’s. She was surprised he wasn’t using it when she popped over to ask him a quick question after she was done with my tattoo. I guess it’s where he usually does his sessions. She couldn’t remember the last time a client was in his private studio,” Belle explained.

“Oh.” I hadn’t thought twice when Maddox had walked me past a bunch of stations, but I really liked the idea of him doing my ink in his personal space. It made me feel like my tattoo was even more special than it already was.

“While I was waiting for you to finish up, I asked Wendy about it. She thought maybe the last time he did a tattoo for a client back there was when he did work on some foreign dignitary who was in town and needed to have his security in the room with him, and that was last year.”