Harder (Stark Ink Book 1) Read Online Free PDF

legitimate reason, though Adam couldn’t think why she wouldn’t have told anyone if that were the case. He pulled out his cellphone and switched it on.
    We need 2 talk. Face 2 face , he texted her. He had to wait a few minutes for her reply.
    Can’t. School , she sent back. Adam wondered whether or not to believe her.
    Tonight . He didn’t bother to explain. He’d just be giving her time to come with a lie to cover her ass. He’d confront her tonight, in person, and get to the bottom of whatever this was.
    K .
    Next Adam texted Dalton, asking if he was awake, but got no response so he slid the phone back into his pocket.
    He didn’t know what any of this was about, but he wasn’t about to let Ava fuck up her life. And Dalton had to be summarily kicked off whatever cloud he was floating on at the moment, because there was no way Adam was handling this shit alone.

Chapter Five
     
    Adam gave up on trying to reach Dalton. There was no guarantee his brother could help anyway. He wondered if Calla Winslow was as uptight as she sounded. If so, it might prove more difficult than necessary to convince her to cut Ava some slack. He picked up a scrap of paper, transcribed the appointment time on it and stuffed it into his pocket. He shuffled across the tile floor and grabbed his boots at the bottom of the back staircase. He couldn’t imagine what Ava was doing every day that had her skipping school, but he doubted it had anything to do with drugs. Mom had managed to keep both himself and Dalton on the straight and narrow growing up, minus a bong hit here or there. There’s no way she dropped the ball with Ava, who despite her brashness had never given Mom and Dad any real trouble.
    He headed back through the lobby and toward his workroom. As much as he liked meeting people and hearing their stories as they sat in his chair, he liked the quiet of the shop just before it opened as well as after it closed. When he’d bought the place, he’d had Dalton divide up the ground floor into four rooms surrounding the lobby. Two tattoo rooms, though for now he was the only artist, a room for piercing once he could afford to hire someone to do it, and a storage room toward the back. He set up his ink and wiped down the counter in his workroom, though it didn’t need it because he was meticulous about cleaning. It was something to do before Jeannie came in. He probably didn’t need her today, either. He could answer the phones himself, but Jeannie had bills to pay like everyone else.
    An hour later he heard the jingle of the bell that hung over the shop’s front door. He tossed his cleaning rag on the counter and headed for the lobby. His receptionist bustled in balancing a coffee, danish, and the set of keys he’d given her to the shop. In her mid-twenties, Jeannie had purple spiked hair and a smile like a razorblade. She was brash but did her job well, and Adam supposed brash worked in a tattoo parlor. Before he’d hired her, she’d been working as an office temp downtown, with a decidedly more muted hair color.
    She’d come in one night as a customer, hoping to have her nose re-pierced. She’d removed it so many times to comply with the dress code of her stuffy office job that it had grown shut. Adam had told her he didn’t have a piercer yet. Jeannie had let loose a string of obscenities that would make a sailor blush but her tiny pixie frame and cute, slightly upturned nose made it impossible to be offended. She’d apologized, blaming the constraints of her nine-to-five. She’d opted for a new tattoo instead and while he had her in the chair, he’d discovered she was an excellent typist, knew her way around a copier, and rarely cursed at people when she answered the phone.
    She’d come in for a piercing and walked out with a job as the receptionist for Stark Ink.
    Jeannie eyed him cautiously now and sniffed. “I’m so sorry, Adam,” she said, tears welling up in her eyes. Jeannie may have been brash but her tough