Dax rumbles out a laugh. “You’re cute yourself. But don’t waste your time or energy on me. I’m taken. In fact, I was thinking about proposing to my girlfriend in the next few months. I’m just trying to think up a clever way to do it.” He pulls on a pair of purple gloves. “So if either of you has any great ideas, by all means, let me know.”
Great. Macy moans. Exactly what I was hoping to do. Find the cutest guy I’ve seen in months and help him plot out the perfect proposal—to someone else. How is this my life?
I give my sister a quick pat to the hand.
“I’ve got an idea,” I say as Macy points out the picture she chose and he takes the book from her. “My fiancé proposed out on the bluff in Cider Cove. There’s a gazebo there on the grass and there are flowers all around it this time of year thanks to the local horticulture club.”
Dax straightens as he looks my way. “Gazebo, huh? I guess chicks dig stuff like that. My girl is romantic at heart.” He shrugs. “She’s cute and funny and kind. And she’d do just about anything for me.” And she has.
Has she now?
Dax pulls out some metal doo-hickey that looks like a drill and lands a fresh needle over the tip before heading over to the cupboard and pulling some vials out and adding it to the apparatus.
I watch as he lathers the area they agreed upon with Betadine as he continues to prep his workstation.
He nods to my hands. “Looks like my girlfriend’s work.”
“Oh, it is.” I hold out my hands for him to admire. The henna hasn’t budged an inch. Once Fish saw it, she tried to lick it off. She was disappointed I had opted to add spots to my look. I let her know it was a pretty pattern, much like her black and white stripes, but after a few weeks, it would all wash away. I hope. I hadn’t thought about having orange hands for my upcoming wedding pictures. “She did a great job. And while she was doing this, you were working on my friend, Georgie.”
“Georgie!” He tips his head back and a genuine smile rides on his lips. “How’s the old gal doing? I hope she healed up okay. I thought she might need stitches.”
“Stitches?” Macy rears her head his way.
He gives a long blink. “Don’t worry. As long as you don’t squirm, you won’t need them. Georgie wasn’t a good candidate for a tattoo on the rear. It can be a ticklish event for some people and Georgie was jumping all over the table. It was impossible for her to hold still. There was a little nick that occurred and all bloody hell broke loose. Literally.”
“That must be when she ran out screaming.” I shrug. “Sorry about that.”
“It happens.” Dax sits on a stool and rolls over to Macy. “You’ll feel a pinch.”
Macy lifts her head. “For like a second?”
Dax makes a face. “For like forty-five minutes. Squeeze the handlebars in front of you. Some people find it helps.”
Sure enough, there’s a pair of red rubber handlebars that look as if they were plucked off a bike and installed on the cabinet in front of Macy, and my sister grabs on as if she were readying herself for the most painful ride of her life.
“I remember you from that night,” I say just as he turns on the instrument of terror he’s about to torment my sister with. It’s not nearly as noisy as I thought it would be, and I’m relieved about it, too. Not because it might not be as traumatic for my sister, but because I was hoping to continue my conversation with him.
Dax pauses from the task at hand, or bottom as it were, to inspect my features.
“You look vaguely familiar.” His forehead furrows. “Help me out.”
“Killer Books. I was at the mystery night. In fact, I played the part of Corella Tinder. Occupation, pole dancer. Role, the killer.” I give a little wave.
“Ooh.” He winces as if I struck him. “I’m sorry to hear it. Yes, I guess I do remember you. Or at least what happened to you. That was terrible—brutal, actually.” Not that the idiot didn’t deserve some form of retribution.
“So you knew him? Wyatt Sanders?”
He scowls as he begins focusing on my sister’s shiny pale rear.
“I guess you could say that. I’ll be honest, I didn’t care for the guy. He put the moves on my girl and I don’t look too kindly on that.” And that’s exactly why we did what we did.
I suck in a quick breath. Was that a confession?
“He put the moves on your girl, huh?” I lean my ear his way. “Did you talk to him?”
He touches the needle to Macy’s skin and she lets out a hair-raising howl.
“Handlebars, babe,” he says and Macy’s knuckles press white. “Yeah”—he glances my way—“I talked to him. I wanted to do more.” Like with my fist. “But my girlfriend let me know it wouldn’t happen again. It wasn’t her fault. The guy came onto her. It turned out, his girlfriend was a nutjob. I think he set it up to get caught. Apparently, she walked in on the whole thing. Stormy said they were having a conversation, and as soon as he sensed the psychopath he was dating was in the room, he planted one on her—my girlfriend, not his. Anyway, that’s how a coward breaks up with his girlfriend. I don’t care if she was a nutcase. You don’t use my girlfriend as a ploy to get dumped.” His voice hikes a notch and his etching of the bloody butterfly gets a little more animated, too—and, well, Macy just howled as if she morphed into a werewolf staring at a full moon.
“I agree,” I say. “That was more than cowardly. It sounds like
