Hot Winter Nights (Heartbreaker Bay #6)(86)

“Because you know all you have to do to get over the blues is think positively, right?”

“Right.” Resisting the urge to smack her phone into her own forehead, Sadie drew a deep breath and sank into the cushy chair in her station where her clients sat while she applied permanent makeup. This was her bread and butter job, seeing as the love of her heart job—working as a tattoo artist in the Canvas Shop right next door—didn’t pay enough yet. And maybe it was silly and frivolous, but she’d grown fond of eating.

The problem was, all the hours on her feet working way too many hours a day left her exhausted most the time.

And maybe the teeniest bit cranky. “Mom, it’s not that easy.”

“To think positively? Of course it is. You just do it. Your sister . . .”

Whatever came after that, Sadie went back to zoning out. Her perfect sister Clara, blah blah blah, she’d heard it too many times to count.

“Sadie? Yes or no?”

Well, crap. She’d missed a question, but pretending she knew what was going on at all times was her MO. If she couldn’t blow her family away with her brilliance, her plan was always to baffle them with her bullshit. “Sure,” she said. “Whatever you guys decide.”

“Well, that’s very . . . sweet of you,” her mom said sounding surprised. “And very unlike you.”

Hoping she hadn’t just agreed to wearing a frothy pink Little Bo Peep bridesmaid dress, she shrugged off the sarcasm and let her gaze shift to the window. The Pacific Pier Building had been built around a cobblestoned courtyard that each of the ground floor shops and businesses opened to, making it convenient for people watching.

One of her favorite pastimes.

But it was January in San Francisco, specifically the Cow Hollow District, and a thick icy fog had descended over the early evening with the promise of rain. The courtyard was lit with strings of white lights and lined with potted trees and wrought iron benches around a hundred-year-old fountain, and was usually a hub of activity.

Tonight only the faint glow of the lights was visible behind the wall of fog. The courtyard was empty. Except . . . wait a minute. A form moved through the fog. A tall, leanly muscled form, his overcoat billowing out behind him like he was some sort of super hero.

She called him Suits.

He had a real name, she knew. Caleb Parker. But she’d never said it out loud, preferring her nickname for him since with the exception of the one time she’d run into him at the gym, she’d never seen him in anything but a suit. And though she wasn’t a suit kind of girl, she could admit there was something about watching him move in the clothes that had clearly been made to fit his rangy build and probably had cost more than an entire year’s rent.

“Mercedes?” her mother said in her ear. “You still there?”

Being full-named always got her back up. It wasn’t that Sadie had anything against it per se—okay, so she sort of did, because who named a kid after the car where that kid had been conceived?—but more than anything, she had a whole lot against her mother’s tone. “I heard everything you said, Mom. I’ll be on time for Clara’s wedding dress fitting appointment.”

“Speaking of that, don’t forget you need to find a date for the wedding.”

“Mom.”

“What?” her mom asked, playing innocent. “It’s a wedding, you’ll need a date. And you’re past due to find your Prince Charming. Way past due.”

Ignoring the dig at her bad luck in choosing men, she said, “I don’t need Prince Charming. Forest animals who clean, yes, that’d be great, but it’s a hard pass on Prince Charming.”

Her mom said a few more things that Sadie didn’t catch because she was making her way from one window to the next in order to keep Suits in her sights. It was misting now and his dark hair shimmered with the droplets every time he passed beneath a lamp post.

Then he abruptly stopped between the day spa and the Canvas Shop, which was only twenty feet from her.

He didn’t move.

“Mom, I’ve gotta go,” she said.

“But—”

“I’ll call you back.”

“Yes, but you always say that and you’re lying. You’re not supposed to lie to family, Sadie—”

“Tooth fairy, Santa Claus, and the Easter bunny,” she responded, and at her mother’s gasp, Sadie disconnected the phone, squelching her grimace because yes, she’d most definitely pay for hanging up on her mom later, big time. The woman had a lot of talents, and one of them was the ability to hold a grudge for a hundred years.

Sadie had a few talents herself, such as not sleeping at night and enjoying chocolate just a little too much. And okay, she also was talented at drinking tequila in the form of margaritas, preferably frosty lime, sue her.

Slipping her phone away, she craned her neck to see what Caleb Parker was up to. He’d crouched low, easily balancing on the balls of his feet, looking at something she couldn’t quite see as the wind and now rain pummeled his back, seemingly unnoticed.

What the actual hell.

She didn’t know much about him other than he was some sort of tech genius and used to work at a government think tank. He’d invented a bunch of stuff including a series of apps that he and his business partner had sold to Google, and more recently the two of them had created a way of getting meds and medical care into remote developing nations via drones.