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"Tattoo Thief"
By: Heidi Joy Tretheway
Series: Tattoo Thief, Book #1
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Synopsis:
22-year-old Beryl doesn't know why Gavin Slater trashed his penthouse, abandoned his dog and fled the country. But as his house sitter, she must pick up the pieces for the front man of the white-hot rock band Tattoo Thief.
When ultra-responsible Beryl confronts the reckless rock star, she wants to know more than just what to do with his mess. Why is he running? What’s he searching for? And is he responsible for the death of his muse?
New York newbie Beryl must find her footing in Gavin’s crazy world of the ultra-wealthy to discover her own direction and what can bring him back.
When ultra-responsible Beryl confronts the reckless rock star, she wants to know more than just what to do with his mess. Why is he running? What’s he searching for? And is he responsible for the death of his muse?
New York newbie Beryl must find her footing in Gavin’s crazy world of the ultra-wealthy to discover her own direction and what can bring him back.
Steamy, sassy and tender, Tattoo Thief is a story of breaking from a comfort zone to find a second chance.
Excerpt:
Setup: Beryl has a job offer to be an assistant property manager for New York’s elite, so now all she needs to escape her sleepy Oregon hometown is a place to live. When her best friend from college, Stella, offers to share her New York apartment with Beryl, it seems too good to be true. It is.
The taxi stops on a grimy side street in Manhattan’s Lower East Side between a Chinese restaurant, a Dominican restaurant, and a candy store.
“You sure this is the right place?”
“Yeah, yeah, this,” the cabbie says with a thick Middle Eastern accent, gesturing up the street. A dozen doorways line the sidewalk and my eyes search frantically for the right number.
I pay him and reluctantly step out of the safety of the cab, tripping on an uneven sidewalk panel as my scary-big suitcase swivels drunkenly behind me.
I feel sweat blooming under my arms and my eyes are gritty from sleep deprivation. No wonder they call it the red-eye. I’m wearing my fat camping backpack and bouncing a messenger bag along on my thighs.
Everything about me screams tourist, and yet I am not.
I am a New Yorker!
How awesome is that?
I don’t feel like a New Yorker yet, though. My outfit, which was boho-chic in Eugene, feels country bumpkin next to the relentlessly polished women who pass me. I might as well be wearing overalls and gingham.
I bump along the sidewalk with a suitcase that was just under the airline’s weight limit, feeling my gut clench uncomfortably with a need to pee. Each apartment number is wrong. I find the numbers close to where Stella’s apartment should be and swallow my rising panic.
It’s not here. Why didn’t she come get me? I haven’t heard from her since Friday and her last Facebook update was some cryptic song lyric about bad boys being so good. The reference was lost on me.
I check my phone again and the map says I’m in the right spot. So I look again, and then—relief!—I see that I’m on the odd side of the street, not the even. I squeeze between parked cars to cross the street for the right entry.
See? I can do this. I can.
I lean on a buzzer, and when Stella doesn’t answer, I hit a half-dozen more for good measure. Finally, the outer door buzzes and I drag/bump my enormous suitcase, which I am rapidly growing to hate, up each of the twenty-seven steps to Stella’s apartment.
I have to take a breath just to get the energy to knock on her door.
No answer.
I knock again, listening. It’s Sunday morning—what if she stayed out late? Somebody told me bars here close at 4 a.m. What if she went home with someone?
I sink down against the hallway wall in despair, wondering if she even got my email with my flight details. I really have to pee, so in about fifteen minutes my “wait it out” strategy is going to get desperate or messy. And I’d rather wet myself than bump my ridiculous suitcase packed with Bumpkin Fashion down twenty-seven stairs.
And back.
So I pound on Stella’s door some more, hoping she’s just, oh, passed-out drunk but coming to; wearing noise-canceling headphones while writing a story for her indie newspaper; or wrapped up in some glorious yoga pose that demands uninterrupted meditation.
As my mind spirals to worst-case scenarios involving Law & Order opening sequences, I hear a rustle, a click, and see the door handle twist.
I am saved! My bladder does a dance of joy and I nearly pee myself.
A guy with spiky black hair and three facial piercings stares at me. My mouth kicks in before my brain does.
“Hi! Are you Knyfe? I’m Beryl. Stella’s new roommate.”
I ditch my stuff in the hallway and plow into the guy, making a beeline for what I hope is the bathroom. I don’t even get its door all the way shut before I’ve dropped trou and peed, like, a hundred years’ worth of in-flight beverages.
Tom Hanks has nothing on me.
(Seriously. You haven’t seen A League of Their Own? Go rent it. I’ll wait.)
(OK, now that we’re all caught up on culture….)
So I’m peeing, and then I’m washing, and I wash my hands and my face and my neck and it feels so damn good that I’m thinking I might just strip down and jump in the shower, my new shower, right this moment, when Knyfe pushes on the door I didn’t quite latch.
“Are you done yet?”
Rude, much? “Sorry, Knyfe. I’ll be out in a second.”
“It’s Blayde.”
“Right. Sorry. I’m Beryl.”
“You said. You’re that girl from Oregon?” He pronounces my state like a geometric shape, an octagon or a polygon. I don’t bother to correct him. Yet.
“That girl.”
“Right. Well, Stella and I broke up and I live here now, not her. So you can’t stay here.”
OMG! WTF? WTFFFFFFF!!!!
I splash more water on my face and dry off on what I hope is a clean towel. I pull open the bathroom door and see a stack of boxes in the living room. What’s happening here?
“Look, Blayde,” I say in my best calm-the-customer voice—practiced from years of handling freak-outs when people didn’t get their lattes just the way Starbucks makes them—“I’m sorry you guys broke up, but I live here now. This is half my apartment. I already paid.”
I go to the hallway to retrieve my stuff and Blayde makes no move to help me.
“No, you don’t,” he says. “My name’s on the lease. You can’t live here. Go talk to Stella.”
“Where is she?” I demand.
“Out,” he says, and slams the door in my face.
I hear the locks click and sink down to my favorite spot in Stella’s apartment hallway, put my head in my hands, and cry.
Author Bio:
Heidi’s obsessed with storytelling. Her career includes marketing, journalism, and a delicious few years as a food columnist. Media passes took her backstage with several rock bands, where she learned that sometimes a wardrobe malfunction is exactlywhat the rock star intends.
You’ll most often find Heidi Joy with her husband and two small kids cooking, fishing, exploring the Northwest, and building epic forts in their living room.
She loves to hear from readers via messages at facebook.com/author.heidi.
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