by Tee Smith
Davina
Blue Belles Investigations- Book Two
Tee Smith
Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
The end
Acknowledgments
Also by Tee Smith
Davina
Blue Belles Investigations Book 2
Tee Smith
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Davina- Blue Belles Investigations Book Two
Copyright by Tee Smith 2018 ©
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer quoting brief passages for review purposes only.
Cover design by Indie Author Boutique
Editing by Leticia Sidon
Created with Vellum
Chapter One
The tattoo gun buzzed as its tiny needles pierced her skin over and over again, etching out his name. She closed her eyes and hummed a tune in her head to block out the pain. She’d take a thousand times more pain for this. To have her boy’s name seared on her skin. He meant everything to her and to think she could have lost him. It didn’t bear thinking on.
“Are you okay?” the tattooist asked. His voice laden with concern.
She turned to the man and nodded. He hadn’t been what she was expecting. In fact, he was a little nerdy looking. None of that mattered, as long as he did a good job.
Looking down at the text that was forming on her collarbone, she saw an L, O and the beginning in a G. Half way. Phew.
Her mind wandered to Drew. The man she’d had a crush on since the day he’d walked into Blue Belles. The man who had no idea she even existed. She wondered what he would think of her getting a tattoo. Like it mattered. Like he’d ever see it.
“Nearly there, Davina. Hold still,” the tattooist whose name she had already long forgotten told her. She hadn’t even realised she’d shifted in her seat.
“Sorry,” she muttered, before finding a spot on the wall to focus her attention on.
“Yeah, that’s exactly what I want.” The voice wafted through the thin wall. It was him. How could he be here? Of all the places and all the days. It was him.
Her ears strained as she tried desperately to listen closer. His voice was deep. The tone rattled through her. She had never had a crush like this on anyone. Not even Logan’s father. That had been a disaster.
“All done,” the tattooist announced. “How’s that? Are you happy with it?”
She looked down at the artwork, the way her son’s name stood glaring back at her; the skin around the black ink, red and raw.
“Perfect. Thank you.” She smiled proudly.
“Good. You will need to keep it covered for the next little while, and I will give you some cream to apply. It’s important…”
Her mind wandered off as he gave her care instructions. She wanted to hear Drew’s voice again. That was all that mattered. She wondered what work he was having. What part of his body was he exposing in the next room?
She made her way to the reception desk and dug into her purse for her credit card. Drew’s laugh rang out from behind her, and she spun on her heel, coming face to face with him. Or face to chest as the case was; his sexy hard chest.
“Hey,” he smiled. That same gorgeous smile he always gave. The one that didn’t give away whether he actually recognised her or he was just being friendly.
“Hey,” she managed out in response. Her voice small and pathetic. She had dreamed of all the things she’d like to say to him. But here, given the chance, she had just fallen flat and made a fool of herself.
Clutching her receipt and list of instructions she turned for the door. Wishing the ground would open up and swallow her. If she’d known she was likely to bump into him, she would have done something better with her hair or worn something nicer. Instead, she wore her single mum who has been awake with a toddler all night, look.
Who was she kidding? The likes of Drew would have women falling at his feet. There was no way he would be interested in a nerdy, single mum. She just had to face the truth. She had made her bed; she had to lie in it. Logan was worth it. He was the most important person in her life. He needed her, and she had no place thinking she could be looking for love. That was the domain of the unattached. The smart girls who didn’t get themselves knocked up before they finished school. She just needed to remember her place in the world.
But there was no harm in dreaming, was there?
Chapter Two
“Good morning, Davina,” Mercy called as she entered the office five minutes after nine. It was very unlike her to be running late. She was usually the first to arrive and the last to leave.
“Morning Mercy,” she called back. She liked her boss. She was a good, fair woman. There were never any questions when she needed to bring Logan into the office with her. She tried to keep him away as much as she could. An office was no place for a child.
“I have these files for you,” Davina said as she followed Mercy down the hall to her office.
“Oh, thank you.” Mercy turned and took the stack from her. “How’s our boy?” she asked, placing the pile down on her desk and reaching to switch her computer on.
“He’s good, thank you. At home with grandma today.”
“That’s good. So, she is feeling better, then?”
“Each day is different,” Davina shrugged. “She still gets exhausted.”
Davina’s mother had been diagnosed with breast cancer the year before, throwing their whole lives into chaos. Before her diagnosis, she had taken care of Logan’s childcare needs.
“But she’s done with her treatment for now, right?”
“Sure is, she had her last radiation treatment last week. Now we have to wait on her results, but her oncologist is saying he thinks it’s going to be good news.”
“What an awful time you guys have been through.” Mercy offered her a sad smile. She was such a genuinely caring person. Finding people like her in the world was hard. Her job at Blue Belles Investigations had been the best thing to happen to her other than her son.
“It’s all good, Mercy. Honestly. It’s not your fault what happened to Loges and hey… he’s still with us right?”
Mercy’s sad smile lifted slightly into a brighter one, but she knew the woman felt responsible for Logan having been shot. Whilst it had been the most terrifying incident in her life, Logan had made a decent recovery. In time, he would learn to live with the effects and may not even remember the trauma.
“If there is anything you need for him…” she persisted.
“Yeah, I know. The therapists are all really happy with his progress. He is learning some basic signs, so we are learning to communicate.”
The incident had only caused a flesh injury to her son, tearing off part of his ear. There had been no way to salvage the pinna, but other than that along with scarring from a laceration to his scalp, there was little el
se damage. With the bullet basically whizzing right past her baby boy’s head, he was lucky to still be alive. Only millimetres further to the right, it would have opened his skull. His eardrum was damaged from the blast, but the doctors believed he would regain some hearing in that ear as it healed. He would always retain some hearing loss on that side but would compensate for that with his almost perfect hearing in the other. They believed the most major long-term issue he would sustain would be in the form of trouble with sound perception. He may have difficulty differentiating where sounds originated from. If that was the most of his disablement after being shot, he was indeed a very lucky young man.
Mercy’s face dropped, she didn’t share Davina’s excited. “I just wish he didn’t have to go through this. It’s not fair. I hope that guy spends a very long time in jail.”
“Yeah, I know,” she admitted, allowing silence to fall between them.
“I’m glad to hear he’s doing better.”
“Thank you,” Davina smiled in response before excusing herself. She had to get back to the front office and let the other woman get on with her work.
As she made her way back down the hall, she checked her reflection in the mirror on the wall. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d rushed out the door forgetting something important. This time, she was happy with what she found. She’d managed to sling her long black hair into a low ponytail before she left home, then on her way into the city, she’d wiped a smear of lipstick across her lips. Gone were the days of full make-up. These days she was happy just to look like she hadn’t fought her way through the jungle to get to work.
One time, when Logan was still a newborn, she was horrified to find he had vomited down her back without her noticing. At least now, as a toddler, she didn’t need to worry about sneaky little things like that. These days she was more prone to forgetting to brush her hair or slipping the wrong pair of shoes on. Motherhood had undoubtedly proved to be trying, but she wouldn’t swap it for the world. Logan’s brush with death had been a serious wake-up call for her. If she’d ever doubted how important he was in her life, she knew now; she imagined that was more than some parents ever would.
“Nice ink,” Drew’s deep voice dripped honey and brought her eyes up to his.
He had piercing blue eyes, like none she had ever seen. They sat against his warm skin and perhaps that was what made them so obvious. She, however, was struck frozen, like a deer in the headlights. How could she not have noticed him coming in? She was always on the lookout for him. Except this day.
“I…ahh…” she stammered, all thoughts vanishing from her mind. Why did he do this to her?
“Is that what Phil did for you?”
Phil, Phil, Phil… yes, that was right, that was the name of the tattooist; she’d quickly forgotten it at the time. Her fingers quickly swept to her new artwork. She had thought she’d covered it with her blouse. Working in front, she felt she had to look professional. The last thing she wanted was to frighten customers away. She knew how lucky she was to have this job and couldn’t afford to lose it.
“Yes,” she managed out, sounding weak and instantly hating herself for it. Drew must think she was so immature.
“Is it your first?” he went on.
Her eyes flashed to his heavily tattooed arms, not that she needed to look. She was sure she had already committed every inch of him that she had seen, to her memory.
“Yeah, it’s ahh… for my son. Logan.” She tugged slightly at her collar, exposing her son’s name, before realising she was also showing off her pretty, lacy pink bra and quickly righting it again.
Drew let out a throaty chuckle and she felt colour creep into her cheeks. As if she hadn’t embarrassed herself enough already.
“It’s nice,” he smiled.
“Yeah, I’m pleased with it.” She smiled with pride, more so that she happened to say something that sounded like she was an adult, not a twelve-year-old.
“The work is nice too,” he smirked.
She let out something between a giggle and a shriek at the realisation; Drew was flirting with her. Before now, she had thought he hadn’t even noticed her.
“Do you… ah, do you, have something for me?” she asked and wished she could take her words back. “I mean, a, ahh… package.” Why was it, all of a sudden, everything she said sounded like a sordid come on? How old was she?
“I sure do,” he said shaking his head from side to side with a laugh.
She wasn’t sure if he was making fun of her, or just enjoying the banter.
Placing a brown-papered parcel on the counter, he handed her his hand-held scanner to sign as he always did, only this time when their fingers touched she wasn’t so sure it was accidental, and they both lingered a moment longer than usual.
“Thank you,” she said, looking up to find his blue eyes staring back at her.
“No, thank you,” he smiled.
“I’ll see you again, soon.”
“Hope so,” he nodded before turning on his heel and heading back toward the elevator.
Again, Davina stood frozen, watching his every step. Even the way he walked was sexy. She wanted to call him back, to gain his attention, anything. But she had nothing. All she could do was watch as the doors opened and he entered the car. He hit the button and turned back around to face her. As the door was about to close, she was sure she saw him raise his hand in a wave.
Her heart swelled. Was it possible to fall in love with someone you had barely even spoken to? Of course, it wasn’t. She did, however, have a massive crush on him. Sinking back into her chair, she sighed. Drew had been flirting with her. She’d made an idiot of herself, but he had noticed her.
“Are you going to answer that damn phone? What do you think we’re paying you for?”
The phone on her desk chortled out its chorus. Bringing it to her ear, she answered in her best office voice.
After completing the call, she replaced the phone in its cradle and grasped the package that Drew had left behind. Even knowing his hands had been all over it made her want to hold it close. She really had to get a grip.
“This is for you, August,” she called from the woman’s door.
“Fine, just drop it on the desk.”
Taking the few steps into the room, she bit down on her lip. She really wanted to say something. She loved working at Blue Belles, but August was such a bitch to her.
“Is there something you want?” August looked up from her computer and squinted her eyes.
“No, just delivering this, that’s all,” she said, swallowing down her words.
“Well, it’s delivered. Thank you.” August’s words were curt and to the point. She never asked how Davina was, nor Logan, bar the one time after the accident.
She was so different from her boss, yet the two women seemed to be close friends; it was something she might never understand.
Chapter Three
It was good to see her mother playing with her son. The older woman had been through a terrible time. It seemed her cancer was finally in remission and her hair was starting to grow back, although gone were the dark tendrils like her own, replaced now with thin, white strands.
“Mummy’s home, Logan,” her mother called to her grandson and pointed over his shoulder. His hearing was bad. Davina knew he hadn’t heard her coming in and hoped the doctors were right about his hearing improving eventually. Growing up with terrible eye-sight and being teased for wearing glasses, she loathed thinking of her child having to wear hearing aids.
“Wheeeee,” she cried, spinning her son around in her arms. “How’s my boy?”
Logan responded with a huge, slobbery kiss. In the months that had passed since the accident, he had grown from being a baby into a rambunctious toddler.
What speech he had been starting to develop was gone, replaced now with gestures and the few basic signs she had been able to teach him. His medical team had told her it was partly due to his hearing loss and partly due to trauma. His saving gr
ace being that he was young and he would forget in time.
Otherwise, he was a normal, active little boy. He loved playing with other kids. Loved his mum and grandma and cars. The kid was crazy about cars. Particularly loud cars. She assumed it was because he could hear and the louder, the better. Or maybe he was going to be a motorhead when he grew up. Her poor little man; all she wanted was a normal life for him.
“Thank you for picking him up for me, Mum,” she said taking a seat beside her on the couch. “Was he okay, today?”
“Yes, all the carers love him at the centre. They were surprised to see me there.”
“I’m sorry. I would have been home on time, but Mercy asked me to type up an urgent report for her at the last minute,” she explained.
“Is she paying you overtime? You shouldn’t have to work all those extra hours.”
“It’s not that much, Mum. It’s just busy at work since one of the girls is on leave, and another one resigned.”
“I’m not surprised about that. That woman you work with sounds like a right royal bitch.”
“August?” Davina laughed. “She is, but she’s not my boss. Mercy is awesome, and she’s been very good to us. She let me bring Logan into work when you were sick, remember?”
Her mum turned to stare at the boy sitting in Davina’s lap. His right ear severely disfigured, the scarring still red. The damage was a stark reminder of how close she came to losing her son to a disgruntled, cheating spouse. He had come after August. Blaming her for his marriage breakdown after he had caught her snapping photographs of him with his mistress.
