She's Got It Bad

She sighed. “I didn’t think so.”

She headed off again, but stopped in the doorway.

“By the way, I asked what he paid her to sit for him.”

“And?”

“It was a freebie. No fee.”

He shook his head. He refused to believe it.

“No way.”

Jacinta simply raised her eyebrows before swiveling on her heel and continuing out the door.

Forty minutes later he pulled up in front of the address he’d been given. He leaned forward over the steering wheel to check the number above the shop door was correct.

The Blue Rose was a tattoo parlor.

It was the last thing he’d expected. He stared at the dingy front window for a long time before he threw his black SUV into gear and drove home. All the way, he thought about the Fords, felt again the mix of guilt and regret and gratitude that he always experienced when he remembered their kindness to him. Wondered where he would have wound up if it hadn’t been for them taking him in. In a state home, most probably. A problem teen no one wanted to take on.

But the Fords had. They’d supported him through his mom’s brief but brutal illness, then they’d asked him to live with them, offering him their backyard studio. They’d even renovated it for him—new paint, new carpet, insulation so he wouldn’t stew in his own juices in summer.

He and Tom had been best mates, a friendship that hadn’t come easily to Liam. He and his mom had been on the road, moving around for so long that he’d stopped bothering to make friends. He’d seen so much ugliness that it was hard for him to invest in the same things that other kids his age were into—music, cars, chicks. But Tom had made it easy, as had his family. And Zoe…

He could still remember the first time he’d seen her. Tom had brought Liam home after school, and they’d been standing at the open fridge door, drinking soda straight from the bottle when she came into the room. She’d been wearing a pair of cutoff denim shorts and a tank top, her dark, straight hair in a ponytail. Her legs were long and slim, but she seemed uncertain of them, like a baby giraffe trying to walk for the first time. The buds of her breasts pressed against her top, ripe and full of potential. And those eyes…those incredible green eyes.

He’d taken one look at her and choked on the mouthful of soda he’d been swallowing.

She was special. He’d known it the moment he saw her. Every second he spent with her afterward only confirmed it. Over the past twelve years, he’d wondered how she was, what she’d become. She’d be twenty-seven now. He’d always assumed she’d be married, maybe with kids of her own.

He dumped the painting in his empty dining room when he got home. He leaned it against the wall and stared at Zoe’s exposed body, the image blurred by bubble wrap.

This was not something he’d ever imagined for her.

He turned away. He wanted to look at her again, to tear off the bubble wrap and feast on her. Which was exactly why he wasn’t going to. He closed his eyes and forced himself to remember her laugh, the trust in her eyes when she used to look at him, the utter honesty and vulnerability in her face and body when she’d told him she loved him.

Zoe Ford deserved better than this painting and that tattoo shop. First thing tomorrow he was going to seek her out and do whatever it took to put things right in her world.

“HEY, HOW ARE WE this beautiful morning?” Zoe asked as she pushed through the back door into the Blue Rose’s workroom.

“Zoe! Man, I was starting to sweat about you,” Jake Lewis said, throwing her a frustrated look.

She made a big show of checking her watch.

“I’m right on time for my ten-thirty appointment, Jake,” she told her boss.

“Would it kill you to get here twenty minutes earlier?”

“You know I don’t need the prep time. It’s all up here, baby,” she said, tapping a forefinger against her temple.

She shrugged out of her denim jacket and threw it on a chair. Her cowboy boots thumped solidly on the concrete floor as she crossed to her workbench and began setting up for her client.

“Anyone ever told you you’re a smart-ass, Ford?”

“Oh, yeah. First time today, though, so you get a prize.” She flipped her middle finger at him. As she’d hoped, he laughed.

She smoothed her hands down her lace-up jeans as she considered her workbench. Everything looked good—disposable ink cups, new needles ready to go.

“You still performing tonight?” Jake asked as she crossed to the autoclave to collect her sterilized gun.

“Nine o’clock. You going to be there? I’ll put your name on the door.”

“Don’t know if my blood pressure can take it.”

She rolled her eyes. “Pussy.”

Jake moved to the front of the shop and she tugged off the long-sleeved T-shirt she was wearing over a snug black tank. She always got warm when she worked, and she wasn’t about to stop in the middle of inking someone’s back to shrug off her clothes.

She heard the front bell sound and checked the clock. Her client was on time. She raised an eyebrow; she’d lost the bet she’d made with herself. This client had been so nervous when they discussed his appointment that she’d been sure he’d be a no-show, or as they called them, a B-back—the kind of customer who made some excuse to slip out just before the needle touched his skin, promising he’d “be back” but in reality never to be seen again.

She heard the low rumble of a man’s voice as she bagged her spray bottles to prevent cross-contamination.

“Sure, whatever, go through. She’s in the back,” she heard Jake say.

Heavy footsteps sounded on the floor as her customer approached. For some reason her stomach tightened and a shiver of something raced up her spine. Excitement? Fear? Premonition?

She had her back to the door when a deep male voice spoke.

“Zoe?”

All the little hairs stood up on the back of her neck. Slowly she turned around to confirm what her ears were telling her.

Liam. Standing there larger than life, bigger and taller than any of her memories of him. Her chest felt as though someone was sitting on it as she took in the messy dark hair brushing the collar of his leather jacket, the deep brown of his eyes, the crooked line of his nose. His jaw was still strong and stubborn-looking, his shoulders still wide. Some things had changed. His chest was deeper and broader than when he’d been seventeen, making his hips seem narrower, and his thighs were more muscled and bulky. The boy had become a man. A big, powerful man.

Of all the tattoo parlors in Melbourne, she couldn’t believe he had walked into hers. What were the odds?

Hard on the heels of shock at seeing him came a searing wash of anger. Twelve years of resentment and bitterness welled up inside her. The way he’d thrown what she offered him in her face. The way he’d left without a word. And what had happened afterward when she was too wild with grief at losing him to care about anything, especially herself.

“Masters,” she said, crossing her arms over her breasts. She was proud of how cool and unsurprised her voice sounded. “This is a surprise. Long time no see.”

He stared at her and she could see the shock and disbelief in his eyes as he surveyed her from head to toe, taking in her skintight jeans and tank, her breasts spilling over her neckline, the dark kohl on her eyes, the deep red on her lips.

“Jesus, Zoe,” he said. “What the hell are you doing here?”

He was surprised by the grown-up her—that much was obvious.

“What does it look like? I work here. If you’re after some ink, I’ve got an appointment right now. You’ll have to come back later.”