Chapter Three
Her lunch was threatening a revisit, as it had for most of the afternoon. Feelings she’d spent the last four years burying raced through her. God, if thinking about going to see the design made her feel so ill, how would she ever get in the chair?
Harper stepped down off the bus. A police cruiser was parked on the road, the officers talking to a cyclist on the sidewalk.
She dipped her head and hurried past. She’d never trust them again.
If they hadn’t withheld evidence, or lied at her trial, he would have received a much longer sentence.
The bitterness burned in her chest like acid.
The walk from the bus stop to Second Circle only took a few minutes, precious time Harper used to settle herself.
Harper pushed the door to the studio open, the coolness of the air-conditioning a blessing. The sofa was empty. Only two tattoos were in progress, and the music wasn’t pounding through her breastbone.
“Hey, Harper.” The same purple-haired woman was behind the counter. “He’s in his office. Said to send you back.” She pointed down a long hallway toward the back of the studio. “Second door on the left. I’m Pixie, by the way. Sorry about yesterday. Wednesdays aren’t usually that crazy.”
Harper nervously took the hand offered toward her and tried not to flinch as she shook it. “Thanks, Pixie,” she said with a tight smile before exhaling heavily.
Breathe, she told herself. Breathe. She raised her hand to knock and yelped when the door swung open. Trent grabbed her arm with a laugh before she fell backward into the wall on the other side of the hallway.
“Sorry,” he said, still grinning. “Didn’t mean to scare the crap out of you.”
She felt tiny in his arms as he righted her. Her free hand was across her heart in a lame attempt to stop its pounding. Way to go on making a good impression. The warmth of his hand seeped through her blouse, burning her skin with his touch.
“Come on in. I was just getting up to see if you were here yet.” Laugh lines crinkled at the corners of his eyes, and darn, if it didn’t make him look good.
“I’m here. But, holy guacamole, I’m scared.”
“Can I get you a water or something?”
“Sure. That would be great.” He moved his hand off her arm and she immediately felt the loss of his touch.
“Be right back,” he said as he left. “Have a seat,” she heard him shout from the hallway.
Harper took a moment to look around the office.
She’d always imagined tattoo studios to be grungy and dingy places, but she was happy to be wrong.
The dark gray wool of the sofa was soft to her fingertips and the lime-green cushions were so plush that they beckoned her to fall down into them.
She could imagine Trent sitting at the long table by the wall, focused on the laptop that was currently showing extraordinary artwork as a screensaver.
Images of tattoo sleeves, covering from the shoulder down to the elbow or even wrist, flickered by.
She wondered if they were all Trent’s work.
In the middle of the room was a light table on which there were several jars of pens and pencils.
The whole room was painted a soft gray. Wonderful vintage photographs of early burlesque dancers adorned the wall—girls who knew how to put the tease back in striptease.
They had that classic retro style of the 1930s and ’40s, reminiscent of Bette Davis and Jean Harlow.
From a dark-haired belly dancer in a bejeweled bra and sheer skirt to a stunning blonde with huge feathers and sparkling heels, they were seductive without being lewd.
Sinking down on the sofa, Harper clasped her hands together. She didn’t need the cramp that would follow tonight from flexing them.
Trent returned, sitting down next to her as he handed her the water. She popped the top off and drank as she watched him do the same.
“I like your office.”
“You sound surprised.” His mouth was turned up at one corner, revealing the cutest dimple.
“No.”
He raised an eyebrow at her.
“Okay. Maybe.”
“What were you expecting? A frat house dump?”
“Honestly … something a little more … I don’t know … rock ‘n’ roll.”
“Like skulls and red velvet?” He laughed, and Harper was suddenly embarrassed by her clichéd expectations.
“You asked,” she responded with a small smile.
“My sister Kit is an interior designer. She helped me with the whole place.” He looked around the room. “So. Ready to do this?” he asked. “This is the easy part.”
Harper nodded. “I think I am.”
Trent got up and went to the light table, flicking the light on. He reached over to grab the brown cardboard tube, flipped the plastic lid off, and pulled the papers out.
He held out his hand toward her. “There is only one rule from this point on.”
Trying not to overthink it, she reached out and took his hand and he lifted her to her feet.
“What’s that?”
His dark eyes looked deep into hers unflinchingly.
“Total honesty. Once we do this, it’s going to be on your back a really long time.
You need to love it. Not just like it. Not just decide it’s good enough because it covers up what is already there.
You have to love every single piece of it.
It has to speak to you. You won’t hurt my feelings at all if you don’t like it.
We’ll draw it as many times as we need to so it’s perfect for you. ”
What he was saying made sense and addressed one of her own worries, not wanting to offend him if she didn’t like what he had drawn for her. “Okay. That, I can do.”
He unrolled the artwork onto the table, the design slowly revealing itself to her. It was too much to take in. The colors drew her eye, and the beautiful lines of the lettering captured her breath. She lifted her hands to her face in a prayer.
She could feel Trent studying her, scrutinizing her reaction. The first tear rolled down her cheek as she moved to stand in front of the sketch and touched it with two of her fingers.
The sword, with its jeweled handle and detailing, was spectacular.
The flames were so vivid and looked so real that her fingers felt hot as she stroked over them, yet the way they morphed into fiery flowers was beautiful.
The stone was dark granite with sparks within it.
And the script—it was perfect. The slanted italic script swirling through the fire simply stated “…strongest steel … hottest fire.” It was everything she had hoped it would be.
She moved her fingers over it a second time.
Trent came to stand next to her. “Like it?”
“Like it? It’s exquisite,” she whispered, struggling to rein in her emotions. “I’ve never … I mean … shit … sorry. I’ve never seen anything quite like it. Are you sure you can do this on me?”
“Yeah. See this area here where it’s just flames?
That’s where the two biggest vertical scars are.
And this part here, where the rocks are, this will be where the horizontal scar is.
We’re going to draw people’s gaze away from the scars by just shading here, making the focus the sword and text down the center.
That’s where all the detail will be, the fine-line work.
That’s what people are going to look at.
Not going to lie, though. It’s going to hurt like a bitch. ”
“No more than it did when he did this.” Holy shit. Words like loquacious, garrulous, and voluble came to mind. Had she meant to say that? Unlikely. She didn’t talk about him. Ever. Unless she counted the one time she’d felt the need to share with Drea—and that had been a long time in the making.
“What if I can’t do it?” Harper asked. “What if it’s too much?”
“I’ll get you through this. I promise. If it takes fifty short appointments, if I have to come to your home, if I have to sic Cujo on you, I’ll get you through it somehow. We’ll figure it out.”
They stood in silence as Harper continued to run her fingers over his design.
Needing to lighten the conversation, she shook the thought of not being able to go through with it from her head. “Maybe I’ll be able to wear a bikini before the end of the summer.”
“Now there’s your motivation. You go through with this and I’ll buy it for you.”
Harper looked up at him. “No! You can’t do that. I’ll buy it.”
“Yes, I can. You aren’t the only one who likes a bit of motivation.
” He smiled at her, but his eyes were intriguingly inscrutable.
Was he flirting with her or just being nice?
It had been so long since she’d had even the remotest interest in someone that she couldn’t even tell anymore. He held out his hand to her.
“Deal?” He narrowed his eyes at her.
“Okay.” She reached out and put her hand in his. “Deal.”
He gave her a rough sense of the cost. It made her eyes water, but she could afford it. She clutched the piece of paper that listed her appointments.
“Just one last thing I’d like to do before you go,” Trent said as he put the designs back into the brown tube.
“What’s that?”
“I need a sketch of your back.” Harper could feel the color drain from her face. She’d thought she’d have a few days to deal with the psychological buildup of him touching her.
“I’m going to make the transfers that make up the outline, so I can put them on your back at your first appointment. I drew the artwork with a rough idea in mind.”
She watched as he put the brown tube on a shelf, Harper Connelly written on it in black marker in the same script he’d used in her tattoo.
There was a small lotus blossom in the curve of the letter Y.
Trent had paid attention to every small detail.
Grabbing her own hand, she jammed her fingers painfully together to stop their usual dance.
“Guess I am going to have to get used to you touching my back at some point.”
He turned back to look at her. Reaching out, he separated her hands, holding them gently and rubbing his thumbs on her inner wrist. His furrowed brow relaxed as he looked at her. “Yes, you are.”
“Okay. Where do you need me?”