Chapter 13 Sydney
Sydney
His lips twitch. “They’re your tattoos,” he agrees.
I switch to a lavender marker and fill in the borders of a Gerbera daisy located midway down his muscled forearm. He tricked me into going with him to get this ink on an early autumn day in a small town in upstate New York. Or maybe I’d wanted to be tricked.
I’d followed him into a tattoo shop with exposed brick walls and scuffed hardwood floors stained a rich shade of espresso. A classic rock soundtrack pumped through ceiling-mounted speakers.
Standing on tiptoe, I whispered in his ear, “If we’re here to shake somebody down for information, this isn’t my wheelhouse.”
He grinned, then brushed my hair aside to whisper back, “No shaking . . . unless I can interest you in a leg-shaking orga—?”
I clamped my palm over his mouth. “No.”
He lifted my hand away, only to hold the inside of my wrist against his cheek for three aching heartbeats.
The act was oddly and profoundly intimate.
A whirring tattoo gun sounded from a room behind a closed door. He released my wrist, straightened, then sauntered over to the reception area like he owned the place.
Rainbow-streaked space buns added four inches of height to the petite woman behind the counter. Tattooed, pierced, and pretty, she visibly lost her breath at the sight of the man in leather before her.
I could tell she did, because when she said, “Welcome to Rebel Ink. Do you have an . . . appointment?” it came out unnaturally high-pitched, and she had to take an extra breath before the word “appointment.”
“I do have an appointment.” He winked at her. “Zack will be working on me.”
She giggled and smoothed down the Peter Pan collar of her short, baby-blue dress. “I’ll need you to read and sign some paperwork . . . sir.”
She passed over a clipboard. “I’ll let Zack know you are”—breath—“here.”
He smiled that sparkling ought-to-be-on-a-toothpaste-commercial smile. “Thanks.”
She giggled again, glanced at me with an excited expression, then practically sprinted to find the missing Zack. The moment she turned the corner and disappeared from sight, a stifled squeal and the deep rumble of a male voice drifted back to us.
I smacked my companion’s chest lightly with the back of my hand. “Stop winking at that poor girl, or she’s going to pass out.”
His eyebrows lifted. “You don’t know that was my fault. She could have asthma.”
“She doesn’t have asthma.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Stop pretending you’re unaware that you’re obnoxiously hot.”
“You think so?” he purred.
“Heavy on obnoxiously.” I took a calming breath. “Why am I here? If you didn’t have time to meet with me at the lab, you could have sent a text or an email.”
“This has nothing to do with Dad’s contract. You’re here as my Tattoo Support Person.”
Tattoo Support—? “Tattoo Support isn’t in my job description.”
“Good thing this has nothing to do with work, then.” He signed his name on the release forms with a flourish.
I sputtered, then thought back to him knocking on my apartment door this morning. He hadn’t said a word about his father’s company or the lab. Well-played, McRae.
A big man with a bald head, a long red beard, tattooed arms, and gauges in both ears entered from the back corridor and headed straight for us, the receptionist hot on his heels.
“Zack.” He thwacked the tattoo artist on the back.
Zack scowled at me, crossed his giant arms over a beefy chest covered in a black logo T-shirt, and jerked his chin.
“This her?” he asked without looking away from me.
“Yup.”
Zack’s face creased into a smile that was equal parts the unfettered joy of a happy toddler and the mischievous smirk of the devil on vacation. “Good to meet you, Sydney. Come on back and pull up a seat.”
We followed him into a pristine workroom and Zack slid a padded stool over for me next to the adjustable table . . . er . . . chair . . . thing he used for his clients.
Zack passed me a binder with sketches in it. “That’s a lot of trust my boy’s got in you.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Not too many people ready to let another person choose ink for them,” he said.
“She has better taste than I do,” my too-gorgeous surprise tattoo date said.
For a moment, all I could do was stare. “You can’t let me choose ink you’ll have for the rest of your life. What if you hate them?”
“I won’t. I had Zack come up with some sketches for you to choose from, but if you have any other ideas, tell him.”
I flipped through the binder. There were a lot of different options, but I stopped when I got to the flowers.
Zack snorted. “You got her number, all right.” He looked at me. “He told me you were gonna stop looking right there when you hit the daisies.”
“I like some of the others too. Would it be weird to do a bunch of different flowers? The dahlia is pretty, and the primroses and the daffodils . . .” I trailed off and gave him an apologetic grimace. “Sorry. You came here for a single tattoo, and I’m trying to sign you up for a sleeve.”
He leaned against the backrest of the chair and shook his head. “This is why I needed you. You know what you like. Don’t worry if they won’t all fit on one arm. We’ll come back as many times as it takes Zack to finish them.”
I chewed on my thumbnail. “Are you sure you want me to do this?”
“If you take too long to choose, we’re going to have to spend the night in one of these cute little bed and breakfasts in this cute little town,” he warned.
Zack settled himself on his stool, put on his black gloves, and busied himself with arranging his client’s arm into readiness. “A sleeve’s gonna take a while. You’re not getting out of here in time to fly home tonight. That’s for sure.”
“Oh, but Rufus—”
“I’ll have one of the staff feed him and keep him company. He’s used to staying at my place when we travel. He’ll be all right,” my companion said.
In the end, I chose two arms’ worth of designs. We’d have to make multiple trips to complete them. I refused to analyze why choosing them felt so good. It wasn’t as though I wrote my name in his skin—just my favorite flowers.
“It’s gonna get painful. He’ll need someone to hold his other hand through it,” Zack said. “You picked the art. You provide the comfort.”
I rolled my eyes. “McRae isn’t afraid of pain. I’ve seen him handle a compound fracture like it was a splinter. He was still cracking dirty jokes while he was barely conscious. If you’re worried about him, give him a lollipop or something.”
Zack blew out a short breath, gave a small shake of his head, settled in, and brought the buzzing tattoo gun to his client’s forearm.
The man in the chair looked back at me, the picture of innocence, and batted his eyelashes.
I narrowed my eyes. “What are you doing?”
He hesitated, then raised his brows in the center. “Ow?”
He was fine, right? He didn’t even look tense. “Do you want me to hold your hand?”
“If you wouldn’t mind.”
I scooted closer and threaded our fingers together for moral support I wasn’t convinced he needed. Just one more time, like when he needed surgery. The truth was that he and I had become far too comfortable touching each other and had been for a long time.
He squeezed back gently. The feel of his lightly calloused palm against mine made unwanted emotion prickle behind my eyes. I wasn’t sad. I was yearning. Deflecting with sarcasm seemed like a good idea. “Do you need me to mop your brow and feed you ice chips too?”
His lips twitched in a repressed smile. “Could you?”
“No.”
His chuckle was that of a man too sexy for either of our good. “Zack, do you or Zoe have any recommendations for where we should stay tonight?”
The (potentially) asthmatic receptionist popped her head around the corner. “Did I hear you say you needed a room? Because the Apple Festival is happening this weekend, so everywhere is booked”—breath—“full, but we own a vacation cabin on the lake. It is so cute and cozy. You will love it.”
“What a great idea, baby. So glad you thought of it,” Zack said in a tone nearly as weird and wooden as hers.
I eyed the two of them suspiciously, noticing her wedding band for the first time. I smelled a setup. If we got to that cabin and there was only one bed, McRae was sleeping on the floor.
A thrill shivered through me. No he wasn’t, but only because his arm would be hurting from his tattoo, and it would be cruel to make a man in pain sleep on hardwood. But I would put a wall of pillows between us. Even if it meant I didn’t have one for my head. Even if it killed me.
I’d be an idiot to fall for him. There’d be nothing left of me when he was done. No career. No friends. No self-respect. Just a bleeding, broken heart.
In this beautiful kitchen in Hawai’i, so far away, I put the cap on my marker and look into the eyes of the man across from me. “What’s your name?”
“Gabriel.” His voice is barely audible.
“Gabriel,” I repeat the syllables in the same volume, combination, and intonation, but that’s all they are: random syllables without meaning. It’s as though I’ve deliberately greased up his name, so it won’t stick. How? Why?
“I called you McRae. The day I chose this ink,” I argue.
“McRae is my last name.”
It should have been obvious all along. I have no idea why I hadn’t recognized it sooner. “My name is Sydney Walsh McRae.”
“You added my last name to yours when we married.”
I did it. He wasn’t lying. I married that man on the street bike. The one whose arms are covered in ink I chose.
Once upon a time, I’d craved him beyond all reason . . . and I’d trusted him as far as I could throw him.