I use the excuse of locking the door to turn my back on him and hide my reddened cheeks. There’s nothing cheaper than a woman who wears too much perfume, and it doesn’t matter how much she paid for the bottle. Or how much her friend paid for the bottle, in this case. Still half-asleep, I must have gone a little overboard with it before I left the house, if he’s commenting on it now.
“We’re doing this in the back room, I gather?” His sharp raptor gaze sizes up the shop in a very calculated way. I worked double time all afternoon, both to keep my idle hands and mind busy while I waited, and because the painters are coming first thing tomorrow morning. There’s nothing much left here, except a few cardboard boxes and a thousand thumb tacks, where Ned had pinned up old newspaper clippings and pictures. I’m probably the least sentimental person on the planet when it comes to material things, and yet I can’t bear to throw them out, so they’re now neatly piled in a box. Maybe someday I’ll put them in an album.
Or I’ll get Dakota to put them in an album. She likes to scrapbook when she gets high.
Composing myself, I edge past him, reaching for the clipboard. “Unless you want to lie out here on the floor. You need to fill out this paperwork, and then I need a copy of your ID.”
He stares at it. “What’s this for?”
“It’s a legal requirement. I can’t put a needle to your skin until you’ve signed. You can fill it out while I finish getting the room ready.” Ned was always strict about filling out the required paperwork. The threat of losing his license was enough to scare him and, while I was working here, to scare me into following his lead.
“Right,” he mutters. “I forgot about that.” I lead him into the back room, watching quietly as his gaze scans the black walls—covered in dusty square outlines where Ned’s portfolio of the weirdest tattoos that he’d ever done used to hang—then the cases of ink that I haven’t decided whether to take home for my own use or sell with the store, and the leather table, laid out flat and covered in plastic wrap, my tools and supplies set on the tray beside it. “The room looks ready to me.”
It’s been ready for him for over two hours. What I need to do is get me ready. “So you said this isn’t your first time?”
The corner of his mouth curls. Setting the clipboard down on top of a box, he reaches over his head and peels off his T-shirt to reveal a canvas of skin and hard muscles and a few scars, along with a sizable tattoo covering his left shoulder.
All nerves temporarily forgotten, I automatically step forward to study its quality and design. “Where’d you get this?”
“San Diego.”
“When?” It looks to be a few years old, at least. And well done, which is good. He probably did his research on that artist, like he did with me. It tells me he’s no idiot.
“Awhile ago.”
I roll my eyes. Not the most talkative guy when it comes to personal questions, I guess. “What is this? A . . .” The helicopter covers the ball of his shoulder. Five men in black dangle from ropes below it. This has to be military, and I’m guessing it has meaning for him. “Were you in the army?”
Cool eyes peer down at me, but he doesn’t answer.
I take that as yes, he was, and no, he doesn’t want to talk about it. It doesn’t really matter to me, but it helps me understand him a little more. His quiet, somewhat rigid demeanor, his lack of reaction, his readiness to help me, willingness to go toe-to-toe with a biker. He’s a soldier—or was—minus the brush cut and “ma’am” at the end of every sentence. Or maybe that was just the Texan Marine I picked up one night in San Diego.
“So, about your design . . .”