Zoe accepted a cup of coffee from Willa, set it carefully on the kitchen table, beyond Keira’s reach, then carried on spooning mashed bananas into her daughter’s sweet little rosebud mouth. Zoe hated bananas with a passion, and fervently wished that Keira would develop a love affair with applesauce. So far, no luck, so Zoe breathed through her mouth and avoided looking directly at the bowl.
“So,” Willa said, plunking herself down at the table with a yawn, smiled at Keira. She sipped her coffee, yawned again and glanced at the clock. “Why the actual heck are you up so early? The place opens at noon, Zee, and you’re the darn boss, and part-time to boot. Nobody to impress on your first day, girl, so why in the name of all that’s holy and right, are you getting ready to roll out of here at seven-oh-four a.m.?”
Zoe nodded at the stacks of paper on the living room coffee table. “Paperwork.”
“What about it?”
“Wolf gave me all that stuff when I took the job. It’s employee records, time tables, client lists, price lists, order forms, suppliers, projections, budgets, expenses… and so on and so on. It’s not impossibly hard, most of it, but it’s all new, and from what I can see, the parlor’s short on tons of stuff. Nobody’s done a proper inventory, either, so I want to get there early and take a look at the stock. Place some rush orders if I have to.”
“Oh, gotcha.”
“And I have a client coming at noon, and I haven’t seen the sketch they’ve left of the tattoo they want. I called Saint yesterday, and he said that it’d be in the file cabinet next to the entrance, so I need to go take a look. It could be a tiny fifty-buck job, or a full sleeve that needs eight sessions. No clue. If it’s really complex and has to be free-hand, then I need to get ready.”
“OK, boss lady.” Willa extended her hand. “Gimme the spoon. You drink your cup of energy, and haul a-s-s.”
With nothing but joy, Zoe handed the spoon towering with mushy bananas over to her friend, who made a face at Keira as she fed her. The baby giggled, made a cooing sound, lightly slapped the tray on the high chair. Zoe was full-on certain that she’d never stop being grateful for Willa’s love for Keira, for her unflinching friendship and support, for her tireless help. The truth was that if not for Willa, Zoe would have gone under a long time ago, back there in North Dakota… and as much as she hated to think about it, she’d quite possibly have dragged that sweet baby down with her as she’d done so.
“OK, so.” Zoe drank her coffee like the answer to her salvation was at the bottom of the cup. “I finish work at about three, and in between stuff, I’ll meet a few potential babysitters. Fingers crossed I find an awesome one who can maybe come over tomorrow to meet Keira. You and me can see how they are around each other, see if we trust her.”
“Huh.” Willa scowled and narrowed her angelic blue eyes. “She’s gonna have to be something amazing, Zee, for me to hand this baby over to her.”
“You know it, girl.” Zoe scowled herself. “No way I’m giving Keira to some moronic stunted twit who spends all day staring at her phone, taking duck-faced selfies, and dreaming of getting rich and famous quick with a makeup tutorial vlog.”
“Right?”
“So, yeah, I’ll keep looking until I find someone great, but it may take a while.” Zoe hesitated. “You sure you can stick around until then? I mean, I know it’s Fargo and all – but you do want to have a job to get back to.”
“It’s all sorted out.” Deftly, Willa scooped a bit of banana mush that had dribbled down Keira’s face, leaving a slimy trail down her chin. “Don’t worry about it.”
“You keep saying that,” Zoe protested. “But how is it all sorted out? Why shouldn’t I worry?”
“Because.” Willa popped the last spoonful of bleuch into Keira’s mouth, handed over her sippy cup. “I have a – ummmm – a kinda special relationship with the Costco manager.”
“No.” Zoe damn near choked on her coffee. “You mean Jimmy?”
“Yeah.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“For how long have you had this special relationship?”
“About – what? Four weeks?” Willa took the bowl over to the sink and rinsed it. “We’re just dating, Zee, nothing to get all excited about.”
“‘Just dating’?” Zoe echoed. “You haven’t ‘just dated’ anyone in… Jesus, what is it now? Like… two years? Nobody since Randy, right?”
“Argh,” Willa muttered. “Freaking Randy. And he sure as heck was, wasn’t he? With eight different women, last I heard, the lying, cheating scumbag.”
“I know, babe. He was the worst.”
“Hands down,” Willa agreed. “The worst of the worst. The worstest.”
“No argument from me, and can we get back to Jimmy now?” Zoe wiped Keira’s hands and mouth, then lifted her squirming little ray of sunshine into her arms. “And you can begin by telling me why you didn’t so much as breathe one word about you seeing him.”
“Well…” Willa fidgeted a bit. “Because – well, you’ve met him.”
“Uh, yeah. So?”
“So.” Willa exhaled. “You know he’s not really… well. I mean, the man isn’t a hot, sexy step class instructor with abs of steel. He’s a forty-eight-year-old supermarket manager with an ex-wife and a beer gut.”
“Again, I say, ‘so’?”
“So. I guess he’s just really, really vanilla. Works hard. Saves money. Sees his kid every weekend. Has a sad little straggly ponytail and no hair on top.”
“Wow.” Zoe danced around a bit and Keira laughed, grabbed at her long hair. “You’re making him sound sooo hawt. Better than I remember, actually.”
“He’s not drop-dead gorgeous, is my point.”
“Not the way you’re describing him, though I recall he has some incredible ink on his shoulder and chest, and he has beautiful green eyes.”
“Well.” Willa’s expression softened, got all wistful and dreamy, maybe even a bit moony. “Yeah.”
“Hey, sweetie. Is he good to you?”
“Oh, yeah.” Willa’s look got even more moony, crossed pretty firmly over into mushy banana territory. “Zee, he’s great. I mean – the man holds the door for me, you know? Brings me flowers. Shows up when he says he will, no bullshit or playing games or making we wonder. Calls me every night before bed, and asks me how I’m doing. Bakes me double-white-chocolate-chip cookies and slips ‘em into my lunch bag in the staff fridge when nobody’s around.”
“Aww.” Despite her white-knuckled moratorium on romance, Zoe found that she was kind of crushing on Jimmy herself. “Showing up on time and sneaking you homemade cookies are hawt, and I hope you know it.”
“That basic stuff is not hawt, it’s… well. Boring. Sweet, maybe, but still.” Willa shrugged. “It’s not anything like having wild step classes in a bar back room, is it?”
“Please.” Zoe snorted. “Wild step classes in a back room are all well and good, but it’s not the kind of thing that respectful and lasting relationships are based on.”
“You sure about that?” Willa asked, since for reasons that she couldn’t quite pin down, a small part of her was kind of rooting for the biker with the growly voice and gentle touch. “Really sure?”
“Positively sure,” Zoe said firmly, downing the rest of her coffee. “Now – I gotta go.”
She gave Keira a big kiss, then set her down on the floor carefully. Immediately, the baby made a bee-line for the door to the backyard, and Willa was off in pursuit.
Zoe laughed, feeling a wave of happiness wash over her, the biggest, most all-encompassing wave that she’d felt in ages. It was all just so right: this big, sunny kitchen in this cute house, Keira crawling for the gorgeous backyard, Willa having a kind, faithful man waiting for her back home, Zoe heading out the door to a job that was going to change her life for the better.
And really, when she thought about things that way, why did she need a man?
Short answer: she didn’t.
Not even one with sapphire eyes and diamond scars. One who could fuck like a train, then cradle her like she was made of spun sugar.
Especially not one like that.
**
A little over three hours later, Zoe hung up the phone with the nitrile glove supplier, feeling completely happy and proud. At eight-oh-nine that morning, she’d walked into a disorganized, poorly-run and -managed tattoo place, with a storage room lacking any kind of back-up supplies and a client schedule smudged coffee-cup rings and reeking of onions. She’d looked around, sighed, shrugged off her jean jacket, and buckled down.
After a solid morning of work, and a pot of coffee, and some focus and the speed-reading of a whole lot of additional paperwork, Zoe felt comfortably on top of things at Blue Dragon Ink. There was still a lot to get done, of course, but she felt on much steadier ground, at least, had a sense of the bigger picture. She wasn’t happy that so much had slipped through the cracks, but at least she knew that it had happened, and she had taken some of the most important steps to fix the situation.
She glanced at the clock, saw that she had about thirty minutes before her client showed up for what had turned out to be a pretty straight-forward tattoo on her lower back – a lucky clover, which was about as easy as Zoe could ask for. Plus, it had the bonus of maybe being a good luck charm, here at the beginning of her new life.
She’d just finished having this optimistic-as-all-hell thought when she heard the door open behind her. She turned, wondering if maybe Saint or Viking had shown up a bit early for their shift, or maybe her client was super-eager to get inked… but when she saw the man standing there – scowling, scarred, sexy-as-fuck – she felt her spirits plummet. All of her happiness just crashed to the ground; her little bubble of ‘I love my new life!’ burst into a hundred pieces.
Fucking, fucking, fucking Scars Innis.
“Hey, Zoe,” he said, and his voice was as deep and dark and devastating as she remembered it. “How you doin’, baby?”
She flashed, just for a second, to that voice whispering her name as he thrust inside her sweetly trembling body, to the way he growled as he came so deep and hard, to the possessive tone of mine that she’d heard in the way that he’d said he wanted to see her again. She thought about all of that just for a second – or maybe two, or seven, or maybe she hadn’t stopped thinking about it at all since the other night – and then she took command of herself.
“What do you want?” she asked, aiming for Siberian temperatures in both tone and body language. “I’m busy.”
He moved closer, gazing at her intently. Then he cocked his head to one side and gave her that slow grin, the one that made her knees go weak.
Damn the man.
“Coffee,” he said abruptly, setting the styrofoam take-out cup on the reception area counter. “For you. For your first day with us in an official capacity. Thought you could use it. I know you have your hands full here, with the mess that got left behind. Saint and Viking and Arrow are great guys, great artists, but none of them could manage their way out of a wet paper bag.”
“Uh,” she said, blinking a bit, sure that if she took anything more from the man, she’d only live to regret it. “I’m cutting back. Thanks anyway.”
“Yeah?” he asked, his amazing eyes flicking to the half-full cup of coffee in her hand, to the empty pot standing in the coffee maker next to the door. “Doesn’t seem that way, Zoe.”
“Starting right now, I’m cutting back,” she said crisply. “So take your coffee, Scars, because I won’t be drinking it.”
He stared at her, feeling all the hard-won calm that he’d talked himself into at home that morning start to unravel already. “So… you won’t even take a cup of coffee from me? After what happened between us the other night?”
“Jesus Christ,” she said, her exasperation making her reckless, angry, smart-mouthed. “Nothing happened between us, OK?”
“That’s not how I remember it, baby.”
“I don’t care what you think you remember,” she snapped. “Develop amnesia, Innis, because as far as I’m concerned, I don’t know you beyond a ‘hi, I’m Wolf’s friend Zoe’ while we were standing at the bar.”
“Is that right?”
“Yes.” She tossed her head, narrowed her green eyes. “That is goddamn right. Now get the hell out.”
Scars felt his brow wrinkling in confusion as Zoe ordered him from the tattoo parlor. Just what the actual fuck was going on here, anyway? OK, sure, she’d beat it out of the back room the other night, which had been surprising in its about-face from smoking-hot to icy-cold, but he’d really thought that she’d freaked out a bit at how sudden it had all been. Thought that she’d be calmer and more open to him by now. And why not? It’s not like he’d done anything that she hadn’t been on board with. Hell, she’d clearly enjoyed herself.
So – what was the issue here? Why was she acting like he’d spit in her coffee, or something?
“What the fuck?” he demanded. “Why are you pretending that the other night didn’t happen?”
“Jesus Christ,” Zoe repeated. She shook her head, sighed. “Look, you really don’t have to do this.”
“Do what?”
“Act like you give a crap.”
“Uhhh…” Scars stared down at her, wondering if he’d ever met a woman who simultaneously turned him on and pissed him off as much as this one did; on the whole, he decided that he had not. “You need to explain that, Zoe.”
“Look, what happened… it was what I temporarily needed, it was what you momentarily wanted.” She shrugged, and her luscious breasts rose and fell with the dismissive movement. “So, it was… fun. A fun one-nighter. I needed a stress-release, and you were it, so thanks for that.”
“Wait up,” Scars said, feeling like he’d just been hit with a two-by-four. “Are you really standing there and saying ‘thank you very much for the fuck’?”
“I’m guessing your one-nighters don’t usually say thank you?” She gave him a snarky little grin. “Not very polite of them, huh?”
“Why do you keep pretending that it was a ‘one-nighter’?” he said tightly.
“Why do you keep pretending that it wasn’t? That it meant anything at all to you?” she demanded, totally exasperated now, and letting fly. “I know it didn’t. I know there’s no way that it ever could.”
Not liking her choice of words even a tiny bit, he glared at her. “What the hell does that mean?”
She glared right on back, not cowering or backing down at all. “It means that I know exactly what you are.”
“OK, stop.” He was straight-up furious now, and he took a step closer, crowding her, entering her space. “You know exactly what I am? What am I, Zoe, in your opinion?”
She shrugged, trying to look all nonchalant and uncaring even as her heart pounded like crazy in her chest at his proximity; she blamed the caffeine overdose, and decided to start cutting back for real. Oh, and dear Lord above, look at the thick cords of his neck, the solid curve of muscle under that damn t-shirt, those gorgeous eyes spitting blue fire.
C’mon, Zoe, focus.
“Look, Scars.” Her voice came out cool and detached, thank Christ. “You wanted to get laid, and so did I. So, we got laid together. It was mutually beneficial and satisfying, but that’s all it was. And now it’s over.”
“So – in your opinion – I’m a walking dick, right? Something to screw, get a few orgasms out of, call it a day?” God, he was hoping that she’d disagree with him, tell him that she’d felt that amazing connection the way that he had. The way that he still did. And no, he didn’t mean the one in the bedroom – though that one had been pretty damn astonishing, too. But she promptly dashed his hopes, brutally and totally.
“Uh, yeah. That was all I wanted from you that night.” She stared at him, wondering why he looked so damn angry. She was the one making this easy, after all, while he was the one who wanted to talk it to death. “Isn’t that all you wanted it to be?”
“So.” He spoke quietly now. “You were using me.”
“Uh, yeah,” she repeated. “And you were using me. We both got what we were after. No harm, no foul, no expectations or complications, and I just don’t get what the problem is here.”
“You want to know what the problem is?”
“Yeah.”
He leaned closer now and startled, she backed away. Unfortunately, the wall was right there, and she couldn’t go very far. She froze up, suddenly afraid of being all alone with this huge, angry man.
The feeling of being trapped and threatened only got worse when Scars raised both hands to the wall on either side of her head, his large arms bracketing and caging her in. She stared up at him, torn between longing and fear, barely breathing as that amazing body touched hers.
“The problem, baby, is that I don’t do one-nighters.” He scowled. “I never have.”
She laughed at that, and that was when her fear evaporated. “You sure as hell do, Scars. You did with me.”
“I didn’t know that’s what it was with you.”
“Oh, my God. Really?” She was mocking him now, and suddenly that seemed like the best way to get out of this confusing situation: make him mad as hell at her so he’d storm out, and then – with a bit of four-leaf-clover luck – he’d stay far, far away from her. Forever. “So when you took me to the bar back room, you were proposing marriage?” Her lip curled up. “My mistake, Scars.”
“Hey.” The urge to shake her until she stopped talking complete bullshit was building in his broad chest. “Zoe –”
“Look, I don’t understand what you’re trying to do here,” she cut him off. “But if I had to guess, I’d say that it’s got something to do with Wolf.”
That threw him and his brow furrowed again. “Wolf?”
“Yeah.” She was back in control now and she glared at him. “You know he’s my best friend, and you know he’s gonna be pissed that you had sex with me. I think you’re just covering your ass with your Prez here, Scars.”
“Hold up.” He shook his dark head, stunned at just how badly she thought of him. He knew he wasn’t a goddamn choir boy, of course, but come the fuck on. “You honestly think that it went something like this: I was with you, and then started to worry that Wolf would kick my head in for touching the woman that he considers his kid sister. So – to throw him off – I’m playing at actually liking you and actually wanting to see you again… all to make Wolf think that I’m treating you with some respect?”
Zoe paused. Alright, she had to admit that hearing it uttered out loud like that showed her just how idiotic of a theory it was, but she needed to stick to her guns. She lifted her chin, defiant. “That about sums it up. Yeah.”
“That’s the stupidest fucking thing I’ve ever heard. And I know you’re not stupid, Zoe, so why are you acting that way?”
“I’m not being stupid,” she snapped, goaded into revealing more than she wanted. “I’m protecting myself.”
Surprised, he leaned back a bit to better see her eyes. “From me?”
She shoved against him now, hard. She caught him off-balance and unprepared, and so despite his much greater height and weight, he stumbled backwards. Quick as a hiccup, she put about ten feet between them, surveyed him from the other side of a reclining chair. It was unfolded all the way down now, so its table-like length was a decent barrier between them.
“Zoe…” He took a step forward. “Hey –”
Fear flashed across her face and this time, he saw that it went deep. Right away, he stopped.
“OK, OK.” He held up his hands. “I’m staying right over here.”
“No,” she said, backing up another few feet. “You’re leaving.”
“No,” he responded, his voice gravely with frustration. “We’re not done talking about this.”
“We sure as hell are.” She glanced at the clock on the wall. “I have my first client in less than fifteen minutes, so I’ll thank you to go now. I need to get things ready.”
“Fine.” He stalked over to the door, wrenched it open so hard she thought he’d tear it right off its damn hinges, and turned to her, his face like thunder. “This conversation is postponed, baby, but it’s nowhere close to over. What happened between us wasn’t the fucking end of anything, you hear me? It was just the beginning and the sooner you realize that, the better it’s all going to be for everyone. Have a good first day at work, Zoe. I hope it goes well for you.”
And with that, he was gone, leaving Zoe to stare after him. Wondering and hoping… and wondering why she so badly wanted to hope for something with Scars.
Fucking, fucking, fucking Scars Innis.
Mistake. Fatal fucking mistake. One not to be repeated, ever ever again.
Even if you want to.
God, Zoe. You idiot.