Leave a Mark (9 page)

“That’s not what I meant,” she said, her smile untamed. “You just look really young, and I’ve heard that residents have — like — negative time.”

He gave her a helpless grin. “Negative time. That’s about right. Who told you that?”

Her smile demurred. “One of my clients.”

“One of your clients is a resident?” His curiosity pounced. Did he know someone who was secretly covered in Wren’s work?

“Who?”

She shook her head, but her smile never failed. “I don’t tat and tell. Tattooing is very personal. If someone wants you to see their work, you’ll see it. But I don’t talk about my clients.”

Even though he was the one asking, Lee liked that she wouldn’t answer. “You don’t talk about them at all?”

Wren raised and dropped her right shoulder in a half shrug, but she still smiled at him. “Well, I don’t identify them.” Her voice softened, but Lee thought he heard a touch of pride. “I’ll talk about the artwork, or I’ll retell a funny story someone told me while I worked on them, but I don’t go around talking about who was in my parlor.”

“That’s cool,” he managed, even though it was more than cool. After seeing her artwork on the walls of her apartment, he already respected her as a professional, but she clearly had integrity on top of talent. He wanted to know more, but more than anything, Lee wanted her to keep talking. “What kind of tats did you do today?”

Her smile grew, and again her cheeks colored. He found his eye drawn to the translucent skin below her cheekbones. Wren’s fair complexion was an alluring contrast to her black and blue hair, but when she blushed, Lee found it impossible to look away.

“Well, let’s see…” Her green eyes swiveled to the ceiling as she recounted. “I did a fleur-de-lis for this girl who turned eighteen today. I inked a Captain America shield on this guy’s bicep—”

Lee laughed, not so much about the tattoo choice, but at the look of amusement in her eyes.

“Yeah, he was definitely an
Avengers
fan… Um…” She paused to tally on her fingers. “…I touched up a Celtic knot for a lady, and I worked on a larger piece for one of my regulars.”

“What was it?” Lee asked, intrigued with the way her face softened when she thought about her work.

“Oh, it’s a dragon. Pretty big.” Wren drew a serpentine shape across her chest. “A piece like that needs to be worked on in stages, so we did some of the shading today.”

He had more questions. He could have stood there listening to her all night, but the rational part of his brain told him to give it a rest. They were in the middle of the grocery store. If he wanted to talk to her more, he should ask her out for coffee.

But you can’t ask her out. You’re seeing someone.

“You’re really talented. I’m sure you stay pretty busy. You seem…” He couldn’t find the words for what he wanted to say. He wanted to tell her that she seemed like the kind of person he could talk to — listen to — for hours. And that he would’ve liked the chance. That she was special, and he knew it. “…you seem perfect — I mean… you are unique.”

He didn’t question why she stared at him with unblinking eyes. What the hell had he just said? She was
perfect
? Who talked like that?

But in the seconds after he’d blurted out the words, he watched her eyes light with a smile — a surprised and genuine smile, and he realized he didn’t regret the words at all.

“Um… thank you?” What had been pink on her cheeks was now scarlet, and Lee thought he might have turned a little pink, too.

“I should let you get back to your shopping,” he said, clearing his throat. He didn’t want to walk away. Maybe if he just stood there, she’d leave first, and he’d be able to watch her go.

“Yeah…” She didn’t move.

Neither of them moved.

“…yeah, I should go.”

“It was great running into you,” he said in a rush. “I’m glad you are feeling better.”

“It was nice running into you, too, Dr.—”

“Lee,” he interjected.

She bit her lip and smiled. “Lee,” she said with a nod. “It was so nice, Lee.”

It was selfish. He’d made her say his name and, again, as he knew he would, he felt a stirring — like fingers running down his sternum. He’d never liked the sound of his name so much.

“Wren,” he said with a nod, liking the feel of her name on his tongue even more.

“Goodnight.” She turned and left him.

Lee stood in front of the fish counter at Albertsons and let himself watch her walk away.

“YOU SEEM PERFECT.”

Wren couldn’t stop hearing his voice. And those words? No one had ever said anything like them. Not to her.

“You seem perfect — I mean… you are unique.”

Even with the qualifier, even if he didn’t mean she was actually perfect (And who could? No one on earth could be less perfect), he’d said she was unique. And it didn’t sound like he thought it was a bad thing.

Her whole life, people had told Wren she was strange. Weird. A freak. For years — in grade school — she’d tried to blend in. Mimic the other kids. Dress like they did. Talk like they did. About the things they did. Not about Laurie. Not about having no daddy. Not about the police coming at night.

It hadn’t worked. By the time she was in seventh grade — long after Laurie was gone — she’d given up. If the other kids were going to leave her out and whisper lies behind her back — or worse, whisper the truth — she could at least dress the part. Black lipstick. Black eyeliner. Black hair.

Her Goth uniform had served as a shield. A giant
Fuck You
sign to the rest of the world. How could they reject her if she wanted nothing to do with them? At recess, she’d hidden in the bathroom and touched up her makeup, and at lunch, she’d gone to the art room. No one had ever been in there but Mrs. Bernard, and she’d been able to eat her tuna sandwich and sketch for half an hour.

In high school, she’d bonded with a few other kids who were art-room refugees, and the more she’d learned about color and texture and shading and technique, the less she’d wanted to hide behind all black.

But that didn’t mean she ever really fit in, not until she dropped out of art school at UL and got into ink. The day she got her first tattoo, it was like being reborn.

Still, even in the life she’d built for herself at the studio, even with friends she loved and what remained of her family, even when she let someone into her bed, she had never heard those words.

And his eyes?

They were indigo blue. The color of the darkest swirls in Van Gogh’s
Starry Night.
The color of escape.

She might have been able to dismiss them if they hadn’t looked so intense when he mentioned his mom. Wren didn’t talk about Laurie, but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t give half her organs to have her back. Laurie had been a shitty mom, but she was still her mom. And Wren had a handful of memories that were strong enough to choke her when she let them.

Like the night Laurie taught Wren how to paint her toenails. She’d sat with Laurie on the edge of the tub, her right foot propped on Laurie’s knee. Her mother had shown her how to swipe the tip of the brush on the inside of the bottle to keep from using too much, and then she’d taught her how to start by the cuticle of each toe and let the brush fan out just a little.

When Wren tried on her own, polish had smeared off to the side. Laurie just dabbed it up, saying,
“I make mistakes all the time. The only thing I got right on the first try was you.”

So when she’d mentioned Mamaw’s peach pies, Lee didn’t have to come out and say he’d lost his mom. Wren could tell just by the look of longing in those eyes.

She wondered when it had happened. How it had happened. She hoped it had been nothing like the way she’d lost Laurie. Nothing that Lee felt was his fault.

In spite of herself, Wren thought about his words and his eyes for three days straight. On Monday, she gave up. That afternoon, Wren got out the butter, the flour, and the frying pan. She’d made fried peach pies only about a thousand times with Mamaw, so she knew the recipe by heart, and when her grandmother had stayed with her after the surgery, she’d left a jumbo bag of Sunsweet dried peaches behind.

Two hours later, she had four hand-sized pies. They weren’t quite as pretty as Mamaw’s; those were always a perfect fan-shape, but these were golden, flaky, and plump. While they cooled, Wren made a bag out of parchment and scribbled a sketch out the outside.

In less than a minute on Google, she’d found his street address on Dunreath. It was a little past six o’clock. Chances were that Lee would be at the hospital. But when he came home, he’d find the bag on his doorstep, and he’d know she’d left it.

That was the plan anyway. But when she found the pretty blue house with his white Jeep already parked in the drive, Wren knew she couldn’t just leave his pies outside. He might never see them.

She parked her Mustang on the side street and debated with herself. She didn’t want him to feel uncomfortable, and she didn’t want him to thank her. And most of all, she didn’t want to have to look him in the eye where he could see that she hadn’t stopped thinking about him since the night they met in the ER.

But she did want him to have the pies while they were still warm. And she did want him to feel like she thought he was special, too. And she couldn’t deny that she wanted to see him again.

Wren killed the engine, grabbed the parchment bag, and walked around the corner to the path that led to his front porch. It was screened in, and the door creaked as she opened it. The house made her smile. She’d told him the day he brought her home that she hadn’t pegged him for someone who lived in the Saint Streets. But that was before she’d known that he had an eye for antiques. His home itself was like an antique. It had character and history, and she liked the thought of him living there.

After taking a deep breath for courage, Wren knocked on the dark-stained French door. Footsteps crossed the house, but they were too fast. Too light. Wren’s heart fell just before the door opened.

“Can I help you?” The words were polite, but the copper-blonde towered over her with an expression of annoyance.

“Um… I…” Wren gulped and glanced down at the bag in her hand. Grease had soaked through the parchment in a few places, spotting her drawing.

She looked up to see that the woman’s eyes had followed hers to the bag, and now her lip curled in disgust. Were it not for the scowl, she would have been gorgeous. For a moment, Wren thought she was staring at Blake Lively.

She tried again, fully committing to her humiliation. It wasn’t as if she could turn and flee now.

“Is Dr. Hawthorne at home?”

At her question, the woman’s eyes narrowed, and the ends of her mouth turned up in a hint of a malicious smile. “He’s indisposed at the moment.”

The blonde was sizing her up. Wren could feel it. And the look in her steely gray eyes and that fake smile told Wren she didn’t come close to measuring up. And how could she? The woman before her — from the top of her salon-smooth hair to the bottom of her Sergio Rossi slingback pumps — was elegant. Chic. Lethal.

Next to her, Wren looked like a circus act.

“This was a mistake,” she said, but it came out only just above a whisper.

Blondie rose to her full height and crossed her arms with a smug nod as if to agree when a voice cut across the house. “Marcelle…? Who’s there…?”

This time, the footsteps that echoed across his wood floor were heavy, measured, and Wren had just enough time to die a little before he reached the door.

Because she had lied to herself. The homemade pies weren’t just a gesture of consolation from one motherless child to another. They were a reason to be in his presence. To feel what she’d felt when he looked at her. To find out if the pull toward him was more than one-sided.

Clearly not — not at all.

But the universe was rarely kind to foolish girls, because he stepped into view scrubbing a towel over his shaggy, wet hair, wearing only a pair of light-washed jeans. His sculpted chest and abs were cruel in their beauty. The masculine patch of dark curls on his chest and the flash of hair under his arms would be hard to forget.

Kill me, now.

“Wren?!”
His look of shock would have been almost comical if she weren’t the one mortifying herself. Lee’s dark blue eyes bugged full tilt.

Blondie — Marcelle — whipped around to glare at Lee. “You
know
this person?”

Lee’s eyes tracked from Wren to his girlfriend back to Wren before settling on the bag in her hands.

“Yes,” he said, looking back at Marcelle. “She’s a patient.”

Marcelle’s head cocked back, like a cobra ready to strike. “Well, what’s she doing
here?”

At least she’d directed the question to Lee. Wren glanced to her left through the screen. She guessed she could make it back to her car in about five seconds if she sprinted.

“I don’t know.” She heard Lee say. He sounded mystified, but the softness in his voice made her turn. His eyes locked on hers, and in them, she could read an apology.

I’m sorry if I gave you the wrong impression,
they seemed to say.

At that, even in the pit of her humiliation, Wren felt a spark of anger.

I have to get out of here.

Summoning what remained of her dignity, she thrust the greasy bag of pies into Lee’s hands. “This is just a thank you. I’m sorry to disturb your evening.”

And she turned and bolted out the screen door.

LEE STARED AT
the warm bag in his hands. The scent that rose from it was unmistakable. Fried peach pies.

Oh my God.

“Wren! Wait!”

She didn’t turn. Instead, she ran straight for a turquoise 1968 Mustang coupe parked on Calder Street. He was out the screen door and running barefoot across the yard when Marcelle yelled after him.

“Leland, what the hell?!”

“I’ll be right back,” he called over his shoulder. “Ow! Damnit!” A pricker lodged into the ball of his right foot just as Wren reached her car, but his curse made her turn.