More Than Meets the Ink (2 page)

This was so not happening. Not fair. Her life was shitty enough as it was; she had enough trouble with Rosita’s crumbling down on her and her own private stalker e-mailing her to death. Her peace of mind couldn’t afford her mom going bonkers on top of that. They’d all gone through enough, dammit; she didn’t need any more crap right now.

After stepping into the house, a shorter and older version of James intercepted them.

“What do you want now, Ann?” the man asked, his tone resigned. As he glanced at his son, a huge smile broke across his face. “Hello, Jimmy boy, you came early!”

“Just in time to intercept the invasion, it seems.”

“Ha! I knew it,” Ann said, ignoring everyone else and lunging for the kitchen, where a faint meow could be heard.

“I’ve done nothing to your cat,” Mr. Bowen said, trying to placate her.

When Tate reached the kitchen, she saw Amy in a cardboard box, curled around what looked to be five or six of the ugliest kittens she’d ever seen. Nothing like the aristocratic, full-blooded, cream-colored, short-nosed Persian Amy was. The kittens, despite being just days old, had pointed ears, already too-long noses, and were three or four different shades of badly mismatching colors.

Her mom was so going to freak. She’d been saving Amy’s reproductive capabilities for last year’s European champion. Pity the sheltered pussycat had had other arrangements in mind and gone swinging.

Her mother shrieked.

“Now, Ann, don’t be upset. She just started popping them out under my kitchen table. What was I supposed to do? I warned you she was not just getting fat. You just didn’t want to hear it.”

Yeah, that pretty much sounded like her mom, self-denial until the very end.

That was too much. Tate turned around and, dragging her feet, went to sit on the wooden deck of the patio. She didn’t need to be ringside to witness her mother’s meltdown. No, thank you very much, the backyard would be quite close enough.

James dropped his duffel on the floor of the kitchen and, leaving his father to deal with the kitten situation, followed that sexy piece of ass currently wiggling its way out of the condo. All and all, the sexiest commando chick he’d ever had the pleasure to intercept. She was nicely curvy where it mattered, her cutoffs riding low on her hips, hugging her cute behind, the huge, crazy knot of hair at the back of her head bouncing with each step, threatening to unravel at any second, especially as she was shaking her head vigorously. He was about to yell for her to wait when he realized she wasn’t running away. The girl harrumphed in exasperation, sat at the far edge of the wooden deck, bent her knees up, propped her elbows on them, lowered her head, and placed her palms on the nape of her neck. She was muttering something much resembling a blue streak any sailor would be proud of in between clenched teeth.

James grinned. Nice new neighbors—a bit weird, but nice. And they were new, he was sure of it; such a luscious behind wouldn’t have passed unnoticed. Not that he was on the make. He wasn’t, especially not here, but this place was always crawling with visiting granddaughters, daughters, and nieces, and he was, in one way or another, acquainted with all of them. Not personally or by choice, but old folks loved to play at matchmaking, and introducing all the eligible women in their families under thirty-five to him seemed to be the number one sport around here. He tried to dodge as many as he could without insulting anyone, but apparently decent sons-in-law were scarce. Or so he’d heard repeatedly since his father had moved down here.

He sat beside her. She smelled nice. Sweet and fresh. Like rain. Like pine and grass. Maybe all the wet grass smeared on her arms and stuck to her chest had something to do with it. For a while he sat just there, hearing her swearing under her breath, until curiosity got the better of him.

“Upset about the kittens?”

She stopped muttering, looked up at him, and smiled, her whole face lighting up with that small gesture.
Whoa
. He almost choked on the breath he was taking. She was even prettier than he’d thought: huge eyes the color of a Siberian husky’s, soft pink mouth, dark hair, mischief in her smile, a deep sadness in her gaze.

“No, those are some ugly kittens all right, but I couldn’t care less about their pedigree or lack thereof. I gather your saber tooth is multicolored, right?”

James nodded. “It’s not ours though; he just drops by quite often.”

She shook her head and chuckled silently. “Fantastic, an alley cat. Getting better and better.”

Ann’s words interrupted his daughter’s as they carried from the kitchen. “Oh, but I can and I will! I’m blaming this on you, mister; after all, you’re the one who was always—”

“You know,” Tate said, turning to James, cutting into the voices coming from the house. “I blame myself. I should’ve insisted on her moving to a residential complex for seniors in Alaska, not in Florida.”

Her pale blue eyes were so mesmerizing and her sweet voice so captivating that for a moment they blocked the whole world. His dad and Ann could be torching the place, and James wouldn’t have given a fuck. And that was weird because she wasn’t his type—at all. He tended to gravitate toward another kind of beauty—the more overt, sexually wicked one. Lots of makeup, in-your-face women. Exuberant, sophisticated, glamorous, a bit artificial too. Aggressive, sexually and otherwise. Real-looking women seemed to fly below his radar. Not this one, though. He’d noticed her right away; she was adorable with those huge, beautiful, husky’s eyes and her chocolate hair trying to escape the confinement of the twist it had at some point been pulled into. No makeup on her, none that he could notice anyway. And no strong, expensive cologne searing his nostrils, which was usually the case with his dates. When he used to date, back in the Stone Age.

He saw her lips moving but couldn’t catch a word. “Come again?” James asked, confused. All his blood supply was en route somewhere much farther south than his head; it made him a bit distracted. And twitchy.

“I said this heat is melting my mom’s brains. A complete neurological meltdown. I take full responsibility.”

He chuckled. “Nah, she’s just new here, and this place is quite overwhelming at the beginning. Take it from me. My dad’s been here for five years, and I still get intimidated every time I come to visit.”

She smiled at him, and for some reason he felt that smile all the way down to his toes.

“Sorry for this scene,” Tate said, gesturing toward the house. “And for almost breaking and entering. I’m sure by the time she was forcing your lock with her credit card, I’d have found a way to get her to see the light. Even if it doesn’t look that way, we are good people. Normal. Neighborly.”

“Are you telling me that apart from crawling guerrilla-style, your mom also busts locks with credit cards? Whoa, I’m going to have to watch out for her. Too much of a bad influence for my father.”

She fought it for a couple of seconds but then burst into laughter. An earthy and unrestrained laugh that had her shaking uncontrollably while all the tension seemed to seep out of her body.

Jesus, she was beautiful. And sweet. And she was making him hot, here on his dad’s patio, just by laughing. Go figure. Spontaneity was something else he wasn’t accustomed to. His dates were always more restrained in their emotions. Uncontrolled outbursts of any kind, besides lust, weren’t first on their to-do list.

He’d bet this girl wouldn’t do restrained in any form. The twist at the back of her head had all but given out, and James realized she had tons of hair, spilling in an unruly fashion all over her shoulders, swallowing her, falling over her face as she doubled over laughing. Nothing like Faith, his last on-and-off-sex-without-strings partner, with her platinum blonde, straight, chin-length hair. Faith had kept her hair back and out of her face, even used a fixing gel for it. Restrained, sexually aggressive, and artificial. Tate was anything but artificial. She was damn spontaneous. The sweet, what-you-see-is-what-you-get girl next door. That white-picket-fence, happily ever after sort of woman he normally avoided like the plague.

Holding her stomach, she drew a deep breath and tried to stop laughing. It took a while before she succeeded. “Sorry…this is hysterical laughing… Can’t help it. I’m just worried sick.”

He remained silent, curiously observing her. Her snug, white tank top was covered in green stains and pieces of grass. He felt like dusting them away. Sure, like groping her tits on his dad’s patio was going to go over well with her, even if his intentions weren’t all that sleazy; he was neat to a fault, and the blades of grass and those smears on her top were badly messing with his conception of the world. To avoid giving in to temptation and getting his ass kicked, James shrugged off his jacket. As long as his hands were busy, they wouldn’t dart toward Sweet Tits here and start feeling her up. And he was sweating. From having her so close by or from the Florida heat, he wasn’t sure. Probably the former, not that he was ready to admit to anything.

The second he took his jacket off, she lifted her eyes to the tattoo on his arm, wrinkled her nose, and flinched in distaste. Her smile froze on her face. Man, spectacular shut down. She wasn’t sweet and relaxed anymore. Stiff as a board was more like it.

“Nice,” she said, pointing at the visible part of his dragon under his short sleeve. If her expression was anything to go by, then in her world, nice double-teamed with repugnant and disgusting. He looked at his arm, half expecting to find God only knew what there that would explain her reaction, but no, it was just his tattoo, nothing more.

There was a story there, but he was so not getting into that; too early in the morning. He ignored her reaction and plunged forward.

“Tate, right?”

She peeled her eyes from his tattoo and nodded.

“Are you down here visiting your mother? I haven’t seen you around before.”

“Yeah.” She sighed and looked up into the open sky. “She moved here five months ago. This is my first visit. I’ve been busy at home.”

“Where’s home?”

“Boston.”

“No shit! We’re also from the greater Boston area. From Alden, a thirty-minute drive from the city. What a coincidence.”

She shrugged a bit uncomfortably. “Actually it isn’t. A coincidence, I mean.”

His eyes narrowed on her. “Not only intrusive tendencies, but stalking ones too?”

She sighed again, her eyes still fixed on the sky. “Not exactly. When my mom moved here, there were several condos free in the area assigned for her age group. I asked if there was anybody from Boston or the greater Boston area, and your dad’s name came up. The Nicholsons too, but there was no available condo near them. So you got us.”

“Lucky us.”

Tate grimaced. “Yeah, lucky you. I thought she wouldn’t feel so disconnected from home this way. Needless to say, I didn’t foresee her behaving like a…lunatic. She’s been going through a rough patch, and she’s developed some freaky tendencies.”

He’d seen that. Maybe it would be in everyone’s best interest to help her adapt before her “tendencies” escalated into full-blown, trigger-happy ones and the whole Eternal Sun Resort ended up on the five o’clock news. “Listen, why don’t you come to the common area tonight? Country music and line dancing exhibition.”

“Line dancing? Country music?” She shook her head. “I don’t think so. Not my thing.”

“Come on. It’ll be fun. It’s pretty simple stuff. As you might’ve noticed, the average age here is sixty-five, not an age to go swinging too much or doing risky steps. Bring your mother; it’ll take her mind off other matters.”

Someone stomped out to the patio, and they turned around.

“Help me with this,” Ann said while juggling the box with the cats in her arms. “We’re taking Amy and the little ones home. Hopefully those kittens will grow lots of fur to hide behind. We’ll keep them until somehow they improve and we can give them away, or until they grow into us, whichever comes first. And we’re so having a word with that vet and the damn birth-control shots he was giving her. And you,” she continued, now staring at Mr. Bowen, “you better keep that misfit of a cat away from us. There’s no joint custody here.”

Tate choked on the breath she was drawing in and turned to James, a grimace on her face. “On the other hand, I think we’ll take you up on your offer. Socializing and going out for a while might be a good idea.”

Chapter Two

Damn. James was sexy.

For the first time in her life, Tate understood Elle’s hopeless crush on infamous bad boys.

This was so not good. She was the levelheaded one, the responsible, reliable baby sister, difficult to impress, not the one prone to lose it after a tight ass and a crooked smile. But despite her mental pep talks, she couldn’t deny seeing James line dancing was making her stomach do funny things—triple somersaults without a safety net actually.

He was stunning. James looked spectacular; nicely worn-out jeans, cowboy boots, long, muscled legs, and a black T-shirt that clung perfectly to his roped chest. To say he was easy on the eyes was a gross understatement. The man belonged on the front cover of a firefighters’ calendar, for God’s sake, not in the common area of a senior community skyrocketing everybody’s blood pressure to the moon. He should come with a warning from the health department:
Handle with extreme caution and use at your own peril. Looking will cause palpitations, dizziness, and hyperventilation
. She knew, for she was having all of those and then some.

He was definitely too much for her undersexed body to handle, his whole self flaunting so many sex vibes it was breathtaking. All those hard muscles flexing rhythmically to the country music, laughing with Mrs. Samuels on his right and some perky grandma on his left, not taking himself that seriously. Definitely too much mojo on the man. Add that to his rugged looks, his wicked and funny comments, and his warm hazel eyes, and Tate felt overwhelmed. Which didn’t make any sense—her sister was the sucker for bad boys, not her. And he was a bad boy, no doubt about it. He had the act down to the letter—tattoos included. As far as she could see, he sported only one, but it was a huge Japanese-style dragon covering his entire right arm. Space wise, it amounted to four tats at the very least. Thank God it wasn’t the tasteless, homemade-looking ones some of Elle’s friends had. She’d despised all those guys, even the somehow nicer, mellower specimens. So why she was now drooling over James was beyond her.