More Than Meets the Ink (4 page)

“I surely hope so. She has me worried.” She sighed and smiled, unwilling to let the incapacitating sadness take a hold of her. She’d been down that road, and it wasn’t pretty. “What about your father?”

“Dad? Solid as a rock. He got tired of waiting for grandchildren, says he isn’t coming back until we make him some of those. But he likes it here, plays golf, takes salsa classes, drives the ladies crazy with his slick moves,” he said, winking at her. “Me and my brothers come to visit as often as we can. Here we go,” he said, parking the car and turning the engine off. “Best burritos in town. Never mind the shabby surroundings.”

“Nice,” she said when they reached the burrito stand.

Out of the four tables, only one was available, and he directed her toward it. All the women sitting at the other tables turned their appreciative gazes toward him, their eyes intently on his back or his front or whatever part of him was in their field of view. He didn’t seem to notice, or if he did, he chose to ignore it.

“Nice? Specify for me, do you mean nice-nice, or nice-repugnant?”

She looked at him in confusion. “What do you mean?”

“I’m trying to get the nuances of your language down right,” he explained while they sat down. “This morning when we met and you glimpsed the dragon on my arm, you also used the same ‘nice,’ but your face said otherwise. Your nose wrinkled as if you’d smelled something offensive.”

Ah, that
. She’d forgotten how embarrassingly expressive her face could be sometimes. Aidan used to say she couldn’t lie worth a damn. And he should know; he
was
a lawyer, after all. “I see. Well, don’t worry, this ‘nice’ is a genuine, honest-to-God one.”

After they had given their order, Tate continued, “And for the record, the ‘nice’ from this morning wasn’t exactly a nice repugnant. Me wrinkling my nose was more like…a reflex.”

His brows furrowed.

As he ran his hand through his hair, she found herself staring, wondering how soft his sun-bleached waves would feel between her fingers. Shaking her head in dismay at her utter lack of common sense, she forced herself to concentrate on the matter at hand.

“Disliking tattoos is like a Pavlovian reflex for me.”

“So you see a tattoo and you automatically dislike the person that wears it? Is that it?”

Said like that, it sounded hypocritical, judgmental and ridiculous, snotty and conceited, but it didn’t make it less true—for her at least. “Kind of. It’s innate already,” she hurried to explain; suddenly the idea of James thinking she was an uppity bitch was not appealing at all. And why Tate would care what he thought, she didn’t have a clue.

“You see, my sister has the reverse impulse. I’ve spent my whole life seeing her heartbroken, cleaning up the messes those guys leave in their wake. They’re like magnets to her; she sees a tat and there she goes, headfirst. It never fails. And trust me, I’ve come to learn most of those men aren’t worth her time.” Or her tears or her money, as it always was. “Every boyfriend she’s ever had was in the bad boy category. Motorcycles, tattoos,” she added making a point of looking at his. “Fun to be with, charming in their own Neanderthal way. Exciting with their rogue and wild attitude, but at the end of the day, completely unreliable. Loners at best, at worst low-life thugs with long rap sheets and a highly developed taste for all illegal things. All of them Peter Pans unwilling to grow up or take any responsibilities. They claim they need to be free. They need space…puhleeze! This is BS code for you having to deal with all the realities of life—groceries and rent included. They can’t be bothered to keep their checkbook balanced or to remember birthdays or appointments. Or, God forbid, try to hold down a steady job. Too conventional for them, too boring. They’re bad boys, they’re above human laws,” she said, rolling her eyes. “They’re so full of it, it makes me puke.”

He looked terribly amused. “Whoa, you seem to have given it quite some thought. Do you really see
all
that in a tattoo?”

A snort escaped her. “No, I see more; you just caught me off guard so I answered off the top of my head. Give me a couple of days, and I can write a dissertation about this.”

“Bigoted, much?” He flashed her a cocky smirk. Jeez, even while making fun of her, the bastard looked sexy. So unfair. “Come on, Tate, getting inked is quite common nowadays, lots of people doing it. Nothing so horrifying.”

“Not horrifying? Ha! Wait until all of them are in their eighties, dragging their blurred, sagging tattoos all over the place. Let’s talk then about horrifying.”

James threw his head back and laughed so hard she couldn’t keep her face straight.

Tate was well aware that tattoos were entering the mainstream. There were plenty of reality shows about it, plenty of middle-aged, pudgy housewives getting them too, but that didn’t sway her. It wasn’t those housewives breaking her sister’s heart every other day with their inarticulate, immature behavior and moronities. Although James was surprising her. He was sexy
and
articulate; who’d have guessed? And she was definitely enjoying herself in his company…too much, in fact.

“Now seriously,” she said, trying to explain. “I don’t see all that in a tattoo, but it seems that nine times out of ten, tattoos are an unmistakable marker for the whole bad-boy, I-am-above-all-that-mundane-shit style of life. So like Pavlov’s dogs, I learned—tattooed men are evil.” Then she looked at his dragon and winced at her words’ implications. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to insult you. I don’t really know you, so you may be the one out of the ten that defies the rule.”

He lifted his eyebrows in mock surprise. “Is that a compliment I’m hearing? Be still my heart. God forbid I’ll get the impression you like me.”

“I know I’m a bit…prejudiced,” she said, blushing furiously. At his incredulous look, she corrected her words. “Okay, I admit it, a lot. I’m a lot prejudiced, I’m something of a tattoo hater, but believe me, it is a learned response; you wouldn’t believe the lowlifes my sister fell for. All of them tattooed men, I might add.”

“You’re judging me by another book’s cover, sweetheart.”

“Maybe, maybe not. I know your type.”

“My type?”

“The charming bad boy. You see, there are two types of bad boys: the brooding ones and the charmers. The antiestablishment, angry-with-the-world, brooding, temperamental type. Silent, arrogant, moody. And then there are the charming, funny ones with their lighthearted humor and fast wit. That’s a facade; they’re just as intense, they’re just undercover, full-conceal mode 24-7. My sis gravitates toward the brooding, silent type. She hooked up with one charmer though. Total devastation. They’re just as dangerous, if not worse. You’re one of those. Both types only good for one thing.”

He narrowed his hazel eyes on her, his thick, dark blond lashes framing them, a slow grin spreading on his lips. The guy was gorgeous. “Which is?”

Yeah right, like she was going to say it out loud. “Never mind. The charmers are that much more dangerous because of their goofy smiles and playful attitude. They like to dance, to party. They’re fun to be around, treat you like a queen, but before you get your defenses up, they’ve hooked you and your life goes down the drain. They’re like a black hole wrapped up in fancy, frilly gift wrap.”

He laughed. “You’ve got to be kidding me. Are you a shrink?”

“Nope.”

“Thank God. If your day job was anything to do with analyzing people, you’d die of starvation.”

She shrugged. “I run a restaurant; dying of starvation is not an option.”

“Good. Because you’ve got me all wrong.”

“I don’t think so,” she murmured, giving him a once-over. She knew she was doing that disparaging thing with her nose again, wrinkling it. She moved to cover it, and he reached for her, brushing the tip of her nose with his finger.

“I am not that…disagreeable, am I?”

No, actually he wasn’t. He had her insides sizzling, and her outside too. Very unfortunate for her. Every time he narrowed his eyes on her, everything inside went warm and itchy. Fuzzy. Her nipples were almost tenting her top, and her pussy was working overtime, flexing and pulsing in preparation, flooding her sensitive folds. Damned treacherous hormones. That was what you got for being celibate for more than half a year. They had her so worked up it was all she could do not to grab him, put her tail up, and rub herself against his leg like a damn horny kitty.

“No, you aren’t. You’re quite likable. I haven’t decided yet if that’s a good or a bad thing. Probably bad.” After all, her sis always found them extremely likable, and look at the result.

Yes, she was too prejudiced, but with good reason. Bad boys were only good for sex—hot, wet, nasty, grinding, all-night sex if James and what looking at him did to her rioting hormones was anything to go by. Well, on the flip side, maybe this was her chance to experience some of that phenomenal fucking her sister talked so much about. It might wash off the dull taste of once-a-week—twice tops in high season—one-orgasm-per-session, usually his, of course, missionary-style vanilla sex Aidan had been so fond of. Besides, she had the feeling James packed more punch in one kiss than Aidan had in all his sex repertoire.

“Extremely likable,” she found herself blurting.

And he was. The thought began forming in her head. James could be a great candidate for a purely sexual, no-strings holiday fling. After all, she was going to be out of there in no time. How much damage could he really do in that time? None, she wouldn’t let it get that far. She had no expectations aside from great sex. She’d be safe from his bad-boy magic. Expectations. That was Elle’s mistake over and over again. She expected so much from them, too much really. With those guys, any expectation, no matter how small, was one too many. They symbolized carpe diem at its very finest, at its most dangerous. Making any emotional demands on them was a lost cause, as was asking for commitment. Hell, they couldn’t be trusted to water your plants or feed your cat when you were out of town; what else was there to say? It wasn’t too clever to hand them your bleeding heart. Your throbbing body, on the other hand…

Her divagations must have been written all over her face, for he offered her a cocky grin. “Ah, so I still have hope to get inside your defenses?”

“You mean inside my pants, right?” she said before she could censor herself. Damn her own mouth, no filter whatsoever.

“That too. A guy has to have his priorities straight. After all, I just discovered I have a reputation as a black hole to live up to. I should get every possible girl sucked in.”

Well, he made sense. Kind of.

Thank God food came to her rescue before she thought and said any more stupidities. She was going to stuff her mouth full and shut up. Comfort food. Sex substitute.

He didn’t seem to mind her sudden embarrassment and grinned when the food arrived. “Great. I’m starving; I used too much energy on the dance floor.”

She welcomed the change of subject. “Yeah, you dance pretty well.”

“Lots of practice. My wife loved to dance, dragged me with her all the time.”

As the word “wife” computed in her head, so did the word “loved.” Loved? As in past tense?

He noticed her sudden stillness and broke into a laugh. “No, no, don’t get me wrong. She’s fine and well, still
loves
to dance, but now she’s my ex-wife and doesn’t get to drag me anywhere. Hence the past tense.”

That brought to mind the awkward silence in the car. “Listen, about the tattoo for your marriage… I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to intrude.”

“Nah, it’s okay,” he said after taking another bite of his burrito. “It was a fiasco. We were married for three years before she had the good sense to dump me.”

“If it was such a fiasco, why didn’t you walk out on her before that?” she said before she could stop herself.

His face hardened. She didn’t mean it as an insult, but he sure looked as if she’d slapped him. He snorted in disdain. “Despite whatever despicable character flaws my tats are a sign of, at least in your eyes, I don’t bail out when things get rough. And when she left me, even if I knew it was for the best, it stung. I don’t like failing, and my marriage was a huge failure.”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to insult you. Or imply you’re a quitter.” Which, of course, she was implying big-time. After all, bad boys were quitters in her experience; nothing was ever quite important enough to fight for, except for their own freedom, that is. For that, the insufferable fools fought tooth and nail, as if the women in their lives were there to rob them of it.

* * *

Hell if he knew why he’d talked to her about his marriage, failed or otherwise. Not her business. Besides, it had been ages since his divorce—water under the bridge. So why the fuck did he suddenly feel the need to justify himself? It wasn’t like he was an unemployed bum. He might not be the most conventional guy on earth, but come on, he was hardly the worst. He was reliable, remembered birthdays, kept his checkbook balanced, ran his own business—successfully, he might add. He wasn’t a loser because he had a couple of tattoos. It didn’t make him a user either. The nine-to-five scene wasn’t for him, but that was hardly a punishable offense, was it?

Despite all her badly misguided comments, he liked her. He liked listening to her talk. She had the oddest notions and misconceptions, but she was damn fun to be around, and the way she blushed and shook her head after catching herself staring at him got him every time. She was being judgmental, yes, but in an innocent sort of way. The girl was pretty much straightforward, called it as she saw it, no agendas. Her inquisitive eyes were continuously sizing him up, sometimes appraisingly, most times, though, disapprovingly. She was dead wrong about him, but hell, who was he to contradict her? A charmer, a bad boy, that’s what she’d called him. A black hole wrapped up in frilly gift paper. He shook his head. Really, where did chicks get all those fancy terms and classifications?

They ate burritos and chitchatted. The girl had no problem eating like a trooper, and that was good, because he hated women unable to swallow anything but carrots and celery. She didn’t ask him what he did for a living, probably assumed he was unemployed or up to no good, and he hadn’t felt like offering details; after all, she thought she had him figured out, and he didn’t feel like bursting her bubble. They briefly talked about her job, how she ran the little Italian family restaurant. Although she didn’t say much about it, he had her pinned down on the spot. Oh yeah, the poor thing had overachiever written all over her. Overachiever and high maintenance, like his ex-wife. The ex that had, for over three years, accused him of being a slacker and drilled him about his lack of goals. He was extremely clever and gifted, she’d claimed, just too much of a lazy dumb-ass to climb up the ladder of success. Now that he recalled, she’d also hated his tattoos, had a cow when she saw the dragon, complained that no one would ever hire him. Suits and dragon drawings didn’t mix, and he was self-limiting his own future, and hers by extension. Elaine had been dead right about that; but the point she was missing was that there wasn’t a chance in hell he’d end up being a suit working sixty hours a week for some stinking company. That wasn’t him, dragon or no dragon. He’d worked damn hard anyways and hadn’t appreciated being put down. Still didn’t. But this little minx here wasn’t his wife, and he didn’t have to justify himself or his choices.