Permanent (Indelibly Marked) (Volume 1) (31 page)

“What’s going on?” Carson pointed toward Lindsay’s bedroom.

“Her boss called.” Shane watched her pace back and forth in the bedroom with her cell phone attached to her ear. Every once in a while she said ‘yes.’ No more, no less.

“Aren’t we supposed to be getting ready for her parents arrival?” Ivan took the hammer from Shane’s hand.

“That’s what I thought.” He shook his head.

Once again Lindsay trekked in front of the doorway. This time she hooked her hair behind her ear, stomped her foot and said ‘yes’ again. At least she was consistent.

“She hates her job.” Carson came over holding a frame.

“Despises it.” Ivan stood on his other side.

They watched her pace the other way.

“All she ever says is ‘yes.’” Carson cupped his hand over his ear.

“Yes.” Lindsay raised her voice.

“I was so rooting for a ‘no.’” Ivan snapped his fingers.

“Even a ‘maybe.’” Carson shrugged. “When she counsels me on my financial affairs, I get a whole lecture.”

“Does she know about the plans for expansion?” Ivan crossed his arms.

“Not yet.” Shane smiled. “I’m going to tell her after her father’s here to help.”

“Good call.” Carson waved his hand as if reading a billboard. “Tattoos by Shane Elliott and Accounting by Lindsay Stevens.”

“Elliott.” Shane tapped his foot.

“That’s what I said.”

“No.” He swallowed and scratched his hand down the side of his hair. “Accounting by Lindsay Elliott.” It was the first time he said it out loud, and rather than fear, a wonderful calm encompassed him. After Lindsay, he could never be with anyone else. Finally he knew what everyone else talked about.

“Dude.” Ivan slapped his back.

“Wow, I thought you’d be the last to fall, and you’re the first.” Carson held his hand out. “Does Mom know?”

“Yeah, she’s real happy.” He shook his brother’s hand.

“Does Lindsay know?”

“No.” He pointed at them both. “And she won’t know until after the audit.” He winced at the word.

Carson stared him down. “Does she know she’s getting more than she bargained for with the audit?”

Ivan punched him on the arm. “She may want to know that before she’s sitting in front of a bunch of IRS people.”

“I know,” Shane yelled. “Her family is coming in less than forty-eight hours! She can’t do anything about it. I’m going to tell her after.”

Both men held their hands up.

“Are you all right?” Lindsay hurried out of the bedroom, tripping over her high heels.

He caught her. After all those months, she still couldn’t walk in high heels. Every once in a while she gave up, but then the shoes reappeared. They weren’t natural on her.

“Are you guys fighting?”

Carson and Ivan shook their heads in unison.

She laughed.

“Are you done with work now?” Ever since he decided to open up Lindsay’s accounting business, he loved it when she complained about work.

“I just have to go in for a bit tomorrow and then I’m off for my parents.” She groaned. “They won’t miss me. I don’t do anything.”

Her phone vibrated against his side. “Not again.”

“Hold on.” She lifted her phone and smiled. “It’s my sister.” She gave him a quick peck and dashed back into the bedroom. “After this I’m done.”

“Sister?’ Ivan grinned.

“She’s like sixteen.” Shane kicked him.

“Sweet sixteen,” Ivan laughed.

He went over Lindsay’s checklist. They really needed to go on errands, and he walked over to the bedroom to listen in.

“Don’t worry, we’ll take you out when you get here. You won’t be stuck with Mom and Dad.” Lindsay chuckled. “Shane has connections and knows all the right places.”

He tilted his head.

“No, I’m not going to move back home in October, my life is here now.” She made a little noise. “I’m sorry.”

He’d never heard anything about her moving home, and he frowned, taking a few paces back and forth before he shrugged and returned to eavesdropping.

“Yes, you will meet everyone, I promise.” Lindsay told her sister.

There was a long pause.

“Shane’s an artist, wait until you see all that he can create.”

Artist? Somehow she forgot the qualifying word in that sentence. What happened to the word tattoo? His stomach ached as if someone kicked him. However, it wasn’t Lindsay who upset him. He should be giving her something to be proud of. He rubbed his temple. In two days he planned to do something traditional and have a talk with her father. He took in his tattoos. How would the man take him seriously if Lindsay couldn’t even say the truth? If he wanted a life with her, he needed to step up.

*~*~*

The meeting droned on around her, but Lindsay’s mind wandered. Her parents were due soon and she admitted that she wished they weren’t coming. They didn’t know about the changes she made. She needed to make sure they saw her before Shane and company came to meet them.

“Lindsay.” Mr. Sebastian’s voice startled her.

She shoved a pencil in her mouth. On the flip side, she needed her father there to talk to him about her current job and her other options. Would he respect her opening her own accounting firm built on Shane and his friends and family? Was she ready to give up the dream of becoming the corporate accountant?

“Lindsay.”

She drifted again and blinked. “Yes?”

He smiled. “How are the books?”

Shane’s books were fine, perfect even. Everyone else’s were getting repaired. However, the books Mr. Sebastian spoke of weren’t even touched. She refused to put her fingerprints on it. “I have some questions about it.”

“What’s there to question?” Rick scowled.

Mr. Sebastian leaned over the conference table, pointing at her. “I know you’re smarter than that. Just fix the books and make everything in the ledger balance.”

For the first time, something her boss said made sense. “Make everything in the ledger balance?” At that moment her ledger was anything but balanced. Everything tilted in Shane’s direction.

“Am I not speaking clear enough for the girl from Ohio?” He slapped the table. “Fix the books!”

Rather than react, she simply stood. Apparently the man didn’t realize who he was speaking to. She was Shane Elliott’s girlfriend. No one bullied her.

“Is something the matter?” He tilted his head.

“I don’t think the girl from Ohio can do this.” She closed the file folder and pushed it across the table to Rick. “He’s your expert at estimating.”

“Are you refusing?”

She glanced between her boss and Rick then out to the office. One time she dreamed of being there, as far away from a Hollywood tattoo shop as possible.

She let out a laugh. “No, I’m not refusing … I’m quitting.”

“Ms. Stevens, you have a contract.” He waved her away like an unwanted fly.

Damn it all if she didn’t know what to say. “I’m sure you can fix that, unless you have a whistle you want blown.” Her voice never rose.

He narrowed his eyes. “Your check will be ready later this afternoon with the voided contract.”

With one last quick glance at Rick, she rushed to her office, picked up her purse and took her pictures from the wall. As she left, her phone rang.

“Where are you?” Shane asked.

She got into the car and decided to save her news to tell him in person. “I got detained in a meeting. Where are you?”

“At the apartment waiting for you.”

“I’ll be right home. I have to make a quick stop.”

“You’ll be here before they get here, right?”

She glanced at her watch. “Yeah, is everything okay?”

“I have a surprise for you.”

“What is it?” A jolt of excitement went through her.

He simply laughed.

“I have one for you, too.” They said their goodbyes and she drove to Hollywood, to where she belonged.

Being at the shop without Shane, Ivan or Carson there was strange, but she laughed when she walked in and two of the artists bowed upon her arrival. They had become her clients as well. She planned to talk to her father about opening up her own accounting practice. With Shane and Ivan’s encouragement, she’d almost collected more business than she could handle, but she loved the work. So much for corporate accounting. She smiled, unlocked her office door and headed to her filing cabinet to collect some of the audit papers to show her father.

“Miss Lindsay.” One of the artists knocked on the doorjamb.

She turned. “Hi, what’s up?”

“We put the mail in Shane’s station if you need it.” He gave her a thumbs up. “We were told to give it to you, but your office was locked.”

“Thanks.” Everyone at the shop finally realized the importance of their mail. Wait. She shook her head as she locked her office and went to Shane’s station. They didn’t open their mail, everyone gave it to her.

Although she visited Shane’s station nearly every day, she smiled at the picture of the two of them center stage on his table. She held the photo to her heart.

She wiped a little dust off the frame. The two of them were mismatched for sure, but every day he proved he wanted her, and the differences between them seemed perfect. She replaced the frame and opened Shane’s drawer, pulling out a huge stack of mail. With her hip she tapped the drawer closed, wrinkling her nose when it seemed as if the drawer hit something and rolled it open again. A second attempt to shut the drawer failed.

“Hmm.” She shoved the mail into her bag and tried again. The drawer caught on something and she reached inside.

When she first pulled out crumpled papers, she expected to find circulars that got stuck. She wasn’t prepared for a stack of wrinkled and ravaged registered letters.

The shaking began before she looked. There could be dozens of reasons Shane would have letters shoved back here. Maybe he forgot about them, maybe they were from a fan, or even an ex-girlfriend. She shuddered at that thought. No matter what, these weren’t meant for her to see. But if they had to do with the business, it was her business. Accounting wasn’t a business where you picked and chose what you wanted to reveal. It was all or nothing.

She swallowed and took a breath before she put the pile down on the table and smoothed out the envelope. The return address and postmark date told her everything she needed to know, and with tears in her eyes she pulled out the letter and read it.

“Damn it.” The tears fell and she balled up the letters and thrust them in her purse. “Damn it.” She pushed on the bridge of her nose to stop, but the sobs took over.

“Lindsay.” One of the artists called to her.

The maroon walls of the shop closed in on her and she struggled to breathe. With her heart pounding and nothing to say, she ran out of the shop.

He lied to her. When she opened up the ledger in her head there weren’t any entries to put in any other column.

She looked up and down the street she had come to love, Pete’s Japanese restaurant, the little clothing boutique, the pawnshop … Permanent Tattoo. She was a fool to think she belonged there. She never learned.

Chapter Twenty-Five

“You said you had some Scotch.” Mr. Stevens smiled at Shane.

“On the rocks?” Shane gave him a huge toothy grin and took the glasses down.

“Is there any other way?”

“Absolutely not.” Shane clicked his tongue, reached in the freezer for the ice, and threw the cube up in the air catching it in Lindsay’s brand new glass.

Lindsay’s father clapped and Shane knew he’d already won over the large round man in the brown polyester pants and greased down hair. Simon Stevens would be mere putty in his hands by the time he talked to him about his daughter.

“Can I help you?” Dorothy Stevens stood from the couch.

“Oh no, no, no.” Shane held his hand up and gave an equally charming grin to the woman in the floral ruffled dress. When she arrived, he’d guessed it was homemade. His suspicions were confirmed when Lindsay’s sister, Rachel, entered wearing a matching dress. “You’re on vacation, you just let me and my wait staff know what you’d like.”

Carson saluted them and Emily curtseyed.

“Thank you.” She beamed at them. “You have such a lovely family.”

He won. The decision he made paid off and he won them over. He was the artist, the boyfriend, the one to be proud of and he could hardly wait for Lindsay to get home. Maybe it was better she was late. Now she would see his surprise in action.

The only one he hadn’t won over yet was her little sister. She kept narrowing her eyes and looking at him funny. However, she did seem to be enthralled with his brother, and why shouldn’t she? Carson was always the pretty boy of the bunch. On the way over with the drinks he pushed Carson down next to her.

“That’s the kind of phone I want,” she whispered to him.

Carson handed her his phone. “Check it out.”

Rachel’s face turned absolutely crimson.

Oh, he was on a roll.

“Well, we’re sorry Lindsay’s late, but we’re so glad we get to spend this time with you.” Her mother patted the cushion next to her.

“It is nice, isn’t it?” He sat down and playfully tapped his glass to hers.

She patted his knee and giggled. “Lindsay said you owned a business?”

Again, he knew he’d made the right decision. Apparently, Lindsay never said what type of business. “That’s just boring corporate mumbo jumbo.” He waved his hand. “Why don’t you tell me more about you?”

“We brought some photo albums.” Her mother took a gigantic album out of a tote bag. “Lindsay didn’t want to take any of these when she moved. She said it was too much, but we packed them right in our luggage.” She hoisted it into his lap.

“Oh, I want to see.” Emily dashed over.

The first few pages were Lindsay as a baby and Shane smiled. He wondered if all mothers did that. His mother actually gave Lindsay some baby pictures, much to his girlfriend’s delight. They made it through elementary school, and got to junior high.

“Here she was president of the math club.” Her mother tapped the picture.

He swallowed trying not to react, but he was quite certain they weren’t looking at pictures of Lindsay. The girl with a huge buck-toothed grin wore a sash with bunches of badges from all the math awards she won. Without moving his head, he shifted his gaze to Rachel. Though her sister didn’t hold any resemblance to Lindsay, she sure looked like those pictures, and he wanted to ask if they got the albums mixed up.