The Tattooed Lady (2 page)

“Just don’t look at me,” Farrah said
pleasantly. “I don’t bake. I’ll pull my share of kitchen duty the
same way all you guys do, but be warned – you’d rather have me
washing dishes than cooking.”

Beth was torn between respect and irritation.
Farrah had made it clear in a heartbeat that she wasn’t going to be
the fire station’s maid just because she was the only female – and
putting that bunch of guys in their place with a smile was a feat
to be celebrated. On the other hand, baking a few cookies wouldn’t
kill her, would it? What was so wrong with the traditional female
pursuits?

Josh held out the plate. Farrah hesitated and
then took a cookie. The toned, well-defined muscles in her arm
flexed under tanned skin as she broke it in two and took a tiny
bite. She stood like a sculpted ballerina, Beth thought, with one
toe pointed out.

The cookie platter made another round.

“Hey, guys, leave a cookie for Farrah,” Josh
warned.

“If she’s going to be just one of the guys,”
Hank said, “let her fight for her own.”

Farrah shook her head. “They’re really good,
Beth. But if I ate another one, I’d have to go straight back to the
gym.” She laughed. “Or pick Josh up again and carry him up a flight
or two of steps.”

Again?
It was
Josh
she’d
carried during that training test? Beth felt chilly. She looked
down at the cookie in her hand. She didn’t remember taking it off
the platter, much less crunching it into a ball in her fist.

“I’m going to go hit the treadmill for a few
minutes,” Farrah said.

In silence, they all watched her walk away.
Definitely the woman was a dancer, Beth thought. She let her gaze
drift from one man to the next, avoiding looking at Josh.

Hank must have noticed her watching him as he
watched Farrah. He turned slightly red and said hastily, “What kind
of a flower is that on her back, anyway?”

“It’s a tulip,” Beth said.

“Odd sort of tattoo for a firefighter to
have,” Fred said. “I thought about getting one once. Crossed hose
nozzles. Maybe I will someday.”

Hank reached out a long arm and took another
cookie. “If I was to get a tattoo, I’d make it a chocolate
chip.”

“That would just end up looking like a
cow-pie,” Josh said. “Heck, maybe we should make it a team thing
and everybody go get one.”

Beth saw red. “Get a
tattoo
? You have
never
said a word about wanting a–”

The fire alarm shrilled.

Hank shoved the rest of his cookie in his
mouth, stepped into his turnout gear, and while still pulling on
his coat, climbed behind the wheel of the nearest fire truck. Fred
seized his gear and headed for the other truck. Josh picked up the
phone to get the dispatcher’s instructions. Farrah seemed to soar
across the garage, into her gear, and up into the truck’s back
seat.

Beth waited till the engines had cleared the
station before she walked back to her car. She didn’t realize until
after the doors had automatically closed that Josh had picked up
the cookie platter off the step of the fire truck and handed it to
her.

She ate the rest of the cookies as she drove
home.

*****

“A tulip,” Beth told Ginny that afternoon.
“She has a pink tulip, tattooed on her shoulder blade. Talk about
obvious. A
tulip
!”

“Well, at least she doesn’t have a pair of
them. You know, two lips.”

“For all I know, she does. Though I don’t
think there wasn’t enough of her covered up to hide a whole flower.
A petal would probably have peeked out somewhere – unless the
thing’s on her derriere. No, I’d have seen it if it was, because
her pants were so tight the outline of the ink would have
shown!”

Ginny was panting. “Slow down, Beth. Your
aggravation is making you walk so fast I can’t keep up.”

“And now Josh is talking about getting a
tattoo. My Josh – wanting a tattoo!”

“He must have just been acting polite. You
know – making conversation. She’s the new kid on the block, so he
wants her to feel comfortable. It’s part of his job, as the
supervisor. It doesn’t mean he
meant
it.”

Beth shook her head. “I don’t buy that. If it
was Joe at the bank welcoming one of his new tellers by suggesting
that everyone go get stabbed with inky needles, would you say he
was just making polite conversation?”

“I can’t imagine Joe and inky needles in the
same sentence,” Ginny admitted, “much less the same room.”

“Anyway, I’m going to talk to Josh tonight.
If she’s going to be just one of the boys, then she’s going to have
to behave like one of the boys. She can’t have it both ways.”

“Good luck,” Ginny said softly. “But sweetie
– be careful. Don’t go saying things you haven’t thought all the
way through.”

“The honeymoon’s over, Ginny.”

“Yeah. That’s exactly what I mean.”

*****

Josh’s SUV was already in the garage when
Beth got home from the park, and he was in the kitchen with a glass
of wine standing on the counter beside him. “Hey,” he said as she
came in. He stopped unpacking a grocery bag and casually draped an
arm around her shoulders.

Beth fended him off. “I’m all sweaty from my
walk.”

“I don’t care. But I’ll wait if you want a
shower first, or a long bubble bath.” He put the wine glass in her
hand.

“Were we out of pretzels and ice cream? Since
when do you do the grocery shopping, anyway?”

“It’s a special occasion. Our ninety-day
anniversary.”

Beth’s heart fluttered.
“You
remembered?”

“I’m making you that pasta carton thing you
liked on our honeymoon.”

“It was pasta carbonara. Do you even know
what ingredients go into pasta carbonara?”

“I may have come close,” Josh admitted.

“Anyway, it’s
not
our anniversary –
that was yesterday. I know what happened, Josh,” she said sadly.
“You finally realized why I was cooking steaks last night, so you
decided to pretend it was today instead to get yourself off the
hook.”

“It is today. The end of December to the end
of March, plus two days because February only has twenty-eight,
means it’s ninety days ago today that we got married. That’s why I
swapped shifts and worked yesterday, so I could be off early today.
You’ll never guess what I got you.”

Beth’s head was swimming. She wasn’t about to
dig out a calendar and count; the fact that Josh had made the
calculations made her feel warm all over. Three months; ninety
days... who cared which of them was actually right? Maybe they both
were. He had remembered, after all.

“Is it gold?” she asked.

“Nope.”

“Platinum?”

“Nope. Much more meaningful than that.”

“Nothing’s more meaningful than platinum,”
she teased. Not that she cared; she was savoring the glow. She felt
like her whole insides had lit up. How she loved this man! “Don’t
tell me you went traditional and got me something paper, because
that’s for the first year, not the first three months.”

“I got you a tattoo,” he said.

Beth’s glow died into ashes. “You did
what
? You want me to let someone stick inky needles into me?
I suppose you’ve already picked out the artwork I should wear for
the rest of my life, too. Well, I have something to say about that,
Josh. How about the outline of a hand with the middle finger
extended?”

“No, dear. No inky needles for you.”

“Then what are you talking about?”

He held up a hand. His left hand. And again,
he wasn’t wearing his wedding ring...

She looked closer. “You hurt your hand,” she
said uncertainly.

“You can say that again. Wicked painful it
was. I’m supposed to keep it covered till it heals, but I wanted
you to see it. Look closer.”

The skin at the base of his ring finger
looked angry – red and swollen. But inside the puffy area was a
darker shadow, a wide gold-colored streak which went all the way
around.

“It’s a wedding ring I never have to take
off,” Josh said. “So there will never be any doubt, no matter where
I go, that I’m yours.”

Beth didn’t know she was crying until he
brushed tears away with his thumb.

“Though if you’d
like
to engrave my
name inside a big old heart on your tush, Bethie, I could certainly
get used to...”

She swatted him. Then she kissed him, hard,
and she no longer cared a bit that she was sweaty from her
walk.

Thank you for purchasing this story!

Leigh Michaels
is the author of more
than 90 books, including contemporary romance novels, historical
romance novels, and non-fiction books including
On Writing
Romance
. Six of her books have been finalists in the Romance
Writers of America RITA contest for best traditional romance of the
year, and she has won two Reviewers’ Choice awards from Romantic
Times magazine. More than 35 million copies of her books have been
published in 25 languages and 120 countries around the world.

Her website is
http://www.leighmichaels.com

Find her on Twitter:
http://twitter.com/leighmichaels

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