She looked like she wanted to say something else and I could have sworn she was going to reach out and grab my arm but I didn’t have time to chitchat with her anymore. When the light changed I bolted across the street and hustled to the shop.

It took Poppy telling me no to get me to the point where I could leave. It took what I had always thought was a shattered heart to make me finally admit that what I wanted for myself was something different from the path I had been on all along. I needed Poppy to get me to Phil and I needed Phil to get me to Denver and the family I had always wanted but had never had. All the bad things had led to all the great things including the raven-haired goddess that was glaring at me with baleful eyes as I scooted into work almost fifteen minutes late. If she had never left there was a good chance I never would have latched on to her sister in the first place. All of it was a chain reaction getting me to the here and now and to the fact that all that first love I was so convinced was everything was really turning out to be nothing.

“Don’t look at me like that. I got waylaid by a pretty lawyer on the corner. I would’ve been on time if she hadn’t stopped to talk to me.”

Salem’s eyebrows shot up and her bloodred lips quirked up at the edges. “The same one that came in here? Sayer? She’s the one I spilled coffee on the other day. She’s very nice.”

I nodded and leaned on the counter, way more interested in talking about us than the lawyer. “Wanna hang out tonight?” I wiggled my eyebrows at her, which made her laugh.

“Sure. I have something I want to show you anyway. I can come over to your place later.”

My mind immediately detoured into the gutter while I thought of all the dirtiest, sexiest things she could possibly have to show me.

“Cool.” I rapped my knuckles on the counter and told her suggestively, “Bring the puppy. I don’t think I’ll be sending you back to your own place.”

She rolled her dark eyes and flipped her long hair over her shoulder. “Pretty sure of yourself, Rowdy.”

My client was watching me from my station, and I had kept the poor girl waiting long enough. I pushed off the counter and didn’t bother to answer Salem. She knew as well as I did that the two of us alone in a private place was going to end up in nakedness and sexiness, so there was no use in trying to deny it.

My client wanted a massive Claddagh heart and entwined hands on her back with a bunch of intricate roses all along the bottom. It was a huge piece that was going to take multiple sessions. It was a neat design that I was pretty proud of. I just hoped the girl was tough enough to sit through the entire outline, which was bound to take at least four hours.

Since the design covered most of her back, she had to get topless. A situation that could be awkward and a little weird if the client was an exhibitionist or angling for more than just ink from an artist. Luckily this girl was a pro and put her hoodie on backward and settled into the chair like a champ. I told her I appreciated her attitude and the fact she wasn’t trying to flash me.

The girl laughed and told me if she was going to be flashing anyone in the hopes of getting a number, it would be Salem, which had me laughing so hard I had to take a second to collect myself before putting any ink to her waiting skin. Salem turned around from the desk to give us a questioning look, which had me rolling all over again. I winked at her and she scowled at me before she turned back to the client she was talking appointments and designs with.

“She’s really something.” The girl sounded wistful and it made me smile.

“She is.”

“I liked the other one, too. The mouthy blonde, but the new girl seems a little easier to handle.”

I grunted and held my breath as I traced a particularly long line along her ribs. I knew it had to hurt but the girl didn’t even flinch.

“Easier is relative. I think they were kind of hatched from the same egg.”

“She doesn’t happen to like girls, does she?”

God, I hoped not. “Not that I’m aware of.”

The girl hissed out a sharp sound as I put the ink on her spine right at the base of her neck.

“That’s a bummer. She probably likes you. Am I right?”

I paused in what I was doing for a second and looked up to see that Salem was watching me. I grinned at her and saw a hot red flush rush into her cheeks. Busted. At least I wasn’t the only one daydreaming about what it was like when we got na**d and tangled up together.

“We go way back.”

“You look like you belong together.”

We did? I didn’t know anything about that, but I didn’t hate the idea and we had always sort of been a matched set, so I just murmured my nonreply and settled in to do some serious tattoo work.

I WAS IN THE MIDDLE of trying to pick my place up and make it look less like a bachelor crash pad when I heard a knock on the door and Jimbo yip from the other side. Not having empty beer cans and fast-food containers littering every surface was going to have to pass as clean.

My place was pretty basic guy fare. Big leather couch, bigger flat-screen TV, and a fridge that was stocked with Coors Light and that was about it. It would never be considered homey, but most of my overnight guests I didn’t want to stick around for too long anyways, so it worked for me.

I pulled the door open and the little dog lunged at me. I wasn’t ready for him, so his fuzzy body hit the floor with a thud that made Salem gasp. I was going to pick him up and check him over to make sure he was all right when he scrambled to all fours and took off to explore the new place with his nose to the ground.

Salem shook her head at him and handed me the dog bowls and bag of dog food she had carted over. A little thrill raced across my skin that she had heeded my warning about not letting her go back to her place. She had brought enough stuff to keep Jimbo comfortable for the night.

“You can’t get mad if he pees on any of your stuff. He isn’t housebroken all the way yet.”

She waltzed past me with a flip of her hair and my eyes zeroed in on the fact she had a very short denim skirt on. It wasn’t what she had worn to work. Thank God. I could barely concentrate on my job as it was with her dressed in the formfitting outfits that she typically wore.

“I’m sure he’ll be fine. I don’t really have much for him to get into.”

As I said it, her gaze wandered around the sparsely furnished space. She looked back at me with a frown.

“How long have you lived here?”

“Five years.” I’d moved in shortly after settling into Denver permanently, right after my apprenticeship with Phil was over and I was working full-time at the shop.

“Everything looks brand-new.”

I set Jimbo’s stuff down and filled the bowls with food and water. The black ball of fur came barreling down the hallway to inspect the goods when he heard the food hit the dish. He jumped on my legs until I gave his ears a scratch and I figured we were friends again and I was forgiven for doing such awesome and unspeakable things to his master.

“I don’t spend much time here. Really I’m only home to shower and sleep.”

She made a face of disbelief at me and continued to prowl around. “That’s all?”

I shrugged and crossed my arms over my chest. “I never took a vow of celibacy and I never said I slept alone.”

“So after I leave tomorrow someone else takes my place?”

That was the way it had always been. Now I didn’t think there was a woman alive that could take her place.

“No. When you leave tomorrow I’ll just lie in bed and think about the ways I can get you back there as soon as possible. I haven’t been a repeat offender for a really long time, Salem.” I made sure she was looking at me as I motioned between us. “You are a first for me.”

I could tell she wasn’t sure if she believed me or not, but whatever hesitation she had about getting into bed with me, both literally and figuratively, always lost out to the fact that she wanted me. That was always there, hot in her black eyes and clear on her expressive face. I decided the subject needed to be changed before we got into stuff that was too heavy to get out from underneath of.

“You said you wanted to show me something. I’m hoping it involves you taking of several layers of clothes in order for me to see it.”

She snorted and rolled her eyes at me.

“No. Just one layer.”

She shrugged out of the red cardigan she had on and held up her hands in a ta-da gesture. “What do you think? It’s the first mock-up of one of the shirts I had the screen printer make.”

She was wearing a black tank top that was molded to her curvy frame. There was a fine ribbon of lace around the neck and the bottom, making it look very feminine and pretty. The old-style gypsy was on the front, looking even more like the woman that had inspired her when I saw the two faces together.

She turned around and I saw the Marked logo on the back along with the shop’s Web address. It was a lot more fashion forward than anything I would have pictured when we started talking about doing a retail venue along with tattoos. The girls that frequented the tattoo parlors were going to eat it up, and if they filled the tops out the way Salem did, their husbands and boyfriends were going to be throwing money at us to make it happen. She was really good at this and I had to admit seeing my design stretched across her chest gave me a certain kind of pride that made me want to pound on my chest like King Kong.

“It’s amazing.”

“Right? Once I get the ones Rule and Nash finally finished done, I’m gonna have just a few made for the girls to wear so we can build up some buzz. You guys did a great job with the designs. They’re all a little rough but still girlie enough that they won’t alienate the female buyer. I think this is going to be a huge success.”

I couldn’t stop looking at the face that looked so much like hers.

“You picked the gypsy.”

She looked down at herself then back up at me. “She’s my favorite.”

I chuckled a little and rubbed the back of my neck. “She’s you.”

Her mouth quirked up in a grin and she took a few steps toward me. When she was within touching distance she put her hand in the center of my chest where my heart was beating out a tattoo that was totally foreign to me.

“I know.” She had to lift herself up on her toes so that she could kiss me on the underside of my jaw. “That’s why she’s my favorite. It makes me all gooey and squishy on the inside that that’s how you see me.”

I put my hands on her waist as she trailed kisses along the edge of my jaw and worked her way to my earlobe. I bit back a groan when her teeth closed over it.

“You’re beautiful. You have a darkness and a wildness in you. You look like a modern-day gypsy.”

“You make the darkness and the wildness calm down.” She had her hands under the hem of my T-shirt at my lower back and was tugging it upward. I caught the back of my collar in one hand and ripped it off over my head and tossed it in the general direction of the couch.

“Yeah?”

She ran her hands along the ridges of my ribs and then up and down my side where my mom’s name was. The reminder of what happened when I loved someone wholly and how hard the lonely was when that love went away was almost enough to have me pulling back, but her lips landed right in the center of my chest just as her hands found their way to the front of my pants. She made short work of my belt buckle, and between her determined fingers and the wet tip of her tongue tracing random designs on my skin, desire and want kicked fear’s ass to the curb.

“Yeah. You sort of feel like where I always wanted to be.”

Well, f**k me. Didn’t that put trying to keep a safe distance and not letting my heart get involved seem damn near impossible?

I threaded my fingers through her soft hair and held her head in my hands as she took a few steps forward and backed me up so that I was leaning my ass on the back of the couch. Her eyes gleamed up at me as she reached around my waist and started to tug my pants off. I kissed her because I had to. I kissed her because I wanted to. I kissed her because kissing her was starting to make me feel like I had found something I wasn’t really aware I had been looking for. Mostly I kissed her because every time she kissed me back I felt her settling a piece of herself even more deeply inside of me. I leaned forward a little to give her some clearance when she put her fingernails in my ass cheeks to get me to move, and grinned when she sucked in a surprised breath when she encountered nothing but na**d skin underneath the denim. She wasn’t the only one that knew how to dress, or underdress, for an occasion.