Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

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First published in Great Britain by Harper 2014

Copyright © Jennifer M Voorhees 2014

Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2014

Cover photograph © Ute Averkamp/Getty Images

Jennifer M Voorhees asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780007579075

Ebook Edition © October 2014 ISBN: 9780007579082

Version 2014-09-12

Dedicated to anyone who is trying to figure out where they are supposed to be. Don’t worry, friends, the universe has a plan for you; you just need to listen to what it’s trying to tell you and you’ll eventually end up exactly where you were always meant to be.

Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Introduction

Prologue . . .: Salem

Chapter 1: Rowdy

Chapter 2: Salem

Chapter 3: Rowdy

Chapter 4: Salem

Chapter 5: Rowdy

Chapter 6: Salem

Chapter 7: Rowdy

Chapter 8: Salem

Chapter 9: Rowdy

Chapter 10: Salem

Chapter 11: Rowdy

Chapter 12: Salem

Chapter 13: Rowdy

Chapter 14: Salem

Chapter 15: Rowdy

Chapter 16: Salem

Chapter 17: Rowdy

Chapter 18: Salem

Chapter 19: Rowdy

Chapter 20: Salem

Epilogue

Author’s Note

Rowdy and Salem’s Playlist

Acknowledgments

Keep Reading

About the Author

Also by Jay Crownover

About the Publisher

INTRODUCTION

For anyone who doesn’t know my backstory, the long and short of it is I thought I had my life figured out. I thought I was on the path I was supposed to be on. I thought I was doing what I was supposed to be doing and in return I was going to live the dream and have the typical happily-ever-after.

Not so much. The path I was meant to be on was vastly different. My happily-ever-after didn’t involve love and marriage but instead a new career and a grand adventure I had only ever dreamed about when I was much younger. Really, what I thought I was supposed to be doing was just the status quo, the day-to-day rhythm I had fallen into because I didn’t know any better, and frankly because I was scared of what lurked outside the comfort of what I had known for so long.

Well, screw that. What I was meant to be doing was so much better, so much more challenging, so much more enlightening and fulfilling than the status quo. I wake up every single day thankful that my path has changed so drastically. Sure, it sucked at the time. It was one of the lowest points in my life and one of the most terrifying journeys I have ever traveled, but coming out of it on the other side stronger, totally independent, and absolutely creatively fulfilled, all I can do is tell the universe thank you for shaking things up.

It’s okay to be scared, I really think that’s how you know that whatever it is you’re meant to be doing matters, but it’s not okay to not find that thing you’re supposed to be doing because you’re afraid of something new, because the path less traveled is daunting and dark. Embrace the change, find your passion, know what your true joy really is about, and pursue it until the end of time. Live the life you were always meant to live. Honestly, nothing on earth will make you happier or more grateful for every single moment you have.

Just get out there and do you. The universe loves that shit!

PROLOGUE . . .
Salem

I don’t have a lot of great memories from my childhood.

There were too many rules. Too many regulations. Too many disapproving looks from my father and not enough support or backbone from my mother.

We lived in Loveless, a tiny Texas town with an achingly accurate name. I was the minister’s daughter, and if that didn’t come with enough inherent expectations, the man who was beloved behind the pulpit but a tyrant in our home heaped them on ever higher. I was meant to be quiet, compliant, and conventional. Problem was . . . that was never me.

When I was nine, I convinced my mom to let me try out for a very exclusive dance team. I longed for something different, something that would make the day-to-day less agonizing. I was so proud, so excited when I made the team, only to have my father tell me dancing like that wasn’t permitted and no daughter of his was going to make a spectacle of herself. He wouldn’t stand for it. It was how everything in my life went, and my mom never seemed willing to take a stand and defy him, even if it meant giving her daughter something she so desperately wanted. Anything that went against my father’s wishes or was deemed inappropriate and shameful got kicked to the curb along with any sense of uniqueness and enjoyment. My parents wanted to squeeze me into a too-small box, painted white and tied with a bow of tradition. Me being me would never be good enough.

It was a situation made even worse by the fact that my younger sister was the apple of my parents’ eye. The perfect golden girl. I loved Poppy with all my heart, too. She was gentle and kind but she was also docile and obedient, ready to jump whenever my father barked an order.

I was never going to be perfect and compliant like my adorable little sister. I had no plans to end up a happy homemaker like my mother. And I sure as hell was never going to fit into the conventional mold of the traditional Mexican woman like my father so desperately wanted me to. So at nine years old, I decided that I would make my own way. I saw a light at the end of the tunnel, I just had to be patient.

When the time came, I broke free. I hit the road with exactly the kind of guy my father hated. I was barely eighteen, not really grown, but I had to get out. I had to run . . . I just didn’t see any other way to survive. I fled Loveless, shaking the dust off my boots and never looking back.

I have very few regrets about the choices I made for myself back then. To this day I am a woman that stands by my decisions—good or bad. I’m independent. I’m strong-willed. I’ve made my own way in life, and have, up to this point, been extremely successful at it. There’ve been times when I stumbled. There’ve been times when I lay alone in the dark and wanted to cry. There were quiet moments that snuck up on me that reminded me my parents weren’t the only people I ran from in that tiny Texas town. But overall I tried to accept full accountability for my happiness and well-being and that was the way I liked it.

I still kept in touch with my sister, Poppy. We were close even though she had married a man I wasn’t too fond of a few years ago. She still lived in Loveless. So deep was my hatred for that place and the memories that lived there I couldn’t even bring myself to attend my sister’s nuptials, which had of course taken place under my father’s watchful eyes in his church. I liked to move around, so Poppy would come visit and get a feel for whichever big city I was calling home for the moment. Her visits had become much sparser over the years, and now I could only get in touch with her every so often for a quick chat on the phone.

At first my gypsy ways had landed me in Phoenix and then Reno, all before L.A. had called to me, which had then been quickly followed by New York. I had tried New Orleans on for size and had a blast in Austin for a few years. Most recently I had landed in Vegas, and something about the lights, the noise, the constant flow of people, the way it really felt like a transient town, had stuck. I stayed in the neon jungle for far longer than any of the other places on the list and settled in to a really profitable career that hinged on all those decisions I had made that my parents were so sure were going to doom my future.

I had a great job, a killer apartment, and I was even seeing a guy that was hovering on the edge of something closer to serious than I normally liked, when I got a call out of the blue from Phil Donovan’s son.

Phil Donovan was legendary in my world—a veritable god in the tattoo industry. He was the tattoo guy other tattoo guys wanted to be. He was the artist you wanted to say had worked on you. He was groundbreaking. He was famous. The list to apprentice under him was a hundred million miles long. Phil was a supremely talented man, and according to his son, Nash, he was sick and his odds on pulling through were slim to nonexistent. Nash had inherited Phil’s shop in the heart of downtown Denver and had also been tasked with getting a new tattoo shop up and running in the more trendy Lower Downtown—“LoDo”—part of the city. Phil had thrown my name in the hat for Nash to consider as the shop’s manager.

I had only met the older man once. It was during a convention in Vegas, and I had just wanted to meet the notoriously handsome artist. Well, Phil was indeed a gorgeous example of a rock-and-roller aging well, but he was also charming, polite, and something about his demeanor had spoken to my very wayward soul. We ended up talking for hours and hours. He offered to tattoo me, and there was no way I was going to say no. I spent the next day under his needle and ended up spilling my entire life history under his watchful purple gaze. It was like being absolved of every sin I had ever committed by a very tattooed and cool pope.

When he asked where I was from and I told him “all over,” he had just laughed. When I mentioned I grew up in a very conservative town in Texas called Loveless, I could feel something change in his demeanor. He became more intent, asked a truckload more questions, and by the time the elegant, beautiful, and very traditional Lady of Guadalupe tattoo was done on my calf, I felt like Phil knew me better than I tended to know myself.

We said good-bye and I never really thought much past that encounter other than I had a killer tattoo from Phil Donovan, which totally gave me bragging rights. Nash’s call had taken me off guard, so I was prepared to blow him off. I was sad to hear about Phil and I didn’t really want to leave Vegas. Colorado was cold and had mountains. I had zero use for either of those things. I was getting ready to hang up when Nash told me to look up the shop on the Internet. To check out the artists and their work. He told me that Phil was absolutely sure I would be interested in the job and the move once I did. I shrugged it and him off and hung up, but my curiosity was piqued, so I did indeed pull up the shop on my phone.

The Marked had a stellar reputation. The ratings were out of this world and the portfolios of the work its artists were producing were breathtaking. But it wasn’t until I flipped over to the individual artists’ pages that my entire world and my future went from Vegas to Denver in the span of a heartbeat.

There on the tiny screen of my phone was the one solid and always good memory I did have from my youth. The one thing that I had held in a warm fuzzy place no matter where I was or how I was feeling. There looking back at me was the grown-up version of the blue-eyed boy who was the one person in my entire life to ever make me feel accepted. The only person who had ever made me feel like it was okay just to be me and that being me was actually a pretty great thing.

Rowland St. James . . . Rowdy. The boy next door who was so sweet, so wide-eyed, so afraid of being sent back into the system, so afraid of being alone.

The first time Poppy dragged him over to the yard to play with us I remembered watching him struggle to figure out how to have fun, how to loosen up and have a good time. He was so little, with such big, sad eyes, my heart squeezed for him. Every little kid should know how to play, should want to roll around in the dirt and cause a ruckus, and it seemed like every little kid did, except for Rowdy.

I think I felt so bad for him because I knew exactly how he felt. I was barely a teenager, and even then I didn’t want to think about how going inside with scraped knees or ripped clothes would go over with my tyrant of a father. I would get yelled at, I would be punished, I would have all my privileges—the few I had—revoked, and all the fun in the world wasn’t worth the repercussions it caused, so I typically resigned myself to sitting on the sidelines and watching everyone else enjoy themselves. Only, once Rowdy was part of the picture, I no longer had to sit there alone.

That was how I first found out how artistically gifted he was. Drawing on paper was clean and tidy, it was normally boring, and there was no possible way I could get in trouble or end up grounded for playing ticktacktoe or hangman. Little had I known that handing a few sheets of plain drawing paper and a few colored pencils to Rowdy was going to unlock artistic potential that would blow me away. Even at ten he had been able to craft images and landscapes that looked real enough they deserved to be framed and hung on a wall somewhere. The boy was skilled, and it was the first time I ever saw him really smile. He loved to draw, loved to sketch and mess around with paint, so whenever we ended up cast off to the side, that was what we did together. Draw and doodle. I sucked at it, but I loved that it made him so happy.

Even with our age gap and obvious differences, Rowdy just understood what it was like to want more and be more than we were currently stuck with. He was a kindred spirit, and he made my heart smile when my day-to-day was so dreary and desolate. We were two kids just trying to make do in households that didn’t really want us or understand us. We might have been on the outside looking in at our own families and our own lives, but at least we could stand outside together. He was quite simply the best friend I ever had—he still was. Sometimes, though, I wondered if he was content to be on the fringe with me, okay with his nose pressed against the glass just because he was another person in my life who was blinded by Poppy’s perceived perfection. We watched everything move around us, never feeling included or wanted, but he never took his eyes off of my little sister.

I had always known that Poppy was the Cruz sister for him, but somehow I forgot that in my last moments in Loveless. Just as the Belvedere was about to peel out of my parents’ driveway, I caught sight of his brilliant sky-blue eyes in the rearview mirror. I jumped out of the car, and in that split second something changed from kinship and our deeper bond of not belonging changed into something else. I saw him as older, saw him as so much more than a confused teenage boy. He was only fifteen, too young to have so much loss and despair in his heartbreaking gaze. Too young to suddenly look so grown-up and like something else. In that half of a heartbeat he became desirable and forbidden to my suddenly thundering heart. Neither one of us was ready for the other; at eighteen I didn’t have a clue how drastic my actions were going to be or how long the effects would last, but I had to kiss him good-bye, had to let him know that he mattered in so many different ways even though I was leaving and never coming back.

Only now, thanks to serendipity and Phil Donovan, Rowdy was staring back at me, all grown-up and gorgeous. He was still blond, still smiling in a way that made my heart trip, but he was bigger, badder, and those blue eyes now had to compete for attention with a riot of ink covering most of his visible skin. It was like staring at everything that I suddenly wanted in the center of a crystal ball telling me that was what my future was supposed to look like.

Without even taking a second to think, I called Nash back and accepted the job. I think he said something about interviewing, but I could hardly hear him through the blood rushing between my ears. Sure I would have more details to figure out before I packed up and left, but I had a new destination and a clear goal in mind. I wanted to see if it was still there, the synchronicity we had, the undeniable connection and pull that had made us work together so well when we were too young and too lost to know what to do with it.

It took a minute to cut ties with the current shop I was working at, mostly because they had just signed a deal to do some kind of tattoo reality show and I think having me at the front desk was one of the big selling points. I also had to break it off with Mr. I Want More and head to New York for a photo shoot I had booked for a tattoo magazine. As each day passed I got more and more anxious. I wanted to be in Colorado, wanted to lay my eyes on the grown-up version of Rowdy. I was dying to see what the years had done to him besides make him undeniably sexy. He had always had the best personality. Affable and laid-back even though his life had been anything but a bed of roses. I always admired him. I envied the way he seemed to just roll with whatever landed in his lap. I was the exact opposite. I made everything into a battle, a fight for survival, and it was exhausting.

Fighting for everything made fighting for the things that actually mattered get lost in the noise and lose their significance.

I threw everything I owned into my car and once again hit the road. It was the first time I ever left one place headed toward another with a clear destination in mind. Not only the anticipation of facing the one happy thing I held on to from another life, but also the lure of helping to build a tattoo empire, of extending Phil’s legacy out in the world with the next generation of tattoo gods, was exciting, and I loved a good challenge.

When I hit Denver in May I was stunned at how beautiful the place actually was. The city was so clean and the way the Rockies loomed out in the distance really was breathtaking. It had a life to it, a vibe that was different from any other place I had ever been and I instantly felt bad for dismissing it out of hand. When I sucked in a breath it was like I could feel the mountain air doing something to my insides. Or maybe I was just suffocating because of the lack of oxygen. Denver really was a mile above sea level, and for a city girl, trying to breathe at that elevation was proving to be a little tricky.

I found a tiny, furnished apartment. After all I was a master at uprooting my life and bouncing from one place to another. I gave myself a pep talk to convince myself that I wasn’t crazy to move to an entirely new state on a whim and a picture of a pretty boy. I got myself gussied up, did my hair, slicked on some bloodred lipstick and donned my most killer pair of heels, and went to charm my potential new employer.

My new boss was a babe. So was his business partner. Seriously they should be on a calendar featuring the hot tattooed and pierced men of Denver. They also considered me carefully. Checking out my ink, not in a leering, creeper way, but to see if I could tell the difference between good and bad work. I must have passed inspection because the tiny blonde with the baby and the attitude smiled at me and told them to hire me or else. Mr. Sexy with the flames tattooed on his head, Nash, like I wouldn’t have known who he was from the eyes alone, offered me the job. Of course I accepted.

The guy with the black mohawk and all the swagger made a few sarcastic comments and flashed me a grin that would have made my blood heat if I hadn’t noticed the very obvious wedding ring he was sporting. Those two were trouble. The very best kind, and I told them I knew it was going to be a good time and that I was excited about getting in on this opportunity with them on the ground floor. We were all set to go and I’d told them I was excited when I heard his voice.

It was deeper, smoother, but under the baritone was the soft Texas twang I remembered from all those years ago. When his head cleared the top of the stairs I saw his eyes widen, watched them fill with recognition and trepidation. I couldn’t help but smile. Even though he looked less than thrilled to see me, everything about seeing him made me happy, and I knew, just knew I had made the right choice. I moved toward him like there was a force field pulling us together and listened to my heels tap on the wooden floor in time with my heartbeat.

I stopped right in front of him. Even with him hovering a step down below the landing and with me in heels, he was still taller than me. He was broad and strong. He was watching me like I was some kind of apparition.

I was. I was very much a ghost from his past just like he was for me.

I ran a finger over the bridge of his nose, fought the urge to lean forward and press my lips to his slack mouth.

I said his name, his real name, so he could tell it was really me—“Hello, Rowland”—and it made his entire body jerk in response. “You sure did grow up nice.” We stared at each other in silence for a minute and I saw all the color bleed out of his face. He whispered my name back at me in a strangled tone.

He had a massive anchor tattooed on the side of his neck. It looked like it was alive with the way his pulse thundered rapidly under the ink.

I looked back over my shoulder and told the rest of our bewildered audience, “Strike that, it’s going to be a great time. See you guys at work on Monday. E-mail me whatever forms you need me to fill out.”

I made sure my hand brushed across Rowdy’s chest when I walked past him as I made my way down the stairs. I could feel his heart racing, could feel the way he trembled. I’m sure it was more from shock than any kind of appreciation of my feminine charms, but I didn’t care.

For the first time in my entire life I knew I was exactly where I was supposed to be.

CHAPTER 1
Rowdy

The pool balls cracked together with a loud smack and rolled aimlessly across the table. Not a single one, solid or stripe, found its way into a pocket. I leaned heavily on the pool cue I planted on the floor and glared at the table.

“Man, you are off your game.”

In more ways than one. I snorted and looked across the pool table at my best friend, Jet Keller. He wasn’t in town much anymore. He was usually off making up-and-coming bands into stars or busy playing rock star himself. It was a rare night when he was actually in town and not attached to his very pretty wife. Normally I would be all over some bro time with Jet, but like he said, I was off.

I reached behind me and grabbed the bottle of Coors Light I had left on the high-top table. Beer normally was the answer to all of life’s problems, but the things that were running around in my mind, the things keeping me up at night, no amount of beer could quiet. I shifted my weight on my feet and watched as Jet sank almost every single one of his shots. I had no idea how he managed to lean over the table and take the shots he did without his pants ripping in half. I kept telling him if he ever wanted to have kids he’d better buy some regular Levi’s; it was a long-running joke between the two of us. I felt bad for the guy’s balls.

I had known Jet for years and was used to his hard-rock style. It fit who he was. It fit his personality. He rocked it onstage and off. It didn’t, however, fit in at the run-down dive bar well off the beaten path I’d dragged him to. I was avoiding the bar closest to the tattoo shop because I had no intention of running into my newest coworker.

It was hard enough seeing her day in and day out at the shop. It was a struggle hour by hour to keep the nine million questions I had from flying out of my mouth. I wanted to know everything, wanted all the answers, but knew even if she had them it wouldn’t make up for the fact she had let me down all those years ago. So I just remained quiet. I kept my trap shut and went out of my way not to look at her, not to talk directly to her, and I sure as shit made sure not to be where I thought she might be outside of work. My avoidance tactics meant the watering hole by the shop was currently off-limits and so was the Bar, the run-down dive owned and operated by a close friend. Those were the only two places that I frequented with my friends and the rest of the gang from the tattoo shop, so it made sense that those would be the places Salem might pop up. Ergo, I dragged Jet’s ass to a place that looked like it hadn’t been cleaned since Colorado experienced the gold rush and where every pair of suspicious eyes were on us.

“It’s been a strange few weeks.”

Jet arched a black eyebrow at me and motioned for me to rerack the balls.

“That have anything to do with the babe from Vegas?”

I felt my shoulders tighten involuntarily. “Maybe.”

I took my time getting the colored balls back in the triangle, and when I was done, I stood and leaned on the table with my hands braced on the edge. My tattooed knuckles almost turned white under the pressure. That was the thing with having a tight-knit group of friends that substituted as family. No one’s business was off-limits and everyone wanted to stick their fingers in the mess and try and help.

I narrowed my eyes at him slightly as he ordered us another round of beers from the cocktail waitress that looked like she had been doing this since the womb. “Haggard” didn’t even begin to cover her worn appearance, and it annoyed me. If I wasn’t being such a nut case we could’ve been at the Bar, where Dixie was the cocktail waitress. She was a doll. A redhead with an easygoing attitude and a bright smile. She was also down for spending quality time with me naked and not expecting anything the next morning, so that made the fact I was getting snarled at by Betty, the Devil’s very own cocktail waitress, even more aggravating.

I snapped at Jet, “What have you heard?”

He grinned at me in the way he had that let me know I was being a dumb-ass. I didn’t get riled up easily. I never saw the point. Things always had a way of figuring themselves out and it was the harder people worked at trying to change the outcome that really made everything a clusterfuck. I firmly believed whatever was meant to happen would happen and there was no way to control the outcome.

He tipped the waitress and took the beers and handed me one.

“Just that she is something else. I heard she can give Cora as good as she gets, that she’s awesome with the customers, that she knows her shit when it comes to managing a tattoo shop and that she’s not just a ten, she’s a ten times ten, and that you’re avoiding her like she came from a leper colony not Sin City.”

Cora Lewis was the business manager for the Marked, the tattoo shop I worked at. She was tiny, mouthy, and the real boss of all of us, and next to Jet she was my closest friend in the world. The fact that she had immediately taken to Salem, had brought her into the fold without even stopping to ask me how I felt about it, bugged me and also made me feel like the odd man out. Everyone seemed to love Salem, couldn’t stop singing her praises and touting about what a lifesaver she had been with the shop expanding into a new location. If you asked anyone else I worked with, she was the saving grace of the Marked.

I wanted her to go back to where she came from and to take all the memories, the feelings that she had tied to her with her. I had worked long and hard to bury most of my pre-Colorado life and I didn’t need a daily reminder that I had loved and lost both Cruz sisters.

“She’s beautiful. She always was.”

Salem Cruz had everything a modern-day pinup girl needed to have in order to be a showstopper. There were the curves she had for days. There were miles of amazing, dark hair that seemed endless and it had a brilliant shot of bright red in the front of it. She had eyes the color of obsidian winged in black liner and a mouth painted in a perfect bloodred pout. Every day she looked like something out of a hot rod magazine. Her style was perfectly designed to be both sassy and sexy in a way that made her almost impossible to ignore. Every day the little ruby, Monroe piercing she wore above her lip winked at me and every day I tried not to notice that her tattooed arms were masterfully done and filled with artwork that I envied as a professional and as an artist. I also tried really hard not to remember when she wrapped them around me when I was young and scared all the time as she tried to make me feel better.

“You know her from way back when?”

Jet had no idea how loaded that question was.

“Yeah. I grew up next to her family in Texas. I spent a lot of time at her house when I was just a kid.”

She had looked different then, far more conservative and traditional. Her hair was darker then, but her eyes were still midnight black and mysterious. Her smile was the same and so was the way I could feel my blood thicken when she walked past me or accidently brushed by me. Back then I thought it was wrong. I thought it was terrifying and dangerous to react to a girl that I knew wasn’t for me, but now I knew Salem was irresistible and it was physically impossible not to react to her.

“So what’s with the freeze-out?”

Normally I was charming, affable, and engaging with the opposite sex. I just had a way of talking to them that let me get my way and left everybody happy at the end of the day. With Salem I couldn’t do that. With her I couldn’t find words that weren’t accusation, blame, and downright hatefulness. I was mad at her for leaving and madder at her for suddenly showing back up.

“She left Loveless when I was fifteen. She packed a bag and took off in the middle of the night with the town’s biggest weed dealer. Her parents were big in the church and her little sister worshiped her, so it was hard on everyone when she disappeared.” I sucked down a heavy swallow of beer and sighed heavily. “It was really hard on me.”

I had loved Salem’s sister, Poppy, with every piece of my young soul. She was my one and only, she was the center of my entire world. At least she had been until I followed her to college and ultimately had her tell me we were never going to be a thing. Salem, however, had been my confidante, my confessor, and maybe most importantly she had offered a lonely and unwanted boy friendship and acceptance. She was my very best friend and I was lost without her. When she left without so much as a good-bye it had been the second time in my life that I felt like I was being abandoned. I was once again left behind by someone that was supposed to care about me forever. Salem left me gutted and hollowed out.

“So you were tight and then she bounced and this is the first time you have seen her in ten years and now you’re all twisted up about it?”

If only it was that simple. The Cruz sisters had done a number on me coming and going. I would be perfectly happy to have never had to see or think about either one of them again.

If I didn’t have my hair slicked up and styled like a character out of Cry-Baby, I would have shoved my hands through it in frustration.

“I’m not twisted up. I just don’t have anything to say to her. A decade is a long time. She’s a stranger.” And anything I said wasn’t going to come out right anyway. The words would be twisted with rage and memory.

Jet gave me a look and pointed the open end of his beer bottle at me. “Right. She’s a stranger, a superhot stranger, and instead of talking to her or flirting her up like you normally do, you’re acting like a mute weirdo. Nope, not twisted at all.”

I contemplated cracking him over the head with my pool stick, but I had a soft spot for his wife, Ayden, and I wouldn’t want her to get upset with me.

“Shut up. You’re not around enough to make commentary on how I’m acting anyway.”

I meant it as a joke, a way to change the topic of conversation, but I saw him flinch and his hands tightened involuntarily on his beer bottle.

Jet worked hard. He was hell-bent on making a name for bands he had faith in. He was killing it as the head of his own record label, but the trade-off was that he had to go where the music was. That meant he was forever off to L.A., Nashville, New York, Austin, or even Europe. It was hard for him considering he and Ayden had only been married for a couple of years and they were in love—really, really in love. I could see it wearing on both of them but neither one had said anything, and like I said, there was no stopping fate no matter what that nasty bitch had in store for you.

“Everything all right with you on the home front?” I didn’t want to pry but it was way better than dredging up my past for him to dig through.

“Ayden and I are great. It’s everything else that sucks.” He shook his dark head and looked at me from under a frowning brow. “She’s going to apply to transfer to the grad program in Austin.”

I paused for a second so I didn’t say something stupid.

“You want to move to Austin?”

He chugged back the rest of the beer in his hand and laid the pool stick across the table.

“Want to—no, but it makes the most sense. She can transfer to UT Austin and finish school and I can actually see my wife more than two or three times a month. It just sucks. Our friends are here. Her brother is here and Cora just had the baby.” He shook his head again and his chest rose and fell in a heavy sigh. “It was her idea, but it still makes me feel like shit. I renovated the studio thinking it would be enough, but it just isn’t.”

It did suck but it was understandable.

“When will she find out if she gets in?”

“Not for a while. It takes some time to get into grad school, and even if they do want her she has to go and do an interview and jump through a million hoops before it’s official. Try not to say anything to Rule or Nash. She hasn’t told Shaw or Cora yet. She wants to wait until we know for sure what we’re doing.”

Rule and Nash ran the tattoo shop and Shaw was not only Ayden’s best friend but also Rule’s brand-new wife. All three of the girls in our little world were supertight, and if one of the dudes let this major development slip it, there would be carnage to follow for sure. Those girls were a solid unit and the idea of one of them leaving was definitely going to be the cause of some serious emotional upheaval.

“That’s some pretty big news. Keeping it quiet might not be the way to go. Has she told Asa she’s thinking about leaving?”

Asa ran the Bar and was Ayden’s older brother. He was a little bit of a wild card and the only reason he had settled in Denver was to be closer to his sister. The two had a strained relationship due to the fact that Asa had a history of being a major shithead and petty criminal, but they were just starting to mend some long-broken fences.

Jet nodded and propped a hip up on the table. I really did expect those jeans of his to split in half every single time he moved. It was endlessly fun to rip on him about it.

“They talked about it. He told her to do whatever makes her happy. I think it bummed her out he didn’t ask her to stay.”

I grunted and cocked my head to the side a little as I noticed a group of guys several years older than us giving us squinty-eyed looks from the far corner of the bar. I mean I knew we didn’t fit in with the run-down ambience, the rough-and-tumble vibe of the place, but we were minding our own business and we always respected the locals’ territory.

I told Jet absently while keeping an eye on the group, “He spent her entire life asking her to do things for him. After he almost died it makes sense that maybe for once in his life Asa would want her to do something for herself. He knows you’re what makes her happy. He isn’t going to try and keep her from being happy anymore.”

Asa was an enigma. He sort of just showed up out of the blue and had dragged Ayden into a mess full of her past and a group of angry bikers. The end result had landed Asa in a coma and Jet and Ayden in matching wedding rings. We all had welcomed the blond southerner into the fold, but everyone watched him with careful eyes. He was lucky Rule’s brother, Rome, had come home from the war and ended up owning the Bar. For some reason the older Archer took a shine to Asa and had put him to work. I think we were all just kind of waiting to see how it played out.

The group that was watching us bent their heads together and the guy I figured was the leader met my gaze and flipped me off with a sneer.

I set my beer down and looked back at Jet.

“The natives are getting restless. We probably wanna go.”

I didn’t mind a good old-fashioned bar brawl. After all, I had played football up until I had dropped out of college at the end of my freshman year. I was still built like an athlete even if on the outside I looked more like James Dean. I was taller than most of them and definitely in better shape, but I liked to think I had grown and matured in the last few years. Avoiding bloodshed and broken knuckles that would mean I couldn’t tattoo was obviously the better option.

Jet looked over my shoulder and dipped his chin down in agreement, only our decision to depart came a split second too late. We were walking toward the door, eyes up and alert, when the men decided they couldn’t just let us walk away. I stopped and Jet paused next to me when we were suddenly faced with three fairly drunk, middle-aged guys that looked like they worked long hours doing manual labor. The one that had flipped me off made it a point to scan me from the top of my head to the toes of my worn black cowboy boots. He made a face and elbowed one of his buddies in the ribs hard enough to make the other guy grunt.

“Who do you think this joker is supposed to be? Elvis?” His gaze flicked over to Jet. “And who are you supposed to be? Ozzy Osbourne? Marilyn Manson? Someone needs to remind you boys that Halloween is in October.”

I felt Jet tense next to me but neither of us moved.

“How long did it take you to make your hair all fancy like that? It would be a real shame if someone went and messed it all up.”

I had awesome hair and it did in fact take longer than I liked to admit to get in the lifted, retro style. If this dude thought he was putting his hands anywhere near my head, he had another thing coming. I was going to tell him that we didn’t want any kind of trouble, that we were happily on our way out the door, when I saw his arm start to lift up. I was going to grab his wrist and tell him to fuck off, when the guy he had tagged in the ribs beat me to the punch.

He reached out and smacked his mouthy buddy’s hand out of the way and pointed at me.

“You look familiar.”

I cut Jet a sideways look and he shrugged.

“I don’t see how. It’s our first—and last—time in here.”

The guy considered me. I mean really looked at me for a long minute until it got kind of awkward. The guy with the mouth looked like he was ready to pipe up again when the gawker suddenly snapped his fingers and broke out into a huge grin.

“I know! You played college ball for Alabama.”

I blinked and it was my turn to stare. No one recognized me from that part of my life. I mean no one. Those days were long past and I had only been on the field for one season.

“Uhh . . .” I heard Jet snicker a little next to me but I didn’t want to waste this chance at making a clean escape. “I did play, a very long time ago.”

“I graduated from the University of Alabama, so I follow the Crimson Tide like it’s my religion. You were a running back. I remember everyone saying that you had a boatload of potential. I remember thinking the coaches had some serious balls putting you in first string. You were fast, fast enough to help them get to the Sugar Bowl that year. Rowland something . . . right?”

I reached up and rubbed the back of my neck. The rest of the superfan’s cohorts had fallen quiet and were now looking at me in an entirely new way. Nothing like football to soothe the raging blue-collar beast.

“Rowdy St. James.”

He nodded. “Right. Rowdy, because you were wild and unpredictable. No one could ever tell what kind of pattern you were going to run. Something happened, though. I don’t remember what but I remember you didn’t play in the bowl game or the following season. I remember them taking about you on ESPN. You just vanished and everyone wondered why.”

That was not something I wanted to discuss, especially not with a group of guys that had been all too eager to start shit a second ago.

I shrugged and forced a sheepish grin. “Well, you know, the pressure got to me. I wasn’t ready for the big show. It just wasn’t meant to be.”

A professional football career really wasn’t in the cards for me, but it had nothing to do with the pressure and everything to do with me not being invested in it. But I wasn’t about to share that with these guys.

“You were a talented kid. It’s a shame you didn’t follow through.”

I gritted my back teeth and offered a shrug. It had nothing to do with follow-through and everything to do with the fact I nearly beat the starting quarterback to death with my bare hands a few weeks before the bowl game. Man, what was it with the ugly past rearing its head and refusing to stay in the dark where I left it?

There was only one way we were getting out of here. I reached out and clapped the superfan on the shoulder and hollered as loud as I could, “ROLL TIDE!”

It was immediately followed by an answering holler from the guy that recognized me and that of course started an epic debate about college football and the Big Ten, which of course transitioned into talk of the Broncos and their tragic loss in the Super Bowl earlier in the year. Before the guys had noticed, Jet and I managed to slip out the front door, leaving the sounds of arguing male voices and clinking beer bottles echoing behind us.

In the parking lot Jet doubled over in laughter and I couldn’t help but smack him on the back of his head as we made our way to the flashy Dodge Challenger he drove.

“Shut it.”

“What the fuck does ‘Roll Tide’ even mean?”

He popped the locks on the car and we got in.

“How about, ‘Thanks for saving us from having to fight our way out of there, Rowdy’?”

The car started with a sexy purr and I had to cringe when thundering guitars and screaming vocals assaulted my eardrums. I dug what Jet did for a living and there was no doubt that he was a very talented dude, but that metal music he liked and played was not my favorite. I reached out to turn it down without asking, which made him laugh again.

“It’s a football thing. Something you musicians wouldn’t understand.”

“Hey, I watch football when it’s on.”

“I’ve watched games with you. You watch for five minutes then check out and either get falling-down drunk or go find something to write with and end up writing twenty new songs by half time. That is not watching the game, my friend.”

He didn’t argue with me. “Still, I had no idea you were seriously famous for throwing a ball around. I mean I knew you played when you were younger, but not that you were like on ESPN and shit.”

I groaned and leaned back in the seat. “I didn’t throw a ball. I caught a ball and ran with it, and the only reason anyone cared one way or the other was because I walked away from all of it without an explanation.”

He looked at me out of the corner of his eye and I purposely looked away.

“I don’t suppose you want to explain it now?”

“You suppose right.”

“Well, hell. I thought my old lady was the master of keeping the past a secret. Turns out she don’t got nothing on you.”

I just grunted in response.

The truth was I never really thought about my past. I had put my heart on the line after I followed Poppy to college, watched it get shredded, and had decided then and there I was never going to invest myself anything or anyone like that ever again. I dropped out of school, not like I really had a choice after the incident with the quarterback anyway, and ended up doing the same thing Salem did, packed a bag and hit the road, leaving everything behind.

I left Texas—all the memories she held, football, college, and Poppy Cruz in the dust, where they had stayed until a few weeks ago when Salem sauntered back into my life like she had never left it.

Jet was right. I was twisted about Salem being in Denver. So twisted that I wasn’t sure how I was ever going to get myself straight again as long as she was around. That girl had ruined me once when I was young. I would never forget the way I felt when she walked away. I didn’t want Salem anywhere near me. I couldn’t trust myself not to fall back into caring about her, trusting her, being captivated by her, only to have her move on once again, leaving me empty and alone.

CHAPTER 2
Salem

I looked at the very pretty blond woman standing across the desk from me. She was obviously nervous. Noticeably out of her element . . . the tailored pantsuit and the Gucci purse on her arm were a dead giveaway that this was probably the first time in her life that she had stepped foot in a tattoo parlor. I gave her my most welcoming smile and cocked a brow at her as she put her manicured hands on the desk in front of me. It was my job to manage the traffic, to make sure clients knew what they were getting and that they were matched with the right artist. It was also my job to make sure I didn’t let someone make a mistake that they would be stuck with on their skin forever.

The woman was probably the same age as me, around twenty-eight or twenty-nine, but she had that vibe about her that broadcast that she wasn’t really sure what she was doing at the Saints of Denver. This was the new shop Nash had opened after his dad had passed. It was right in the heart of the trendy, more upscale part of LoDo and far more modern and slick than the shop that was on Capitol off of Colfax. The artists that worked here had been handpicked by Rule and Nash. They were skilled and pretty awesome, and since this was a brand-new shop, and Nash wanted to build a reputation for it as well as have it double as a retail space for clothes and other tattoo-themed merchandise, I was spending more of my time here than at the shop where the guys were based. They rotated days so that one of them was always at the new shop to help drive traffic in through the doors.

Today was Rowdy’s day at the shop and normally that would thrill me—if he hadn’t been determined to pretend like we didn’t know each other and that I didn’t exist. It was going on a month, and every time those sky-blue eyes landed on me he looked away a second later and his jaw ticked in aggravation. I tried to corner him, tried to get him alone more than once so we could talk it all out, but the boy was good at evading me and I had never had to chase a man before, so I wasn’t really sure how to go about it and not seem desperate.

I saw the blonde gulp and she shifted nervously and I asked her, “How are you doing, doll?”

She snapped her gaze to me and her lips parted a little. She really was stunning in a very refined and country-club kind of way. Her eyes were the color of the ocean and looked terrified as she blinked at me.

“I . . .” She paused and I saw her gaze dart up to somewhere over the top of my head as I could literally feel Rowdy walk up behind me. I was so attuned to him, so aware of the space he took up and the way he smelled and affected the air around him, that I didn’t have to look over my shoulder to know that he was there. The pretty professional gulped again and her eyes popped open even wider. Rowdy was hot, and when he smiled it was hard not to fall in love, but this woman looked like she was about ready to faint or throw up.

“Can I answer any questions for you, darlin’?”

Over the weeks I had learned fast that Rowdy was a big-time flirt. He always had a grin, always had a soft word and special little gleam in his eye for a pretty girl. His charm was effortless and so was the light humor he used to make his clients and friends feel at ease. If I hadn’t known the little boy he used to be, I would’ve taken it at face value, but I knew there was more to that careless demeanor and laid-back persona he showed the world.

Watching the color flee from the woman’s face as she gazed up at Rowdy over my shoulder, I asked her, “Do you want to sit down for a minute and look though portfolios or something? I can get you a glass of water and we can talk about what brought you to the Saints of Denver today.” I smiled at her again, hoping it would help calm her down and maybe distract her from whatever had her paralyzed in terror.

Slowly her perfectly coiffed head shook side to side in the negative. She lifted her hands off the counter and I watched them as they curled into tight fists at her sides. She blinked at me again and then jerked her gaze back up to where Rowdy was looming behind me and she took a stumbling step back.

“I’m just not ready for this.”

That was a pretty extreme response to chickening out on getting some ink, but I wasn’t the type to judge. I’d rather have her get out now than waste everyone’s time and back out on the day of the appointment or have a freak-out once she hit the chair. That was never good for business.

“You know where to find us if you change your mind.”

Rowdy’s voice oozed comfort and had a lull to it that seemed to calm her down. She clutched her purse and turned in a sort of frantic whirl and bolted for the door. It was odd, but definitely not the weirdest thing I had ever seen in a tattoo shop. I felt Rowdy shift behind me and knew he was going to walk away from me again without saying anything and I was done letting him ignore me.

Even though the shop was packed and the other artists all had clients they were working on, I still jumped up from the chair I was sitting in and grabbed the front of his shirt. It was black and had white piping on it with shiny pearl snaps up the front and I had been admiring all day the way the rolled-up sleeves showed off the colorful artwork that covered both of his arms. I spent a good portion of my day checking him out and didn’t feel bad about it at all. His sandy-blond brows dipped down at me and the anchor that covered the side of his neck started to jump when he reached up and wrapped his fingers around my wrist.

“Let go.”

I instinctively tugged him closer so that he was forced to bend down a little, and those summer-sky eyes were all I could see.

“Stop avoiding me.” My tone was curt, but I was done playing games with him. We had to work together, but more than that, I was here for him and at some point he was going to have to know that and understand the importance of it.

“I’m not avoiding you.” All the welcome and honeyed sweetness that usually coated his words were missing when he talked to me. I saw the corner of his eyes twitch when I pulled him even closer so that were almost sharing a breath.

“Yes, you are and I’m over it. You don’t want to talk to me, don’t want to catch up with me, then that’s fine, but you haven’t even asked about Pop—” I didn’t get the rest of her name out of my mouth before his other hand slapped over my mouth and he used the hand he already had around my wrist to jerk me around and pull me to his chest. He bent his head down so his lips were right next to my ear.

“Don’t even think about going there with me, Salem.”

I shivered, and not from fear. I was finally pressed all against him, only the time and place were totally wrong. A fact proven by Cora’s sharp voice snapping Rowdy’s name and telling him to let me go.

Immediately his hands were gone and so was the press of his hard body against mine. I turned back around to look at him and saw the way his nostrils flared and the way his bright eyes darkened. He was mad, really mad, and finally a bit of the boy I remembered was shining through.

“We’re going to have to talk eventually.” I kept my voice calm and even smiled at him. I felt like any move I made was just going to spook him further.

He backed up a few steps and narrowed his eyes at me. “Not if I can help it.”

I cocked my head to the side and lifted an eyebrow at him. “Not talking about the past doesn’t make it go away.”

He made a noise low in his throat and shifted his gaze to the petite blond woman that had come from the upstairs area of the shop and stopped next to me. Cora had just had a baby with Rule’s brother and I couldn’t believe how amazing she looked. She was just as tiny and just as spunky as she had been before the baby, at least that’s what everyone told me. Little baby Remy, or RJ as she was more commonly called, stayed at home with Cora’s dad while Cora worked half days at the shop and her boyfriend went to work at the bar he owned. I had yet to meet Rule’s older brother, but I was curious about the kind of man that could put up with her fiery personality full-time. She was a delightful handful even if she was about to butt her nose into something she had no clue about. Rowdy and I had ties that bound us together, it was just proving more difficult than I thought to unwind them and tie them back up into a pretty bow.

“What is going on? We have customers, you dumb-ass.”

Rowdy shot a look over his shoulder and then looked back at me. I saw his eyes narrow and then his handsome face shifted and the cool cat that never got his fur ruffled resurfaced. The unflappable smile was back on his face and the midnight-blue shadows that had been dancing in his eyes vanished.

“Don’t worry, we were just setting a couple of boundaries.” He flashed the tiny blonde a wink and turned on the heel of his cowboy boot and made his way back to his station. He didn’t have an appointment for another thirty minutes but I could guarantee that he would find a way to keep himself busy until then to avoid having to interact with me anymore.

Cora propped her hip on the counter and waited while I checked out two clients and checked another one in. Sure I was a little rattled by Rowdy’s reaction to me trying to bring up my sister’s name, but I was more unsettled by how angry he really seemed to be at me. I hadn’t seen him in a decade and when I left Loveless he had been a teenage boy with his entire life stretched out in front of him. I couldn’t imagine what had transpired in my absence to make him have such a burning resentment toward me.

Poppy and Rowdy had remained tight after I left. I knew that because before she had moved back home Poppy and I had stayed in constant contact; now our communication was far more limited. I knew that when they had graduated high school together Rowdy had picked the University of Alabama to attend because that’s where my sister decided to go, even though Notre Dame had offered him a better recruitment package. What I didn’t know, what I wondered at now, was how things had happened between them that had set Rowdy running away not just from my little sister but also from his entire future and education. I needed him to talk to me if I was ever going to put everything I had missed in the last ten years together to get a clear picture of who Rowdy was as a grown man.

Cora waited until I got off the phone and asked me to go upstairs with her. I didn’t really want to but I figured I couldn’t say no. Nash and Rule ultimately signed my paycheck, but I realized fast that Cora was sort of the rudder of the group. She steered the ship and I didn’t want to be the one causing waves so early on in my employment here.

I liked Denver. I liked the welcoming and fresh vibe it had. I liked my coworkers and the men and women in their inner circle. Rule’s wife was a sweetheart and there was no doubt the tattooed heartthrob had met his match in the classy blonde. Nash’s girlfriend was just a peach. She didn’t really talk much but when she did she was always kind and insightful and she looked at Nash like he hung the moon. I had only met Jet once but his wife, Ayden, popped in and out of the shop to talk to Cora at least twice a week, and I always thought she was a riot. And of course I adored Cora. She was smart, sassy, and full of attitude. She was just my kind of gal, only right now I was dreading getting dragged over the coals by her, but that didn’t change the fact that they were all really good people and I couldn’t have asked for a better place to land when I finally realized where I was supposed to be.

The upstairs was mostly empty. There was an office Cora shared with the boys and a whole bunch of empty space that was just waiting to be filled up and turned into a trendy, retro tattoo boutique. It would make money. The boys just needed to stop waffling about what they wanted to put up here and just do it. I think the idea of shopping and building an online store was kind of daunting to them and really Phil’s passing was still pretty fresh, so everyone was just trying to find their footing as business owners still. It was a good thing I was here. This was right up my alley. I loved clothes. I loved tattoo and pinup culture. I couldn’t wait to make the Marked and the men behind it a household name.

I walked into Cora’s messy office and sat in the chair across from her desk. She didn’t walk around the other side but instead just jumped up on the edge in front of me and swung her legs back and forth. She had eyes that were two different colors, so it was easy just to stare at her in awe. I had to respect that she didn’t beat around the bush when she immediately laid into me.

“Look, Salem, I like you. I like you quite a bit actually and I think you are just what we all need for the next phase of this business once the boys get their shit together. But Rowdy is my family and he’s been off of his game since that first day we hired you and I don’t just mean professionally. I don’t know everything, but I do know that ever since you showed up he hasn’t been himself and that I don’t like at all.”

I pulled my hair over my shoulder and ran my fingers through the dark strands.

“What exactly do you know?” I kept my tone light and curious, wondering if maybe he had shared with her his underlying reasons for seeming so fired up about me popping back up in his life.

She lifted a shoulder and let it fall. She really was just the cutest thing ever.

“I know that he burns through girls at an alarming rate and that they all thank him afterward. I know none of them stick and yet he can’t seem to keep his eyes off of you.”

Well, that wasn’t exactly what I had been after and I think she knew it. When I arched a dark eyebrow at her she gave me a coy grin.

“He never sticks with the same girl for more than a minute, which isn’t exactly unusual with this crew. The rest of them put plenty of miles on the sheets until they found the right girl. Only Rowdy has mentioned more than once that he already met the right girl and she didn’t want him, so now there is no reason to look for the one. He told me that the one just happened to be your sister. She broke him, so now he’s all about a good time and not taking anything or anyone too seriously. At least he was until you walked in the door. He seems pretty fucking serious about you.”

I crossed my legs and looked down at the peep-toe cut out of my pumps. They were black and had red bows on the heels. They were supercute and went awesome with my fitted, red pencil skirt. I dressed the way I did to feel sexy and in control. I rocked a look that attracted attention, and I did it mostly because I had been so disparaged when I was younger and I liked the positive response it always got. No amount of style and panache could dull the sharp edge of the blade that cut through me at the reminder that Rowdy had loved my little sister.

I looked back up at Cora and nodded a little. “He did love Poppy. The family that lived next to mine in Loveless took Rowdy in as a foster kid when he was ten. They were supernice but had a bucket load of kids, their own and ones from the state. Rowdy was shy, quiet, and really sad. Poppy and I were playing tag out front one day and she just happened to see him sitting on the front porch. I remember him watching us but not saying anything and she ran over and asked him to play with us.”

I felt a soft smile pull at my lips at the memory. Even then he had been tall for his age and lanky. There was also no way to miss that glittery gold hair and those bright blue eyes in a town that was predominantly inhabited by Mexican-American families. He was something else. Something new and uncertain, something exciting and unexpected in a life that had forever seemed monotonous and bleak. Even though sadness and discontentment bled off of him back then, I could still see the strength and defiance in him that I so longed to have in myself. I wanted to soothe him but I also wanted to watch what happened when someone with that much untapped potential was set free. I wanted to live through him and stand beside him so I could feel what finally being untethered from the chains of conformity felt like. I also wanted to hug him and tell him it was okay to be sad, to be angry, to be lost and frustrated. I wanted to tell him he was all right just the way he was, like I so desperately longed to hear. Now I still wanted to tell him everything would be all right, but he wouldn’t stand still long enough for me to explain that I was here for him and now that we were both free we could flourish and grow into something amazing and unbreakable together. He just had to give me a chance.

“I think he loved her from that moment on.” I sighed and looked down at my hands where they had unconsciously laced together. “My dad is a very traditional man. His family immigrated from Mexico City when he was just a baby and he really believes in the old way of doing things. He is hyperreligious and didn’t mind Poppy being friends with Rowdy because he was an orphan and his foster family were active members in our church, where my dad presided over the congregation. But he never would’ve condoned a romantic relationship between the two of them and Rowdy always knew that. It never stopped him from wearing his heart on his sleeve, though. I think he was just waiting for the two of them to get older, for them to go off to college, and then when Poppy was out from under my dad’s thumb, she would see they were meant to be together.”

Cora’s legs stopped swinging and she looked me dead in the eye.

“So what happened?”

I barked out a dry laugh and pushed my long hair back over my shoulder. “Good question.”

Now it was her turn to lift an incredulous eyebrow, only hers was dotted with a sparkly pink piercing.

“You don’t know?”

“Nope. All I know is he left school, left her, and just dropped off the map. I asked her about it a few times here and there over the years but she never gave me any details.”

“Are you here for the job, Salem, or are you here for Rowdy?” It was very Cora to ask the question so bluntly.

I could play it coquettish, smile and brush it off, but I liked her honesty and forthrightness, so I figured I should offer her the same. Plus I wasn’t afraid of any of this crew knowing I was here for one of their own. They should know that eventually they were going to have to share Rowdy with me.

“Both. I came for both.”

She made a noise that was a mix between a snort and a laugh and hopped off the desk.

“I don’t think he has any idea what to do with you. I think he’s afraid of you.”

I got to my feet and smoothed my hands down the fabric of my skirt. I watched as she made a noise of distress and pressed an arm across her chest. Her dual-colored eyes got big in her face.

“Are you okay?”

She made a face and turned a little pink. “I have to go. Apparently it’s time to feed my kid.”

Aww . . . how sweet was that? “No worries. I got the shop for the rest of the day. I can manage whatever is left for the afternoon crowd.”

She nodded and reached for her purse. I wasn’t surprised that it was zebra striped bright yellow and black. Cora was definitely colorful in appearance and personality.

“Try and play nice with Rowdy for the rest of the day. Obviously the two of you need to have a come-to-Jesus talk, and if I have to put my foot up his ass in order to make him see that, then I will be happy to do it.”

I followed her to the top of the stairs and put a hand on her shoulder before she could head down.

“No. He needs to get there on his own. I’ve been letting him tiptoe around me for weeks and I’ve given him plenty of time to adjust to the idea that I’m back in his life and that I’m not going to go away. He’s obviously not ready for me yet.”

She laughed a little and we made our way back into the shop. The waiting room had gotten busy in the fifteen minutes I was upstairs, so it was going to take a second to get everyone situated and straightened out. She leaned over and whispered so only I could hear, “Just so you know, I would pay a small fortune to see him in those tight football pants he used to wear when he was younger. I Googled him once and saw a picture from when he played for Alabama.”

She waved her hand dramatically in front of her face and gave me a little wave on her way out the front door. I had to laugh and just happened to look over my shoulder to catch Rowdy staring at me.

For once, the angry gloss was gone from his eyes as he watched me unblinkingly. I saw it clear as day in that split second. The reason there was so much division and dissonance between us. The reason he couldn’t handle me being back in his life suddenly was mapped out in that sea of blue on blue. When Rowdy looked at me all he could see was the past and what he had suffered through then, the loss he had felt at my hands and the heartache he had been gifted by my sister. But for me, when I looked at him all I could see was the future and every promise and possibility that was wrapped up in the sexy, blond, and tattooed package that was grown-up Rowdy St. James. Some way, somehow, we had to start looking at the same thing if I was ever going to have a shot at showing him there was life after the one and life after loss, especially if the one was the wrong person for him all along and the loss was right in front of him wanting to make amends.

CHAPTER 3
Rowdy

I was never the kind of guy to turn my back on a good time. It was rare anymore that the entire group of friends I had immersed myself in and now called my family were all able to get together at the same time on the same day. So when Jet called me on his last night in town before he flew out to listen to some band play in Portland and demanded that I show up at the Bar because everyone was going to be there, I couldn’t think of a reasonable or noncowardly excuse not to go.

It was getting harder and harder to avoid Salem without making it absolutely noticeable and now that Cora had witnessed my epic overreaction when Salem had been on the verge of mentioning her sister . . . well, there was just no escaping the endless questions and speculative looks coming from those two-tone eyes. I loved Cora something fierce, but I didn’t have any desire for her to start sticking her fingers into old wounds. Those suckers had long since scabbed over, and even if the scar tissue they left behind was ugly and gnarled, it was way better than the festering hurt and leaking heartache the actual memories had tied to them.

In an effort to prove not only to the girls but also to myself that I could play nice and that just seeing Salem in all her pretty, bronze beauty wasn’t going to drag me back to places I never wanted to go, I put my best FTW attitude on and went to the Bar. I figured I could do this for one night. I could fake my way through pretending like the very sight of her didn’t undo me from the inside. I just had to remind myself she was simply a stranger that I no longer knew. She was just a random and lovely Latin goddess covered in some of the prettiest, most detailed ink I had ever seen. I was a pro with the ladies and Salem was most assuredly all lady. I could be charming and slick. I could be engaging and friendly, and hopefully that would put her at ease and I would feel a little less like she was here in Denver to bring every terrible memory that haunted me to my front door.

I thought it was a rock-solid plan. I thought I was going to pull it all off with no trouble, but then I hit the entrance. The first thing my eyes landed on wasn’t Ayden trying to get Jet to two-step with her to “Family Tradition,” or Rule and Shaw whispering with heads bent close together, or Rome tugging his little pixie around the side of the bar to where I knew his office was back behind all the liquor storage, or Nash and his pretty Saint pretending to play a game of pool while they really just made out next to the felt-covered table. No, the first thing my traitorous gaze clapped on to was Salem’s unmistakable curves where they were propped up so enticingly when she leaned over the bar as Asa beckoned her closer.

Of course the first thing that slammed into my brain was the way her black-and-white skirt hugged her backside and hips as she leaned over on those crazy tall heels she liked to wear. Right on the tail end of that thought was the notion that Asa was probably getting one hell of a show if she had a low-cut top on, and for some reason that made my head feel like it was going to fucking implode. My back teeth clenched together and I literally saw a hot red haze when she tossed back her head and laughed at something the blond southerner said. Her dark hair swished across the curve of her ass and her husky laugh made something in my gut and below my belt get tight. Before I could think about what I was doing, I found myself walking toward the bar with hasty steps.

I saw Asa notice my approach and he grinned at me knowingly as he purposely moved away to help another customer. I had to give it to the guy, he had killer taste in women. More often than not, now that he and I were the only unattached members of our little unit, we found ourselves good-naturedly fighting over the same girl at the end of the night. It was never anything serious and more than once it had turned into a sort of game to see which one of us could get the girl first. Considering both of us were blond and had our fair share of charisma, it was always a crapshoot to see who would win. He had the southern drawl working in his favor, but I had the fact that I was rocking plenty of ink and a retro-cool vibe a lot of ladies couldn’t seem to resist. I posted up next to Salem and took the Coors Light Asa set in front of me without having to ask for it. I narrowed my eyes at him a little and saw his grin go from friendly to speculative.

“What’s up, Rowdy?”

He always sounded like he had just stepped off of a farm in Kentucky. Ayden’s accent was hardly noticeable unless she was mad or excited, but Asa used his twang like a weapon against all unsuspecting women. I felt Salem turn from where she was leaning to look at me, but I ignored her and focused on Asa.

“Not much.”

“You haven’t been around much lately.” Now that all my friends were either married, practically married, or involved with their one true love, I tended to spend my free time hanging out here and shooting the shit with him. He would definitely have noticed that I had been cowering under a rock covered in my own fear and uncertainty for the last month or so. I went to make a smartass remark about him enjoying not having the competition around, when I heard Salem snort.

I’d avoided being too close to her because she made me uneasy and I was just so physically aware of her. When I grabbed her the other day I had been driven by panic and fear, not out of a sudden need to touch her. However, being this close, seeing the midnight-sky color of those eyes and the way her mouth was always painted in a perfect, sexy pout, had blood rushing to parts of my body I didn’t want to be happy to see her. The way that ruby sitting at the corner of her mouth winked at me like it wanted me to bend down and lick it had me so that I suddenly couldn’t remember why I didn’t want to be close to her, why I adamantly didn’t want her back in my life. Looking at her jet-black eyes and the way her raven-dark brows danced up as I stared at her made me want to get as close as I could.

“I’ve been busy.” I answered Asa’s question offhandedly while I continued to stare at this stranger that I had once known better than I knew myself.

“Busy with what?”

I jerked my head around and noticed he had a shit-eating grin on his face. The fact that I was dumbstruck by this woman was obviously apparent and he had no qualms about torturing me with that knowledge.

I picked up the beer to have something to do with my hands and tilted my head to one side as Salem and I continued to watch each other. I was looking at her like she was going to attack at any second, like she was going to pounce and pull away all the good stuff I surrounded myself with now and all I would be left with was a blanket of threadbare awfulness that covered a life I didn’t want to remember.

She was looking at me like I was the toy inside a Cracker Jack box. Her dark eyes shone like she had just found something she had been looking for and it was so much better than she imagined it being.

I took a big swallow of beer and told her flatly, “I want to know why you’re in Denver, Salem.”

She picked up her drink, something pink that smelled tangy and sweet, and took a sip. She pushed her heavy fall of hair over her shoulder and I looked down. Yep, Asa had gotten an eyeful. She had on a red lacy top that was cut low over the swells of her breasts and it looked like if she leaned in just the right way, the entire thing would fall down and expose her entire chest. She dressed provocative and alluring, but it was always sophisticated and very pulled together. She really did embody a modern-day Bettie Page.

“I’m here because Phil wanted me here. He knew this was where I was supposed to be if I wanted to be happy.”

I wasn’t expecting that answer, in fact I felt kind of like a dope for thinking she was going to say it had something to do with me being here. The little ding to my ego surprised me and I frowned.

“What does that mean?”

She just shrugged. “It means I’ve moved around a lot since I left Loveless. I never stay in any one place for very long and I’ve never managed to settle. I always thought that meant I was adventurous, that I had the soul of a gypsy, but Phil made me realize that I was always just looking for a safe place to land, a place to call home. I have never had that before.”

“Denver is your safe place? You want this to be home now?”

I got it. I mean, Phil had found me slumming in a disgusting tattoo parlor in Oklahoma apprenticing under a guy that was more interested in running meth out of his shop than tattooing or teaching me how to tattoo. He had a friend of a friend that mentioned me to him, and the fact I was young, really eager to learn, and legitimately loved art. He made a special trip to come see me, and without my knowing how it would play out, Phil Donovan had rescued me, brought me to Denver on his dime, taught me what I needed to know to have a successful career and how to make money off of art. Most importantly Phil had brought me into the fold of his family. Lonely wasn’t easy but I had done it for so long that at first I didn’t recognize what any of it was. Phil made Denver my safe place and my home as well.

She smiled and that sexy-as-hell piercing above her lip winked at me again. Now there was no question things below my belt were getting hard and taking all kind of notice of her against my will.

She told me coyly, “Sort of. My home is a little more complicated than coordinates on a map.”

I was going to ask her what in the hell that meant when the door to the bar opened and a young woman sauntered in. I heard Asa suck in a breath from across the bar and heard Saint call out “Royal” as she waved to the new arrival from where she was still wrapped around Nash by the pool table. The auburn-haired beauty gave a general wave and then glided across the floor like it was her own personal catwalk as she went to join her friend. Just like that, Nash was in the center of a sexy redhead sandwich as the two girls hugged and giggled all around him. Lucky bastard.

“Who? Is? That?”

Asa’s drawl was suddenly tight and thick in a way I had never heard before. His eyes, which were normally all shiny and bright like gold coins, darkened to something intense and intent like I had never seen in him before.

“Royal. She lives across the hall from Nash, and since Saint practically lives with him now, the two of them are inseparable.”

The two redheads were an odd mix and as opposite as two girls could be. Saint was low-key, soft-spoken, and about as humble and sweet as one person could get. She had coppery hair and freckles, so I liked to tease her that she looked like Pippi Longstocking. Royal Hastings had been genetically gifted in every way a young woman could be. She was tall, had perfect skin, cocoa-colored eyes, and auburn hair that went on for days. Her body was the kind of thing I used to think never really existed outside of a Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, and if all of that wasn’t enough in a supersexy package, she was also really nice, superfunny, and just quirky enough to make her approachable and engaging.

“I want.” Asa’s voice dropped an octave and I saw Salem look back and forth between the two of us. I hated to even think it but it sure ran through my mind that if he set his sights on Royal, that meant I didn’t have to get all queasy and weird about him flirting with Salem so I told him, “Go for it. She’s single.”

His eyes shot back to mine and he scowled. “Why is a chick that smoking hot single?”

In guy speak that totally meant “what is wrong with her?”

I lifted a shoulder and let it fall innocently. “She works a lot and has weird hours, I guess.”

He put his hands on the bar across from me and leaned forward a little. “What does she do?”

That was the tricky part. When I told him what the stunning young woman did for a living, I knew his interest would immediately be dampened. I tossed it around in my head for a second, toying with how to tell him, when Salem suddenly interrupted our back-and-forth banter by stating, “She’s a cop.”

Asa’s eyes bugged out huge in his face and he took a step back from us like the news held an electrical shock.

“How do you know that?” His tone was harsh when he asked her the question.

Salem lifted a bare shoulder and let it fall. I decided I wanted to lick along her entire collarbone and suck on the curve of her shoulder where it met her elegant neck. What was wrong with me? I was supposed to be running away from her and the hurt I knew she could inflict.

“She comes into the shop with Nash’s old lady all the time. One time she was in her patrol uniform. I asked her to show me her gun.”

All the color fled out of Asa’s face and he shook his head back and forth like the action would dispel the truth in Salem’s words. Just to drive the point home I nodded and added, “She really is. I didn’t believe it when Nash first told me but it’s true. She even got jumped by a junkie while she was on patrol a little while ago and ended up walking around with a black eye and a busted lip. She carries a badge and enforces the law, my friend.”

He swore under his breath and gave me a lopsided grin. “That should be illegal. No girl that hot should be allowed to protect and serve.”

He wandered away to fix some drinks for Dixie, who was watching the exchange from the end of the bar. When I caught the pretty cocktail server’s eye, she smiled at me and I had to swallow back some beer to avoid the automatic grin back. Flirting with a pretty girl came as naturally as breathing to me, but Salem was watching me carefully with those ebony eyes of hers, and for some reason giving Dixie my I’ll show you a good time grin didn’t really sit right under the scrutiny. She pushed some of her long hair over her shoulder and I watched it slither across her bare skin. Flirting might be second nature to me, but this woman was effortlessly sexy and oozed sensuality like it was an expensive perfume. She was way better at playing this back-and-forth game than I was ever going to be and that was just more reason to keep my distance from her.

“Pretty girls shouldn’t be police officers?” Her tone was a little snide, so I pushed off the bar and inclined my head to where Asa was still talking to Dixie.

“Asa has a long history of being on the wrong side of anyone with a badge. It isn’t her so much as what she does. He isn’t the kind of guy that likes it when a hot girl is off-limits and to him what she does for a living makes her most definitely off-limits.”

She lifted a raven-tinted eyebrow and cast a speculative look between Asa and the striking redhead that had tossed her head back and was laughing loudly at something Saint had said.

“It’s a shame he feels that way. They would make a really beautiful couple.”

Well, that made me feel less like strangling Asa for not only getting an eyeful when Salem had been bent over the bar, but for smiling at her and being so easy around her when she made me feel like I was back to being an unwanted and out-of-place little kid.

“So you just dropped everything—left your entire life—to come help Nash and Rule with the new shop because Phil wanted you here? You didn’t leave anyone or anything behind?”

There was resentment there. I could hear it in my own voice, and I couldn’t seem to help it. My mom had died in a random act of violence when I was a really little kid. I didn’t have too many memories of her. But I could recall that she was nice, pretty, and was always smiling or laughing. I remembered her being happy.

I had gone into the system when I was only six years old. I had no other family or at least no one with my blood willing to claim me, so I bounced from foster home to foster home until I landed with the Ortegas when I was ten. I knew logically my mom hadn’t left me alone in the world on purpose, that fate was a tricky thing and could be really fucking nasty when she wanted to be, but there was no denying that whenever someone I cared deeply about walked away from me it brought back all those feelings I had long since held on to of being abandoned.

Instead of answering my sarcastically asked question, she propped her hip on a bar stool and leaned a little to the side while she considered me solemnly. I always thought she had great eyes. When I was younger I thought they looked like velvet and something soft. Now, while she watched me unflinchingly, I thought they looked dark and enigmatic. I didn’t like that she came across like she knew every secret the universe had and that she was just waiting for me to catch up to her so she could whisper them in my ear.

“Why haven’t you asked me anything at all about Poppy? Not how she is? Not where she’s at? Not what she’s doing? You wouldn’t even let me say her name yesterday and I’m wondering why. I know the two of you had a pretty bad falling-out, but there is something more there. You two were attached like Siamese twins when I left Loveless. So enlighten me, Rowdy. What really happened between you and my sister?”

I couldn’t stop the way her sister’s name made me take an involuntary step back. I didn’t ask because I really didn’t want to fucking know any of that information. This was exactly why I had been avoiding Salem like a coward for the last month. I just wanted to go back to a point where I was happy pretending like the Cruz sisters were nothing but a distant memory I only dusted off when I had too much to drink or sentimentality snuck up on me and gave me a sucker punch.

I was saved from having to choke out a lame response when Ayden popped up at my side and grabbed my elbow. Her eyes were the identical shade of rich whiskey as Asa’s and they were shiny and bright with both tequila and mischief.

“Come dance with me. Jet is being difficult.”

I looked over my shoulder and saw that my friend was glaring at me in warning. Since ruffling Jet’s feathers was at the top of my favorite-things-to-do list, there was no way I was going to tell her no. I wasn’t really a country-and-western kind of guy, but I did have on cowboy boots and I was never going to complain about getting my hands on a girl that was as pretty as Ayden.

I looked back at Salem and could practically see the wheels in her head turning behind her dark gaze, but before I could say anything to her she reached for her drink and pushed off the bar.

“We’re gonna have a reckoning eventually, Rowland. You were always really quick on the field, but off of it you kind of stumble.”

She swished her way around me, her hair slinking across my bare forearm and making my guts clench. I watched her as she wound her way to where Nash and Saint were still talking to Royal and saw her embrace the auburn-haired stunner in a one-armed hug like they were long-lost friends.

I looked back at Ayden and told her before she could even start, “Don’t. Just don’t.”

I let her tug me toward the tiny dance floor and easily fell into a quick two-step with her as David Allan Coe crooned “Mama Tried” on the digital jukebox.

“Rowland?” She giggled a little and I scowled down at her.

“I haven’t been that guy in a long time.”

“Where did ‘Rowdy’ come from, then?”

I grunted but flashed a very toothy grin at Jet over the top of Ayden’s head as he raised both middle fingers up at me and mouthed every dirty word he knew. I pulled his lady closer and smiled cheekily down at her just to rile him up even more.

“I was an unruly child. I had a lot of energy that no one seemed to know what to do with. I was always in time-out, always in trouble at school, and no one really seemed to want to get a handle on it. I was put with a family when I was ten that already had a bunch of other kids, their own and other fosters. The mom—Maria—didn’t speak the greatest English and used to mutter at me in Spanish. She was trying to tell me to settle down, to act right, but I was just rowdy. My teachers, the other parents at church, some of the other kids started calling me that and it was easier for her to say, so it stuck and it fit.”

Her eyes had widened huge in her face and her mouth had sort of dropped open in a little gasp. I gave her a squeeze to let her know it was a long time ago and that it was all right now, but inadvertently my gaze once again sought out that dark head of hair and those ridiculous curves encased in a skintight skirt. At least it had been all right until she showed up.

Ayden wrinkled her nose at me and gave me a squeeze back. “Did Jet tell you about Austin?”

Her voice was quiet. I almost didn’t hear it over the clatter of the heels of our boots on the wooden floor.

“He mentioned something about it.”

“What do you think?” She sounded hesitant and I saw her gulp a little after she asked it.

“I think we’re all adults and know how planes work. Austin isn’t Antarctica, and just because you’ll be in a new zip code physically doesn’t mean you won’t be here in heart and spirit still. You guys are family no matter how many miles might be between you and us.”

I saw her nod a little and her eyes got glassy and hot.

“I’m scared.”

I sighed a little and pulled her into a hug that had her squealing in surprise and her long legs kicking up behind her. I kissed her soundly on the temple and told her matter-of-factly, “That’s how you know you’re doing it right, honey.”

I put her back down and she lightly smacked me on the center of my chest with a laugh.

“Yeah, but I’m still freaked out. I’m worried about Asa. Who’s going to keep him in line and keep an eye on him when I’m gone? He’s a trouble magnet.”

“I would think it’s past time your big brother keeps himself in line and there is an army of us here to remind him what he has to lose if he slips up. Worry about you. Worry about your man. Just go and be happy and enjoy being in love and being married. It’ll be fine, Ayd, and if it’s not there isn’t anything you can do about it anyway.”

She made a noise in her throat and lifted her eyebrow at me. “So what’s the story with you and Salem? There seems to be more going on there than you originally let anyone in on.”

Over the top of her head I saw that Jet had climbed to his feet and was stalking toward us. I winked at him and was treated to another nasty look.

“It ain’t a fairy tale, if that’s what you’re hoping for.”

“She’s fun and kind of eccentric. I like her.”

“Salem’s easy to like.” She was warm. She was smart. She was caring and compassionate. She was the only person in my young life that had made me feel at peace, and when she took that away, when she had abandoned me to my own devices, that was when I really had latched on to Poppy with a ferocity that bordered on obsession. I wasn’t going to make the mistake of being taken in by Salem’s welcoming personality again. It left too big of a void when it was gone.

“So why are you acting like she kicked your puppy? It isn’t like you, and frankly I’m not a fan. She’s a great addition to the shop and you guys are lucky to have her.”

Jet had finally reached us and put his arm around Ayden’s middle. He pulled her backward to his chest and I let her go without a fight.

“You suck.” His tone was surly as he looked at me hard.

I laughed and shrugged. “Then get off your ass and dance with your wife. She comes and listens to that ear murder you call music, the least you can do is twirl her around a dance floor once in a while.”

He grunted and begrudgingly let Ayden pull him into a slow dance as I stepped away from the darkly beautiful couple. I headed to the bar for another beer and thought about what Ayden had said.

The truth of the matter was that the shop and even Rule and Nash were indeed lucky to have Salem here . . . but me—well, I kind of always had the idea that if it wasn’t for bad luck, then I would have no luck in my life at all. I lost my mom. I lost Salem. I lost my first love and that was all before I was old enough to drink legally. Bad luck was something I was intimately acquainted with.

I figured all the good fortune I had since meeting Phil and coming to Denver was fate’s way of repaying me for a childhood of being lost and loveless.

CHAPTER 4
Salem

“Hey, will you please call me back? This is the fourth message I’ve left you in two weeks, Poppy. I’m starting to get a little bit worried.”

I scowled at the phone and shoved it back in my purse as I jumped around a puddle the afternoon rain was leaving on the sidewalk. Denver got hot in the summer, not desert hot or Texas hot, but it was still nice and warm, so I was surprised that when the sky opened up like it seemed prone to do midafternoons, the raindrops that fell were freezing cold and the size of quarters. The weather in this state had a serious identity crisis but I guess that was okay because if you hated what was happening weatherwise it would change five minutes later.

I shivered since I was wearing cute black shorts with big silver sailor buttons and a flouncy off-the-shoulder shirt this morning, and now I was freezing as I walked to the coffee shop at the end of the block to grab something to warm me up before I headed back to the shop from my lunch break. I didn’t even want to think about what the rain had done to my hair and the heavy eye makeup I usually wore, so instead I focused on how irritated I was at my baby sister.

Poppy and I had always been very different. Where I was resigned to the fact that Loveless and my parents’ home were not places I was ever going to thrive in and find happiness, she was still there and still the apple of my stern father’s eye. I had prayed that after she went away to college and saw more of the world, she would branch out, live a little, and realize there was more to life than being a perfect daughter. Much to my annoyance she had returned home right after graduation and had fallen quickly into all her old patterns even when I pleaded with her to come and stay with me. A marriage to a man that was far too similar to my father for my liking had quickly followed and so had Poppy’s distancing herself from me. A choice I was sure wasn’t entirely her own.

Even though my parents and her husband didn’t love that Poppy still stayed in touch with me, it was her one act of defiance and we talked whenever she could get away with it. I had questions—a lot of them. I wanted answers and it was impossible to get them from Rowdy, considering he was about as welcoming as a concrete wall. There was more to their falling-out than the simple “he wanted different things than I did and it meant we couldn’t even be friends anymore” that Poppy had initially given to me when everything broke loose all those years ago. Something major must have occurred for Rowdy to be so adamant that he didn’t even want the slightest info on my sister. She was supposedly his first love and Poppy normally told me everything there was to tell, so all the subterfuge between the two of them had me extra curious.

My sister was not what one would call lucky in love. She was too eager to please, both the men in her life and my father. That led to her dating and ending up in relationships with some real gems. I don’t think she would know the real deal in love if it bit her on the nose, and that was one of the reasons I tried to keep tabs on her and was worried she hadn’t called me back. Her husband was a real piece of work. Oliver Martinez was a bossy and menacing carbon copy of my dad and that made me really nervous. Poppy wasn’t strong enough to walk away or willful enough to stand up for herself if a man in her life was trying to control her.

I ordered a floofy coffee drink and a brownie because they looked good, and tried to wring some water out of my long hair. I was shuffling back to the door, my eyes were down as I put the brownie in my purse, and I didn’t see the woman I almost plowed down until it was too late. I barely caught her around her wrist as she bounced off of me and the collision sent her phone flying to the floor.

We both gasped and I stammered out an apology because even though my coffee hadn’t spilled everywhere it still sloshed a little from the violence of the impact and got on the back of both of our hands.

The woman waved me off and bent to retrieve her phone as I rushed to apologize again and again. I was even more apologetic when I noticed it was the same elegant, blond woman from the other day in the shop.

She was wearing another sharp suit and her hair was pulled up in a tight bun on the top of her head. Her eyes were wide as she recognized me.

“Sorry. I was reading e-mail on my phone and not paying any attention.”

I snorted a little and flicked my hand to shake the cooling liquid off the back of it.

“I was juggling a hundred things and my mind was a million miles away. I have a few minutes before I have to head back to the shop; let me buy you your coffee to apologize.”

She shook her head. “Oh no, you don’t have to do that, really. I should have been paying attention.”

I just ignored her and turned and walked to the line hoping she would follow me. She did, still telling me the gesture was unnecessary, but by the time it was our turn to order she had quieted down and I wasn’t surprised that she got a simple black coffee and didn’t add anything to it. This woman really seemed to be absolutely no frills and no nonsense, which again had me wondering why she had ventured into the tattoo shop in the first place.

“I’m Salem Cruz, by the way.” I stuck my hand out and she shook it briskly.

“Sayer Cole. I actually work at the family law building that’s a couple of blocks over.”

I nodded and grinned a little. “You would be surprised how many lawyers are running around with tattoos nowadays. I sure hope it wasn’t your job that convinced you to forgo getting some ink.”

She balked a little and turned a hot shade of pink. “No. I’m actually pretty new to Denver and was just out exploring.” She cleared her throat as we made our way back to the door. I was relieved to see the rain had let up some. “I stuck my head in on a whim. I’m not really sure what I was thinking.”

She looked away from me as soon as she said it and I had the distinct feeling she wasn’t exactly being honest with me.

“I’m new to the city, too. So far I love it here. Where did you move from?”

“Seattle. I spent my whole life there. I needed a change.”

I could relate. She asked me where I was from and I just laughed and told her all over. When she asked what had brought me to the Mile High City I looked at her out of the corner of my eye and asked, “Are you going to think I’m ridiculous if I tell you it has to do with a guy?”

She shrugged a little and we stopped at the corner of the block. Her gaze darted away and again I got the really strong impression that she was only telling me half of what she meant. “No. I’m sort of here for a guy, too. Not in the romantic sense but a certain guy was definitely a motivating factor in why I accepted this transfer when my company decided they wanted to open an office in Denver.” She inclined her head in the opposite direction of the way I had to take to return to work and told me with genuine kindness lacing her tone, “I hope it works out for you.”

I laughed. “I’m pretty persistent. If you change your mind about adding a little rock to your roll, come back by the shop. Those boys are doing some really spectacular work.”

Her gaze drifted over the expanse of my tattooed arms. “I never realized how beautiful it could be, or how much art was really involved in tattooing.”

“If it’s done right it is as beautiful as anything painted on a canvas and it’s the one kind of art you really can share with the world wherever you go.”

The lights changed and we headed off in opposite directions and I wondered about the polished young woman who seemed to have a lot of secrets. I silently hoped whatever had brought her to Denver worked itself out as well. Secrets or not, she seemed really nice.

I pushed open the doors of the shop and had to wind my way through the people cluttering up the waiting area to get behind the desk. Cora was talking to two girls that were showing her pictures and the buzz of tattoo machines was steady in the background. Nash caught my eye and inclined his head at me. I stashed my purse after rescuing the brownie so I had it on hand for later and asked him what was up.

He rubbed his hands over his shaved head and I wondered how often Saint did the same thing to him. Those flames he had tattooed along each side of his scalp were bright and fun. If he was my guy I would have my hands all over them every chance I got. His purple eyes flashed at me with a mixture of good-natured humor and aggravation.

“What do you need me to do in order for you to get that store upstairs up and running? I thought I had an idea, but every time I think I’m moving forward something happens and I get pulled in the opposite direction.”

“I need you guys to give me some images, some kind of logo, so I can contact a screen printer and get the designs put on T-shirts and other apparel.” It had to be cute stuff and trendy stuff that fit with the vibe the guys had going on. “I think you should all base your design ideas off of tattoos each of you already has. The fangirls would go bonkers for it. You have that dragon, Rule has that snake on his arm.” I nodded when his eyes got squinty in thought. “Cora has all those flowers, and Rowdy has that anchor on his neck that is impossible to miss. All different, all distinct, and I think it would make a statement. That way we aren’t just branding the tattoo shops—we’re branding the people behind them.” I reached out and squeezed his impressive bicep. “I also think you should do a special limited-edition design for Phil. Something old-school, something badass that pays tribute to him and his hand in leaving this behind for you guys.”

I saw his Adam’s apple slide up and down and his eyes blinked fast for a second until he cleared his throat and dipped his head down in a nod.

“You are exactly the person we needed to make this happen. My dad really did know his shit.”

I grinned. “He was a very smart and tricky man.”

“He wanted you here for more than the shop, didn’t he?”

I lifted a bare shoulder and let it fall. “Sometimes it takes someone from the outside to notice what is missing. Phil was really good at that.”

Nash grunted his agreement and lifted a hand to wave his client over as he entered the shop.

“He was.” He took a step around me and then paused and looked down at me. “The store was all Rowdy’s idea. The concept, the idea to branch out, was all him. I think I’ll give him a call and tell him he can be your point person on getting up and going. Rule and I have too much other stuff to deal with right now.”

It was there in those fabulous eyes, the same kind of compassion and need for the people around him to be happy that glowed out of his father’s eyes. He was Phil’s son—no doubt about it. I laughed and turned back to the desk so I could help Cora manage the still-growing crowd of potential clients.

“Whatever you say, boss.”

*

It wasn’t until hours and hours later that I finally got to my brownie. It had been a packed day for appointments, and there were two late walk-ins that a couple of the new artists agreed to stick around and do, so it was almost nine at night by the time I got around to doing the cash-out for the day and locking everything up. Even on a busy day here it didn’t come close to the chaos I was used to at the shop in the casino. That place had almost fifteen artists on staff and was open until two in the morning. The shops in Denver were successful and busy but they felt way less like a spectacle than my previous job had. I was surprised how much I liked the closer-knit, more mellow feel of my new gig and I appreciated that they were really cranking out amazing works of art versus cookie-cutter, flash tattoos that tourists picked off a wall.

I was the type of person that got bored and hated routine. I think that was one of the reasons I was always on the move so much. I never wanted to be predictable. I never wanted to know what was in store for me from one day to the next. I’m sure it had to do with growing up in a house where routine was everything, where not one second passed that wasn’t accounted for and planned down to the minute detail. My dad lived and died by rules and regulations, so it made sense that as soon as I was able I decided to never have a plan. I was always content to just land wherever the wind took me—only now that had changed. I felt grounded here. Felt like I could wake up to the mountains, fresh air, and crazy weather for an endless number of days and never get tired of it.

I also knew without question that I could stare into Rowdy St. James’s cerulean eyes for an eternity and never see anything prettier—even when he was looking at me like I was something toxic and dangerous.

I was munching on the brownie and called Poppy again, this time leaving a message where I chewed her out and threatened to get on the next plane out of Denver if she didn’t call me back tomorrow. I was putting the cash from the day’s deposit in the safe that was in Cora’s office and making sure all the doors were locked upstairs when I caught sight of myself in one of the crazy fun-house mirrors the contractor had put up here to tie the boardwalk theme of the shop together.

It was the mirror that stretched me out and made me look like a giraffe. It also reflected that I had thick black smudges of eyeliner under each eye and that my normally sleek and styled hair was a frizzy mess from the rain. I couldn’t believe I had worked the entire last part of the day looking so rumpled and messy. I shook my head at the silly reflection and went to turn the lights off when I heard footsteps on the floor below me.

The only people with keys to either shop were the guys and Cora, so I just assumed it was one of them and waited to see if the footsteps were going to hit the stairs. They did, and when I heard the distinctive click that could only belong to a pair of well-worn cowboy boots, I felt my heart start to pick up speed.

Rowdy’s slicked-up hair cleared the top landing and his bright gaze landed on me. He didn’t smile or grin. He didn’t quip one of his fast responses at me; he just stared at me steadily as he closed the space between us until he was standing in front of me. He towered over me and I had to tilt my head back to look up at him. Flirty-fun Rowdy seemed reserved for any female that wasn’t me and I didn’t know if I liked that or if it annoyed me just yet.

“Hey.”

His eyes flared hot at the center and I saw the corners of his mouth tense in a frown as he continued to just stare at me without speaking.

It took a solid five minutes before he decided to open his mouth. “Nash called me and told me to swing by and see if you were still here. He wants me to talk to you about the store.”

I lifted an eyebrow at him and took a step back. When I did so he took a minute to breathe the space in and run his thumb along the edge of one of his ruthlessly trimmed sideburns. His eyes also swept over me and landed back on my face with his frown still in place.

“Why are you such a mess?”

I snorted and flipped my tangled hair over my shoulder. “I got caught in the rain on my lunch break and almost ran some poor woman over in my haste to get back to work. I can’t believe no one told me I looked like a drowned rat all day.” I rolled my eyes and went to move another step or two back from him but he caught my wrist in his hand and tugged me closer.

My lungs stopped working and my heart fell out of my chest and landed at his feet when he took his free hand and ran his thumb along the delicate curve below one of my eyes where all my eyeliner had retreated to.

“This actually looks familiar. I remember the first time you snuck makeup from one of your girlfriends at school and couldn’t get it off.” He repeated the process on the other eye and I had to suck in a breath out of desperation because his face was starting to get blurry from lack of oxygen to my brain. “You didn’t know the stuff was waterproof and spent an hour trying to scrub it off with the hose in the backyard because you knew your dad would lose his shit if he caught you with it on. You just ended up looking like a soggy raccoon.”

I remembered the incident just as clearly as he seemed to, only I was having a hard time thinking straight because his thumb was now dancing across the high arch of my cheekbone and skipped even lower to glance across the ruby I wore right above my lip.

“You ran home and asked Maria what to do. She sent you back with olive oil and saved the day.” I gave him a lopsided grin. “It wasn’t too long after that that I started wearing as much makeup as I could just to get under his skin. Some habits stuck with me, I guess.”

I saw his chest shudder as he took a deep breath and something dark moved across his sky-blue eyes. He opened his mouth like he was going to say something else then changed his mind and snapped it closed. He dropped my wrist like it was on fire and took a step back from me. I didn’t bother to try and hide the disappointment that his retreat caused.

“So talk to me about the store.”

I sighed a little, but if he wanted to talk business I wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth. At least he was carrying on a conversation with me.

I ran over the basic ideas I had given Nash earlier. I told him that I really thought their clients would love the opportunity to represent not only the shop but their favorite artists and I was happy that he seemed to agree. He told me his idea about offering prints and graphic pieces of art to sell as well as apparel and I had to admit I was impressed with his entrepreneurial mind. He had always been a lot more than a pretty face and a jock. I was happy to see he hadn’t lost that as he had grown into adulthood.

We tossed ideas back and forth for twenty minutes or so and I told him he was in charge of wrangling Rule and Nash because he knew them better than I did in order to get them to give me designs I could use. He readily agreed and then we fell into an awkward silence as it was obviously time to go. He told me he would have something for me by the end of the following week and I nodded in agreement. We turned in different directions, him toward the stairs and me back toward the light switch on the wall, when he suddenly said my name in a very strangled tone.

“Salem . . .”

I looked at him over my shoulder and lifted a brow at the intent look on his handsome face.

“Yeah?”

His boots clattered on the wooden floor as he stalked toward me. His mouth was in a tight line and his eyes were bleeding blue fire at me.

“What is that?”

He walked right up to me. He didn’t stop until his chest was almost pressed into my back. For someone who had actively avoided me for weeks and weeks and didn’t seem thrilled to have to share the same space as me, he sure didn’t have any kind of problem at all putting his hands on me.

He collected my heavy fall of two-tone hair in his hands and pulled it all up and off the bare expanse of my shoulders and neck.

From one shoulder to the other I had a field of Texas bluebonnets and in between all the flowers were tiny little sparrows. It was a big tattoo, bright and pretty, that took up a lot of real estate on my skin and in my heart. The flowers and birds were so lifelike it looked like a photograph not a painting made of flesh and ink. It was the first tattoo I had ever had done and it had withstood the test of time pretty well over the years. Normally it was hidden by my hair or whatever I was wearing for the day, but with this shirt, the entire thing was on display and it was no wonder he was looking at the ink like it was going to jump off my skin and wrap him in memories.

“I got it done as soon as I left Loveless.” My voice was a little shaky even though I meant to sound defiant. The flowers were the exact same color as the heartbreak in his blue eyes that day I left.

“I drew that for you.” He sounded mad. He sounded hurt. I couldn’t blame him for either.

“I know you did, Rowdy. I might have had to leave Texas, but it was never my intention to make you think I was leaving you and Poppy as well.”

His finger traced along the field of flowers and he said more to himself than to me, “You never thought it was weird I liked to draw. Everyone else always told me to focus on football. Everyone said I was going to go pro, so I shouldn’t waste my time with studying or messing around with art. You always told me to do what I wanted. You were the only one that ever said it was okay that I was really good at more than one thing. I drew this picture for you for your birthday when you turned sixteen.”

I was going to jump out of my skin and then I was going to jump him if he didn’t stop stroking me like that. I let out a shuddering breath.

“It was beautiful. The gesture and the picture. You always were extremely talented and I thought your art should be on display. I never forgot you, Rowdy. I always took you with me wherever I ended up.”

He said my name again, only this time he sounded confused and lost. I gasped a little as his hands suddenly gripped my shoulders and he spun me around. Before my mind could catch up to what was going on, he was backing me up toward that fun-house mirror. When my bare shoulders hit the chilly glass I gasped, which worked out perfectly for him because he suddenly dropped his head and clamped his mouth over mine.

My brain might not have known what to do with his sudden switch in demeanor toward me but my body had no trouble responding. My back arched. My arms reached up to twine around his neck. My nipples got hard and my mouth did its very best to seal itself to his forever. My tongue twisted around his and I whimpered as his hands slipped around my waist to pull me up higher on the toes of my heels in order to match his impressive height. Thank God I typically wore ridiculous shoes, or getting all the good stuff lined up would have been impossible.

It wasn’t a sweet kiss. It wasn’t a delicate kiss. I could taste the past and his resentment in it. I could feel that he was chasing down ghosts as his teeth nipped a little harder than they should have along the plush curve of my bottom lip. None of that mattered, though, because this was Rowdy and to me he felt like everything that had ever been good or made me happy in this whole entire world.

His hands were a little too hard, his breathing a little too fast, and when I leaned even more fully into him I could feel that his heartbeat was erratic and unsteady. I was trying to climb up him, trying to get inside of him, and just when I got my hands up to the back of his head so I could pull him even more fully to me, my phone decided to ring from where it was stashed in the back pocket of my shorts.

Carl Perkins was singing “Honey Don’t,” and while I would have been glad to ignore it and continue kissing the boy I had always wanted to kiss in another way than good-bye, I couldn’t because it was finally my sister calling me back.

I dropped back to my feet and let my arms drop from around Rowdy’s neck. I dug the phone out and hit the touch screen to answer the call.

“Poppy?”

As soon as my sister’s name fell off of my lips Rowdy’s entire behavior changed. Dark shutters fell across his pretty eyes and he stepped deliberately away from me. Without another word he turned on his boot heel and headed for the stairs. He didn’t say good-bye, didn’t look back. There was no acknowledgment that we had been involved in a very serious lip lock just seconds before. He just vanished, leaving me all keyed up and with more questions than I had had before. Damn him and damn the past that seemed to be standing in the way of where I wanted to be.

CHAPTER 5
Rowdy

It was so hard to keep the memories at bay once the door they had all been closed behind was flung open. One after another they chased me across all of my waking hours and danced behind my eyelids at night.

I remembered the first time Poppy ran across the yard between our houses and asked me if I wanted to play. I was so used to being overlooked, so used to being forgotten and alone, that I almost ran in the other direction. She was so cute—all knobby knees and long pigtails. She smiled at me and told me we could be friends forever and I remembered even at ten years old thinking I never wanted to be without her smile and her kindness.

I remembered Salem being patient and funny as two kids trailed after her like she was the queen of the world. She never tired of the questions, of the attention, of fixing up my hurt feelings when I had a bad day at school—which there were a lot of—and she never looked at me like she found me lacking even when everyone else in my little world was trying to guide me in a direction I wasn’t sure I wanted to go. She was always my biggest cheerleader and it never mattered if it was because I scored a touchdown or drew her a picture.

Along with all those memories came the other ones, the ones that made it hard to breathe and made my head throb and my heart hurt.

I remembered Poppy and her big, sad eyes telling me she would never love me the way I loved her, that we would always be from two different worlds, and therefore it would never work out. I literally put my young and soft heart in her hands and she had chucked it back at me like it was nothing. I had had a crush on her—was so sure that I’d loved her—for what felt like forever. I just knew she was my one. She was steady. She was unfailingly kind and generous. She was lovely inside and out, but to her I wasn’t enough. I didn’t have the right background, the right upbringing, and in all honesty the right skin color for her to ever be able to bring me home and tell her dad she was spending the rest of her life with me. I would have given her the world—only she didn’t want it—or me.

I also remembered standing in the driveway watching Salem and her dad scream at each other while she threw all her things into the back of a rusted-out Bonneville and her telling him point-blank she was never going to step foot in his house or in Loveless again. She was my best friend. She was the one that always made everything better, and even at fifteen I remembered thinking I would never make it the rest of the way through high school without her. How was I supposed to pick which college I was going to go to? I was going to tell my foster parents, Poppy, everyone, that I didn’t want to play football, I wanted to paint and draw. I wanted an art scholarship not an athletic one and Salem was the only one that would support me in that. I needed her to give me the strength to fight for it, but in the blink of an eye she was gone.

She saw me where I was lurking and got back out of that car so that she could give me a kiss—a real kiss—on the lips and I remembered she tasted salty and sweet because she was crying as she told me good-bye. It was my first kiss and the memory of it was tied to watching yet another person I cared about leaving me on my own. She tried to tell me she would write, call, send a carrier pigeon, but I just walked away from her because I couldn’t listen to it and I knew she was lying. Once she was gone, I wouldn’t matter anymore, which had proven to be true.

Now all those memories were tangling and colliding with the new ones I had of the way grown-up Salem felt pressed against me. The memory of the way my dick twitched when I saw her standing at the top of the stairs that first day she got hired to work at the shop. There was the irritating remembrance of the way she burned as hot as the sun when I touched her and that she still tasted salty and sweet, but now I was old enough to want to know if she tasted that way everywhere on her body, not just on her pouty lips. I couldn’t stop seeing the way her dark eyes gleamed like polished onyx, or stop thinking about the way her full mouth felt better than anything I could ever remember feeling, and the fact she tasted like chocolate and history in the best and worst way was haunting me every minute of every day. I knew that if her phone hadn’t gone off I was a split second away from trying to get my hands in the waistband of those short-shorts she had been wearing, and even closer to tugging the shoulder of her sexy top the rest of the way off. I wanted to touch all that caramel-colored skin and put my mouth on the pointy tips of her breasts that I could feel poking into my chest.

It was all crashing and colliding so loud and hard that I felt like I couldn’t see or hear anything else. I actively avoided going to the new shop and even harassed Rule into taking my shift that week so I didn’t have to see her. I couldn’t get on top of it and as a result I was drowning in the past and running away from the future. I was exhausted.

Even though I told her I would get her some drawings by the end of the week, I totally blew it off and now it was Thursday night and I was well on my way to getting absolutely shit-faced with my friend Zeb at the Bar. I also fully intended to take Dixie home because the quickest way to get over the idea of someone was to get into the idea of someone else. And even if Dixie wasn’t game to play surrogate lover, then maybe I would take the blonde that was eye-fucking me from the end of the bar home with me and her hot, brunette friend was totally welcome to join us. I smiled at her for good measure and saw her flush and turn to whisper to her friend.

I caught Asa’s eye; he was watching the show with a smirk and shrugged. I turned back to Zeb, who didn’t look half as impressed as the southern bartender did.

“What?” My tone was a little surly and a whole lot sloppy. I was chugging Jäger shots like they were water and I think they had finally caught up to me.

Zeb Fuller was a good dude. He had been a client first and then morphed into a friend after we spent several hours covering up the nasty jailhouse tattoos he had gotten over the couple of years he had spent locked up. The guy was an amazing craftsman. I was pretty sure he could build a house with nothing more than some Elmer’s Glue and some toothpicks, but life hadn’t always been a picnic for him and such being the case, I had wanted to help him out. I was the one that suggested Nash and Rule look into hiring Zeb as the contractor on the new shop, and much to my relief it had worked like a dream for everyone involved.

With all my friends being married, or having babies, or settling down with sexy nurses, I was on my own way more than I was used to be, so I had taken to calling Zeb when I needed a drinking buddy for the night.

Zeb lifted his Jack and Coke and just looked at me over the rim of it and told me “nothing” in a tone that clearly meant something.

I squinted my eyes a little and tossed back the newly filled shot Asa had placed in front of me with a lifted brow.

“What’s with the look, then?”

Zeb was a massive guy. I think he was even bigger than Rome, which was almost unheard of as far as I was concerned. He was as covered in ink as I was, and with his shaggy dark hair and scruffy face he was one intimidating bastard. I think I was lucky we were friends or else I might have regretted being a dick to him.

“I don’t know what’s more pathetic, the fact you are wasting your game on some random bar chick . . .” He grunted at me when I scowled at him. “Or the fact that you’re a grown-ass man trying to drink your girl problems away.”

I was twenty-five but felt like I had lived a hundred lifetimes from the moment the cops had showed up at the apartment door in the middle of the night to tell me my mom was dead. They had explained that she had taken a bullet when some punk kid tried to carjack her when she hadn’t moved fast enough to suit him. They put me in the system that night and I had never escaped. I had been a grown-ass man since that moment on, and Zeb was right, I should be man enough to face Salem and the way she had me tied up in knots.

“What do you know about it?” I sounded petulant and irritable.

Zeb rolled his dark green eyes and his normally unsmiling mouth twitched at me in unsympathetic humor.

“I know she’s about this tall.” He held his hand out to about shoulder height. “She has a figure that makes it hard to think and eyes and hair that were made to get lost in when the lights go out.”

I felt a muscle tic in my jaw as I leaned on the bar and asked Asa as he walked by, “You telling stories?”

He laughed at me and I wanted to lunge over the bar and choke him.

“Hey, she’s a fox and radiates hot sex and good times like it’s effortless. I was just sharing my appreciation of a pretty girl. It’s not my issue that you can’t seem to see her looking at you like you’re her favorite drink and we’re in a drought.”

Oh, I could see it all right. I just didn’t have the first clue as to what to do with it. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. After that kiss I had a pretty fucking clear idea where everything I was feeling toward Salem was headed, right into my bed, but I wasn’t sure I could handle that. Just her saying Poppy’s name had been enough to tame the raging hard-on kissing her had awoken and had done more to get my head out of my pants than any shock of cold water ever could.

Could I ever really have loved Poppy the way I thought I had if just the sight of Salem, the idea of putting my mouth on her, did more to wind me up than Poppy ever had? I don’t think there was really any way I would’ve been able to kiss Salem if all those feelings I had for Poppy in the past were really as important as I had always made them out to be.

I mumbled something that made no sense and picked up my beer.

“It’s not just some random chick that I’m trying to navigate around. I know this girl and she knows me.”

Zeb chomped on a piece of ice from his drink and I thought he looked like he could be out in the woods somewhere living off the land. He was the epitome of what a Coloradoan should look like. I thought we should maybe put him on the state flag to represent us all proudly. Yep, I was drunk.

“That’s your problem, Rowdy. You never want a chick to know you. You just want to hit it and quit it so you don’t have to put any effort into it.”

I growled a little and motioned for another shot. “I put effort into it once. More effort than any young man should, and it blew up in my face. I learned that lesson the hard way. No more effort . . . just a good time for me and a great time for her. Everybody wins.”

Zeb made a noise and nodded when Asa asked him if he wanted another round.

“One girl burned you a long time ago, so that means all girls are made of the same flammable material? Gotta say, I always thought you were smarter than that.”

I was getting annoyed. We were supposed to be brothers-in-arms—bros before hos—and all that noise. I didn’t ask him to hang out so he could shove logic and brutal clarity at me.

“You don’t understand.”

He rolled his eyes at me.

“No? I was engaged when I got arrested. I loved the holy shit out of that girl. She told me she would wait, that I was her one true love and even bars and time wouldn’t be able to keep us apart. It took a little less than two months for her to stop visiting, a little over six and she was engaged to a ski pro. She has two kids now and drives a minivan. You think that means all women are like that? That there isn’t one out there that would really wait if she loved me?”

We just stared at each other until he shook his head.

“I don’t. I think there are good women out there that will stand by their man no matter what. I think there is a woman out there that won’t give a shit I did time and she will love me anyway and be willing to see what I have to offer now. Sure, until I find her I have no qualms about doing easy—easy has its place and can be a good time. But when it gets hard, when the girl is worth it, I’m not scared to do the work.” He laughed. “I like doing the work, especially when it’s hands-on.”

The liquorish taste of the Jäger danced on my tongue as I tossed the shot back. I needed to stop. Things were starting to get wavy and I felt like if I let go of the grip I had on the edge of the bar I was going to slide off the bar stool and land on my face.

“There is only one first girl to hold your heart. That first sets the tone for everything and everyone that comes after.” I didn’t sound so sure about that anymore and it wasn’t just because of the booze.

Asa paused and leaned across from me on the other side of the bar and reached out across the expanse to flick me between my eyes. I swore at him and jerked my head back.

“You’re a dumb shit. There’s a million first girls for a million different first things. There’s the first girl you slow-dance with, and the first girl you go to bed with. There’s the first girl to give you a kiss, and then the first one you take home to your mama.” His amber eyes lit up with humor. “There’s the first girl you fight with and the first girl you fight for. There’s also the first girl you have to let go of. There’s the first girl you love, obviously, and the first girl to break your heart. There’s always a first girl, Rowdy, but there is also the girl that is going to come after her until you get to the last girl. The last girl is the one that really matters.”

I always told myself that Poppy had been my one and only but I wasn’t going to lie—she wasn’t my first girl for most of what Asa said. Sure she had most definitely been the first girl to break my heart and she had done so spectacularly. The first girl I had sex with was Joanne Morse when I was fifteen. The first girl I had slow-danced with had been Megan Drake during homecoming the year I scored three touchdowns in one quarter. She was also the girl that had gone down on me for the first time. Once I figured out I could pine for Poppy but still get laid as long as I smiled at a girl and told her she was pretty, I had pretty much run through the entire available and age-appropriate female population of Loveless by the time I graduated high school. The first girl to take home to mama was never going to happen since my mama was in the ground and the girl that had given me my first kiss was the reason I was acting like a drunken idiot tonight. He was right: there had always been another girl after the first and I had never had a last girl yet.

“You guys suck. I just wanted to get drunk and get laid.” They both chuckled at me and I let my glassy eyes land on Dixie as she sauntered up to my side and put a hand on my shoulder.

“I am totally willing to help you out with the last part, Rowdy.”

I liked Dixie. I liked her as a person and liked everything she was working with that made her a pretty girl. She never asked for more than I wanted to give and we always had a good time when we got naked together. She was a sweetheart, but right now, looking at her and the sexy anticipation in her eyes, I knew there wasn’t any way I was going to be able to go through with taking her home. My mind was on someone else and I didn’t want Dixie to be reduced to a drunken hookup because I was acting like the world’s biggest coward by avoiding the woman I really wanted to be with.

I covered her tiny hand with my own and pushed away from the bar with a lurch. “Not tonight, sugar. These two sorta ruined my mojo.”

There was no way I could drive, so that meant my SUV was staying in the parking lot and I was taking a cab to my apartment.

“Sorry.”

She just shook her head at me and smiled. “I always knew someday someone was going to catch your eye and you were never going to look at any other girl again. It’s the way all of you guys seem to be. As much as it sucks, I have to say it also gives me hope that a guy will look at me that way one day.”

She was turning my rejection into an act of chivalry. Man, she really was a doll.

Asa called me a cab. Zeb helped pour me into the backseat and the poor driver watched me in the rearview mirror all the way to my complex like he was afraid I was going to hurl over the backseat. I gave him a fat tip to make up for causing him to worry and stumbled into my lonely apartment.

I was really drunk. My head was spinning from booze and memories, so I did what I always did when I was that keyed up. I got out a sketch pad and some charcoal and I drew. I was pretty sure none of it would look like anything legible in the morning when I sobered up, but for the moment it made me settle, focus, and some of the things that were chasing me finally quieted down enough that I could shut my eyes and slump over in a blacked-out heap.

I jerked awake with a start the next day and sent the sketch pad falling to the floor as I scrambled to find my phone from wherever it had landed last night in my train wreck. It was on the kitchen counter next to a bowl of cereal I had poured but obviously never ate, and the Marked number was glaring at me as the Cramps’ heavy and psychedelic guitars rattled my fuzzy head.

“Yeah?” My voice sounded like I had smoked ten cartons of cigarettes all by myself last night.

“Rowdy?” Salem’s voice was concerned and I flinched involuntarily.

“Yeah. What’s up?”

I added milk to the waiting cereal and took a bite.

“Do you know that it’s after noon? Your first appointment has been waiting for thirty minutes.”

“Fuck me.” I tossed the cereal bowl into the sink and rubbed a hand all over my face. “No, I had no idea. Can you reschedule it and give them a discount for the inconvenience. I’ll be there in a few minutes.” I needed to wash the Jäger out of my system and go back to the Bar to get my car. It was going to take more than a few minutes but she didn’t need to know that.

“Are you okay?” Again with her concern and my dick twitching in my pants at the sound of her voice.

“I got tanked last night and blacked out on the couch. I’m fine, just a little annoyed at myself.”

“Okay. I’ll handle the client.”

Her tone had switched from worried to slightly disappointed and I felt it deep in my gut. Whatever was going on between the two of us, whatever she was doing to my head, I still needed to keep things professional between us at work. I owed that to the guys, to my clients, and even to Salem.

“Thank you. I’ll contact him as well and apologize, and I’ll have some designs for you to look at Sunday if you want to meet up.”

She made a weird noise and I heard her move the phone to the side to talk to someone in the shop.

“Fine. You can bring them by my place or just e-mail them to me when you have them ready. I need to spend Sunday and Monday at home this week.”

I wanted to ask her why, and immediately thought she wouldn’t be spending those days alone, and then wanted to kick myself because it wasn’t any of my concern. I agreed and she told me she would text me the address.

I hung up and let my head fall forward on my neck. I was a goddamn mess and I needed to get my act together. It didn’t help my state of mind when my gaze landed on the abandoned sketch pad from the night before that the image staring up me was the one I had spent all night trying to run from and trying to drink away.

It was all there . . . her dark eyes, her endless waves of ebony hair, her perfectly sculpted mouth complete with the winking jewel above her lip, her knowing grin. Plus, the knowledge of every secret I had was there in that hastily drawn image. Even in a drunken haze so bad I could barely remember getting home, she was at the forefront of my mind and I couldn’t get around having to deal with her and the hurt she had left behind.

I picked the papers up and tossed them on the couch in disgust. This was getting out of control and I really had to do something about it.

I took a shower hot enough to scald and rushed to get out the front door in under twenty minutes. My next appointment was at one thirty and I didn’t want to disappoint anyone else today. I hated that feeling.

Work was a nightmare. I was usually the one giving everyone a hard time, usually the guy ready with a quick retort. But there was no denying that I looked like hammered dog shit and was acting like a bear with a thorn in its paw, so Rule and Nash were ruthless about it all day long. I took the ribbing good-naturedly and made it through the rest of my clients with no incident. I was hoping Salem would still be there when I arrived, but she had left to go to the LoDo shop not long after calling me, which left me feeling unfulfilled and unsatisfied on top of being more hungover than I could ever remember being.

Nash wanted me to go with him to grab something to eat for dinner since Saint was working a late shift in the ER and Rule had taken off to go home already. Rule was always bolting home right after work these days and I think it bummed Nash out. The two of them were really tight and now, with all the business stuff going on and each of them settling into domesticated bliss, their bro-times were few and far between.

I had to decline because I needed to work on the drawings for the store. I wanted to show Salem I wasn’t really as much of a screw-up as I had appeared to be in the last few days. Nash told me he understood and promised he would have some sketches to me within the next few weeks as well, and left me alone to draw.

I sketched out a pirate ship. I sketched out a mermaid like the one I had put on Rule a few years ago. I sketched out a gypsy and then had to argue with myself not to throw it in the trash when I realized how much the design looked like my drunken doodle from the night before. All the images were bold and graphic. They were old-school tattoos with enough flair to make them appealing to a consumer not in the business. I liked them so much I decided on the spot I couldn’t wait until tomorrow to show Salem. I didn’t care that it was almost eleven o’clock at night or that I might come across as crazy, I texted her and asked her if it was all right if I brought them by tonight. I really could’ve just snapped photos with my phone and sent them to her but I didn’t want to do that. I wanted to show them to her in person.

I hadn’t felt like this, the rush, the chill of anticipation rushing up and down my spine, since the last time I had created something on paper to show her. I was fourteen and Salem was seventeen. Her dad had refused to let her go to her prom because as usual she had broken one of his endless rules. She was so sad about it, too, because the captain of the football team had asked her. It was going to be her dream date. Instead she had spent the night in her room alternately crying and cussing about her dad. Because I was always hanging around, always at her house instead of my own, I had ended up on her bedroom floor while she cried in bed, trying to make her feel better. Granted I was just a clumsy teenage boy, so there wasn’t much I could do, but when she told me how sad she was that she would never have a picture to keep—a good memory from prom and her high school days—because her father had thwarted her once again, I knew there was one thing I could do.

I knew Salem’s face as well as my own and it took less than five minutes to draw her out and put her in a fancy princess dress that she would never wear in the real world. The captain of the football team was a little trickier. By then I was only on junior varsity, so I knew basically what he looked like, but the only way I could really figure out how to draw him was in a football uniform. So I drew her a prom picture with her looking beautiful and perfect on the arm of a jock with a jersey on and a football helmet under his arm.

When I gave it to her she stopped crying instantly. She laughed and laughed. At first I thought she was laughing at me and then she had launched herself off the bed and tackle-hugged me to the floor. She told me it was way better than any prom picture could ever be and I still remembered feeling so proud of myself for cheering her up.

I also remembered Poppy sticking her head in the room to see what the ruckus was all about and giving both of us a disapproving look when she saw Salem sprawled all across the top of me. I hadn’t cared even though Poppy was the one I was supposed to be in love with. I wanted to make Salem happy. She was always going out of her way to make me feel like I belonged, like I mattered; I wouldn’t be judged for returning the favor.

The place Salem rented was right in the heart of Capitol Hill and not too far from the Marked or where Nash lived. She was just a few streets up and over. I found her name on the call box and buzzed her to let me in. She didn’t answer the first time and I wondered again if she was alone. When I buzzed again I laid on the button until the noise annoyed me and I had to jump back when she suddenly appeared at the security door. She pushed the heavy door open and I had to step to the side as an energetic black bundle of fur and fluff darted past me. Salem went racing after the puppy and I was left there staring after both of them like an idiot.

She was hollering “Jimbo! Get over here, Jimbo!” and the black Lab puppy was happily ignoring her as it pranced around from yard to yard.

Salem had her long hair tied up on top of her head, a pair of black glasses covering her dark eyes, and she was wearing the same shorts she had on from the other night when we had gotten up close and personal at the shop. Only tonight she had on a white tank top that clung to every curve she had and it was pretty obvious she wasn’t wearing a bra.

I had to admit the more she stripped out of her fancy outfits and perfectly made-up face, the more I was drawn to her. This Salem reminded me of the girl that had given me hope, the other Salem made my dick hard and had my head spinning, and I was irrevocably drawn to both of them.

The dog made a beeline for me and I bent down to scoop his fuzzy little body up. His tongue darted out to slime all over my face and his tiny tail whipped back and forth. Salem dashed up to the front of the apartment complex and took a minute to bend over at the waist to catch her breath.

“Stupid dog.” The dark fur ball turned at the sound of her voice and tried to escape my hold to get at his pretty owner.

“You got a puppy?” I handed him over to her and she tucked him into her chest as the dog attacked her face with his love.

“Yeah. I’ve never really stayed anywhere long enough to get attached to a pet. My neighbor mentioned that her boyfriend was trying to get rid of a surprise litter of puppies, and once I saw his dopey face I couldn’t resist.”

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