Page 42 of The Devil's Scars

“Uh, yeah. So?”

“So.” Willa exhaled. “You know he’s not really… well. I mean, the man isn’t a hot, sexy step class instructor with abs of steel. He’s a forty-eight-year-old supermarket manager with an ex-wife and a beer gut.”

“Again, I say, ‘so’?”

“So. I guess he’s just really, really vanilla. Works hard. Saves money. Sees his kid every weekend. Has a sad little straggly ponytail and no hair on top.”

“Wow.” Zoe danced around a bit and Keira laughed, grabbed at her long hair. “You’re making him sound sooo hawt. Better than I remember, actually.”

“He’s not drop-dead gorgeous, is my point.”

“Not the way you’re describing him, though I recall he has some incredible ink on his shoulder and chest, and he has beautiful green eyes.”

“Well.” Willa’s expression softened, got all wistful and dreamy, maybe even a bit moony. “Yeah.”

“Hey, sweetie. Is he good to you?”

“Oh, yeah.” Willa’s look got even more moony, crossed pretty firmly over into mushy banana territory. “Zee, he’s great. I mean – the man holds the door for me, you know? Brings me flowers. Shows up when he says he will, no bullshit or playing games or making we wonder. Calls me every night before bed, and asks me how I’m doing. Bakes me double-white-chocolate-chip cookies and slips ‘em into my lunch bag in the staff fridge when nobody’s around.”

“Aww.” Despite her white-knuckled moratorium on romance, Zoe found that she was kind of crushing on Jimmy herself. “Showing up on time and sneaking you homemade cookies are hawt, and I hope you know it.”

“That basic stuff is not hawt, it’s… well. Boring. Sweet, maybe, but still.” Willa shrugged. “It’s not anything like having wild step classes in a bar back room, is it?”

“Please.” Zoe snorted. “Wild step classes in a back room are all well and good, but it’s not the kind of thing that respectful and lasting relationships are based on.”

“You sure about that?” Willa asked, since for reasons that she couldn’t quite pin down, a small part of her was kind of rooting for the biker with the growly voice and gentle touch. “Really sure?”

“Positively sure,” Zoe said firmly, downing the rest of her coffee. “Now – I gotta go.”

She gave Keira a big kiss, then set her down on the floor carefully. Immediately, the baby made a bee-line for the door to the backyard, and Willa was off in pursuit.

Zoe laughed, feeling a wave of happiness wash over her, the biggest, most all-encompassing wave that she’d felt in ages. It was all just so right: this big, sunny kitchen in this cute house, Keira crawling for the gorgeous backyard, Willa having a kind, faithful man waiting for her back home, Zoe heading out the door to a job that was going to change her life for the better.

And really, when she thought about things that way, why did she need a man?

Short answer: she didn’t.

Not even one with sapphire eyes and diamond scars. One who could fuck like a train, then cradle her like she was made of spun sugar.

Especiallynot one like that.

**

A little over three hours later, Zoe hung up the phone with the nitrile glove supplier, feeling completely happy and proud. At eight-oh-nine that morning, she’d walked into a disorganized, poorly-run and -managed tattoo place, with a storage room lacking any kind of back-up supplies and a client schedule smudged coffee-cup rings and reeking of onions. She’d looked around, sighed, shrugged off her jean jacket, and buckled down.

After a solid morning of work, and a pot of coffee, and some focus and the speed-reading of a whole lot of additional paperwork, Zoe felt comfortably on top of things at Blue Dragon Ink. There was still a lot to get done, of course, but she felt on much steadier ground, at least, had a sense of the bigger picture. She wasn’t happy that so much had slipped through the cracks, but at least she knew that it had happened, and she had taken some of the most important steps to fix the situation.

She glanced at the clock, saw that she had about thirty minutes before her client showed up for what had turned out to be a pretty straight-forward tattoo on her lower back – a lucky clover, which was about as easy as Zoe could ask for. Plus, it had the bonus of maybe being a good luck charm, here at the beginning of her new life.

She’d just finished having this optimistic-as-all-hell thought when she heard the door open behind her. She turned, wondering if maybe Saint or Viking had shown up a bit early for their shift, or maybe her client was super-eager to get inked… but when she saw the man standing there – scowling, scarred, sexy-as-fuck – she felt her spirits plummet. All of her happiness just crashed to the ground; her little bubble of ‘I love my new life!’ burst into a hundred pieces.

Fucking, fucking, fucking Scars Innis.

“Hey, Zoe,” he said, and his voice was as deep and dark and devastating as she remembered it. “How you doin’, baby?”

She flashed, just for a second, to that voice whispering her name as he thrust inside her sweetly trembling body, to the way he growled as he came so deep and hard, to the possessive tone of mine that she’d heard in the way that he’d said he wanted to see her again. She thought about all of that just for a second – or maybe two, or seven, or maybe she hadn’t stopped thinking about it at all since the other night – and then she took command of herself.

“What do you want?” she asked, aiming for Siberian temperatures in both tone and body language. “I’m busy.”

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