“I apologize. I wanted to be sure I’d feel comfortable with you.”
Birdie shrugged and said nothing. She didn’t think her tongue would work. She was amazed she’d gotten that one line out without stuttering, really.
“I have a table in the corner. Why don’t we have a seat and talk?”
“Is everything all right, Birdie?” Jonas’ voice intruded. But it also brought Birdie back to reality. She turned to him with a warm smile and nodded.
“Everything’s fine, Jonas. Apparently, I’ve found my client. I’m fine. I’ll take a porter, though.”
Jonas handed Birdie a bottle of porter, to Adam’s surprise.
“I’ll take a Bud,” said Adam, and was given one, along with a slightly disdainful look.
By the time they got to the table, Birdie had herself under control. At least, so she hoped. She didn’t want to act like a star-struck idiot.
“So, got a name?” asked Birdie, taking the initiative.
Adam grinned.
“Do you find tardiness so unforgivable?”
Birdie relaxed and knew it was a mistake immediately. Her tongue immediately seemed to tie itself up in knots.
She just shook her head.
“All right,” said Adam, amused now. “I’m Adam Simpson.”
It clicked into place.
Birdie’s mouth nearly fell open. She caught herself just in time.
“The app billionaire?”
Adam rolled his eyes.
“I suppose so,” he admitted, looking a bit peeved.
“I didn’t know you were so cute.”
It was out before she could stop it. She could’ve thumped her head on the table.
Instead, she took a sip of her porter and hoped he’d think it was just a compliment.
“The tabloids seem to print my most unflattering photos,” said Adam, with a grin that could’ve made angels fall.
Really, the man was so gorgeous, it shouldn’t be allowed!
“Okay, I guess I kind of get the whole secrecy thing. Though really, it wasn’t necessary. But you couldn’t have known that without knowing me.”
“I’ve heard only wonderful things about you.”
“What have you heard?”
Shit, thought Birdie, had she actually said that aloud? Now she sounded like a fan who was amazed that he knew of her existence.
If Adam noticed the tone, he didn’t dwell on it, for which Birdie was grateful.
“I know of you from a lot of people. You’re becoming quite a name. But the reason I wrote to you is Celeste.”
Birdie smiled, and the fondness was unmistakable. It made Adam reach out for her hand and hold it, though neither of them realized the intimacy of that moment.
“Celeste is amazing. She has such strength. She always had it. She just forgot about it for a while and hid inside herself. I was so glad to help her, though she helped me as much as I helped her. She’s the one who made me see what my calling was. She did as much for me as I did for her. We’re still in touch, though I haven’t written to her in a while. I should.”
“I think she’d like that.”
Birdie was suddenly aware of that contact and pulled her hand away abruptly. It felt far too nice. She had no business feeling such things, not there with Adam Simpson. He was from a different world, with the kind of wealth she couldn’t even imagine. She didn’t even want it. Birdie just wanted enough to live on her own terms. Since her terms didn’t include private jets or owning islands, what she had was good enough.
“I would like that, too. If you know of me from Celeste, then you know everything there is to know. What else do you need?”
Adam sat back, his long legs stretching out under the table and making Birdie avoid them. She wanted to rub her legs against his.
So she absolutely wouldn’t.
“I need you to know me.”
Wouldn’t mind knowing you biblically, thought Birdie before she could stop herself. She could only be grateful she hadn’t said it out loud. That would’ve really capped it all.
She just nodded.
Birdie waited, not trusting herself to say anything. He’d talk when he was ready.
Adam took a deep breath, and waited a moment. He didn’t talk about this, not with anybody. It was letting somebody into the deepest part of him, letting them see things about him he wasn’t comfortable sharing with anybody at all.
It was an admission of weakness. Birdie Campbell was a stranger.
But she could help him. He had to believe that.
“I have a scar. Many scars, really, covering my right thigh and my back. They’re pretty big.”
Birdie nodded. She could see that it was difficult for him. Interrupting him would only make it more difficult.
“A year ago – almost exactly a year ago – I was in an accident. I love – loved – dirt bikes. I’d go to a track and ride when I wanted a stress-buster. Well, that day, I busted a lot more than my stress. It’s apparently a miracle that I’m alive. But I don’t believe in miracles. I fought to stay alive. I refused to die. But now, the scar reminds me of how I almost didn’t. I almost didn’t fight hard enough. I need to change it. I could get rid of it, but that’s not what I want. I’ll never be able to live as if it had never happened. But I want to live again, instead of just… being afraid.”
When he said the last word, he paused in surprise. He had never intended to say that, not to her, not to anybody else. He had never confessed that part to anybody.
But there he was, having a conversation with a stranger and spilling his deepest, darkest secrets. Maybe that’s what he needed: an understanding stranger.
He saw the compassion in her stormy eyes and felt strangely comforted.
“You want to turn it into strength. You want to remember how you fought and won, instead of just that you had to fight and you might have lost,” said Birdie, softly, and Adam felt like he had never been understood before.
He nodded.
Birdie smiled softly.
“That’s what I do with my work, Adam. I turn scars from failure to strength, to remind you that you did more than just survive. You beat it. You beat it to hell and back, and now you’ll turn it into a work of art. That’s kicking its ass. That’s telling life that it can’t kick you around.”
Adam nodded again, not trusting himself to say anything.
“Well, practically, I’m afraid the process will take you back a bit. For one thing, I need to see the scar, or at least a photo of it, before I can start to work on a design. It would really be better if you could come into the studio tomorrow and we could put our heads together. Besides, it’ll be a big project, so I can’t sign you on unless Marley signs off on it.”
“Marley – that’s your partner.”
Birdie nodded.
“I’m afraid you didn’t exactly gain his trust with the anonymous routine. We have to agree. But I’m sure I can convince him. He knows that helping people find beauty in what they think of as ugliness is important to me. And he knows that it’s just about impossible to drag me away from a challenge. So, I’m pretty sure I can convince him to look past the mystery.”
Adam looked discomfited.
“You know, I didn’t really consider that you might not take me on as a client. I thought it would be my choice.”
Birdie chuckled and took a sip of her sadly neglected drink. It wasn’t cold enough anymore, but Birdie could deal with it.
“Yes, so I gathered from the first email. But from what you’ve told me already, it will be a pretty long process. It will also take a lot from me. Each scar I work on is different. It needs a different part of me. It takes as much out of me as a painting takes out of an artist. It’ll be a piece of me, a piece of my soul that I’ll give you to take strength from, if you need to. I wouldn’t do that unless I felt I could deal with it. I wouldn’t do it unless Marley felt I could, either.”
“So, are you and Marley… umm…”
Birdie gaped for a moment before dissolvin
g into peals of laughter.
“Oh,” she gasped, “he would get such a kick out of that. No, Marley is my friend and my partner, and I trust him and his judgment. So I’m afraid that even if I’ve passed your test, you still need to pass his. You’ll have to audition for him,” said Birdie, her eyes sparkling with mischief.
Adam smiled, and Birdie found all control over her vocal chords sliding away again. It was easier to keep her mind from scrambling all over the place when he didn’t smile.
“So, does that mean that I’ve passed your test?”
Birdie smiled vacantly, barely registering the words that came from his mouth because she was far too lost in his smile.
That dimple was distracting. It should be registered as an illegal substance or something. It seemed to get her high. Was there something in her porter?
She looked at the bottle suspiciously before deciding she needed it and taking a long swig.
“Have I?”
The man was persistent.
Birdie nodded.
“I guess so,” she managed to say, and her voice was thankfully not squeaky. But then, her voice was always throaty and a little husky.
“Then I guess I need to charm Marley, too.”
That tickled Birdie out of her star-struck imbecility again.
“Oh, that wouldn’t work on Marley. With Marley, you must be honest and upfront. You see, he deals with a lot of our routine stuff. He does enjoy the work, but a lot of clients who want flowers and butterflies tend to be… well… They rarely have hidden depths, let’s just put it that way.”
Adam grinned again.
Birdie looked away before she let her brains get scrambled again.
“But,” she hurried on, “they are always sweet and charming. Sometimes it gets to be so much that Marley craves a good dose of no-nonsense, straightforward honesty to all the charm in the world. And it would go much better if you did it man to man. He gets far too protective with me. Even if I can lay him on his ass.”
The last part was muttered and Adam didn’t catch all of it. Lay? Had she said lay? But she had said that there was nothing going on between them.
Adam was surprised by how much he wanted Birdie to be single and unattached. She wasn’t his type, he reminded himself. She wasn’t simple. She was complicated and had layers.
Anybody who did the kind of work she did was bound to have layers.
He liked uncomplicated women who didn’t know too much about him, and who didn’t care to ask him why. Birdie would be nothing like that.
Though it was endearing how she seemed to lose her train of thought when he smiled.
Of course, Adam knew that he was handsome. But he had never seen a woman as beautiful as Birdie be susceptible to it so obviously. It showed a lack of artifice that was charming and incredibly rare.
“All right, then I will talk to him, and I will tell him the truth. If I could win you over when you were hostile – no, don’t say you weren’t, I saw how irritated you were a little while ago, with me – then I should be able to handle Marley.”
“You were late,” she pointed out.
“I wasn’t. I was here ten minutes before you were.”
Birdie shrugged.
“That doesn’t really make it any better. I was left to wait and cool my heels. I don’t like waiting.”
Adam couldn’t help it. He grinned, and saw that slightly dazed look come into her grey eyes again.
“I won’t keep you waiting again,” he said solemnly.
Birdie felt like her head was stuffed with cotton wool. Adam was so cute. She had heard of him, of course. He seemed to have come from nowhere and had taken the tech world by storm.
Then he had disappeared for a while. Not much had leaked, though there had been plenty of speculation in tabloids, which were kept at the tattoo studio for people who wanted to browse.
Now Birdie knew the truth. She couldn’t even begin to figure out how difficult it must’ve been for him to let go so far. She would have to do justice to his faith.
“I promise you, I’ll give you something that’ll make sure that you never regret seeking me out.”
The words were soft and sincere. Adam was touched.
“I don’t doubt that, Birdie. But I doubt myself, sometimes.”
This time, it was Birdie who leaned across to cover his hands with hers. There was a soft intimacy in that simple touch, and neither wanted to ignore or acknowledge it.
“I’ll try my best to make sure you don’t do that, either.”
Adam smiled, and this time, it was sad enough to tug at her heartstrings. He must’ve gone through hell, and it must still plague him.
But as she watched, Adam drew back, as if he had gone too far.
“Then I will see you tomorrow, Birdie. Midmorning, if that suits you.”
Birdie nodded, and before she could say more, he had left.
Birdie let out a long, shaky breath.
This, she thought, was going to be interesting.
Chapter 4
Birdie was unaccountably nervous. She told herself this so many times as she got dressed in her staple jeans and T-shirt.
She knew she looked good in it, but she didn’t spend much time thinking about it.
She had woken up with the clear knowledge that she simply had to work with Adam Simpson. But it was just as important that Marley be on board with having Adam around for quite a while. She would understand if he decided he didn’t want that. But she wanted him to say yes.
For one thing, their business was still taking off financially and they needed the money. From Adam’s description, it sounded like it would be a long and painstaking tattoo. From what she had gauged from him, she was sure that he would want a demanding and intricate design, too.
So, it would be extremely good for business.
She didn’t think they could count on publicity, though. For one thing, the tattoo would be on his thigh and back. Unless he got comfortable enough to show those parts of him in public, nobody would ever see her art.
Women he slept with would see them. The thought wasn’t a welcome one; neither were the feelings that accompanied it.
Birdie had never been a jealous woman, and she didn’t want to start now, for no reason. She knew envy, of course. Everybody who grows up without much knows envy when they see people who don’t need to worry about where the rent money was going to come from.
Birdie didn’t realize how closely her thoughts mirrored those of Adam’s from not too long ago. If she’d known, she would’ve been shocked.
Birdie had spent some time looking up everything she could about Adam. She’d felt like a voyeur, really, but how could she have helped it? She had been fascinated by the man and she had acted like a complete fool around him.
At least if she could get more solid background on him, she would be able to get a grip on herself.
Or so she hoped.
But there wasn’t all that much. There were the usual tabloid rumors. If they were to be believed, he’d been engaged seven times, divorced thrice though married only twice, for some odd reason, and he’d won a few extreme sports prizes.
He had been a serious hobbyist, she’d realized as she read that bit. To have been betrayed by something he’d counted on for relaxation and a connection to who he was – that must’ve been difficult.
An idea was beginning to dawn in her mind. She didn’t know what his scars would be like, but she had been doodling for a few days now. Weeks, really.
Birdie picked up her sketchbook and turned the pages until she came to an intricate sketch of a bird with a tail of stylized fire.
She had found the process of creating that difficult. It had almost been painful.
Birdie hadn’t really considered turning it into a tattoo. It had just been one of those things that had been torn from her subconscious because keeping it bottled inside her had become just too painful.
It reminded her of herself. It was why she was called Birdie. It was a firebir
d – a phoenix.
After meeting Adam, she was beginning to realize that she had drawn that for a reason. It had come out of her because it would be needed.
She had known, somewhere deep inside her, that it was time. That it would be needed.
Now she saw why, superstitious as it sounded.
But Birdie had always believed in instincts, and in following them. Without them, she would never have found herself knocking on an unlikely door at seventeen, looking for a job because she had given up on everything her life had been until then.
But she hadn’t been Birdie then.
With a jolt, she came back to herself and quickly grabbed her bag and keys. There was no time to lose. She’d be late if she didn’t hurry.
When she got to Visions, she saw that it was already open. Marley, thought Birdie with an affectionate smile.
But when she walked in, it wasn’t Marley she saw first. It was Adam.
Birdie stopped in her tracks and gaped, again. She seemed to do a lot of gaping when Adam was around. He must think her a bimbo without a thought in her head.
“Adam,” she said, and was grateful, again, that she didn’t stutter or stammer.
“Birdie, it’s good to see you. I said I’d be by midmorning, but Marley said he’s free early. If you don’t have time, we can do our consult later as planned.”
Birdie shook her head, then nodded.
Adam raised an amused eyebrow.
Damn it, she was doing it again.
“No, I have time now.”
Adam smiled and followed Birdie in to sit in the comfortable chair.
“How did it go with Marley?” blurted out Birdie.
Adam smiled.
“Marley and I are playing nice. He has given the green light for the consultation, at least. If I behave inappropriately or mysteriously, I’ll have to deal with him.”
Birdie grinned. That did sound very much like what Marley would say.
“So, what do you need to know?” asked Adam, his voice deep.
Birdie suddenly felt very hot.
“I need to see the scar,” she said.
She was asking Adam to take his shirt and his pants off. She would see Adam in his underwear.
She was being so unprofessional, it wasn’t even funny. Was she having a hot flash? Was his body as spectacular as his face?
Be My Everything (Brothers From Money Book 11) Page 18
