INK

by Elizabeth Hunter

  Not your girl.

  Emmie was not his girl.

  Adrian the douchebag Saroyan was supposed to be coming to the reception. He wondered if he could pay Kim and her buddies to keep the man occupied. They’d probably think it was hilarious.

  What the fuck was he doing?

  Ox rose from his chair when he saw Spider walking down 7th Avenue. It was far from the first time he’d met the man, but a little thrill still went through him every time Ox thought about hanging out with him. Spider Villalobos was a legend in the tattoo community. He’d been featured in magazines though it was under his proper name, Manuel Villalobos. Only friends and clients called him Spider anymore. Ox wondered if Emmie knew that.

  He was also one of the most badass men Ox had ever met. It wasn’t his size. Spider barely came to Ox’s chest. It wasn’t his attitude, because the man was practically a Zen master of calm. But something about the cool expression in Spider’s baby face and the creeping tattoos on his neck and head warned others that you did not cross the man. If you were a friend, that expression warmed. To everyone else, Spider was an enigma. An enigma that could probably kill you.

  “Hey.” Ox pushed the door open. “As always, I’m honored, man. Thanks for coming.”

  Spider stuck his hand out. “Ox, good to see you.” He stepped inside and looked around. “The place is looking good. How’d the first day go?”

  “Slow for me, pretty busy for her. I didn’t want to book anyone that might overlap with the opening, but I have appointments going the rest of the week.”

  “Cool.” Spider nodded. “I might have a client to send your way. Not sure, but I’ll let you know. His girl likes the Irish stuff, and it’s not my deal.”

  “I’d be happy to talk to her.”

  They chatted for a few moments until Ox noticed Spider adjusting his neat black tie and smoothing a hand over his vest.

  “Shit,” Ox said. “I gotta change.”

  Spider looked over Ox’s faded jeans and T-shirt. “Yeah, you do.”

  “Hey, not all of us dress to impress.”

  Spider grinned and nodded toward Daisy on the other side of the shop. “When you’re married to a woman like that, you dress however the hell she wants you to.”

  Ox noticed that Daisy was wearing a sharp, retro-looking red dress with black polka dots and some fancy thing in her hair. She spotted Spider and Ox and waved with a huge smile.

  “You know you’re a lucky bastard, right?”

  Spider looked around the shop. “Look who’s talking.”

  Ox ducked outside and grabbed the clothes his mom had pressed for him that morning. It was just black jeans and a black button-down shirt like he’d told Ethan, but it looked good and it wouldn’t stand out in this crowd. If he were still over at Bombshell, Ginger would sneer at him for trying to impress. At INK, it was just part of the image.

  He slipped back into the shop as more and more people started to arrive, ducking into the office at the end of the hall only to find Tayla sitting at the desk and typing rapidly on her phone.

  “Uh, hey Tayla.” Emmie’s best friend both intimidated and amused Ox. She reminded him a little of Ginger, only without any of the bitterness or claws.

  “Don’t mind me,” she said with a wave. “I’ve imagined you naked plenty of times, and my imagination is usually pretty accurate.”

  Ox felt an unexpected blush. “Why are you imagining me naked again?”

  Tayla looked him up and down with a critical eye. “This is when I say duh. I imagine all good-looking men without their clothes. It’s one of the benefits of reading a lot.” She closed her eyes and circled her hand beside her temple. “I have cultivated my mental camera.”

  “And that mental camera leaves off the clothes?”

  “Mostly.” She opened her eyes and stood up. “Don’t pretend you don’t do it with women. And don’t pretend you’re not wondering if Emmie’s mental camera is as fine-tuned as mine.”

  Well, now he wouldn’t be able to think about anything else. Did Emmie imagine him naked every time she looked at him?

  “The girl has a good imagination, Ox. And that’s all I’ll say about that,” Tayla continued. “I need to get out there again, so I will allow you your privacy. Please be social media ready by the time you leave this room.”

  “You’re too kind, madam.” Ox bowed as she passed by.

  Tayla paused. “You’re good. You will be devastating when you get your head out of your ass and make a move on the girl. Don’t think I haven’t noticed.”

  Ox straightened. “Noticed what?”

  “Are you going to make me say duh again?”

  Best friends saw too much.

  “We both agreed it was a bad idea to get involved,” Ox said.

  “Who was the one who suggested it?”

  Him. Clearly Tayla already knew that.

  “So who has to be the one to put an end to this foolishness?” she continued.

  Ox didn’t say a word.

  “I wouldn’t waste time if I were you.” Tayla leaned closer. “You’re far from the only one who’s noticed.”

  She patted Ox on the shoulder and walked out of the office. Ox shut the door, locked it, and took a minute to recover from the experience that was Tayla McKinnon.

  Then he thought about Emmie’s “mental camera” again.

  Damn it.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The first face Emmie saw when she walked down the stairs was Jeremy standing next to Tayla and wearing a huge smile. Both of them were dressed to the nines, Jeremy in a waistcoat and snazzy bow tie, Tayla in her sleek sheath with a wide belt and heels. Emmie walked toward them and stopped a few feet away as Jeremy let out a low whistle.

  “You look great!”

  Tayla nodded firmly. “You really do. That color is perfect with your hair.”

  The red burgundy of the shirt brought out all the red in Emmie’s hair. She had to admit she loved that part of it. The back, however… “I feel naked,” she hissed.

  “You’re not naked. You’re beautiful.”

  Jeremy nodded. “Promise. You look great.”

  “And you two match,” Emmie said, looking between the two of them. “Tayla, are you going to ask him out or not?”

  Tayla ignored the faint red on Jeremy’s cheeks. “You have no appreciation for the dance, Emmie. Anticipation is everything.” She slid a finger down Jeremy’s arm, tossed him a wink, and hooked Emmie by the arm. “Okay, let’s go show you off.”

  Emmie could feel the cool air on her back as she walked through the growing crowd. They passed by the counter, and Tayla grabbed a handful of business cards and shoved them in Emmie’s back pocket.

  “This is showing me off?” she asked.

  “Give it a minute.” Tayla squared her to the room and stood behind her. “For now, I want you to look at this and appreciate what you’ve done.”

  Emmie took a deep breath and looked around.

  By the bookshelves, customers were enjoying short glasses of brown ale and wine as they looked through the titles on the shelves. Everyone had a book or books in their hands, many using the totes Ethan was handing out at the door as people came in. The couch and chairs in the lounge were full, a mix of people congregating as they drank and looked through the stack of coffee-table books and Ox’s albums on the table.

  Speaking of Ox…

  Emmie looked to the right, expecting to see Ox surrounded by a gaggle of female customers asking about his tattoos. The gaggle was there, but he was ignoring them and his eyes were locked on her. His black button-down was open at the neck and his sleeves were rolled up, displaying the grey-and-black ink on his forearms.

  He stared at her with an inscrutable expression, and Emmie felt her cheeks growing hot, but she couldn’t look away. He broke away from the chattering group of customers and walked slowly toward her.

  “Resolutions crumbling…,” Tayla whispered at her side. “In three… two…”

  “Hey,” Ox
said when he reached them. “Emmie, you look—” He shook his head. “Forget what I said about the shirt being a bad idea. You look wonderful.”

  “Thanks.”

  Tayla patted her shoulder. “I’m going to go flirt shamelessly with other men to make Jeremy jealous. See you later.”

  Emmie tried looking around the shop, but she still felt Ox’s eyes on her. “How many people so far?”

  “Ethan handed out forty bags last time I checked, but not everyone took a bag, so he thinks it’s closer to fifty.”

  “And we ordered one hundred?”

  He nodded. “Did you do something different with your hair?”

  She shook her head. “Sometimes it’s just redder than other times. It kind of depends on what I wear. It’s really brown, but when I wear wine colors it kind of…”

  Ox tucked a loose strand behind her ear. “I like the braid.”

  You can use it as a handle if you want.

  Bad Emmie!

  She forced a smile. “You look nice too.”

  “Thanks.”

  Emmie finally braved looking at him full in the face, and the punch of his expression made her forget what she was going to say.

  Okay, maybe Tayla was on to something, because Ox looked hungry, and she didn’t think it was from a lack of mini egg rolls at the buffet.

  She swallowed the lump in her throat. “Forty bags, huh?”

  He nodded.

  “Have you booked some appointments already?”

  “Yeah.” His eyes left hers and traveled down to somewhere in the vicinity of her lips. “Are you hungry?”

  “No, I’m okay.”

  He stepped closer, glancing over her shoulder, letting his eyes linger on her skin. “You should eat.”

  “I think I’m too nervous to eat.” Was it possible to actually feel someone’s eyes? Because she felt Ox’s eyes. “Besides, we probably need to mingle. Talk to people and stuff, right?”

  “Uh-huh.” His tongue peeked out and tasted his lower lip.

  “Ox?”

  He cleared his throat and blinked. “Yeah, why don’t we get you a beer or something?” Ox put a hand on the small of Emmie’s back, sliding his fingers under the edge of her shirt so his palm was pressed to her skin.

  “Okay.” Oh my.

  His hand was huge and warm and suddenly Emmie didn’t feel quite as exposed. Ox led her to the bar that Hugh and Carly from Metlin Brewing Company had set up at Ox’s tattoo counter. Just as he grabbed their beers, Emmie heard the bell she kept on the register ringing over the hum of the crowded shop.

  Emmie turned and saw the last thing she expected. Spider was standing on one of her kickstools, holding a beer.

  Everyone quieted at the sight of him. Whoever had control of the music paused it.

  “Hey,” he said. “I’m Spider. I don’t give speeches.”

  A light smattering of laughter.

  “But I’m looking around this place and it’s cool,” he said. “Lots of people hanging out. Lots of people you might not put together. This is Metlin, right? We kind of stick to our own sometimes. But”—he looked at Emmie—“change is good. Emmie started this place with Ox, and it feels like a place where everyone is welcome.” He raised his glass. “So, to Emmie and Ox. To INK.”

  “To INK!” the crowd answered back before everyone drank and clapped. The music started again, and the strange vibe that had buzzed between Emmie and Ox seemed to dissipate as they walked through the crowd.

  First they visited the people gathered around the tattoo chair looking through catalogs and admiring the art on each other’s skin. Then they wandered over to the books, and a few of the girls whom Emmie recognized from earlier in the day took turns showing Ox the most scandalous book covers in the romance section that featured tattooed heroes.

  From the badly smothered smile on his face, he was eating it up, but not once did he leave her side. Most of the night he stood behind her and to the side, letting her lead the way as they visited customers and introduced themselves to many of the other businesspeople from Main Street and 7th.

  There was Hugh and Carly from Metlin Brewing, of course, but they were also joined by Junior, who ran the Ice House across from Bombshell Tattoos. Cynthia and Esther Nixon dropped in from the antique shop south of Main. The Nixon sisters had to have been in business for fifty years at least, but they were still the life of the party. Esther was flirting with Marco Ventura and his father, who ran the paint shop across the street on 7th. Trang and Julie Nguyen from the T-shirt shop next to Jeremy’s place had come, as had Don from the welding shop. He’d mumbled a quick hello before he grabbed a beer and escaped to a corner near the biography section, his grey head bent over the books, ignoring anyone who tried to make conversation.

  It was a glorious and confusing mix of old and new, and Emmie loved it. It was way more fun than the stuffy readings and receptions she’d hosted at Bay City where everyone tried to impress everyone else by what books they read as they traded opinions about wine.

  Ox leaned over and whispered, “Are you happy?”

  Emmie nodded. “You?”

  “Yeah.” He was staring at her again. “You look happy.”

  She couldn’t keep the heat from marking her face. “Ox, what are you—”

  “You gotta be fucking kidding me,” he muttered.

  “What?”

  Emmie looked up, but Ox wasn’t looking at her anymore. He was staring at the door with a scowl on his face. Turning to follow his eyes, Emmie realized why he looked so angry.

  Ginger had walked into the shop with Russ and two other artists from Bombshell. Though the crowd didn’t go silent, the room definitely got quieter.

  “Oh no.” Emmie sighed. “She’s not going to—”

  “Let me take care of this.” Ox slid an arm around Emmie’s waist and slid his thumb back and forth over her spine. “I don’t want… I’ll get rid of her.”

  “Don’t be rude,” she said quickly.

  Ox turned and gave her an incredulous look.

  “She is our neighbor,” Emmie continued. “I have to live across the street from her. The last thing I need is to start some kind of feud. Just… be polite.”

  Ox leaned down. “Are you serious right now?”

  “As polite as you can,” she whispered.

  “I’m not the one who started the fights,” he said under his breath. “I’m sick of her shit, and she decided to bring it over here.”

  “But—”

  “Is this my shop too?” he asked, his eyes flashing. “Is it?”

  “Of course it is.”

  “Then I don’t want her here.” He sliced out his hand. “At all. I don’t have to be polite to her. You have no idea how she will mess with you, Emmie. Trust me on this: you do not want to have sympathy for this woman. She feeds on it.”

  Ginger had strolled to the bar and ordered a beer while Emmie and Ox were talking. She leaned on the bar and watched Ox and Emmie with a smug expression on her face.

  “She’s watching us,” Emmie muttered.

  “What?”

  “She’s. Watching. Us.”

  “Don’t care. Let her watch.” Ox drew her up and kissed her temple. “I’ll take care of this.”

  Emmie might have imagined the collective sigh that emanated from the romance section of the bookstore, but she didn’t think so. She also didn’t think she imagined the daggers that shot from Ginger’s eyes or the swirling feeling in her own head.

  Did that just happen?

  Ox walked over to Ginger and stood in front of her, keeping his voice low. Ginger, of course, didn’t suffer from the same problem.

  “I thought this was a grand opening.” She managed to make “grand opening” sound sarcastic. “Just wanted to check out the competition.”

  The group behind her looked uncomfortable, and Emmie couldn’t help feeling sympathetic. These were people Ox had worked with. They probably wanted to be excited for him. A couple were looking around the shop with
obvious curiosity.

  Ox spoke again, but Emmie couldn’t hear his words above the chatter of the crowd and the music that Tayla kept playing. Her friend shot her a look across the shop, but Emmie could only shake her head. She had no idea what Ox was saying, but Ginger had settled a mutinous look on her face and was clearly ignoring him. She scanned the crowd, her lip curled slightly at the corner.

  She looked amazing, of course. Ginger always looked amazing.

  Glamorous heels, not comfortable slippers.

  Emmie looked away and wandered to the book section, determined to ignore whatever was developing at the tattoo counter. She chatted with happy customers about books and fielded questions about book clubs and events. She’d already had a couple of people suggest movie nights and she loved the idea, wondering if Ox would be willing to host a joint party.

  She heard a voice raised across the room and couldn’t help but look.

  “You think you’re too good for us,” Ginger said over the music. “You always did. But you’re not, Miles. Not even close. At least I don’t lie about who I am. But hey, I’m glad you found a pretty little thing you could trick into supporting you. I wonder how long that will last. And when you’ll show her your true colors.”

  Guests had stopped chatting and turned to look. Emmie felt a surge of embarrassment as Ox and Ginger once again took center stage in their own personal drama. She felt like she was going to cry.

  “Cut it out and stop talking out your ass,” Ox said.

  Tayla and Jeremy were standing by the speakers, whispering furiously, all flirtation gone from their expressions. Daisy’s eyes were wide behind the refreshment table as she rearranged cookies. And Spider…

  Was walking over to the drama in the tattoo shop.

  “Ginger,” he said quietly. Spider leaned over and said something in Ginger’s ear.

  Her expression calmed as he spoke, and the tension in the room began to ease. Everyone watched as she nodded toward the door, then the cadre from Bombshell walked out the door. One shot a small wave at Ox while another—the bald guy Emmie remembered—nodded at him.