Identity of the Heart (A Hidden Hearts Novel Book 1)

by Mary Crawford

  “Well, I’ve been going on a lot of first and second dates; but, not much beyond that. A lot of women have a very glamorous idea about what it’s going to be like to date the owner of a tattoo shop— especially one like mine. They expect that there’s going to be a never-ending stream of rock stars and celebrity clients through the shop every day and that after-hours we’re going to be constantly partying with these people like we know them personally.”

  “How shallow can you be?” Ivy huffs indignantly.

  “Right? That’s what I always thought. But, some of my friends said I should just get over it and settle into the hero worship schtick. It just feels artificial to me. We don’t really have all that many celebrity clients and those that do choose my shop are relying on me to keep their information confidential. So, I’m not going to go blabbing about their tattoos so that my girlfriend can feel like she’s dating somebody important. Does that make any sense?”

  Ivy smiles at me as she fixes the collar on my jacket. “It makes perfect sense to me. It’s not a very hard concept to understand. I don’t even have a tattoo yet, but even I understand that it’s a very personal, private thing that everybody processes and shares differently. You probably hold as much confidential information about somebody as a hairdresser or bartender—if not more, because you spend so much time together. If someone can’t respect that, they don’t need to be in your life. Don’t compromise your values just in order to be with somebody; that’s just stupid.”

  Until this very moment, I didn’t realize how important it was to me that somebody truly understand that about me and my personal value system. But, as my brain and my heart process her simple declaration, I feel the hardness that’s been protecting my heart melt away like a glacier in the tropics.

  “Thank you,” I murmur against her temple.

  She pulls away looking at me quizzically. “Thank you for what? I didn’t really do anything.”

  “Actually, strangely enough you have. From the time we met, you’ve taken the time to look beneath my appearance and my job to try to find who I am and what I’m about instead of jumping to conclusions based on the stereotypes. To me, that means the world.”

  The tips of Ivy’s ears turn red and she looks down toward the ground as she responds, “It just so happens that I think you’re well worth knowing Mr. Brolen.”

  Ivy hands me the key to the door. With a snick of the lock, it opens easily. I guess I shouldn’t have really been surprised when we step inside and encounter a suite about the size of my entire apartment.

  “Wow! Can you imagine what Jessica would say about this? She would have a cow! We could fit two of our dorm rooms in this and still have some room left over, I think.”

  I walk over to the closet and pull out two very lush robes. I turned to Ivy and suggestively wiggle my eyebrows, “Well now, what do you suppose we should do with these?”

  Ivy practically sprints over to the side of the bed to get the hotel guide. She rapidly thumbs through it until she finds the hotel map. “Oh my gosh! You’re not going to believe this! They have two!”

  Her enthusiasm is way over the top, but then again, I suppose mine is too. I’ve stayed in places that I’ve considered nice, but they’ve never approached anything like this. “Okay, I’ll bite. They have two what?” I ask with an amused grin.

  “Saunas! Can you believe that? They have two saunas. Do we prefer Tropical Paradise or Majestic Rain Forest?”

  “I don’t know that I have a preference. I’ve never actually been in a sauna before. So, I’ll have to defer to your expertise on this one.”

  Ivy taps her chin in contemplation. “I suppose saunas would be more popular in Vermont than in Florida, wouldn’t they?”

  “Yeah, our weather pretty much takes care of the need for saunas around here. All of you out-of-towners think this is the perfect place for a vacation while the locals know the real truth.”

  “Really, and what would that be?” Ivy asks with crossed arms.

  “On our snarkiest of days, we locals call Florida the armpit of Satan.”

  Ivy scoffs at my characterization of our warm, sunny weather. “Oh, you poor abused man suffering from a few too many ultraviolet rays and the rustling of palm trees. Come talk to me when you’ve had to dig out from inside your house when your entire front door has been snowed shut—right up to the eaves of your house twelve or thirteen feet high. Then you might have the right to complain about miserable weather. Until then, you’ll have to excuse me if I play you the world’s smallest violin which is so small that I'll have to use a microscope to play it."

  I hold my palms up in a gesture of surrender as I say, “Okay, okay— you win! Obviously I have no reason to complain about Florida weather in comparison to the weather in Vermont. I guess I’d rather deal with hot and sticky than several feet of snow any day.”

  Ivy gives me a smug grin as she says, “I thought you might see it my way. Not much can compete with winters up north when it comes to weather catastrophes. It’s funny, when most people celebrate the first snowfall of the season, whenever we get the first snow that sticks, all of us Vermonters are looking at each other saying to ourselves, ‘Oh crap. Here we go again I wonder if it will be July before we’re unburied again.’ It sort of takes all the joy out of it for us.”

  “I’m not sure how you do it. I’d go stir crazy for sure. How do you like Florida?”

  “To be honest, I miss Vermont more than I thought I would. I miss the hokey stuff like warm PJ’s and hot spiced apple cider.” Ivy closes her eyes and leans her head back on my chest. “Soup. I miss soup. No one eats a good hearty thick soup in Florida.”

  “Stop! You’re making me hungry!” I protest, rubbing her tummy because she’s standing in front of mine.

  She turns around in my arms. “I have a feeling that very little doesn’t make you hungry. Let me guess, when you go home, you still con your granny out of homemade cookies like you did when you were five, don’t you?”

  I frown at her innocent question. “No, sadly I can’t. She died from lung cancer.”

  Ivy slides the pad of her thumb across my throbbing temple. “I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s not your fault, Sugar. It happened a really long time ago. It still makes me sad though. She was a really good person.”

  “I understand. There’s not many folks left in my family either. It’s just my parents and I. Think that’s why my dad is so set on having the whole family business thing.”

  “I know I haven’t met your dad yet, but I’d be willing to bet he doesn’t want his baby girl unhappy. I can tell from the face that you make when you talk about anything to do with business that being an accountant definitely would not make you happy.”

  Sighing heavily, Ivy rests her forehead against my shoulder. “But, what if I have to choose between making myself happy or making my dad happy?”

  “I can’t help but think that’s not the choice here. I think that if your dad knows you at all, he’s going to understand that accounting isn’t really your gig.”

  “I hope you’re right and it’s just that simple. But, I have a feeling this thing with Rogue is going to open up a whole new can of worms. So, who knows where this conversation is going to go. I’m afraid that my relationship with my dad is going to be forever damaged beyond repair. What if he hates me for finding Rogue and disrupting our little family unit?”

  I place my arms around Ivy and pull her close as I murmur into her hair, “Or, what if they think it’s the most miraculous thing they could’ve ever imagined?”

  Ivy draws a shaky breath as she replies, “That’s the other thing that I’m afraid of. What if they meet her and they think she’s a better version of me? She’s cooler and more street savvy. She’s led a far more interesting life than I could ever dream of. It’s possible that they could love her even more than they ever loved me.”

  Marcus kisses my forehead as he says, “Now you sound like a real paranoid sibling. In my experience, that’s not how
parental love works. Somehow, parents all around the world manage to find something unique and special about each child without sacrificing their love for their other child. It’s amazing how that works.”

  “I know you think I’m being stupid. But I just don’t know how to process all of this. I’ve never had a sister before and it seems like Rogue is all the things I’m not. She’s edgy, fashionable, comfortable in her own skin and popular with people. I can see that it would be much easier to love and accept a person like her.”

  I grin at her as I reply, “I think you’d be really surprised if you heard Rogue’s assessment of you. She’s worried about not being accepted by your family because you are so much more gentle, refined, cultured and beautiful. She thinks that your sense of humor is hysterically funny and very sharp and pointed like a precision instrument. She thinks you have a brilliant mind and she’s afraid she may not match up to your success.”

  “Me?” Ivy whispers hoarsely, “what is she talking about? I don’t have a tenth of her talent and I can’t even muster the courage to have a conversation with my daddy about what I want to be when I grow up. So much for my brilliant mind, huh?”

  “Well, I think your mind is pretty brilliant. But, I also think it needs a break. So, what’s it going to be? The Tropical Paradise room or the Majestic Rain Forest room?”

  “Well, I’ve always had a thing for the movie Fern Gully, so I guess Majestic Rain Forest it is.”

  “You’re kidding! I thought I was the only kid totally obsessed with that movie. I wouldn’t let my mom throw away any paper for six months after I watched that movie. I thought for sure she was going to kill every tree in the forest,” I remark, laughing at the memory.

  A look of panic crosses Ivy’s face. She strides over to her suitcase and dumps it out on the bed. “Oh, please tell me this isn’t happening—”

  She starts to dig frantically through the piles murmuring a few choice curse-words under her breath. She’s not sounding so refined right at the moment.

  As things start to fall off the bed, I pick them up and fold them, placing them in a pile. This is triggering my OCD in ways that I can’t even explain. Finally, I can’t handle it anymore I walk up behind her and envelop her in a hug from behind. “Sugar, tell me what’s going on,” I coax.

  “I should’ve listened to Jessica and done a stupid checklist, that’s what’s going on—”

  “That doesn’t really tell me much.”

  “I forgot my dang swimming suit. I can’t go in the sauna without a swimming suit,” I protest.

  I arch my eyebrow as I argue, “Well, actually you can. I definitely wouldn’t mind.”

  Ivy blows out her breath in frustration. “Actually, I would. We don’t know each other that well yet. You truly don’t need to see me naked. I’ve got all sorts of battle scars. I’ve been sick a lot and I’ve had multiple surgeries it’s not a pretty sight. We’re going to have to get to know each other a whole lot better before I show you any of that garbage.”

  “Oh, is that all? That’s no big deal. I’ll just get you one in the gift shop.”

  “At this time of night?” Ivy asks incredulously.

  “Oh it’s not a problem if you’ve made friends with the concierge.”

  Ivy looks dubious. “How do we make friends with the concierge now? He probably just wants to take a nap.”

  “I don’t think we have to worry about that, Sugar. I think Tristan took care of it so that everybody in this hotel will take care of whatever we need—no matter what the cost.”

  “I hope he knows he didn’t need to do that,” Ivy says, shaking her head.

  “I think that’s part of the reason that the Super-Secret-Spy-Guy likes to do it for us. He knows that we don’t expect it from him and that we’d like him either way. So, I think he does it as a way to befuddle Rogue. She does seem uncharacteristically confused by his behavior.”

  “I agree, Tristan seems really sweet with Rogue. I can’t imagine that he can afford to be that open and vulnerable with a lot of people. I suspect most folks try to take advantage of him because of his money.”

  “Trust me, Rogue is not going to be one of those people. His money totally freaks her out. I’ve never seen a woman so resistant to being treated nicely in my whole life. This is going to be fun to watch. So, shall we go talk to the concierge or would you like to rummage through my luggage too?”

  Ivy looks over at the destruction on the bed. “Uh oh! Don’t tell me that you’re one of those neat freaks—”

  “Is this going to be a deal breaker…?” I ask slowly as I rub the back of my neck nervously.

  “I don’t know,” Ivy answers with a small smile. “To be honest, I’m not all that surprised. I’ve seen your shop. It’s totally meticulous. It’s so clean and well organized I don’t think you’ve ever had so much as a dust bunny. Frankly, that level of clean intimidates the heck out of me. I don’t know if I can live up to that kind of perfection. Since I like you, I’m willing to give it a shot. The question is how long can you put up with me. I’m not a total slob, but compared to you? There’s no way I can measure up.”

  I’m really shocked that she’s noticed that much about me. Most people see the crazy hair, the big earrings and the menacing, colorful tattoos and they don’t bother to look at anything else. They don’t understand that I’m a complex ball of contradictions under the stereotypically bad boy persona.

  I may look like the personification of a bad biker boy but I’m really a family guy who’s trying to turn my life around from the scared-wanna-be-gang-banger I was at twelve. I was using drugs and alcohol even back then to cover up things I knew I shouldn’t be doing. Fortunately, for me, Somebody with some brains saw that I had some artistic potential and took me under his wing on the condition that I stayed clean and sober.

  Lucky for me, I was scared enough that I took Picasso up on his offer. If I hadn’t been, who knows where my life would be right now? Yet, being clean and having a career focus hasn’t completely quieted the nervous energy that’s haunted me since I was a kid. It’s always been a struggle for me to focus on the stuff that I’m supposed to pay attention to.

  In kindergarten, when we were supposed to be learning our letters, instead of focusing on how to form the letters, I would be sidetracked by how the colors didn’t match in the illustrations, if my T-shirt itched or if the class hamster made a noise. It seemed that I could never quite tune into the right frequency. It was really frustrating to be labeled the bad, rambunctious kid in school. I didn’t want to be moving constantly. I just didn’t know how to calm my mind and body. Eventually, I developed my own little coping mechanisms like mentally counting, hyper organizing and wearing headphones and sunglasses all the time to help limit the outside input. The other kids just thought I was being cool. I was okay with that perception because it helped me hide a lot.

  Picasso was pretty much a genius when it came to motivation. The more successful I was in school, the more complex tattooing work he allowed me to do. So, he was able to motivate me to excel in school and move up within his organization at the same time.

  Picasso is the reason why I work with kids in the Big Brother/Big Sister program. I want to pay forward the help I was given as a young teenager. If I can save another kid from going down the same path I went down, it’ll be totally worth it. Better yet, if I can keep him out of jail so no that mother has to go through the pain that my mom went through when Tomás went to jail, that would be even better.

  “That’s okay. It would be good for me to learn a little bit of flexibility. I can be a little set in my ways. Maybe we can both teach each other a few new tricks.”

  I can’t believe that the whole point of the sauna is to sweat. All this time, I thought that it was something really glamorous, but I can get this working in my backyard. Sure, the wood paneling and the music, foliage, candles and aromatherapy that they’ve included in the Majestic Rain Forest Room provide a very nice romantic atmosphere. But, in the end it’s st
ill a big room where you sweat. Ivy doesn’t seem to be having any of these reservations as she sits reading a glossy chick magazine with a plethora of celebrity pictures. She looks up at me, her eyelashes spiky with sweat. “Can you believe they opened up the gift shop for just the two of us? Isn’t that wild?”

  “It was rather epic to be treated like some sort of celebrity. I could get used to that. I really like your purchase, by the way.”

  Ivy preens and strikes a few model poses in her red bikini with teeny white polka dots. “Thanks, this isn’t what I usually wear, but I am on a mission to stretch my comfort zone and this definitely doesn’t fit within my usual bounds.”

  I leisurely study her from head to toe. “I don’t see why not. You look absolutely gorgeous. You would give any fashion model a run for her money.”

  Ivy laughs out loud. “Now I know you’re just being polite. I’ve got enough ugly scars on me to make a Rand McNally map jealous. I also know this little scrap of material they cleverly call a bathing suit disguises nothing. So, as much as I appreciate your manners, a fib is still a fib.”

  I grab a towel and dry myself off as I walk over to her and pull her up to a standing position. I run my finger tip down the scar over her sternum. “I don’t find this scar ugly at all. Do you know what it means to me?”

  Ivy shakes her head mutely as she searches my face for clues.

  “It means you’re a born survivor. You’re a fighter and stronger than I could ever hope to be. This is tangible proof that you don’t give up. Wear it with pride, you earned it. As I understand, few people actually live through what you did, let alone thrive.”

  “I’ve never really thought about it like that. I always figured my scars were what made me different and less attractive.”

  “I can’t speak for everyone else, but that’s not the way I see you.”

  “Well, obviously you’ve never hung around a bunch of junior high school kids.”

  “I’m sad to say, I was probably one of the kids who would have bullied you back in the day. I was not what you would consider an upstanding citizen.”