Heart of a Tattooist: Dark Romance MC Club Alpha Bad Boy Obsession (Tattooist Series Book 3) (10 page)

The weeks flew past and became months. They settled into a rhythm. Mitch was often frustrated by his writer’s block, and he alleviated that by whisking her out to the Long Lakes or out to his house in Belle Meade. They lay around naked in his backyard, splashed in the pool, and cooked dinners together.

They went to the Bluebird to see aspiring songwriters and singers, and hung out for many hours in the art galleries and coffee shops. They walked the streets with Roger trailing a discreet distance behind.

Cara learned everything about Mitch in those weeks, and she met his large and rather boisterous family one very eventful weekend.

That last had scared her. She was sure they would take one look at her and tell him that he was out of his mind, but they didn’t. In fact, they welcomed her into the fold with an alacrity that stunned her and made her heart swell.

Mitch’s mother was a lively and still lovely woman who told Cara, “You know once you’re in this family there’s no way out of it, right?”

That had eased something in Cara that she had never known was gathered up so tightly. She liked his family and they lived nearby, so having them around was not uncommon.

She gave his nephew, who turned eighteen that weekend, his first tattoo as a birthday present and learned how to make Mitch’s favorite pie—buttermilk—on another day.

They laughed and drank and shared everything. Cara found herself opening up to him in ways she had never opened up to anyone else, and it felt good.

The shadows of her past were slowly fading, and she hardly ever thought about Memphis anymore. The crew there was all mostly locked up or on the run, and the crime rates had spiraled even higher as the summer wore on, making her mourn for the place.

She mentioned that to Mitch one afternoon and he nodded and said he knew exactly how she felt. His dad had played music down that way and the place as going to hell in a handbasket, but it would turn around soon enough.

She asked, “How do you know?”

He replied, “Memphis is a proud old city, Cara. It’s got everything you could need or want there. The crime is because the one thing that’s needed and wanted is jobs and wage equality, and that isn’t happening. It’s a volatile mix. You have people making way too much and people making nothing, and little in between.”

“That’s the whole country right now,” she pointed out.

Mitch nodded. “That sounds about right.”

She sighed. “It makes you wonder what’s going to happen in the world.”

“It does.”

“Does it ever scare you?”

“All the time.”

She was surprised by that admission. “Really?”

“Only a fool wouldn’t worry, Cara. But a bigger fool would worry until it ran them into an early grave. But back to Memphis… it’s a great city, and it’s sad to see it dealing with so many issues. But it will get them back under control.”

“It was a cool pace until…you know…”

He took her hand. “Still worrying about that old stuff? It’s been almost a year, you know.”

“I do know. That’s crazy. I can’t even imagine that it has been so long, but it has been. I must be getting old because time is getting away from me.”

He chuckled. “I’m ten years older than you.”

“You don’t seem it.” She rolled over onto her back and stared at the sky. The pool hissed and slapped as she said, “I’ll admit that sometimes I miss the ocean.”

“We should go down to Panama City.”

“Panama?”

“No, Florida. Now that’s my favorite beach town.”

“Isn’t that where they hold Spring Break now?”

He grinned. “Yeah, it moves a lot. People get tired of the college and high school shenanigans after a little while, and the dollars aren’t worth it. It’s a cool place, and the sand is so white that it looks like sugar.”

“Really? Is it white? I mean, I always heard it was but all I have ever seen is brown sand.”

He sat up. “You’re off tomorrow, right?”

“Yes.” A grin formed. “Are you thinking what I think you’re thinking?”

“If you’re thinking you don’t even need to change out of that very sexy bikini, the answer is yes.” His grin got bigger. “I’ll have Roger get the plane ready.”

It made her breathless, and it scared her too, that he had that kind of money. If he wanted to go somewhere or do something he did it. A few weeks before, he had declared that he wanted Chinese food and they had flown into New York and headed toward Canal Street for a long and leisurely dinner at a tiny, funky little place where the menus weren’t even in English.

It was frightening because he was a man who got what he wanted and did what he wanted, and she often felt dwarfed by the fact that he had so much money. She was making plenty of it now and stowing it away, but she still felt rather imbalanced by the large gap between their livelihoods and pocketbooks.

She stood and he did too. He swatted her bottom playfully and said, “You might actually want to take a dress or two. We can fly back up tomorrow night in time for you to get some sleep so you’re rested up for work.”

She hesitated. Now would be the time to tell him no. To say that this was crazy. That normal people didn’t just fly off in a plane to go to the beach for a day just because one of them happened to say that they occasionally missed the ocean. But she did miss the ocean. “I think there’re a few of my things floating around here.”

There were. She’d been buying clothes a lot lately. She’d needed them and she needed stuff in both the house and the condo because she never knew where they would end up. There were times when one or the other of them would need their personal space, or have to work late, and they wouldn’t see each other that day but those days were few and far between and she was glad for that.

She loved spending time with him, she really did. He was a man who knew how to give her room and how to make her want to give him more.

She headed into the house and he called out, “Hey, Cara?”

She turned. “Yeah?”

“Put something over that bikini, will you? Otherwise Roger might just get himself blinded by the sight of my bare butt in that tiny little plane.”

She laughed and turned away, calling, “You have a cute butt!”

“I’m not quite sure Roger would agree with you on that one!”

Her laughter floated out behind her.

* *

The ocean danced up against the shore. The sand was indeed solid white, and very fine. It drifted across her feet and clung to her skin and she smiled as she dug down into it to capture a perfect sea shell and turn it over in her hand.

It was early morning and Mitch still slept up in the room. She’d been eager to get back down to the beach, so eager she still wore nothing but a pair of bathing suit bottoms and one of his shirts. The surf creamed and foamed around her ankles and she kicked her foot up, letting water spray over her legs while she laughed.

Sea gulls whistled and glided overhead as they searched for a meal. Cara shaded her eyes with one hand and looked far out to the horizon. Mitch spoke from behind her, “It’s hard to imagine that Mexico is not far from here. I mean, we’re on the opposite side of the country from California after all.”

“I know. I’m not geographically inclined at all either, so that sort of boggles my mind,” she said as she turned and nuzzled her face into his bare chest. “I can see why you like it here. It’s great. Thank you.”

“You don’t have to thank me, sweetie. I wanted to come too.” He took her hand and they started walking. He added, “I swear I’m starting some kind of women’s lingerie line that features those shirts. Every time I see you in one it makes my heart just stop.”

She laughed. “Maybe I’m hoping for a different reaction from a different organ.”

“Oh, you got that too.” He grinned at her. The early sunshine lay on his face and she studied it. There were tiny lines around his eyes and mouth. He laughed a lot, and it showed. He had a kind of goodness radiating from his visage. He was handsome, yes, but part of those good looks came from that kindness.

They walked on, avoiding the little crabs that scuttled toward them with their pinschers out. The salty wind blew over their bodies and she said, “I almost wish I didn’t have to work tomorrow.”

“You do know that if you had your own place you could make your own rules.”

She wanted one, but that was still a distant dream. Maybe one day. It was a lot of work and uncertainty and…there were so many variables. “True.” He sighed and she asked, “Still no luck with the writing?”

He scratched his head. “Well, we got all of about eight songs out of the pages of scribbling I’ve been doing. Mostly it is all cobbled-together stuff. I haven’t booked studio time and it doesn’t really cost me anything but time to try to write. I feel like I’m wasting time, though, that I should’ve already gotten it done.”

“You need to stop beating yourself up.”

“I know but I can’t seem to stop.”

“I know that feeling.” She giggled. “That sounds like a country song.”

They kicked their way past dunes and sea pats and then headed back up the long wooden steps and boardwalks that led to the resort hotel’s back decks.

Cara couldn’t stop herself from worrying about his feel of writer’s block. “Maybe something will come to you if you just pause for a little while. Do something else. Or maybe write a song for someone else.”

He nodded. “You might have a point there. Maybe if I quit focusing on my own songs I might be able to break something loose out of this head of mine.”

“Maybe that’s the problem. Aren’t the best songs the ones that come from the heart?”

He stopped walking and took her into his arms. “You’re a genius.”

She let her nose rest against his bare chest so she could smell his skin. “I am?”

“Yes, and you’re totally correct too. That’s what I’ve been doing wrong! How did I not see that? This whole time I’ve been trying to write the songs my head tells me are what I need to write in order to get the album to be great, and I haven’t once listened to my heart.”

“It’s our art, right? I hate guys who tat from their hands and nothing else, especially if they have a lot of skill. It feels empty, like there’s no energy to it.”

He kissed the top of her head. “That’s because there isn’t. I vote we walk down to the donut place and get about a dozen and then lay on the balcony sucking up sun and sugar. What do you say?”

“How can I resist an offer like that?”

He took her hand and they headed toward the street. “I guess it’s a good thing we thought to put on flip flops. This concrete’s hot.”

He was hot. So hot she wanted to haul him right back to the room, and make love to him all day while the sea wind blew in on them. She grinned… it wasn’t a bad idea.

The door to the tattoo shop opened and a man sidled through. The darker gray on his face gave him the look of someone who lived on the shadier side of things. He gave the shop’s denizens a long and distrustful stare, then his eyes fell on Cara.

An unpleasant smile creased his face, revealing jagged teeth as gray as his skin. She managed a small smile back as uneasiness settled into her bones. He looked vaguely familiar but she couldn’t recall his having been in there before, and he was someone a person didn’t easily forget. “Can I help you?” she asked as her eyes went to the guys clustered near the couches. All of the tattooists were waiting for customers. They had just opened and business was not just slow at the moment, but totally dead.

“You’re her, aren’t you?”

She sighed inwardly. Cay’s music video and song were everywhere and so naturally people came in to see the L.A. and New York artist who’d been in the video. “Yup, it’s me.”

Thomas, the owner of the shop, had put up billboards all around town too. Her face and name were everywhere. It just figured some pervert had seen them and decided to come in and get a closer look.

Her eyes went to his arms. Prison ink, all faded and ragged. Not the kind of guy who wanted real ink. That figured too. She forced another small smile. “You looking for a tat?”

He shrugged as the door behind him opened again. The creep wandered out of her field of vision as a young woman and group of what had to be her friends all crowded in, their bravado so huge they were giving away their nervousness without knowing it.

Cara headed for desk as did some of the other tattooists. When she looked around again the guy was thankfully gone.

A thin thread of worry sliced through her but she ignored it. She was going to have to talk to Thomas about the difference between using her to gain business and getting her ogled by perverts on a regular basis.

She set the thought aside when the one of the girls in the group asked Cara if she could tattoo a butterfly on her back.

* *

Thomas was lying. She knew it. She gritted her teeth so tightly she heard a molar crack and squeak. She said, evenly, “Thomas, this is the fifth time in as many days I’ve come up with less in my pocket than I put on the board.”

He wore an expression of complete innocence. “Nope, that’s the way it rang out. I’ve got to charge you for space, Cara. You know what it costs to run a place in downtown Nashville?”

“About as much as it costs to run a place in any tourist town’s main strip,” she snapped back. “I get that it costs to run the shop. What I don’t get is why your artists are bearing a greater share of the rent than the dude who runs the shop.”

She saw Harry lean against a wall. She knew he would back her play. He’d been around for a long time, and he was good—not great and he would be the first to admit it, but he was a good flash guy. Harry was ripping him off, too, though, just like he was ripping off every other artist in the place.

Harry shook his head. “Look, Cara, there’re costs.”

“I get that,
like I said
. What I signed up for was straight deal. Ten percent of my take and a set amount of rent on that room every month. That was fair. By my calculation you took damn near twenty percent of my day’s earnings, and I paid you full rent. You’re just robbing me, and there’s no way I’m standing for it.”

Thomas growled, “Now look here, everyone knew fees were going up. I posted it yesterday.”

“Yes, but you’ve been taking more all week. I thought maybe I was off—the first day. But after a week straight of you taking more than agreed to, it isn’t me. What’s more, you posted that shit and you never talked to any of us about it. That’s bullshit! No one else wants to stand up to you? Then I will. Legally, you have to actually tell us and give us the option of saying yes or walking.”

She wasn’t going to back down. Not for anything. Thomas ran the busiest shop in town, and he knew it. He also knew that he had a prime location and a staff of damn good artists who were hauling money in for him, and he was willing to toss them on their asses if they said a word about his hand in the till.

So what if he fired her?

There had always been a secret longing in her. A place of her own. A place where her name was the one over the door. A place where she made the rules and everyone worked well and fairly. Mitch had put the bug in her ear again. Maybe now was the time to do it.

It had been months and she’d made good money. Nashville’s lower cost of living and its deep-pocketed residents had put plenty of money in her pockets. It wasn’t really enough, but she could wing it… Hire artists with their own gear and make do with a few chairs and a really clean space until she could do better.

Her name alone would draw some in, and every guy at Thomas’ shop had regular customers. If they wanted to join her they could run his ass right out of business. She knew that and she decided to use that as leverage.

“Give me my money or I walk, Thomas. I’m serious. You can take down those damn billboards you got up with my name and face on them, or face a lawsuit as well. I’ll start my own place, and how long do you reckon you’ll keep your doors open like that?”

He glared at her. “Now I told you. I posted those signs and—”

“You took my money. Money that belongs to me. That’s theft, you old goat, and I refuse to put up with it. The way I see it, you owe me fourteen hundred bucks as of today. You really want to lose a big draw over that kind of cash? Because I don’t care enough about working here to get worked over. You can’t play fair, neither will I.”

“Gimme a fucking break, Cara. You’re just trying to rile up everyone in the damn shop—”

“You’re riling us up,” Harry stepped in. “See, she isn’t the only one you’ve been skinning. We all know you’ve been doing it. It seems like you got yourself a little cash flow problem and decided to cure it by robbing us blind. It’s done. I’m with her on this one and I ain’t the only one.”

Thomas had the grace to look slightly abashed. “Maybe I made a few accounting mistakes this week because I knew the percentages were going up and I just forgot exactly when.”

Liar. “Whatever. Pay me what you owe, as well as everyone else in the shop.”

“Yeah sure.” Tomas headed for the register.

Harry followed him. “I’m watching to make sure you do. I’m telling you, man, if she goes we all go. She brought in a ton of business and I intend to keep earning like I have been lately. If that means following her out of this shop, then that’s exactly what I aim to do.”

Thomas muttered a few times and came up with the cash. Cara and Harry took theirs while the other artists stood around waiting for theirs.

Cara headed out, Harry right behind her. Out on the sidewalk she looked at him and said, “Thanks for backing my play there, Harry.”

He shrugged. His gray ponytail swung as he said, “Look, I know I’m not the best at free-hand. Hell, I wouldn’t let me free-hand a damn thing if I was a customer, but I’m good with a gun. I don’t have what you have, that spark and that talent you got. But if you ever decide to start your own place and you need a good flash man, talk to me, okay?”

She smiled gratefully. “I will. Count on it. You’re better than you think. You’ve got talent and passion.”

He shrugged. “Some of us do tats. Some of us make art. You’re in the latter category. Have yourself a good night.”

He walked off and she watched him go. She headed for the bank on the corner, intent on making a deposit. It was barely dark. She wasn’t thinking of danger or anything but starting her own shop, and seeing Mitch later after he was done with his songwriting session.

“Well, look what we have here.”

The voice that came behind her ear made her jump. It was too close, dangerously close. She turned to see him standing there, the gray-faced and sharp-toothed man who had come into the shop earlier, giving her a look.

“Get back.” Her voice held no strength and the fear wrapping around her spine had her backing up. She had turned into a corner and now was alone in a blind alley that held nothing but an ATM.

The ATM had a camera, though, so she started toward it, backing up slowly again. He stalked her, his face ghastly and pitted with acne and other scars, smiling confidently at her.

Tweaker, she realized. Meth head. A serious one at that. Okay, he wanted to rob her. She could give up the money in her pocket. She would. It was just money and it wasn’t worth her life. “Look, I have money in my pocket and I’m going to give it to you.”

“You fucking got my brother killed.”

She blinked. The words came out on a puff of breath so foul her nose wrinkled, and bile roiled up in her belly and throat. She swallowed hard. “What’re you talking about?”

“Junior. He was my brother.”

Hell no. He had to be joking. She took a chance, “Bio or street blood?”

“Does it matter?”

No, not really. She’d just hoped to distract him long enough to find a weapon, but there was nothing nearby. She took a few more steps back, her eyes judging the distance between him and the mouth of the alley.

It was too far and he was blocking her from it.

“I didn’t have anything to do with that.”

“The hell you didn’t. You unmanned him. He had to go out and prove he had balls after what you did, bitch. Do you know how hard the other dudes rode his ass after that? They thought it was funny as hell. You kicking his ass like that, ruining his ink.”

Anger overtook common sense. “It was my ink! That bastard tried to steal it!” Wrong freakin’ thing to say to a tweaker. She knew if he got her back against a wall she was done, so she kept moving, hoping he wouldn’t notice that she was slowly but surely turning in a circle, trying to get his back closer to the wall and her body closer to the tiny entry into the little offshoot of concrete wall that made up the alley.

Why the hell a bank had thought putting an ATM into this area was a smart move was beyond her. Why she thought of even using it was stupider!

“He could take whatever he wanted. That was the deal.”

The deal? What deal? She didn’t want to know, but she had a good idea. She’d met guys like Junior and this one before. They hung out with her parents’ crew. Soft guys desperate for power. They reveled in pretending they were part of the crew, and the crew let them because it amused them and because they could get them to do anything in order to hang out there.

Guys like Junior, guys who claimed blood or street ties that didn’t really exist. Tweakers like this one, they were the same. They were outsiders who wanted something that they could never get on their own. Respect.

She had taken whatever respect Junior had had, and while she knew that the man facing her thought she was wrong for that, she knew she hadn’t been.

He would never understand that what Junior had done was disgusting. He would have found it funny. Or arousing. Her stomach churned at the thought. “Listen, please. I don’t want any trouble.”

“Well, you got trouble, bitch!” He reached inside his jacket and pulled out a gun.

Her heart sank all the way into her belly. She wanted to vomit. Sickness floated into her throat and threatened to move past her teeth. “I didn’t do anything but protect what’s mine.”

“And I’m doing the same.” The gun lifted and she saw the light from the street lamp hit the dull barrel.

I’m going to die.

That was the last thought that went through her mind before the gun came down on her temple.