The Valentine's Arrangement (2 page)

“Since this is a large tattoo I need you to be my last appointment of the day. Can you be here tomorrow night at 7:00?” Ronnie asked as Kale finally emerged from the hallway.

“I will be here.” He looked her in the eyes; unwavering and unaffected from the little threat she gave in the other room.

Before Kale walked around the reception desk, he stopped at the end of the hall and leaned in close to Ronnie. Her body jolted to attention the moment the heat from his breath hit her neck. She was about to spit out words to him that even her trailer park sailor swearing momma would be embarrassed by when his hand touched the small of her back.

“For the record Sweetheart, I wasn’t mind fucking you, but thank you for putting that image in my head.” He pulled away and his pretty boy, clean cut, ‘yes sir’ persona faltered a little bit. The corners of his mouth tilted just slightly into an imperative smile, but it didn’t last long. “See you tomorrow night.” His tone was now formal, like he hadn’t just planted goose bumps along the side of her neck. Fuck, tomorrow was going to be interesting.

Chapter 2

Kale pulled his truck into BW3’s around 5:00. His kitchen was lacking in the food department and with only a week left in the States, he didn’t really see the point in grocery shopping. He would kill for a home cooked meal like his grandma used to make but he had the cooking skills of a ten year old. If you couldn’t put it in the microwave, he didn’t eat it. Needless to say, he had been eating most of his meals out.

The bar wasn’t too busy and he snagged a seat in front of a flat screen playing the Kings vs. the Flyers NHL game. He placed his order for an insanely large amount of wings and a beer.

“Well if it isn’t Sergeant First Class Emerson,” a sweet friendly voice said from behind him. He turned around to see Meagan, a girl he went out with a few times before he left for Iraq, standing closely behind him.

He stood up and pulled her in a bear hug. He always liked Meagan. She was a sweet girl, never pushy or annoying, and she respected his relationship status. On top of that, she was a sexy blonde with full soft curves and an overflowing handful of breasts. She looked like she had lost some weight while he was gone, but he wasn’t going to say anything, he knew better than that. Besides, he thought he liked her a little bit thicker.

“Hey Meg, how have you been?” he asked as he released her from his arms. She smiled shyly at him and took a small step back.

“Great, how about you? When did you get back?”

“A week ago.”

“And you haven’t called me?” She placed her hands on her hips in feigned annoyance.

“Sorry, Meg.” He shrugged, genuinely sorry. He should have called her. He didin’t know why he didn’t even think about it. Maybe then his nights would have been filled with this woman warm in his bed. The idea would have usually had him asking her out right then and there but something stopped him; the idea of possibly getting a certain walking art canvas in the form of a brunette bombshell with a bad attitude into his bed. You know what they say about the chase.

Meagan wrinkled her nose and laughed. “It’s fine, I was just teasing you.” She leaned into him, pressed a chaste kiss to his cheek, and placed a hand on his chest. She smelled so good and he could feel the warmth of her hand through his shirt. “My friend is waiting on me. I just wanted to say hi. It was so good to see you, Kale. I’m glad you’re home. Be safe going back.” She slid her hand down his chest. “We should get together while you’re here.”

She turned and as he watched her hips sway away, he thought they just might do that after all.

*****

Kale walked into the tattoo shop and sure enough, Ronnie was standing at the reception desk looking amazing. Any previous thought of calling Meagan tonight was washed from his mind. It didn’t matter if it took him the rest of his leave to convince her, he was going to have this woman. She looked up at him and walked around the desk. Her hair was piled up on top of her head in a ball, and she was wearing a pair of jeans that looked like they were painted on her skin from hip to ankle—and those damn heels. They were black this time with studs along the sides, but they were just as sexy and did just as much to his imagination as the other ones did, if not more.

“Good, you’re on time,” she said without a hint of a smile. “Let’s go.”

She turned around and headed down the hallway. He just stood there like an idiot and watched her. Her hips rocked back and forth sweetly, and damn, if he thought those heels made her legs look amazing then he was going to have to check the Webster dictionary to find a word that described the way they made her ass look. He wasn’t even sure such a word existed.

She turned around, her impassive expression turning irritated. “Alright Soldier, you just gonna stand there and waste my time or do you want to get some ink?”

Kale put his head down and smirked as he started after her. He couldn’t help but like her bad attitude. It was refreshing. She was feisty and quite possibly going to be a huge pain in the ass, but it turned him on. Oh yes, this was going to be fun.

*****

Why did he have to come in here looking like a walking ad for sexy ‘r’ us? Seriously, the pretty boy thing didn’t usually do it for Ronnie, actually it never did it for her, but Kale sure knew how to pull it off with just the right amount of bad boy to make it tempt her. He had a beanie on his head and his face was scruffy today. When he slipped out of his coat a simple black shirt—which just so happened to be her favorite thing on a man—rested underneath. Nothing said hot like a nice, fitted, solid shirt clinging to a man’s chest, hugging his thick arms. His jeans were worn and just the right amount of fitted to show off his massive thighs, but loose enough he didn’t look like he needed to pair them with cowboy boots. Lord, help her when he took off his shirt.

Ronnie walked into her room, Kale following close behind her. She could feel his presence like a cloak of thick air surrounding her. She was sure that if she turned around he would run right into her. She stopped at the counter on the far wall and waited until his footsteps ceased before turning to face him. Just like she suspected, he was within arm’s reach of her. Damn soldier.

“You can park it on that chair while I get set up,” she said, turning back around so she was no longer facing him.

“Are you this nice to all your clients?” he asked sarcastically.

“Always,” she replied with her own dose of venom behind her words.

After she set up her work area, she picked up the transfer paper of the tattoo she drew up and turned back around to face Kale.

“Shirt off.”

Kale lifted his shirt above his head and Ronnie made it a point not to look at his bare stomach. She could just imagine what it looked like and there was no way in hell she was going to let him see her look, no matter how badly she wanted to.

“Alright, turn around,” Ronnie said. Once Kale was positioned against the chair, his back facing Ronnie, she slowly and carefully placed the transfer paper on his warm skin and pressed down lightly. The muscles in his back flexed as her fingers brushed across his back.

“Take a look.” She stepped back from the chair to allow Kale to get up and look in the mirror.

“Yeah, that looks great,” he said, looking into the floor length mirror from the small mirror he held in his hands.

“Good. Lie back down and get comfortable.” She wanted his body laying down so she wouldn’t be tempted to look at him, well more tempted than she already was. Seeing him with his shirt off already had the idea of him removing the remainder of his clothing sticking out in her mind. Fuck. She wasn’t supposed to be thinking about him like this.

“Bossy much?” Kale teased lightly, peaking over his shoulder at her as he leaned his chest against the back of the chair.

Ronnie just narrowed her eyes at him, not giving him the satisfaction of playing into his little game of bantering.

“Okay, okay.” Kale sighed in defeat and leaned his forehead down to rest on his arms.

Ronnie ignored him as she put her gloves on and continued the final preparations. The sooner she got started the sooner she would finish. She already knew she was going to need a drink after this one.

“So how many tattoos does this one make for you?” Ronnie finally said, breaking the silence that stretched between them.

“First one.”

“Tattoo virgin, huh? Alright Soldier, let’s see what you’re made of.” She splayed her left hand out on the bottom of his back and slowly lowered the tattoo gun to his skin.

The needle pierced his flesh, and she easily moved the gun across his static back

Thirty minutes into the tattoo and she hadn’t spoken another word to him. He lay still as a statue allowing her to do her work more easily. His head was still pressed against his arms so she couldn’t see his eyes, but she could hear his calm even breaths, even over the buzzing from the tattoo gun.

“You hanging in there?” She looked at him out of the corner of her eye as she rubbed the ink away from the section of skin she was working on.

“Ah, she does have a heart after all,” Kale said, shifting his head to the side to look at her, a dimple forming deep in his cheek as he smiled.

Yeah she had a heart, just not one she was interested in sharing with anyone.

“Not a particularly large one though,” she smirked back. “I just wanted to make sure you hadn’t passed out on me.”

“Not even close,” he said. She could feel his eyes on her as she worked and she silently wished she wouldn’t have said anything to him. It was more distracting having him looking at her.

“So how long have you been doing tattoos?” Great, here comes the small talk. She really shouldn’t have said anything to him.

Ronnie sighed. “Since I was twenty.”

“So, that’s been how long?”

“Didn’t your momma ever tell you it’s not polite to ask a lady her age?”

“My mother died when I was little, and besides, I didn’t think you were a lady.” He raised his sandy eyebrows at her and that fucking dimple made its reappearance.

Ronnie leaned back and looked at him. No pity lingered in her eyes; she wasn’t offering him that by any means. Hell, her mom might as well have died when she was a baby too. Ronnie had been on her own since she was old enough to get herself on the school bus. No, nothing lingered in her eyes other than amusement. He was playing his cards though, that was for sure.

She softly wiped the angry flesh of his back with a clean, wet paper towel and returned the needle to his skin. “I’ve been tattooing since I dropped out of art school six years ago and followed my high school sweetheart from one post to another after he enlisted. I drove an hour each way to Austin, Texas every single day for two years interning for one of the best tattoo artists in the whole damn state. Fell in love with it and I’ve been doing it ever since.”

“Hood, huh? I was stationed there a few years back.”

And that was supposed to make her care, why?

“So this high school sweetheart brought you to Drum, what does he do?” Kale’s jaw clinched tightly as Ronnie ran the needle close to the side of his ribs. Men could be such pansies when she tattooed their ribs. She hadn’t even batted an eye when she had hers done.

“Apparently he does any-fucking-thing with a vagina, and apparently it doesn’t matter if she looks like a man either,” Ronnie snapped, not really meaning to share her ex issues, it just sort of spewed out.

Ronnie looked at Kale out of the corner of her eye. His face was stolid as he watched her from the side.

“Care to elaborate?”

“Nope,” she said, shooting her eyes towards him in a glare. His face didn’t falter once. Ronnie rolled her eyes and shook her head as she leaned over his back, continued working, and sighed in defeat.

“My high school sweetheart turned into my fiancé. We moved to Drum about a year ago. He deployed to Afghanistan six months ago and has been sticking it to his squad’s female medic for the last three. Now I’m just waiting for his sorry ass to get back so we can sell the house and I can get the hell out of this town.” Her last few words were more to herself than to him.

Ronnie softly wiped Kale’s back and leaned away. As she admired her work, Kale pushed away from the chair and angled his body toward her. Her stomach flinched when his blue eyes met hers, tearing into them with a fierceness that was raw and powerful. She wanted to look away, she needed to look away, but she couldn’t.

“He committed himself to you and then he turned his back on you and your trust. He’s not a man; he’s a coward and a piece of shit.”

Ronnie blinked and swallowed hard, not knowing what to say.

*****

See, this was a prime example of why Kale didn’t do relationships. They were hard enough as it was and then throw in field time, late nights, and oversea deployments and relationships went from hard to difficult. He had seen the issues some of his men have had to work through and it was no cakewalk. Spouses were left home, left taking care of the life that moves on while their soldiers were stuck living day by day in a hellhole. Soldiers were fighting for their country, their families, their brothers; and they were proud as shit to do it, but they did it all the while wishing like hell they were home with the people they love.

Then you had pieces of shit, like Ronnie’s ex, who took the pansy way out and crumbled when things got a little tough and expected it to be understandable. Bullshit. Once you commit to someone, you commit. You put that other person before yourself and you don’t fuck it up.

That’s why Kale kept it casual. Casual was simple. Sex was simple; it was just sex. He always made sure the women he spent his time with knew that’s exactly what it was, just sex. Don’t get him wrong, he treated them well; but he didn’t want to lead them on, give them an idea of something more—Kale never wanted more.

Kale held Ronnie’s gaze like it was the glue keeping her together. Her face softened and the hurt and betrayal she felt molded their way into her expression. He didn’t say anything else, it wasn’t his place and he could tell this wasn’t a particular topic of conversation she was up for. Instead, he turned back around and draped his arms over the back of the chair, letting the silence fill the gaps of tension in the room.