CHAPTER 1
Karen walked into the Hot Ink Tattoo Studio clutching a manila envelope over her speeding heart. Crackle. One of the photos inside bent, and she swore softly as she pulled the envelope away from her body, desperately trying to smooth it back out. If she’d damaged the photos…
Well, if she’d damaged the photos, she’d just have to print out new ones and come back a second time. She fought a manic grin at the thought, struggling to control her expression as the door fell shut behind her, sealing out the waning heat of a summer evening in Pittsburgh.
“Hey, Karen.” Mina beamed from behind the counter where a cash register rested on top of a glass display case showing off body jewelry.
“Hey.” Karen’s voice came out a lot less breezy than she’d intended, and for a second, a spark of amusement seemed to gleam in Mina’s dark eyes.
God, was she really that obvious? There were mirrors in all five of the half-booths that lined the shop’s walls, and she purposely avoided looking at any of them. Her fair skin was always quick to show a blush, and if her cheeks were as red as they felt, she didn’t want to know.
“Jed’s in the back,” Mina called as Karen made her way down the aisle between booths.
“I figured,” Karen said, cringing inwardly. If she hadn’t looked ridiculously excited to see him when she’d walked in with flaming cheeks and a goofy smile, she’d ruined that by making a beeline toward the back of the shop without waiting for Mina to direct her. She’d just been so eager to escape Mina’s knowing gaze – sometimes, having a best friend who worked at the place her crush owned did not seem like an advantage.
Crackle. The envelope protested again as she raised a fist to knock on the closed door Jed was definitely behind. She couldn’t help being aware of her heartbeat – it was pounding so loudly in her ears that it almost drowned out the not-so-distant buzzing of a tattoo machine – as her knuckles hit wood.
“Come on in.” Jed’s voice was so deep that it reverberated somewhere in her core – a place she tried hard not to think about as she turned the doorknob and stepped into the combined office and storage space Jed sometimes worked in when he wasn’t tattooing or consulting with a client.
“Karen.” Jed looked up from the desk that took up one corner, his dark eyes a little wider than usual as he placed large hands on its surface and rose.
He looked surprised, which wasn’t exactly shocking – she’d sent him an e-mail telling him she was headed to Hot Ink, but that had been a whopping twenty minutes ago, and she’d high-tailed it to the studio, unable to resist the lure of showing him her latest work in person. She’d more or less memorized his work hours – a completely natural result of having done so much work for his business, of course.
As she stood before his desk, her gaze was drawn to him like a magnet to iron.
He was tall. About 6’3” if Karen’s estimation was correct, and she was a pretty good judge of height – a consequence of being a 5’10” tall woman. Some guys were shorter than her, and most weren’t much taller. But Jed … she noticed every last one of the several inches in their height difference, and his muscular frame made him seem even bigger.
“I brought you those photos.” She lifted the manila envelope and held it between them like it could shield her from the sexiness that radiated from the owner of the Hot Ink Tattoo Studio. The photos were feeble protection against his short but not too-short, almost-black hair and the dark stubble that shadowed his jaw. His dark eyes met hers, and she stood frozen. Some idiotic nervous instinct urged her to hop back and forth, or at least shift her weight from foot to foot, but she stifled the urge.
“McGinnis’ back piece?” Jed rounded the desk and practically pried the envelope from her suddenly stiff fingers.
He took it from her, and with a crackle and a flash of script, it was in his hands. Jed Torino – she’d written his name across the envelope, as if she could possibly forget who it was meant for. It had taken all her willpower not to dot the ‘I’ in Torino with a heart, or to scrawl her own name next to it.
“Yeah,” she said breathlessly. “I finished going through the images a little early last night, and there were some that turned out so well I couldn’t resist making prints. And well, I thought you might like to look at them in person instead of on a computer screen.”
“This is great,” Jed said, sliding the stack of prints out of the envelope. “I was only expecting an e-mail, but this is even better.”
“Hope you like them.” Her voice came out higher than it should have, sort of like she’d just inhaled a lungful of helium. Her face warmed, but luckily, Jed had his head bent over the photos, which he shuffled through slowly, holding the prints gingerly between large fingers, studying each one.