Dedicated Ink

by Rose, Ranae

  Dedicated Ink

  Inked in the Steel City Book 3

  Ranae Rose

  Dedicated Ink

  (Inked in the Steel City, #3)

  A one night stand has never gone so wrong … or so right. Two months after one scorchingly hot July night, tattoo artist Abby is pregnant and the man who showed her everything she’d been missing is nowhere in sight. When he walks into the Hot Ink Tattoo Studio looking for much more than some new ink, she risks their rekindled connection by confessing that she’s pregnant … with his twins.

  Sworn to serve and protect, Pittsburgh police officer Sam isn’t one to back down from responsibility, and he’s definitely not going to let the woman who’s been haunting his dreams all summer get away again. But two babies on the way means a reunion that’s anything but what he imagined. Can unforgettable chemistry evolve into real love before her due date arrives?

  eBooks are not transferable. This book may not be sold or given away. Doing so would be an infringement of the copyright.

  This book is a work of fiction. All characters, names, places and events are products of the author’s imagination and are in no way real. Any resemblance to real events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Dedicated Ink

  Copyright © 2013 Ranae Rose

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  EPILOGUE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  BATTERED NOT BROKEN EXCERPT

  CHAPTER 1

  Blue lines and frantic heartbeats – they were all Abby could think about as she sat the plastic stick down on the edge of the bathroom sink, then clasped her hands in front of her hips, unsteady fingers entwined. She didn’t dare look away as the white area inside the first test window darkened, going grey as if a storm cloud was passing over it.

  That was exactly how she felt, too: unbearably nervous, caught beneath the long shadow of looming possibilities. Another few seconds and she’d know. Then, she’d either breathe a sigh of relief or … or what? Her heart marked each long moment as a shape materialized in the first murky window.

  A horizontal blue line – the control line. It meant the test was working, nothing more. And there was no other line bisecting it, even as the second window began to darken.

  Her lips cracked open in automatic response, and she drew a deep breath. As the scent emanating from the lavender oil diffuser on the shelf above the towel rack filled her lungs, reality registered: there was no vertical line in the first window. She’d worked herself up over nothing. Even her cold sweat was pointless. Except…

  Except, holy hell, the first window was still changing, beginning a second metamorphosis right before her eyes. As the second control line appeared in the second window, one just like it materialized in the first, appearing sudden and strong, undeniably there.

  She stared at it for God knew how long, her gaze frozen on the vertical line that passed over its horizontal twin, forming blue crosshairs right in the middle of the test she’d picked up for a few dollars at the grocery store ten minutes from her apartment, tucking it between a bag of avocados and a jug of milk, hiding it in her cart because that had made the possibility it’d represented seem less real.

  She picked up the test again, reading the three lines over and over as the thin device shook, making the blue stripes blur. The aroma of lavender still hung in the air, but it seemed less soothing than before – cloying, almost.

  Blurry or not, the reality the stripes had revealed was clear: Abby’s life would never be the same. Trying and failing to breathe normally, she set the test back down and glanced at her reflection in the mirror.

  Her face was pale and shining beneath the sheen of a nervous sweat, and that made her messy ponytail look ragged and washed-out – more dirty dishwater blonde than the natural platinum shade she’d inherited from her dad.

  She’d just have to go to work this way. Because at the moment, she needed more than anything to escape the quiet solitude of her apartment, and her hands were still shaking too badly to be trusted with make-up or a curling iron. With one last look at the positive pregnancy test, she turned on her heel and rushed out of her home, pausing to pull on shoes and grab her purse, swinging it over her shoulder as she struggled into a light jacket.

  Her entire world’s axis had just shifted, but she still had work – she had a new client scheduled for a noon appointment, in fact. As she hurried down the complex’s stairs and slid into her car, she prayed that her hands would stop shaking by the time she picked up a tattoo machine.

  * * * * *

  “Hey, you okay?” Tyler hung over the wall of Abby’s half-booth, a dark brow raised as he surveyed her from above.

  Half-curled in her swivel-chair, she felt smaller than her petite frame accounted for. “Yeah,” she breathed, forcing herself to straighten and wincing as her spine popped.

  “You look like crap,” Tyler said. “I mean, you look like you feel like crap.” He watched her like he expected her to bite his head off.

  “Not a great morning,” she admitted. “It’s personal.”

  “Ah,” he said, nodding and backing away from the half-wall. “Female stuff. Gotcha.” He was gone quicker than a summer rain shower, safely shielded from her female woes by the solid wall of his own booth.

  Abby glanced toward the front counter, where Zoe the receptionist sat on a stool behind a glass case full of body jewelry, ready to help any client who walked in. She was the only other woman in the Hot Ink Tattoo Studio at the moment. All the other artists were male; Zoe and Mina, the other receptionist, were the only female staff besides Abby.

  Female or not, Zoe was oblivious to Abby’s issues, and that was for the best. Abby wasn’t ready to tell anybody yet – not when she only half-believed it herself. Making sure that no one was watching, she swept her fingertips over her belly. No baby bump yet, but her body had been changing in other ways.

  Sore breasts and days of vague nausea had prompted her to consider the possibility that she might be pregnant despite the fact that a missed period hadn’t meant much to her – her periods had been more or less irregular since she’d started a new birth control pill a few months ago, so no immediate alarm bells had gone off when she’d skipped a cycle.

  So much for those pills.

  She was what – God, almost two months pregnant, despite the medication? Had to be, because she knew exactly when she’d conceived the baby, even if she could hardly believe it.

  One night. One night with one amazingly hot-dream of a guy she’d met at a bar. Her stomach shrank into a hard ball as she tried to imagine life as the single mother of a child conceived in the most cliché of careless situations: a one-night stand with a random stranger who was absent from her life, totally oblivious.

  God, she might never see him again. And even if she did, for all she knew, he was a total flake. A total flake with a rippling six pack that would make her growing belly look frumpy.

  “Hey Abby,” Zoe called from up front, “your twelve o’clock is here.”

  “’Kay,” she wheezed, suddenly short of breath as she eyed a nearby tray of equipment. Enough was enough – she had to stop freaking out and get into the zone so she could fulfill the promises she’d made to her newest client. She wouldn
’t – couldn’t – tattoo anyone unless she was sure she could give the piece her best effort, and she had about five minutes to get her head on straight.

  Standing, she reached out and steadied herself with a hand on the booth wall, her heart sinking as her head swam. Was being pregnant really this bad, or was it just nerves?

  Probably both…

  “Hi,” she said, emerging from her booth and stepping into the main aisle, wiping a clammy palm on her jeans so it would be dry when she shook her client’s hand. This would be the first time she’d done that; this guy had been an e-mail consult, someone who’d claimed his rotating shift schedule made it easier to plan online than face to face. “I’m Abby. It’s nice to finally meet you in person…”

  “Hi.”

  His single-syllable reply sent a strange little bolt of something arrowing through her, making her stomach churn a little faster as she looked up.

  “Sam.” The word jumped to the tip of her tongue, a false question, because she just couldn’t wrap her mind around the man standing in front of her – she’d had enough shock for one day already.

  Sam was short for Samuel. Duh. Still, she’d had no reason to suspect that the “Samuel Mackenzie” in the From: field of her inbox had been the full name of a Sam she’d met before. There were a million people named Sam, probably hundreds, at least, in Pittsburgh alone…

  “Yeah. It’s nice to see you again.” He stood there, six feet of sculpted muscle in a plain white t-shirt and jeans, and extended a hand.

  Abby’s own hand felt as heavy as a cinderblock at her side. She let it hang there uselessly, resisting the urge to hug her still-flat midsection as she studied the promise of a six pack that showed through his thin cotton shirt.

  He kept his hand there, steady in mid-air, as he stared at her – thinking what crap she looked like, probably. There was no way the clear lighting inside Hot Ink was half as flattering as the flaw-shrouding dimness of the bar she’d first met him in, or the near-dark of his bedroom at midnight…

  He, however, didn’t look like crap – not even a little bit. He looked every bit as amazing as she remembered – a fact which sent her heart sinking further toward the floor, even as it skipped a beat.

  Those eyes … they were ice-blue, but somehow not cold, especially when he looked directly at her. And she’d recognize his hair anywhere – it was a dark, rusty shade of red, rich and striking, even though he wore it so short that the strong curve of his skull could easily be made out beneath. The unusual tattoo peeking out from beneath the edge of one of his short sleeves was the finishing touch; it hadn’t been that long since she’d traced its dark lines with her fingertips, and then her mouth…

  “Are you all right?” he asked, his lips turning down the tiniest bit at the corners.

  “I think I’m going to throw up.” Turning on her heel, she fled down the aisle, clutching her stomach with one arm as she threw the other out in front of herself, reaching for the bathroom door at the back of the shop, just beside Jed’s office and storage area.

  She slammed the door shut just in time, collapsing onto suddenly-weak knees as nausea overwhelmed her.

  It wasn’t pretty, and even worse was the thought that everyone out in the main area of the shop could probably hear her. She was that loud – her hitching, half-choking breaths were loudest of all – and it was early in the work day; the shop was quiet. Zoe hadn’t even turned on the radio yet.

  A hot tear crept from the corner of one of Abby’s eyes and fell into the depths of the toilet. She stood, scrubbed her eyes with the back of one hand and splashed her face with cold water after hastily flushing. No way was she going to walk back out there looking like she’d been puking and crying.

  Taking a few moments to compose her cooling face, she stared at the solid wall before her, regretting that there was no window. If there had been, she could’ve escaped through it and hurried home. After all, her stomach was still flat – for now – and her petite frame would allow her to squeeze through even a modestly-sized window. Instead, she had no choice but to make an appearance in front of everyone again.

  At least Jed, the shop owner, wasn’t there. It was a consolation – albeit a tiny one – to know that her boss hadn’t witnessed her humiliation. Holding onto that thought, she exited the bathroom.

  Two steps later, she nearly collided with Zoe.

  “Hey, are you okay?” Zoe stood squarely in the aisle outside the bathroom, shielding Abby from the others’ view. “Are you sick? If you are, I’m sure Jed would tell you to head home if he was here.”

  Abby shook her head. “Not sick … just not feeling well.”

  Zoe arched an ebony brow that matched her dark chin-length hair. “Okay … well, you know you need to get some rest, right?”

  Abby shrugged, her shoulders trembling. Why had she wanted to escape her apartment so badly – why had she thought a day at work would help her orient herself? She craved the privacy of her apartment now, ached to be alone. “My client. I can’t tattoo him. Not like this. It wouldn’t be right.”

  Zoe nodded. “I know. Come on, I can drive you home if you need me to.”

  “That’s all right. I can drive.” She could do anything if it meant escaping Hot Ink and the captive audience inside.

  When Zoe stepped aside and escorted Abby down the aisle like some kind of invalid, Sam was still there, standing right where Abby had abandoned him.

  Heat flooded her cheeks, but she refused to let her chin drop. “I’m sorry,” she said when she reached him, “but I can’t go through with our appointment today. I just can’t do my best work like this.”

  He nodded, his face unreadable. She dared to meet his eyes, but there wasn’t a trace of surprise – or anything else, really – visible in them.

  Had he worn such a mask the first time she’d met him?

  No, she vividly remembered a spark of lust in those same eyes, obvious excitement… It was no wonder he wasn’t feeling those things now.

  “Should we reschedule now?” Zoe called from behind the counter, already poised at the computer there, ready to enter a fresh appointment into the system.

  “Okay,” Abby said, her empty stomach sinking.

  Zoe probably thought Abby had eaten some bad take-out, or contracted a twenty-four hour virus. She had no way of knowing that Abby couldn’t stomach the thought of tattooing Sam, now or ever, because how could she possibly devote all her concentration to tattooing him when his baby was growing inside her?

  “I know you have a crazy work schedule…” She forced herself to meet his eyes.

  “Well, Sam,” Zoe said, “if you just let me know when you’re available, I can compare those times to Abby’s schedule, and I’m sure we can find something that works.” She smiled from behind the counter. “Abby, why don’t you head home and get some rest? I can handle this.”

  Abby nodded, but her feet didn’t want to move. The weight of the tiny life anchored in her belly was imperceptible at only two months, but it held her there anyway, locking her knee joints and stiffening her muscles. Could she really just walk away from Sam without another word? On the other hand … what could she possibly say, here and now?

  Definitely not, “Hey Sam, nice to see you again. I peed on a stick less than an hour ago, and guess what? I’m pregnant and you’re the father! I bet you’re glad you chose Hot Ink for your next tattoo, huh?”

  Ugh. She felt half-ready to vomit again at just the thought of such a declaration. Somehow, she had to think of a tactful way to spring the news on him, and not in front of her co-workers.

  “You don’t have to hang around for my sake.” Sam’s deep voice shattered her half-frantic thoughts. “I can see that you’re sick and need rest.”

  Should she be touched by his concern, or depressed by the fact that she obviously looked as bad as she felt? Unsure, she took one wobbly step forward. “I…”

  Her stupid shoe slid against the tile floor and she pitched forward gracelessly, catching herself,
but not before Sam closed one large hand around the top of her arm. Cheeks flaming, she straightened her spine, doing her best to stand tall as he supported her unnecessarily with an iron grip.

  “You don’t have the flu, do you?” He raised one dark red brow. “That can be serious, especially if you can’t keep any fluids down. Co-worker of mine had to be hospitalized with it just last week.”

  She shook her head, her messy ponytail swinging as she hoped to God that Sam wasn’t recalling the splashing sounds of her stomach’s contents being emptied into the toilet. “It’s not the flu. Besides, I’ve been vaccinated, so…” Suddenly, she was short of breath in that about-to-puke way. “I’ve gotta get home.”

  “Need a ride?”

  She shook her head and managed to wriggle her arm out of his grip.

  “I already offered,” Zoe said, stepping out from behind the counter.

  Every set of eyes in the shop was trained on Abby, and she’d had enough. “I’m driving home. Alone.” No way was she going to risk throwing up in front of everyone again. If she had to pull over on the side of the street to do so instead, or sprint up the stairs to her apartment, so be it.

  “I’ll walk you to your car, at least,” Sam said.

  “I can do that.” As young and slender as she was, Zoe looked almost mother bear-like as she advanced on Sam, stepping between him and Abby.

  Abby bit back a sigh and a curse. Clearly, Zoe thought Sam was a stranger … which he very nearly was. “Zoe, it’s all right. Sam and I know each other.”

  “Oh.” Zoe donned a distinctly less wary expression and took half a step backward. “Well, okay then. If you’re sure you’re okay with it, Abby.”