The guy with the black mohawk and all the swagger made a few sarcastic comments and flashed me a grin that would have made my blood heat if I hadn’t noticed the very obvious wedding ring he was sporting. Those two were trouble. The very best kind, and I told them I knew it was going to be a good time and that I was excited about getting in on this opportunity with them on the ground floor. We were all set to go and I’d told them I was excited to start when I heard his voice.
It was deeper, smoother, but under the baritone was the soft Texas twang I remembered from all those years ago. When his head cleared the top of the stairs I saw his eyes widen, watched them fill with recognition and trepidation. I couldn’t help but smile. Even though he looked less than thrilled to see me, everything about seeing him made me happy, and I knew, just knew I had made the right choice. I moved toward him like there was a force field pulling us together and listened to my heels tap on the wooden floor in time with my heartbeat.
I stopped right in front of him. Even with him hovering a step down below the landing and with me in heels, he was still taller than me. He was broad and strong. He was watching me like I was some kind of apparition.
I was. I was very much a ghost from his past just like he was for me.
I ran a finger over the bridge of his nose, fought the urge to lean forward and press my lips to his slack mouth.
I said his name, his real name, so he could tell it was really me—“Hello, Rowland”—and it made his entire body jerk in response. “You sure did grow up nice.” We stared at each other in silence for a minute and I saw all the color bleed out of his face. He whispered my name back at me in a strangled tone.
He had a massive anchor tattooed on the side of his neck. It looked like it was alive with the way his pulse thundered rapidly under the ink.
I looked back over my shoulder and told the rest of our bewildered audience, “Strike that, it’s going to be a great time. See you guys at work on Monday. E-mail me whatever forms you need me to fill out.”
I made sure my hand brushed across Rowdy’s chest when I walked past him as I made my way down the stairs. I could feel his heart racing, could feel the way he trembled. I’m sure it was more from shock than any kind of appreciation of my feminine charms, but I didn’t care.
For the first time in my entire life I knew I was exactly where I was supposed to be.
CHAPTER 1
Rowdy
THE POOL BALLS CRACKED together with a loud smack and rolled aimlessly across the table. Not a single one, solid or stripe, found its way into a pocket. I leaned heavily on the pool cue I planted on the floor and glared at the table.
“Man, you are off your game.”
In more ways than one. I snorted and looked across the pool table at my best friend, Jet Keller. He wasn’t in town much anymore. He was usually off making up-and-coming bands into stars or busy playing rock star himself. It was a rare night when he was actually home and not attached to his very pretty wife. Normally I would be all over some bro time with Jet, but like he said, I was off.
I reached behind me and grabbed the bottle of Coors Light I had left on the high-top table. Beer normally was the answer to all of life’s problems, but the things that were running around in my mind, the things keeping me up at night, no amount of beer could quiet. I shifted my weight on my feet and watched as Jet sank almost every single one of his shots. I had no idea how he managed to lean over the table and take the shots he did without his pants ripping in half. I kept telling him if he ever wanted to have kids he’d better buy some regular Levi’s; it was a long-running joke between the two of us. I felt bad for the guy’s balls.
I had known Jet for years and was used to his hard-rock style. It fit who he was. It fit his personality. He rocked it onstage and off. It didn’t, however, fit in at the run-down dive bar well off the beaten path I’d dragged him to. I was avoiding the bar closest to the tattoo shop because I had no intention of running into my newest coworker.
It was hard enough seeing her day in and day out at the shop. It was a struggle hour by hour to keep the nine million questions I had from flying out of my mouth. I wanted to know everything, wanted all the answers, but knew even if she had them it wouldn’t make up for the fact she had let me down all those years ago. So I just remained quiet. I kept my trap shut and went out of my way not to look at her, not to talk directly to her, and I sure as shit made sure not to be where I thought she might be outside of work. My avoidance tactics meant the watering hole by the shop was currently off-limits and so was the Bar, the run-down dive owned and operated by a close friend. Those were the only two places that I frequented with my friends and the rest of the gang from the tattoo shop, so it made sense that those would be the places Salem might pop up. Ergo, I dragged Jet’s ass to a place that looked like it hadn’t been cleaned since Colorado experienced the gold rush and where every pair of suspicious eyes were on us.
“It’s been a strange few weeks.”
Jet arched a black eyebrow at me and motioned for me to rerack the balls.
“That have anything to do with the babe from Vegas?”
I felt my shoulders tighten involuntarily. “Maybe.”
I took my time getting the colored balls back in the triangle, and when I was done, I stood and leaned on the table with my hands braced on the edge. My tattooed knuckles almost turned white under the pressure. That was the thing with having a tight-knit group of friends that substituted as family. No one’s business was off-limits and everyone wanted to stick their fingers in the mess and try and help.
I narrowed my eyes at him slightly as he ordered us another round of beers from the cocktail waitress that looked like she had been doing this since the womb. “Haggard” didn’t even begin to cover her worn appearance, and it annoyed me. If I wasn’t being such a nut case we could’ve been at the Bar, where Dixie was the cocktail waitress. She was a doll. A redhead with and easygoing attitude and a bright smile. She was also down for spending quality time with me naked and not expecting anything the next morning, so that made the fact I was getting snarled at by Betty, the Devil’s very own cocktail waitress, even more aggravating.
I snapped at Jet, “What have you heard?”
He grinned at me in the way he had that let me know I was being a dumb-ass. I didn’t get riled up easily. I never saw the point. Things always had a way of figuring themselves out and it was the harder people worked at trying to change the outcome that really made everything a clusterfuck. I firmly believed whatever was meant to happen would happen and there was no way to control the outcome.
He tipped the waitress and took the beers and handed me one.
“Just that she is something else. I heard she can give Cora as good as she gets, that she’s awesome with the customers, that she knows her shit when it comes to managing a tattoo shop and that she’s not just a ten, she’s a ten times ten, and that you’re avoiding her like she came from a leper colony not Sin City.”
Cora Lewis was the business manager for the Marked, the tattoo shop I worked at. She was tiny, mouthy, and the real boss of all of us, and next to Jet she was my closest friend in the world. The fact that she had immediately taken to Salem, had brought her into the fold without even stopping to ask me how I felt about it, bugged me and also made me feel like the odd man out. Everyone seemed to love Salem, couldn’t stop singing her praises and touting about what a lifesaver she had been with the shop expanding into a new location. If you asked anyone else I worked with, she was the saving grace of the Marked.
I wanted her to go back to where she came from and to take all the memories, the feelings that she had tied to her with her. I had worked long and hard to bury most of my pre-Colorado life and I didn’t need a daily reminder that I had loved and lost both Cruz sisters.
“She’s beautiful. She always was.”
Salem Cruz had everything a modern-day pinup girl needed to have in order to be a showstopper. There were the curves she had for days. There were miles of amazing, d
ark hair that seemed endless and it had a brilliant shot of bright red in the front of it. She had eyes the color of obsidian winged in black liner and a mouth painted in a perfect bloodred pout. Every day she looked like something out of a hot rod magazine. Her style was perfectly designed to be both sassy and sexy in a way that made her almost impossible to ignore. Every day the little ruby Monroe piercing she wore above her lip winked at me and every day I tried not to notice that her tattooed arms were masterfully done and filled with artwork that I envied as a professional and as an artist. I also tried really hard not to remember when she wrapped them around me when I was young and scared all the time as she tried to make me feel better.
“You know her from way back when?”
Jet had no idea how loaded that question was.
“Yeah. I grew up next to her family in Texas. I spent a lot of time at her house when I was just a kid.”
She had looked different then, far more conservative and traditional. Her hair was darker then, but her eyes were still midnight black and mysterious. Her smile was the same and so was the way I could feel my blood thicken when she walked past me or accidently brushed by me. Back then I thought it was wrong. I thought it was terrifying and dangerous to react to a girl that I knew wasn’t for me, but now I knew Salem was irresistible and it was physically impossible not to react to her.
“So what’s with the freeze-out?”
Normally I was charming, affable, and engaging with the opposite sex. I just had a way of talking to them that let me get my way and left everybody happy at the end of the day. With Salem I couldn’t do that. With her I couldn’t find words that weren’t accusation, blame, and downright hateful. I was mad at her for leaving and madder at her for suddenly showing back up.
“She left Loveless when I was fifteen. She packed a bag and took off in the middle of the night with the town’s biggest weed dealer. Her parents were big in the church and her little sister worshiped her, so it was hard on everyone when she disappeared.” I sucked down a heavy swallow of beer and sighed heavily. “It was really hard on me.”
I had loved Salem’s sister, Poppy, with every piece of my young soul. She was my one and only, she was the center of my entire world. At least she had been until I followed her to college and ultimately had her tell me we were never going to be a thing. Salem, however, had been my confidante, my confessor, and maybe most importantly she had offered a lonely and unwanted boy friendship and acceptance. She was my very best friend and I was lost without her. When she left without so much as a good-bye it had been the second time in my life that I felt like I was being abandoned. I was once again left behind by someone that was supposed to care about me forever. Salem left me gutted and hollowed out.
“So you were tight and then she bounced and this is the first time you have seen her in ten years and now you’re all twisted up about it?”
If only it was that simple. The Cruz sisters had done a number on me coming and going. I would be perfectly happy to have never had to see or think about either one of them again.
If I didn’t have my hair slicked up and styled like a character out of Cry-Baby, I would have shoved my hands through it in frustration.
“I’m not twisted up. I just don’t have anything to say to her. A decade is a long time. She’s a stranger.” And anything I said wasn’t going to come out right anyway. The words would be twisted with rage and memory.
Jet gave me a look and pointed the open end of his beer bottle at me. “Right. She’s a stranger, a superhot stranger, and instead of talking to her or flirting her up like you normally do, you’re acting like a mute weirdo. Nope, not twisted at all.”
I contemplated cracking him over the head with my pool stick, but I had a soft spot for his wife, Ayden, and I wouldn’t want her to get upset with me.
“Shut up. You’re not around enough to make commentary on how I’m acting anyway.”
I meant it as a joke, a way to change the topic of conversation, but I saw him flinch and his hands tightened involuntarily on his beer bottle.
Jet worked hard. He was hell-bent on making a name for bands he had faith in. He was killing it as the head of his own record label, but the trade-off was that he had to go where the music was. That meant he was forever off to L.A., Nashville, New York, Austin, or even Europe. It was hard for him considering he and Ayden had only been married for a couple of years and they were in love—really, really in love. I could see it wearing on both of them but neither one had said anything, and like I said, there was no stopping fate no matter what that nasty bitch had in store for you.
“Everything all right with you on the home front?” I didn’t want to pry but it was way better than dredging up my past for him to dig through.
“Ayden and I are great. It’s everything else that sucks.” He shook his dark head and looked at me from under a frowning brow. “She’s going to apply to transfer to the grad program in Austin.”
I paused for a second so I didn’t say something stupid.
“You want to move to Austin?”
He chugged back the rest of the beer in his hand and laid the pool stick across the table.
“Want to—no, but it makes the most sense. She can transfer to UT Austin and finish school and I can actually see my wife more than two or three times a month. It just sucks. Our friends are here. Her brother is here and Cora just had the baby.” He shook his head again and his chest rose and fell in a heavy sigh. “It was her idea, but it still makes me feel like shit. I renovated the studio thinking it would be enough, but it just isn’t.”
It did suck but it was understandable.
“When will she find out if she gets in?”
“Not for a while. It takes some time to get into grad school, and even if they do want her she has to go and do an interview and jump through a million hoops before it’s official. Try not to say anything to Rule or Nash. She hasn’t told Shaw or Cora yet. She wants to wait until we know for sure what we’re doing.”
Rule and Nash ran the tattoo shop and Shaw was not only Ayden’s best friend but also Rule’s brand-new wife. All three of the girls in our little world were supertight, and if one of the dudes let this major development slip, there would be carnage to follow for sure. Those girls were a solid unit and the idea of one of them leaving was definitely going to be the cause of some serious emotional upheaval.
“That’s some pretty big news. Keeping it quiet might not be the way to go. Has she told Asa she’s thinking about leaving?”
Asa ran the Bar and was Ayden’s older brother. He was a little bit of a wild card and the only reason he had settled in Denver was to be closer to his sister. The two had a strained relationship due to the fact that Asa had a history of being a major shithead and petty criminal, but they were just starting to mend some long-broken fences.
Jet nodded and propped a hip up on the table. I really did expect those jeans of his to split in half every single time he moved. It was endlessly fun to rip on him about it.
“They talked about it. He told her to do whatever makes her happy. I think it bummed her out he didn’t ask her to stay.”
I grunted and cocked my head to the side a little as I noticed a group of guys several years older than us giving us squinty-eyed looks from the far corner of the bar. I mean I knew we didn’t fit in with the run-down ambience, the rough-and-tumble vibe of the place, but we were minding our own business and we always respected the locals’ territory.
I told Jet absently while keeping an eye on the group, “He spent her entire life asking her to do things for him. After he almost died it makes sense that maybe for once in his life Asa would want her to do something for herself. He knows you’re what makes her happy. He isn’t going to try and keep her from being happy anymore.”
Asa was an enigma. He sort of just showed up out of the blue and had dragged Ayden into a mess full of her past and a group of angry bikers. The end result had landed Asa in a coma and Jet and Ayden in matching wedding rings. We all had we
lcomed the blond southerner into the fold, but everyone watched him with careful eyes. He was lucky Rule’s brother, Rome, had come home from the war and ended up owning the Bar. For some reason the older Archer took a shine to Asa and had put him to work. I think we were all just kind of waiting to see how it played out.
The group that was watching us bent their heads together and the guy I figured was the leader met my gaze and flipped me off with a sneer.
I set my beer down and looked back at Jet.
“The natives are getting restless. We probably wanna go.”
I didn’t mind a good old-fashioned bar brawl. After all, I had played football up until I had dropped out of college at the end of my freshman year. I was still built like an athlete even if on the outside I looked more like James Dean. I was taller than most of them and definitely in better shape, but I liked to think I had grown and matured in the last few years. Avoiding bloodshed and broken knuckles that would mean I couldn’t tattoo was obviously the better option.
Jet looked over my shoulder and dipped his chin down in agreement, only our decision to depart came a split second too late. We were walking toward the door, eyes up and alert, when the men decided they couldn’t just let us walk away. I stopped and Jet paused next to me when we were suddenly faced with three fairly drunk, middle-aged guys that looked like they worked long hours doing manual labor. The one that had flipped me off made it a point to scan me from the top of my head to the toes of my worn black cowboy boots. He made a face and elbowed one of his buddies in the ribs hard enough to make the other guy grunt.
“Who do you think this joker is supposed to be? Elvis?” His gaze flicked over to Jet. “And who are you supposed to be? Ozzy Osbourne? Marilyn Manson? Someone needs to remind you boys that Halloween is in October.”
Rowdy Page 2