Ink Flamingos

Chapter 59

Jeff’s fingers traced the outline of the unfinished and marred flamingo on my lower back, causing goose bumps to rise, but not in a bad way.

“I’ve got an idea, but you’ve got to trust me, Kavanaugh,” he said.

I couldn’t see his expression. I was facing away from him, holding up my shirt, my jeans back down around my hips.

Suddenly his fingers were dancing along the tiger lily on my side, and then the dragon tail that curled around my torso.

“This is good work,” he murmured.

Mickey, my old boss at the Ink Spot, had done them. They were beautiful. This was the first time Jeff had seen them.

“Do you have any others?” he asked.

I shook my head. “Just the sleeves and the one your mom did on my leg,” I said, referring to the Napoleon on horseback.

“You need more,” he said, still tracing the dragon.

“Let’s get this one fixed up first, okay?” I had asked him to do the repair work on the tattoo Harry had started. Ace had said he could do it, as a sort of peace offering. He was back at work here, just as Joel had said he would be, and was feeling pretty guilty about his friendship with Harry. I didn’t hold it against him, though. It wasn’t his fault.

Joel had offered to fix up the mess, too, but while I admired Joel’s work, it wasn’t as delicate as the koi that Jeff had done on my arm. Jeff’s style, when he wasn’t doing flash, was more my style.

I was acutely aware of his touch; now he was back to the lily, his fingers moving up along the stem toward the flower, which touched my breast. I shivered, and his breath whispered against the nape of my neck.

I arched back and felt his lips brush my skin; then he moved away.

“Let’s get started,” he said, all business.

I lay face down on the chair, which was a little too reminiscent of when Harry had tied me down. I thought about how Tim had told me Terri wanted to make me afraid, how she’d called the Venetian to be on the lookout for me and to detain me, how Harry had sneaked peeks at my schedule when Bitsy wasn’t looking, and Terri had called my clients to cancel appointments. This was all more than just making me a distraction for the police. Terri was obsessed with me-and with the way Harry felt about me. She’d impersonated me at the bar, and when Harry texted her that he’d gotten me drunk, she relished taking those pictures of me and posting them on Ainsley’s blog. Ainsley had all her passwords written on a notepad in her desk drawer, which was how Terri had been able to do it. She’d even tracked down Colin Bixby’s e-mail so she could break us up. She wanted to ruin my life.

It was too bad for her it didn’t work, and now she’d end up in jail.

Jeff put the stencil to my lower back. He hadn’t asked me if I wanted to see it, and I hadn’t said I did. I trusted him.

When the machine started, I closed my eyes and let myself become a part of the work.

It was magnificent. Pink and red and purple plumes stretching along either side of my lower back, the beak raised upward slightly, a little haughtily. The black rogue line blended in with the lines of the bird’s body. It didn’t look like a flamingo now, but a phoenix rising from orange and yellow flames. As much as I loved Joel, he couldn’t have done this. He couldn’t have turned something so ugly into something so beautiful.

I held the mirror and stared at it, unable to tear my eyes away from it.

I hadn’t said a word.

“You don’t hate it, do you?” Jeff asked, a nervousness in his voice that I’d never heard before.

I reached up and touched his cheek, leaning forward. “I love it,” I said, and kissed him. On the lips. In the middle of my shop.

When we finally broke apart, we stared at each other for a second; then he grinned as he put his hands on my waist and pulled me closer so our bodies were pressed against each other. He moved in to kiss me again, but pulled back abruptly and said, “So I guess we’ve got a thing, huh, Kavanaugh.”

I rolled my eyes at him.