Cuffs - Cara Lockwood Page 0,2

than that, taken aback that she was telling him no. Clearly, he was used to getting what he wanted. Not this time. “You don’t do this art?” The suit actually pulled up a picture of the cover art on his phone. As if she didn’t already know what it looked like: peregrine falcon, midflight, its belly dotted with gray and brown, its dark wings expanded, yellow talons poised to snatch up its prey. Why did he care so much about it? The bass-heavy, borderline metal band didn’t seem his speed.

“No, I don’t.” She sighed, feeling bone weary all of a sudden.

“I have to have this tattoo. Money is no object.” He reached for his back pocket, ready to pull out his wallet. Of course, a man like him would think money solves everything. Mags finished the very last line of the eagle tattoo on Angus and sat back to admire her work. Nice job, if she did say so herself.

“Keep your money,” she said, and his hand froze, midway to pulling out the expensive leather bifold, which somehow looked miniature in his big hands. The man had the build of a lumberjack, not a businessman. Not that Mags noticed, she told herself. “Like I said, I don’t do that tattoo. Go to another shop. They’ll help you with your midlife crisis.”

He didn’t rise to her bait. “I don’t want another artist. I want you.”

The sound of his voice, the confident, deep bass, plucked a string that vibrated through the center of her chest.

“I’m confident we could reach a mutually beneficial agreement.” Was he talking about tattoos or sex? It was hard to tell with the man whose sensual mouth seemed to tease her. Who cared if the suit was sexy? He was still a suit.

Mags tried to dig into her basket of witty retorts to shut the man down but found it strangely empty.

“Are you?” she managed, hoping for heavy sarcasm, but instead, she sounded uncertain.

Her stomach growled instead, a little too loudly. She’d skipped breakfast, and her stomach was telling her lunch should’ve been an hour ago, now that it was close to one o’clock. But when she got in the zone, like she did with Angus, she didn’t think about anything else but the job at hand. Now that she’d finished Angus’s tattoo, her stomach told her it was time to focus on the important things, like food.

She pulled her attention from the man and his mutual benefits and tapped Angus on the shoulder to let him know their time was done. Angus’s eyes flicked open then, and he pulled out his earbuds and saw the suit for the first time. He glanced at Mags. One nod from her and Angus would see the man out. Not gently, either. It’d be a shame if the man’s good looks were marred by a one-way trip to the concrete. Angus slowly wound up the cord of his earbuds and sat up. He sneaked a glance at his shoulder.

“Damn, Mags. You outdid yourself.”

“Glad you like it.” She gave Angus a genuine smile and could feel Gael studying her as she leaned back on her stool, unlocking its wheel with her left foot and kicking backward as she whipped off her surgical glove with a snap. She tossed them in the nearby trash can. She stood and stretched herself, her back and upper shoulders stiff, all the while aware of Gael’s unblinking gaze. “You know what to do to take care of it, yeah?”

He nodded. With all the tattoos he had, he could probably write a book on new-tattoo care. Then he refocused his attention on the suit. To the suit’s credit, he met the man’s stare and didn’t look away as Angus walked into the expanse of the lobby and into the sunlight that warred with the fluorescent lights. Not easily intimidated, then. Interesting. She would’ve thought he’d run scared when Angus stood and stretched his beefy shoulders. Angus was six feet four, weighing in at over three hundred pounds, pretty much the opposite of svelte. He worked as a bouncer at the biker bar on the wrong side of town. Yet, now that Angus straightened to his full height, she saw that he only had an inch, maybe, on Gael. Angus was broader, but that was mostly fat, Mags had to admit. Gael had more muscle on his lean frame. Angus pulled out a money clip and rolled off four $100 bills. Mags didn’t ask where he got that kind