Irresistible Ink Read online

  Her smile flickered. “I did go to school. Graduated from Carnegie Mellon a few years ago. But…”

  That was impressive. James told her so, ignoring the stabbing jolt of inadequacy that slipped between his ribs, knocking his confidence down a notch. So what if Arianna was out of his league? He’d known that the moment he’d laid eyes on her. She was the kind of woman that was more or less out of any man’s league – unbelievably beautiful. The fact that she was educated on top of it wasn’t going to stop him from pursuing her. Not now that he’d gotten her here and she was practically straddling his thigh beneath the table.

  He’d never finished highschool. At least, not in the normal way. He’d gone back later and gotten his GED. Luckily, she didn’t ask about that.

  “My education is more impressive than my actual work, I guess.” She frowned, tipping her head to the side.

  “Why do you say that?” She was doing something she liked and something she was good at. It made sense to him. Was he too ignorant to see why she should be doing anything else?

  She shrugged. “My family imagined me making waves and climbing ladders in corporate America after graduating from college, I guess. Or at least holding down a modest traditional job. Instead I bought myself a new laptop loaded with editing and design programs and started churning out pretty graphics from a desk in one corner of my apartment.”

  “So you’re an artist instead of a cubicle slave. That sounds like a good thing to me, but maybe I’m biased.”

  After a moment’s hesitation, she smiled again.

  When their food arrived, it introduced a natural lull to the conversation. He didn’t mind. Arianna had already said more to him while they’d waited than she had during all three of their tattoo sessions combined. It seemed like a good start.

  By the time they finished eating, it felt like more than a good start. It felt like the start of what he’d been aching for ever since the first time he’d laid eyes on her. She still wasn’t what he’d call easy to read, but he had a feeling … a feeling that resonated in every fiber of his being, including the rock-hard length of his dick, which throbbed against his jeans zipper as he watched her touch her tongue to her lower lip, obliterating a drop of chocolate sauce her dessert had left behind.

  “Listen,” he said after he’d paid for their dinner and they’d left the restaurant, “we’ve still got the whole night ahead of us. Our date doesn’t have to end here if you’re having a good time.”

  Forget the river view the restaurant had offered; she was beautiful, and he couldn’t drag his gaze away from her face as they stood by his car, his words hanging in the air between them.

  Her gaze drifted south slowly, and he all but felt it burning over his body, resting for a moment on his jeans, just below the hem of his t-shirt. The May evening air was cool, if the way her nipples pricked against her top – two small buds that made his mouth water – was any indication.

  He didn’t feel even a hint of cold. In fact, his blood might as well have been hot lava.

  He knew she could see that he was hard, knew the ache in his groin meant his lust was outlined beneath the inadequate cover of denim. He didn’t try to hide it. He couldn’t have if he’d wanted to, for one. And if there was a chance that she wanted what he lusted for, he was more than willing to lay his intentions out on the line.

  CHAPTER 2

  “I’m having a good time,” Arianna finally said, her fingertips drifting to brush the handle of his car’s passenger-side door. “I don’t have any plans for the rest of the evening, either.”

  Heart speeding, James reached out and slipped his hand over hers, opening the door for her. “Let me take you to my place instead of taking you home, then.”

  He lived alone. Empty and quiet, his apartment was more than ready to accommodate a date for a few hours or a night – however long she’d stay.

  For a moment, her glossed lips remained sealed, and she looked just like she had sitting in his tattoo chair. “Okay.”

  He’d never been so glad to hear one of her short replies. As he helped her into the car and rounded the front of the vehicle, settling behind the wheel, he felt his lust for her all the way down in his bones. Would she have said yes if he’d asked her out sooner, after one of their first two sessions? Thinking of what he might’ve been missing out on physically hurt.

  But there was no telling, and whatever the answer was, he was glad it was happening now. So glad that his balls were hugging his body, aching against the seat as he brought the engine to life and steered the car for his place. They’d left her vehicle behind in the lot near Hot Ink – they’d worry about that later. Right now, he had a one-track mind. Instinct and familiarity guided him home, leading him to take turns he barely thought about, eventually reaching his apartment.

  Arianna let him take her hand as he helped her out of the car. Afterward, he held on. Kind of weird that this was the first time he’d laid hands on her, outside of his tattoo booth. They were just minutes away from doing things he’d been fantasizing about for months, and they’d only now gotten so far as hand holding. When he finally touched her in the privacy of his apartment, it’d be a rush – almost too much, except he knew he’d never get too much of her. The thought made his head spin and his cock throb.

  “This one’s mine,” he said, nodding toward a unit on the ground floor. 116 – a one bedroom apartment and home sweet home for the past three years.

  “This one?” Arianna’s question resonated as they approached the unit.

  “Yeah…” He stopped a few steps away from the door as a feeling of wrongness registered. He blinked as he double-checked the number on the door, then looked back down at what was taking up just about all the space on the tiny stoop.

  What. The. Fuck?

  “Um.” Arianna stood motionless beside him, her hand still caught up inside one of his. “Do you have a kid? Because there’s a car seat on your doorstep.”

  “No.” His heart crept into his throat, the thought almost choking him. A kid? He didn’t have any family he was close enough to so much as share a phone call with, let alone a child. “My neighbor has a baby. Maybe she left it here by mistake.”

  Why anyone would leave a car seat sitting outside, exposed to the elements, was beyond him, but whatever. That was his neighbor’s business and the only thing he cared about right now was getting Arianna inside. Reaching down, he lifted the car seat, setting it aside in the empty space between his unit and 118.

  Except when he went to let go, he couldn’t. Shock froze his fingers around the handle as he caught a glimpse of the seat’s interior. Cradled in the safety harness and bundled up to its chin in a fuzzy yellow blanket, there was a baby.

  A live, human baby. Alone. On his doorstep. It was so unbelievably tiny he might’ve thought it was a doll – some kind of joke – but it sneezed.

  He almost dropped the car seat. Almost. Catching himself at the last second, he knelt down instead, getting a close look at the kid, as if that would make the situation any less weird.

  “This isn’t my kid,” he said, realizing that he’d let go of Arianna’s hand and hoping she hadn’t turned tail and fled.

  “Then whose is it?” Her voice came from surprisingly close by, her breath warming his ear as she crouched down beside him.

  “I don’t know.”

  She reached out and pulled something he hadn’t even noticed from the doorstep – a cheap vinyl bag printed with daisies and cartoon elephants. “Here’s a diaper bag,” she said. “But where’s the mother?”

  She looked around and James joined her, tearing his gaze away from the little round face that didn’t belong anywhere near his doorstep.

  The parking lot was empty, except for a guy who loitered near one of the farthest spaces, leaning up against a nineties model sedan.

  “Hey,” James called, rising. “You know who this kid belongs to?”

  The man opened the driver’s side door without answering.

  “Hey!” Jame
s called out, louder. “Did you see the mother? Is she around?”

  The man moved with surprising speed, practically leaping into the car. As a sense of suspicion crept up on James, the car peeled out of the parking lot, swerving dangerously and disappearing down the street.

  “Well, I think we know who left the baby on your doorstep.”

  James stood, dumbstruck, trying to remember everything he could about the man who’d probably abandoned the baby. Tall, brown hair. Twenties, maybe thirties? Already, the details were beginning to fade. “What the hell?”

  The baby squirmed, releasing a wail that sounded too loud to have come from its tiny lungs. Guilt crept over James as he realized he’d sworn in front of the kid. Was feeling bad about it stupid? It wasn’t like it could understand. Hell, it looked like it had literally been born yesterday.

  James’ anxiety rose with each passing second as the kid screamed like an air raid siren. The sound was like nails on a chalk board, a cry that demanded something be done. But what? He couldn’t just whisk some stranger’s baby inside his apartment, and he didn’t know what to do to make it stop crying anyway.

  Arianna reached out and unbuckled the car seat’s harness with surprising dexterity, lifting the bundle of blankets into her arms.

  James couldn’t help but admire her in the same way he might’ve admired someone handling a wild, potentially dangerous animal. An alligator wrestler or snake charmer, maybe.

  The baby stopped crying the instant she cradled it against her chest, arms crossing protectively over the little body swathed in pastel blankets. Unfortunately, the silence only lasted for a second.

  “She’s hungry,” Arianna said. “Or he’s hungry, for all I know.”

  The baby swung its softball-sized head around, nearly bashing Arianna in the chin.

  “And in need of a change, I’d say.” Arianna wrinkled her nose. “Poor baby. That guy was just hiding behind his car, waiting for someone to find the kid. What a piece of shit.”

  James’ guilt over swearing ebbed a little. “Yeah.”

  He stood frozen by his own door step, unable to look away from the sight of Arianna standing there, holding the infant against her body. The abandoned infant. Shit… Suddenly, his life seemed like some sort of sitcom episode. Except it wasn’t funny. Who the fuck did stuff like this in real life?

  The kid couldn’t be his. His encounters with the opposite sex had been mostly meaningless, but he wasn’t stupid – he’d always taken precautions. There had to be some other answer.

  The baby’s wails reached a new level of noisiness, fragmenting James’ half-panicked thoughts and threatening to break the sound barrier.

  “Check the bag,” Arianna said. “See if there’s a bottle in there. And clean diapers.”

  Fingers numb, James crouched and fumbled with the zipper, opening the lurid vinyl sack. Inside, it was stuffed to the brim with an assortment of baby stuff. Blankets, blankets and more blankets. Tiny pieces of clothing. What looked like a rattle. “Yeah,” he said, gaze finally settling on a rubber nipple protruding from between a package of wipes and a tiny, wadded-up jacket. “There’s a bottle. Diapers, too.”

  He noticed the necessities, but his gaze was drawn to something else – something that made his gut shrivel up, cramping.

  An envelope. With his name on it.

  He recognized the handwriting.

  There weren’t many people in the world whose handwriting he would’ve recognized at a glance. Jed’s, maybe. But the writing on the envelope wasn’t his. With oversized capitals and rounded letters, it set off a chain reaction of memories, bringing the past to sudden life.

  He stuffed the envelope into his pocket before Arianna could see it, then sprang to his feet.

  He opened his apartment door and ushered her inside. Standing there with her and the crying baby, he set the bag down on the counter and dug the bottle out, along with a handful of diapers and a package of wipes.

  “Here’s everything,” he said, surveying the spread of supplies that would hopefully calm the screaming baby.

  “What about formula? The bottle’s empty.”

  James buried his hands in the bag again, plunging them elbow-deep until his fingers brushed the side of a can. Pulling it out, he breathed a sigh of relief as the words ‘infant formula’ caught his eye. “Found it.”

  Arianna looked at him expectantly, and it dawned on him that she was waiting for him to make the bottle.

  “I have no idea what I’m doing,” he said, popping the lid off and staring at the white powder within. The can was two-thirds empty.

  “There should be instructions somewhere on the label.” Arianna sounded a little unsure, or maybe holding the screaming baby was just unraveling her nerves.

  Either way, she was right. Hastily, James filled the bottle at the kitchen tap, then added the indicated amount of powder. After shaking the bottle, its contents resembled milk. Thank God. “Here.”

  “I’m not sure, but I don’t think you’re supposed to use tap water.” Arianna took the bottle anyway.

  “It’s all I’ve got.”

  She nodded. “Well, it’s gotta be better for the baby than starving.”

  She popped the bottle into the baby’s mouth and was rewarded by instant silence. Silence that stretched for several minutes, until James couldn’t take it anymore. “I know how this must look,” he said, “but that’s really not my baby.”

  Any second now, she’d probably hand the kid over to him and walk out the door. He wouldn’t blame her – hell, he was glad she’d stuck around this long – but he didn’t want her to leave with the wrong idea.

  She looked up, turning those golden-green eyes on him. “How do you know?”

  His heart skipped ahead, and his mouth went dry as he saw the familiar script in his mind’s eye. James. Five letters and he knew exactly whose baby had been left on his doorstep. Maybe it shouldn’t have surprised him. Maybe it didn’t surprise him when he really thought about it. But it disappointed him, and frankly, scared him shitless. “The baby belongs to my sister.”

  The words left a bitter taste in his mouth. After everything he and his sister had been through, how could she? A part of him itched to tear the envelope open, to pour over whatever sorry excuse she’d stuffed inside, like anything could possibly be a good reason to do what she had. Another part of him wanted to rip it up without even reading it.

  “There was a note in the bag.” He didn’t mention that he hadn’t actually read it.

  Arianna’s expression changed, though he couldn’t pinpoint exactly how. “Is she coming back?”

  She sounded like she already knew the answer.

  James’ gut knotted itself a little tighter. “I don’t know.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I guess you could call the police. Or child protective services.”

  James’ heart slammed against his ribs, and it took all he had not to snap at Arianna. “No.” His gaze was drawn to the baby, and a sense of dread he hadn’t felt fully in years slipped over him. “No.”

  The baby had finished the bottle. Arianna held the kid against her shoulder and it burped right in her ear. She didn’t seem to mind.

  Grabbing one of the diapers – they were small enough to fit in the palm of James’ hand – from the counter, Arianna knelt down on the floor and unraveled layers of blankets.

  She’d been right about the baby needing a change. Seeing the filth the infant had been left to sit in, alone on the doorstep, filled him with sudden rage. His pulse hammered against his temples, giving him a headache, and his jaw hurt. If he’d had his sister’s letter in his hands at that moment, he would’ve thrown it into the trash along with the dirty diaper.

  “Well, you have a niece,” Arianna said, securing a clean diaper and replacing the tiny pieces of clothing layer by layer. “I wonder what her name is.”

  James managed to grunt out something noncommittal. What the hel
l was he going to do?

  “Does she have anything else to wear?” Arianna asked. “She spit up a little on this top.”

  James dug through the bag, pulling out a few articles of pint-sized clothing and handing them over. By the time the baby had been redressed, he was still standing there like an idiot, one hand buried in diapers and wadded-up blankets.

  Quiet filled the apartment; not even the baby made a sound.

  James felt the pressure of the silence; it sat on his shoulders like the weight of the world. Arianna was still there, still holding the baby. There was a soft look in her eyes when she looked at the kid, but now her gaze was focused on him, asking questions he didn’t know the answers to.

  “If you’re not going to contact authorities…” Arianna reached for the bag, cradling the baby with one arm. She peered down, lowering her gaze to the supplies piled inside. “You’re going to need more stuff. Babies go through everything fast – food, clothing, diapers…”

  “Yeah.” James just stood there, knowing she was right but unable to imagine exactly how he’d rectify the problem. What did he know about what babies needed? A shopping spree would probably turn into a total clusterfuck.

  He realized he’d spoken out loud when Arianna frowned.

  “It won’t be that hard. Just buy the same brand of formula that came in the bag and pick diapers and clothing appropriate for her age range.”

  “I don’t know how old she is.”

  “She can’t be more than a month old. She’s tiny and she can barely lift her own head.”

  Arianna lifted up the dirty bodysuit she’d set on the counter. “Baby clothes have tags saying what age range they’re meant for.”

  She was right. The tag in question read ‘0-3 months’. Staring at it, he realized he was out of excuses. Unless he was going to hand the baby over to the state, he’d have to do exactly what Arianna had suggested. And there was no way he was going to involve authorities.

  “I could come with you if you want help,” Arianna said.