Inked in the Steel City Series (20 page)

“Mina, will you marry me?”

A diamond winked from the box’s interior, but she could barely manage to tear her gaze away from his. His eyes were more gorgeous than ever, and his gaze melted something inside her, sending warmth flooding through her body. The butterflies that had plagued her when they’d first started dating were back in full force, fluttering like crazy in her belly. He was serious. This was really happening.

“Yes.” She threw her arms around his neck, letting his stubble rasp against her cheek as she buried her face in his shoulder. The unease that had settled over her when he’d asked his first question was gone. This moment felt perfect. This moment felt right. She’d known a few short weeks into their relationship that she never wanted to be with anyone else.

He hugged her back, squeezing her so hard that her breath rushed from her lungs in a gasp.

After a few moments Eric loosened his hold, allowing a few inches of space to separate their bodies. He pulled the ring out of the box, took her left hand and slid it onto her finger. “Just let me know when,” he said. “We’ll get married whenever you want to. I’m not going anywhere.” He brushed a kiss across her lips. “You’re the only one for me, Mina.”

She touched the tip of her tongue to her lip, tasting where he’d kissed her. “I’d marry you right now if I could, but I think we’d better wait a little while. Karen will kill me if she doesn’t get to take any engagement photos, and I’m sure Jess won’t want to miss out on the chance to be a bridesmaid.”

“What, the poster doesn’t count as an engagement photo?” he asked, teasing.

She smiled as she remembered the first time they’d posed together. If it hadn’t been for that, they might never have fallen in love. She wriggled her fingers. “I’m pretty sure I have to be wearing the ring for it to count. Or at least, that’s what Karen will say.”

He grinned wickedly, drawing her close again and pressing his lips against the arch of her neck. “Whatever. Isn’t she too busy with all of her clients and those magazines to be bossing you around? Maybe I should take you to the courthouse right now.”

She giggled as his stubble tickled her neck. Maybe he was right – Karen’s photography business had virtually exploded over the past couple months – but with Garret finally gone, she wasn’t about to go anywhere until she and Eric took advantage of the empty apartment. “Wouldn’t you rather spend the rest of the afternoon here? I mean, now that we’ve got this place to ourselves…”

He swept her feet out from under her and lowered her onto the nearby couch, pinning her against the cushions and kissing a trail from her jaw to her collarbone. “I guess you’re right. We should celebrate getting engaged first.”

About the Author

Ranae Rose lives on the US East Coast and is an avid reader and writer who can’t resist a good love story, and the hotter the better. To learn more about Ranae and her books, please visit:
www.ranaerose.com

Ranae loves to hear from readers! She can be reached at:
[email protected]

Connect with Ranae on Twitter: Ranae_Rose

Other Contemporary Romances by Ranae

Taken Hostage

Glazed

Party Girl

Available from major ebook retailers, including Amazon.

For information on Ranae’s historical and paranormal titles, see www.ranaerose.com

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.

Innocent 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.

CHAPTER 1

Karen walked into the Hot Ink Tattoo Studio clutching a manila envelope over her speeding heart.
Crackle
. One of the photos inside bent, and she swore softly as she pulled the envelope away from her body, desperately trying to smooth it back out. If she’d damaged the photos…

Well, if she’d damaged the photos, she’d just have to print out new ones and come back a second time. She fought a manic grin at the thought, struggling to control her expression as the door fell shut behind her, sealing out the waning heat of a summer evening in Pittsburgh.

“Hey, Karen.” Mina beamed from behind the counter where a cash register rested on top of a glass display case showing off body jewelry.

“Hey.” Karen’s voice came out a lot less breezy than she’d intended, and for a second, a spark of amusement seemed to gleam in Mina’s dark eyes.

God, was she really that obvious? There were mirrors in all five of the half-booths that lined the shop’s walls, and she purposely avoided looking at any of them. Her fair skin was always quick to show a blush, and if her cheeks were as red as they felt, she didn’t want to know.

“Jed’s in the back,” Mina called as Karen made her way down the aisle between booths.

“I figured,” Karen said, cringing inwardly. If she hadn’t looked ridiculously excited to see him when she’d walked in with flaming cheeks and a goofy smile, she’d ruined that by making a beeline toward the back of the shop without waiting for Mina to direct her. She’d just been so eager to escape Mina’s knowing gaze – sometimes, having a best friend who worked at the place her crush owned did
not
seem like an advantage.

Crackle
. The envelope protested again as she raised a fist to knock on the closed door Jed was definitely behind. She couldn’t help being aware of her heartbeat – it was pounding so loudly in her ears that it almost  drowned out the not-so-distant buzzing of a tattoo machine – as her knuckles hit wood.

“Come on in.” Jed’s voice was so deep that it reverberated somewhere in her core – a place she tried hard not to think about as she turned the doorknob and stepped into the combined office and storage space Jed sometimes worked in when he wasn’t tattooing or consulting with a client.

“Karen.” Jed looked up from the desk that took up one corner, his dark eyes a little wider than usual as he placed large hands on its surface and rose.

He looked surprised, which wasn’t exactly shocking – she’d sent him an e-mail telling him she was headed to Hot Ink, but that had been a whopping twenty minutes ago, and she’d high-tailed it to the studio, unable to resist the lure of showing him her latest work in person. She’d more or less memorized his work hours – a completely natural result of having done so much work for his business, of course.

As she stood before his desk, her gaze was drawn to him like a magnet to iron.

He was tall. About 6’3” if Karen’s estimation was correct, and she was a pretty good judge of height – a consequence of being a 5’10” tall woman. Some guys were shorter than her, and most weren’t much taller. But Jed … she noticed every last one of the several inches in their height difference, and his muscular frame made him seem even bigger.

“I brought you those photos.” She lifted the manila envelope and held it between them like it could shield her from the sexiness that radiated from the owner of the Hot Ink Tattoo Studio. The photos were feeble protection against his short but not too-short, almost-black hair and the dark stubble that shadowed his jaw. His dark eyes met hers, and she stood frozen. Some idiotic nervous instinct urged her to hop back and forth, or at least shift her weight from foot to foot, but she stifled the urge.

“McGinnis’ back piece?” Jed rounded the desk and practically pried the envelope from her suddenly stiff fingers.

He took it from her, and with a crackle and a flash of script, it was in his hands.
Jed Torino
– she’d written his name across the envelope, as if she could possibly forget who it was meant for. It had taken all her willpower not to dot the ‘I’ in Torino with a heart, or to scrawl her own name next to it.

“Yeah,” she said breathlessly. “I finished going through the images a little early last night, and there were some that turned out so well I couldn’t resist making prints. And well, I thought you might like to look at them in person instead of on a computer screen.”

“This is great,” Jed said, sliding the stack of prints out of the envelope. “I was only expecting an e-mail, but this is even better.”

“Hope you like them.” Her voice came out higher than it should have, sort of like she’d just inhaled a lungful of helium. Her face warmed, but luckily, Jed had his head bent over the photos, which he shuffled through slowly, holding the prints gingerly between large fingers, studying each one.

Karen’s heart thumped against her ribs like an unhappily-confined animal against steel bars. This was exactly the reason why she’d come to the studio in person. When Jed looked at her work, it was like he was in his own little world – a world that revolved around his passion and hers, which were tattooing and photography, respectively. He handled the amazing ink work and she photographed it in the most flattering way she knew how; in a way, it was like they worked together to create something beautiful.

Maybe the thought was a little cheesy, but she liked – no, loved – anything that involved her and Jed collaborating

“These are amazing.” Jed carefully slipped a photo to the bottom of the stack, raising his gaze briefly to meet her eyes before poring over the next one. “As usual.”