Abiding Ink (Inked in the Steel City #4) (14 page)

Didn’t Danielle see what she was putting their mother through?

Maybe not. She was only twenty-one, and Mallory hadn’t gotten her own head on straight until she’d been about that age – well, a year or two younger, really, but people matured at different rates. Touching her hand to her hip, Mallory barely suppressed another sigh.

She hadn’t grown up until she’d been rudely awakened by a boyfriend – the same one whose name she’d had tattooed on her hip. After the disastrous end of their relationship, she’d realized what a fool she’d been, that she’d been heading down a path to heartbreak and disappointment bound to rival her mother’s. After that she’d focused on college, and then her nursing career. She’d
vowed
never to be that woman again and had lived with the ridiculous tattoo as a reminder of what could happen when she let her heart run ahead of her head.

Now, the tattoo was gone, but she still remembered the lesson it had represented.

“Oven’s beeping,” Kevin said. “Earth to Mallory – turkey’s gonna burn.”

She stood, shaking off thoughts of embarrassing ink and past mistakes. “I got it.”

A knock came at the door as she opened the oven. “Can you get that, Kevin?”

“Yeah.”

A moment later, a familiar face lit up the doorway.

“Hey, Theo,” Mallory said as she stood. “Merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas.” He grinned. “Hope you don’t mind my interrupting – I thought I’d check in and see how you and your mother are doing. You know, after yesterday.”

“We’re fine. How are you – has your son arrived yet?”

“He just took off to visit his mother. We had lunch together and he’ll be doing dinner at her place.”

“I guess you’re—”

“Theo?” Mallory’s mother appeared in the kitchen. “I thought I heard someone knock.”

Mallory exchanged a glance with Kevin.
Uh-oh
. Poor unsuspecting Theo had no idea what he’d just walked in on. 

Theo grinned more widely than ever. “Merry Christmas, Brenda.”

After a split second’s hesitation, Mallory’s mother smiled too. “Merry Christmas. We were just about to eat. Would you like to join us?”

Mallory and Kevin exchanged another look, and she saw her surprise reflected in her brother’s eyes.

“Sure. If you’re sure I won’t be imposing.”

“Not at all. We have plenty. Come on in.”

Theo stepped inside, not mentioning that he’d just eaten lunch.

Mallory didn’t say a word. Instead, she watched her mother set a place at the table for Theo, humming a Christmas tune beneath her breath.

“Mallory, why don’t you put on some music?” she asked, laying a set of silverware down by the extra plate. “Something festive.”

“Sure mom.” She retreated to the living room to mess with the stereo, genuinely surprised at how quickly her mother’s sour mood had evaporated.

No sooner had an instrumental version of “The Twelve Days of Christmas” started playing than Mallory’s phone rang, chiming from down the hall, inside her bedroom. Walking quickly, she went to see who was calling.

It was Tyler. Drawing a deep breath as memories from their night together flared to vibrant life inside her, she picked up her phone.

* * * * *

A cold wind blew through the parking lot, but Tyler barely felt it. Instead, expectation radiated nervous heat inside him, possibilities protecting him from the chill. He had no doubt that if things went badly, he’d feel the December cold in his bones.

“Hey.” Mallory appeared at the foot of the staircase by the edge of the parking lot. She was dressed in a heavy winter coat and had pulled a knit hat down over her curls. The sight eased his nerves a little – clearly, she understood that though he’d asked to come over, what he planned to say to her wasn’t something he wanted to discuss in front of her mother or anyone else.

“Hey.” His heart beat a little harder as she approached and stopped just a few feet from where he stood. “I hope your family doesn’t mind my stealing you for a few minutes on Christmas Day.”

“It’s fine. We’re done celebrating, really – my brother and sister have already left.”

It was dark and soon the holiday would give way to December 26
^th
. He’d waited until late evening to come out of respect for her family celebration. His own family’s get-together had gotten a little crazy after Dustin’s confession and honestly, Tyler would’ve relished an excuse to escape sooner. He’d resisted the urge to ask Mallory to let him drop by earlier, though – he wanted to do this right. Crazy as it was, it felt like everything depended on it.

“So what is it you wanted to talk about?” Mallory’s face caught the soft glow of one of the lights that lit up the lot, and a stray snowflake landed on her eyelashes, glistening there for a moment before melting.

“Just one thing,” he said, feeling everything he wanted to convey jumble up inside of him, stubbornly resisting his efforts to form the right words. Realizing that eloquence wasn’t going to work, he decided on straight and simple. “I thought the other night was great. And I thought you thought so too, at the time. But the next morning you didn’t seem happy anymore. You seemed kind of pissed. I want to know – why?”

He
had
to know, and he willed her not to brush him off, not to give him some pat answer designed not to hurt his feelings.

Her gaze dipped down, toward the toes of her boots, which were black with the barest hint of faux-fur trim. “I know I hurried out that morning. I wasn’t sure if you’d noticed. I guess I thought maybe you had your hands full with your brother visiting and would be relieved when I went home.”

Relieved? Relieved that she’d left so he could spend time alone with Dustin? He would’ve laughed if she hadn’t sounded so serious. “Relieved is definitely not how I’d describe how I felt when you left.”

“Sorry.”

“Are you going to tell me why you were in such a hurry to leave? Was it really just my brother? I didn’t plan on him showing up that early, just so you know.”

“No, it wasn’t your brother. Not really. This is going to sound so stupid…” She breathed a short sigh, her breath curling past her perfect lips in a little puff and hanging frozen in the air. “I really enjoyed the night we spent together. I felt so happy it was almost like I was on a high. I still felt that way in the morning, up to a certain point. Then I got cold feet.”

She looked like she was on the verge of saying more, so he kept his mouth shut.

“This is all kind of embarrassing to admit, but I really like you so I don’t want it to sound like I’m just making excuses. Truth is, I overheard you and Dustin talking. He said something about someone being pregnant, and for a split second I thought that maybe you’d…”

“He was talking about himself. His own girlfriend, I mean. He got some girl he’s been seeing at his college pregnant.” The realization of what Mallory had thought sat deep in his gut like curdled milk. It had never occurred to him that she’d heard, that she might think that Dustin had been talking about something that affected him.

Mallory nodded. “I know. I mean, I figured. But still, that split second of wondering what if scared me because… Well, it made me realize how much I like you.”

She paused, and the delicate column of her throat rippled as she swallowed. “Right then, I realized how torn up I’d be if I found out that you had serious ties to someone else, or anything at all happened really and… I felt like I was standing on the edge of a cliff ready to slip over the edge with the least little push. I couldn’t believe I felt that way when I’ve only known you for a couple weeks. All of a sudden I was desperate to get some breathing room – clear my head.”

Tyler exhaled slowly, refusing to let it turn into a sigh. White and evanescent, his breath hung suspended in the cold air. So she was afraid of how much she liked him? Well, that was definitely better than what he’d feared, which was that she’d decided she didn’t like him that much after all. “I feel that way too. About you, I mean. I’m not afraid of falling, though. You can go ahead and give me a shove if you want.”

Mallory was amazing – alluring in every way – and she made meaninglessness seem … meaningless. If she thought they might be headed for something long-term, no way in hell was he going to back away.

His teasing worked – she smiled a little. “Now I feel like I ran out on you. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to leave you thinking I didn’t have a good time.”

“Well it’s hard to be mad when you’re telling me that the problem is that you like me so much it scares you.” He couldn’t resist a smirk. “You’re not just trying to shelter my ego when the problem is really something else, are you? Maybe you’ve decided you don’t like my tattoos that much after all?”

“I love your tattoos. Don’t be ridiculous. It really is what I said. You have to understand – I’m the girl who once got a boyfriend’s name tattooed on my body. I was stupid once and nowadays I like to think that I’m older and wiser. I’ve spent years watching my mom sit on the sidelines and let life pass her by because her marriage to my father fell apart. I promised myself I’d be careful not to end up like that.

“I figured I’d focus on making a life for myself first – you know, my work as a nurse – and then, if I ever did settle down with anyone, it’d be after dating them for about a million years and making sure we were really,
really
compatible before I let myself get all attached. Then, of course, we’d fall slowly but surely into a deep and abiding love that would last for the rest of our lives.”

“Well, that settles it,” he said. “We’ll just have to keep seeing each other for the next million years. At the end, you can let me know if you want to sign on for the rest of eternity.”

She grinned. “I’m already too attached to carry out my original dating scheme like I’d planned. At this point, I’m not supposed to like you so much. I’m supposed to be kind of aloof so that if things end badly, I won’t feel like you’ve danced a jig on my heart.”

“So you just want to use me for my body until you decide whether you really like me as a person, too. Gotcha. Can’t say I blame you, really…”

“No!” She laughed. “Sleeping with you so soon wasn’t part of the original plan either. I just couldn’t resist.” Her gaze dipped down again, then back up to meet his. There was a light in her eyes that made him semi-hard, flooding his body with heat that laughed in the face of the winter cold.

This was definitely going better than he’d expected. Except…

“I don’t want you to feel like you need to resist,” he said. “Do you still feel that way?”

A little dent appeared in her lip – she was biting it from the inside. “I
feel
like I want to be around you. A lot. I don’t
feel
like I want to resist even the least little bit. I guess a part of me is just worried that I’m letting my feelings run away with me and taking things too fast. It feels right, but what if I’m taking a gamble and I lose, you know?”

“Being with someone is always a gamble. I hate to break it to you, but I don’t think you’d be very happy dating someone for a million years just to see if you really wanted to be with them. That sounds boring as hell, and in the end, I think the answer would be no. I think that when you find someone you have a connection with, you’ve gotta decide whether they’re worth taking a chance on or not. You’re a person, not a robot – you have feelings for a reason, and if they don’t play a role in decisions like this, what’s the point?”

For once, his feelings came out in semi-intelligible word form. He resisted the urge to ruin it by adding something stupid onto the end, like: “I like you. For the love of God, let yourself like me back.”

Several moments ticked by, and she didn’t say a word. By the time she spoke again, he figured he’d pissed her off.