I had to do a double take and felt my jaw drop when I caught sight of her. Her fabulous auburn hair was coiled up on her head, she had no makeup on, and she was dressed in the basic bluish-black police uniform all the street cops in Denver wore. She had a hat under her arm and a gun on a belt at her waist. I couldn’t believe this was the same girl who had on pink heels and skinny jeans last night.

“You’re a cop?”

She pushed past me and walked into the kitchen, where the coffee was done brewing. She made herself right at home going through Nash’s cabinets until she found a mug. I should have protested her forwardness but I was still in shock over the fact that she was armed.

“Yep.” She let the p pop and poured me a mug as well. “Listen, I want to try and explain something to you about your guy.”

It was on the tip of my tongue to deny he was my anything, but she scowled at me. “I’m cranky and armed. Don’t start with me, girlie. Last night I locked myself out of my place. My phone was in the car, so I was screwed. Nash helped me out, fed me, and talked to me about you. Do you know how many asshole guys would’ve used that as an excuse to put a move on me? Or how many would’ve tried something shady because I had no way to communicate or anyplace to go?”

She had a very valid point, so I nodded at her in agreement.

“Most guys are assholes. Seriously, Saint, Nash is not one of them. I know there is some history there between the two of you or whatever, but open your eyes, honey. That boy is sprung on you and he is a nice guy. A superhot, supersexy nice guy. Do you know how rare that is? He’s like a goddamn unicorn.”

I picked up my mug of coffee and continued to watch her like she was some kind of wild exhibit at the zoo.

“Besides, my mom was the other woman. I was the milkman’s kid … well, the stockbroker’s really, but that doesn’t matter. I would never do that to another person, insert myself in their relationship, because I saw how hard it was on my mom waiting for that asshole to leave his wife. I can’t help it that I have an awesome rack and was blessed with fabulous hair. I’m not some femme fatale out to steal anyone’s man.”

It actually sounded like that was a sore spot with her, so I cleared my throat and tried to give her a semi-explanation.

“It doesn’t help that you’re beautiful and live right across the hall, but it could be any pretty girl, Royal. Men are easily distracted like that.”

She let loose a string of profanity that made me take a step back. She was sure a contradiction. A really pretty girl with a badge and a really dirty mouth.

“That’s insanity. No other girl is going to come along and distract him. He is absolutely focused on you. We are not interchangeable objects, LEGO pieces that click together just because the parts fit. If he is telling you he wants you, then no one else is going to do. If you can’t believe what he’s telling you because of whatever your ordeal in the past is, pay attention to what he’s showing you. Actions always speak louder than words.”

She took her hat and positioned it over the bun on her head. I cocked my head to the side and considered her for a long minute.

“What does it matter to you anyway?”

She put her mug in the sink and rinsed it out.

“Nash is nice, you seem nice. There aren’t enough good people out there that find each other. Plus I want you to be my friend.”

That wasn’t what I expected. “What? Why?”

“Because girls don’t like me. They all think I’m out to steal their man or they get squirrely when they learn I’m a cop. I’m twenty-three years old, Saint, and I can’t remember the last time I had a friend that wasn’t a dude. My best friend in the entire world is my partner, Dominic. We went to high school together and struggled through the academy together. If it wasn’t for him I would be really, really alone, and I don’t want that.”

I just stared at her, trying to figure out what I wanted to say to her.

“When you have a guy like Nash willing to offer you everything, don’t risk losing it because of what was or because of what might be. Now I gotta go catch all the bad guys.”

When the front door closed behind her, I took my coffee and went to flop down on the couch. I wanted to go to the grocery store before I had to go and put some actual food in Nash’s fridge for him. The poor guy couldn’t live on cold pizza and beer, not with everything else he had going on in his life at the moment. Really I had a burning need to try and take care of him working under the surface of my skin and I wasn’t going to question it right now.

It had been an intense few days and my emotions were all over the place. Royal was right: Nash had been trying to show me all night long the things I wouldn’t listen to and he was making it impossible for me to keep my head buried in the sand. Not only was the only guy I had ever really truly cared about demanding something more from me than I ever thought I could give, but I had a brassy, loud, badass female cop that looked like a movie star telling me she wanted to be my friend. I didn’t know what alternate universe I had fallen into, whose life this was I was suddenly living, but it sure didn’t feel like mine. Right now I couldn’t tell if that was the best thing to ever happen to me or the worst.

The shop was coming along way better than I could have imagined. Zeb was a magic man and an honest-to-God visionary. The final concept he had come up with was an old-school carnival straight off some boardwalk, and since my life felt like a three-ring circus half the time now, it totally fit. It was old-timey and a little kitschy, but the idea was awesome and all of us liked how different it was from the rough-and-tumble way the original shop came across. Each of the six artist’s stations was modeled after a booth that would be in a 1930s freak show—we had a strongman, a bearded lady, of course a tattooed lady, a fortune-teller, a lion tamer, a sword swallower, and a freaky-looking wolf man painted on the wall. Zeb wanted to install a vintage strength machine, a retro photo booth, and one of those old creepy fortune-telling machines, which I thought would send the concept and the shop over the top. All our portfolios and pictures of tattoos we had done were on a state-of-the-art LED screen that was constantly changing and operated on a touch screen so that potential clients could interact with it.

It was a fantastic mix of old and new, and while the actual tattoo shop probably only had three or so more weeks of work to make it a workable and usable space, Zeb hadn’t gotten around to the top floor yet. The idea was to keep that space more modern, more boutique feeling. So far the bridge between the shop and the retail space hadn’t come to fruition, mostly because it was uncharted territory for all of us and I think we were all worried about screwing it up or making it a joke when we had all worked so hard to solidify our reputations as the top tattoo artists in the Denver metro area. It was a brave new world and things were changing fast for all of us who called the Marked home.

I called the girl Phil had insisted I give a shot. It was a weird conversation. She was undeniably sharp and quick-witted. When I asked her if she had any experience working in a tattoo shop, she had laughed heartily and told me there was nothing she couldn’t do. She actually didn’t sound that interested in the opportunity to come out and interview with us until I mentioned the shop was in Denver. I told her what Phil said about looking the shop up online and letting me know. She hung up laughing and I thought I was going to end up writing her off as nothing more than a flighty model.

I was headed across town; I wanted to make a stop before going into work for the day. I needed some advice about getting around the ties and bonds that held a person to the past, and the only person I could think of that might be able to help me get some real answers, some real clarity, was Asa. He was a man who had lived a terrible life—a user and abuser—until almost losing not only his life but his sister as well. He had been forced to reevaluate what he was doing, who he was. Now he was making strides, trying to make amends, and while his relationship with Ayden was still rocky and often strained, there wasn’t a day that went by that they didn’t try and move on in their new relationship together. Asa was a man trying not to be defined by his past.