Nothing on his face indicated whether he cared about that. The pang of disappointment in her chest pissed her off to no end.
"Will you have time?" For the tattoo, he meant.
"Yes, I will." But Darcy meant something else. Time enough to flush Beck Rivera out of her system once and for all before she headed to warmer climes--and a fresh start.
chapter 5
The pots of money invested in Sunnyvale couldn't quite mask the astringent smell of disinfectant, marking it a place where old people went to pass on to the other side. Sort of morbid, Darcy admitted as she quickly navigated the slick floors of the lavish care facility, where her grandmother was camping out while she recovered from her stroke. The old girl was richer than God and could have afforded around-the-clock care at the mansion, but the docs had recommended she spend her rehab here. Something about socializing her way back into regular life.
Lord help the other residents, was Darcy's answer to that.
Darcy entered her grandmother's room without knocking. "Hey, Grams, how's it hangin'?"
Eleanor Cochrane's regal gaze landed with a thud on Darcy's bustier-molded cleavage.
"You trying to catch a cold or a man in that outfit?"
"Oh, a man. Most definitely a man."
She'd gone leather today from the waist down, and maybe it was too sexy for her grandmother, but it sure as hell wasn't for Beck Rivera. For that man on fire, it was the perfect temperature. She had plans for him later.
Bending over Grams, Darcy kissed the wax-papery skin of her cheek. The woman had aged so much in the last three months it scared the shit out of Darcy, which is why she loved when her grandmother showed flashes of spirit--even if that spirit was laced with acid.
Darcy plopped down into a comfy armchair near the bed. "Looks like you might be on the hunt yourself, Grams. In that nightie, you're flashing enough bosom to send the boys here to their graves with big smiles and bigger hard-ons."
"It's a peignoir, Darcy. Your expensive education was clearly wasted on you." She inhaled a breath with difficulty, causing Darcy some difficult breathing of her own. "But at least you're here. Not a single visit from the rest of them. All waiting for the call that I've croaked and my money is ready for distribution." Them, meaning her cousins. The rest of the Cochranes found it hard to fit tongue lashings from the family matriarch into their busy schedules.
"I'm only here in the hopes you'll change the will and drop it all on me," Darcy said with a grin, knowing that despite Grams's diatribes against the younger generation, she would never do such an outrageous thing. Blood is king was her mantra when she wasn't damning the lot of them to hell.
"He'll cut you out for good if you're not careful."
At the mention of her father, Darcy stiffened in the plush chair, but recovered with a wave. "Guess I should continue to be careless, then. I don't want it. Any of it." Her father's cash-rich approval came with strings so tight they made the bustier she was wearing feel roomy. Since she had dropped out of college and became her own person, she had felt free. Rootless, a little lonely, but liberated. She loved Chicago, but there wasn't an umbrella big enough to weather her father's toxic rain.
"He misses you," Grams said, and Darcy's heart melted. Not because she believed Sam Cochrane truly missed his daughter, but because Grams sounded so forlorn.
"I miss you, too." That earned Darcy a geriatric scowl. Gaudy shows of emotion were unacceptable from a Cochrane.
They spent ten minutes chatting about the upcoming fund-raising gala for homeless women that Grams organized each holiday season. Darcy was playing proxy for her grandmother, and had discovered that ordering people about in the name of Madam Cochrane was the ultimate power trip.
Her grandmother turned on the dowager countess stink eye once more. "So who are you flashing all that skin for?"
Heat scalded Darcy's cheeks. "Do you remember Jack's friend? The boxer from about seven or eight years ago?"
Grams screwed up her pinched face, calling deep on her memory reserves, and Darcy held her breath. Just how much damage had that stroke done to her?
"Serious boy. Broken nose."
Phew. "That's him. Beck."
"Ah, my favorite ladies."
Darcy's muscles locked up as the deep, resonant tone of her father both warmed and chilled the room. Sam Cochrane had a marvelous speaking voice, which he used to great effect encouraging his employees Trump-style--and crushing their dreams, when any of them dared step out of line. It was the same tactic he used to control his family.
Self-pity, thy name is Darcy Cochrane.
She turned in her seat, "displaying her wares" as he had once described her body art and revealing clothing. Petty satisfaction warmed her gut at watching his lips form a grim seal.
Tall and urbane, with graying hair winging his temples, her father had aged exceedingly well. Tori, his third wife, was a health nut and she made sure to keep him active, both in the gym and in the bedroom. A between-the-sheets exercise regimen with women who weren't his wife had always been his go-to before the latest Mrs. Cochrane.
He had married Darcy's mother, a former beauty queen and daughter of a wealthy man, for seed money. And then he left her to a boozy rot in their Gold Coast mansion while he screwed his secretaries and figured out ways to contort everyone around him into knots. Darcy had seen the effects of her father's manipulations on her mother. It dragged her down, made her small. But she had eventually wised up and was now happily remarried, living in South Beach.
"Well, Grams, I've got to go seduce that man. I'll check back in later." Darcy sprang up and gave her grandmother a kiss good-bye along with a gentle squeeze, netting for her trouble a disapproving hmph at her mawkish display.
Bypassing her father, she headed to the corridor with a parting nod of acknowledgment. "Dad."
"Darcy," he said, following her out. "Stop behaving like a child."
She halted and let the fury work through her body for a gratifying moment before she spun on her boot heels and drew herself taller. He made it so easy to hate him. "In another two weeks, I'll be out of your hair. I'm only here for Grams."
"What about the fund-raiser?"
"Like I said, I'll be there for her. Not for you."
"Dressing appropriately, I hope," he said, his dark gaze skimming her outfit. "Your stepmother would appreciate it."
Instinctively, she drew the lapels of her jacket together, hiding what made her individual, different. Not Cochrane. Her ink felt like a huge X over her heart, an invitation to her father to take his best shot. Every battle in this war between them left her diminished and bruised, and now she dug deep for ammo.
"Dad, do you still have it in mind to trot me out as meat for one of your screw-someone-over schemes? Who is it this time? The scion of a Swiss banking dynasty? The geek founder of some start-up you want to buy out? Or is Preston Collins back on the market looking for Wife Number Two?"
Her father scoffed. "Well, now that you've made yourself look like a barrio mural, no one of use to me would want you."
Shock sliced through her, not at his words, but that they could still sting so much. Her usefulness to him had vanished with every screw you she embedded in her skin. She could feel her body curling up, her heart shrinking in his outsize presence.
"I'm more than what you choose to see, Dad. I always have been."
Subtlety was not part of her father's skill set, but in that moment, he seemed to realize his faux pas in cutting her so deeply. His mouth softened.
"Darcy, you're still my daughter and I love you. Come home."
"It doesn't feel like home anymore, Dad."
"Even with one of the city's finest at your beck and call?"
Rage boiled up. "For God's sake, Dad, have you been following me?" His keeping tabs should not have surprised her. Given some of his past stunts and his preference for gold jewelry, he had more in common with an old-school Mafioso than with the upper echelons of power he so wanted to control.
"He's not worthy of you, Darcy. He never was." He stared her down for a moment, then turned and walked into Grams's room.
"Keep your fists up," Wyatt said.
Shoulders back, Beck adjusted his stance, putting more weight on his back foot, and delivered a one-two to the bag with his chin down and fists proud. Only three weeks since he'd started his leave, and his muscles bitched at every unfamiliar motion. Sweat rolled off his neck, soaking his tee, the impurities of his body sloughing away with every punch. Not the impurities of his mind, though. He held on to those like a drowning man whose life flashed before his eyes in bursts with each desperate second above water.
Darcy writhing under him, encouraging him to take her harder, do her right. Darcy's hands exploring his chest and rasping his nipples. Hell, sexy shit she hadn't even done!
The bag hit his head so hard that his ears popped and rang.
"The fuck?"
"You're distracted," Wyatt said as he steadied the bag he had just used as a weapon to usher Beck back to reality. If reality meant the cramped gym at Engine 6 on Chicago's North Side, he'd take his fantasy life, thanks. The old quarters could do with a face-lift, which given the city's budget woes and the fact CFD came last on their good mayor's list of priorities, would not be happening in any Dempsey's lifetime.
Wyatt cleared his throat. "Keep that shit up and you'll get your head bashed in by the Five-Oh."
"It's not until April," Beck said, referring to the annual Battle of the Badges. "Plenty of time to get undistracted." Two more weeks should do it. She'd be gone, off to Texas and some cowboy hick who would learn every inch of her tattooed body, and what each image meant.
"So you are."
"Are what?"
Wyatt's flinty expression said Beck shouldn't even bother playing it cool.
"Yeah, I'm distracted." He had Darcy on his mind. Then. Now. The future with a heaping side of regret if he didn't act and lock her down. She'd lied to him about this amazing woman she had become while he lodged his body deep within hers. But as mad as that made him, he understood that deficit of trust on her side. Maybe she was right to keep the real Darcy from him; maybe he didn't deserve to see the woman behind the ink, not while past mistakes were milling around in his brain.
Beck knew he was going to rue the next words out of his mouth because Wyatt was the worst sounding board ever, but sometimes talking to a human wall was better than a lady-feelings exchange with Gage or Luke.
"There's this girl."
Wyatt hoisted an eyebrow. Already overseas with the Marines when Beck and Darcy had started dating, his oldest brother had missed out on all the drama from back in the day.
"I cut her loose years ago and now she's on my radar again. She was this big bright light that made me feel like I could do anything, y'know?"
"I know," Wyatt said with uncharacteristic feeling. Guy was completely cryptic when it came to his sex life, so that was about as effusive as Beck had ever heard him.
"Keeping her close would have been the best thing for me, but it would've dragged her down, dimmed all that radiance. She had college and this golden life ahead of her, and she would have given it up to stay with me." She knew he couldn't leave Chicago, not when his future involved suiting up in CFD bunker gear. Which left the option of a long-distance relationship, or Darcy staying put and possibly giving up her dreams--for him.
He threw a punch at the heavy bag, keeping his top knuckles centered in the glove to absorb the shock. "I needed to be a firefighter, to honor Sean and Logan and everything they had done for this family, this city. My life was here, but hers . . ." Another solid blow to the bag kept him focused on getting out words that had never before found air. "Not sure I could have lived with what a life with me would have turned her into."
For a start, her father would have cut her off for hooking up with a punk-ass street kid. Staying in Chicago with her wings clipped, living on the fumes of teenage love that might not pass the test after a year or two of real life--no way did Beck want to shoulder the blame for that cluster.
"Love someone, set them free. That your angle?"
"I s'pose." Beck landed a hard, yet unsatisfying one-two-punch on the bag. "She's turned into this amazing woman, Wy. Strong, beautiful, independent." As for what Beck brought to the table, the jury was still out. He knew one thing, though, with a clarity that cut him to the core.
He wanted her.
"Becky, you've got a visitor," Luke called out from the gym's entrance.
"Are you decent?" a sultry voice crooned. Speak of the green-eyed temptress herself . . .
Darcy peeked around Luke's shoulder, her palm caging her eyes inadequately as she scoped out the gym. She dropped her hand dramatically. "Oh, that's disappointing. I was hoping for more sweaty men."
Beck's heart punched his ribs with all the force of an attack hose pumping out water at 400 psi. Just when he thought he'd have to chase her down, here she was, and holy shit, she had dressed up for her Engine 6 debut.
Leather molded to her curves like it had been painted on with a brush--or tattooed with her gun. High-heeled boots brought her up to Luke's chin, and he was taller than all of them. The jacket she wore was unbuttoned, revealing that revolt of colorful florals on the rise of her breast. All she was missing was a frickin' crossbow.
"Hey," he said. Wow, positively Shakespearean.
"Hey, yourself," she said back, a smile in her voice. "Can I have a word?"
That should have been enough of a hint for Beck's nosy brothers to clear off, but from their assorted smirks and raised brows, no one was budging. Fuckers. Hurriedly, he made introductions and was about to quickstep her out of there when Gage strutted in.
"Hey, it's Darcy, isn't it?" Gage asked. "Hot damn, I love your ink!" Never one for boundaries, baby bro nudged the lapel of her jacket aside and scrutinized her cleavage. "Heard you're a big-time tattoo artist now."
"I wouldn't go that far," she said, a becoming watercolor bloom of pink suffusing her cheeks.
Gage threaded his muscled arms over his chest. Today's T-shirt slogan announced: I'm a Firefighter--What's Your Superpower?
"Beck's been stalking you on the Web, trying to piece it all together Sherlock-style. Those pics . . . Darcy Cochrane, you are a stone-cold fox!"
"Sometimes I wonder if this gay thing is just a phase," Beck muttered, drawing Wyatt's low huff of laughter.
"Oh!" Surprise perked up Darcy's face, and she considered Gage with renewed interest. "That's right, you're gay. Mel is going to be stricken with grief."
Gage winked. "Yeah, I get that a lot."
As he stripped off his gloves, Beck recalled the details of his investigations on Darcy, which had turned up far-flung locations like London, Paris, and LA. She lived a nomadic lifestyle, always leaving her clients--and no doubt her many admirers--wanting more. In the tattoo world, Darcy Cochrane was a big fucking deal. She had won contests, displayed her art at something called the Body Expo, was a respected force in the business of drilling pigment into the skin. She'd even inked a well-known rock star, and there were rumors of a brief, combustible relationship, if TMZ was to be believed.
Gage was still gabbing. Jesus. "I couldn't believe that in all this time, he's never once looked you up. I mean, that's what the Internet is for."
"I thought it was for cat videos and porn," Darcy deadpanned, catching Beck's eye with a glint in her own.
"But it's also for snooping," Gage said with authority. "I'm always checking up on my exes, usually with my fingers crossed that one of them has made it onto some revenge porn site or that they take a really bad mug shot."
Amusement curved Luke's lips. "Does anyone take a good mug shot, idiot?"
Gage double thumbed in the direction of his head. "This face is incapable of having a bad day."
Darcy laughed warmly, just like Beck remembered, not that he had ever given her much reason. As a kid, he was too nervous around her, his skin so tight he felt like it would snap right off his bones. He liked to thi
nk he had lightened up in his old age, but he would never have Luke's innate charm or Gage's easy good humor.
Jealousy of his gay brother gnawed his innards. These two would be fast friends before the day was out; tequila and pillow fights would cement the deal. Still, another part of him enjoyed that she dug his family. He wanted her to be part of this thing that was so important to him.
"What did you need to talk about?" Beck asked, cutting in on the Gage and Darcy Show.
"Oh, right." She opened the big-ass purse on her shoulder and extracted a piece of paper. "I wanted to show you the design for the tattoo."
Her moss-green eyes were alight with a brew of fire and apprehension as she handed it to him. The names of Sean and Logan in Celtic lettering hit him like a right hook out of yesterday. Even after all this time, he felt it. The void they had left.
"The black script is a bit hard on the eyes," Darcy said, "so I thought I'd soften it with a shamrock on one side for Sean and the CFD logo on the other for Logan."
Beck struggled to get the words out. "Two separate tattoos, then?"
She placed her hand on his bicep. "One for each gun," she said softly, her fingers cool to the touch from being outdoors. He felt the sizzle as the heat between them expanded, and for a moment everything fell away and it was just him and Darcy, eyes fusing like their bodies had two nights ago.
Several heartbeats later, she lowered her eyes, then her hand. "I can do something else. Just tell me what you need."
Everyone stared at the design, trapped in their own vortex of memories and pain.
"It's awesome. We're in," Luke pronounced, breaking the heavy silence. "Unless you want this just for yourself." He held Beck's gaze, worry that he had spoken out of turn clouding his eyes.
The unabashed rightness of this struck Beck squarely. It was for them all.
"If you guys want to be a part of it and Darcy can manage the work, then that's fine by me. She's in high demand and . . ." He trailed off as the memory of how long she'd be around sucker punched him in the solar plexus. She was planning to skip town by year's end, and shit on a hot dog, that sucked.
"I can do you all." She bit down on her lip and took in the ring of Dempseys staring at her avidly. "Well, you know what I mean."