Her CEO Stalker and Her Second Chance Mate Chapter 73

Briar

Carter surprised me once again. I thought  the turmoil of my feelings would have put him off. Did he not understand how conflicted I was? How messed up some broken parts of my mind were, longing inside the panic of my dreams for the man who elicited my terror. It seemed he was genuinely devoted to standing beside me through it all. It seemed too good to be true. I didn’t deserve that sort of reverie. When our mouths parted, he pulled me to straddle his lap and just held me, causing my doubts to drift away, bound by his all-consuming comfort. 

We sat like that a while before he picked his phone up off the table and grunted. “I’ve got an appointment in town, and I’m bound to be late if we don’t get going. I got up, and Carter collected the boxes and put them in the trash. 

“What sort of appointment?” I asked. He pointed to the unfinished part of his tattooed sleeve. “Sounds like fun,” I said, jumping on the bike behind him, and he kick started the engine and took off. He was definitely going over the speed limit, no doubt already late for the appointment because of me. When we got to the shop, located in a hole in the wall place, I could smell the incense coming from it. Mom used to burn herbs sometimes, I loved the smell of it, deep and musky, yet it felt cleansing.

I hadn’t asked about his tattoos. I always found the expression of ink on skin beautiful, but I never got one, not wanting to mar my chances of a corporate job. I suppose that was all out the window now; may as well, but of course, Carter had made me leave my bag behind. Window shopping it was. My eyes skimmed the walls, covered with a plethora of hand-drawn images and the photos of them on skin. Thick books lay open on a low table in the waiting room, with more of the same. A woman came out, narrowing her eyes at Carter.

“You're late,” she accused, sternly.

“I know, I'm sorry, I had something I needed to attend to.”

“It's my fault,” I said, waving to get her attention and take the heat off Carter.

“Who is the pretty lady, Sheriff Carter?”

“This is Briar. She skipped out on me for lunch, so I had to hunt her down before I came.”

“Smart man, he knows when not to let the right one get away.” Carter just beamed and gave me a cheesy grin. The right one?

“Briar, this is Willow. She specializes in healing tattoos.” 

“Healing tattoos?”

“Yes, I’m an energy healer. When I’m not aligning chakras and doing other energy work, I’m a tattoo artist, but my other work always follows me. Juan should be finishing up a client very soon. You are lucky he went over his time; he won’t even notice you were late,” Willow chuckled. How about you, Briar? My appointment canceled, I have time, if you would like something so you don’t have to sit around and wait for this one,” she said, pointing at Carter.

I shrugged, “As much as I would love to take you up on that offer, it seems I was rushed out of work and told I didn’t need my bag,” I said, giving Carter a look that told him this is why the bag goes everywhere. 

“If you want it, Briar, I’ve got it,” Carter said.

“I can’t.”

“You can and you will. Consider it a gift, or a payback for all the meals you’ve fed me, I don’t care. Sometimes, if you want something, you just need to do it. I promise Willow will take good care of you.”

“Come on, what do you say?” Willow asked. She really seemed to want to do it, and I was intrigued.”

“Alright,” I finally agreed as Juan stepped out from the back with a client. 

When he left, Juan turned to Carter. “You're on time for a change. Give me a few to set up and we will finish that ink finally,” he said to Carter, and barely spared me a glance, just a quick nod of recognition before he disappeared into the back room. 

Willow handed me a book of tattoos, “Here, have a seat and a look. Show me what you like and I’ll do the rest. Mind, you have to trust the process, I work freehand so you won’t know what you are getting until I’m done.” I nodded, for some reason that didn’t scare me, though it probably should have.

There was so much to choose from, and they were all beautiful in their own way, but the small cluster of dandelion tattoos caught my eye. “I like these, just this one is too dark and the other is too, umm, girly,” I pointed out.

“So, you have something in your past you want to let go of?”

“I guess you can say that,” I glanced at Carter, who had paused his thumbing through another book to pass the time to look over at the designs I was considering.

“Strong lines, but fluid, not stark; makes sense. I can work with that,” Willow agreed. 

I flipped through several more pages of flowers and the like before I came to a page of dragonflies, “I like these, too; but the same, some are too dark and others too delicate.

“I think I’ve got it,” Willow said. She stood as Juan walked into the waiting room to collect Carter. We all followed them back. She shifted the chair closer to Juan’s set up and rolled her work table over so we were closer to him and Carter as they both worked.  Then she laid the chair out flat like a bed.

“Hop on, shirt off, face down,” she instructed.