“I can’t take credit for it. Everything you see here is because of Camille.” He glanced at her again, and her breath evaporated in her lungs at the heat in that bright gaze.
How dare he look at her like that? Like he wanted her. Like he...
He kicked you out, remember?
Yes, if her heart refused to recall, that hole in her chest right next to it definitely had a perfect memory.
“Well...awesome.” Korrie chuckled softly. “Don’t mind me. I’m just going to go...somewhere.”
With another low laugh, she walked away, leaving Camille alone with Erik. She damn near called the other woman back.
“Camille,” Erik said.
“I know you told me to take a break,” she said, interrupting his imminent demand to know why she was working his booth. “But I couldn’t just leave Dara hanging today. If you want, I’ll stay over here until the rally is over. That way, any lingering reporters will have to bother me out here instead of at the shop.”
“I don’t give a fuck about reporters at the shop.”
“Since when?” she scoffed. “That wasn’t your tune last night.”
“I’ve changed my mind.”
“How very nice for you,” she snapped, her temper crackling like a match to dry wood. She whipped around and grabbed the last stack of shirts and started folding them. Anything was better than studying his beautiful, maddening face. “How very awesome that you can just flip a switch like that. Although I can’t imagine how you can care about guarding your precious privacy and life one moment and don’t the next.”
“Camille, look at me, please.”
The “please.” That’s what penetrated when nothing else could’ve. Well, that and the hoarse tone that sounded as if it’d been dragged down an unpaved street.
Slowly, she set down the shirt in her hands and turned around to face him.
“I need to show you something,” he said.
She nodded, oddly breathless and speechless. An...expectation settled on her chest, and she stilled, watching him. Waiting for...something.
Without glancing away from her, he shoved up the short sleeve of his dark gray T-shirt, exposing the very top of his shoulder. He paused, and it hit her that he wanted her to look there. Ink covered his entire arm and shoulder, but as she leaned forward, she noted a slightly reddened area. She’d been around Forever Ink long enough to spot the sign of a fresh tattoo. And his...
Oh God.
She jerked her gaze to his face, immediately ensnared by his bright blue eyes. Trapped by the emotion she hadn’t wanted to acknowledge moments ago. Feared acknowledging. But if she’d doubted her eyes, she couldn’t question that new tattoo. Or its meaning.
The Forever Ink logo.
ThenewForever Ink logo. One she’d designed and presented to him over a week ago and he’d slapped down with a firm, “hell no.” Now, knowing his past, she understood why he’d reacted so strongly to her proposition.
And now, she understood even more what it meant for him to change it.
Slowly, she emerged from behind the booth and didn’t stop until she stood right in front of him.
“You changed your logo.”
“Yeah, I did.”
“For me,” she whispered.
“Yeah, I did.”
“You love me.”
Without hesitation, he said in that rough voice that reached to every hurt, every wound, and healed them.
