To his studio where he makes art out of words with ink, paint, and parchment paper. “You’re a…what’s the word?”
“Calligrapher,” Tam supplies. “Did you think I was a plumber or something?”
Honestly, I’m not sure what I thought. But it wasn’t this. I peer at the work he has scattered around. The ink bottles, the pen nibs, and sheets of thick paper. “You have big hands.”
Tam laughs. “Okay.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“I know.”
“How?”
“How what?”
I tear my gaze from a Christmas tree comprised of elegant script. “How do you know what I meant?”
“Because no one can ever get their head around me doing something like this. If I’d asked you to imagine a calligrapher ten minutes ago, would you have pictured me?”
I’ve pictured him in my dreams, I’m sure of it. But he has a point. I don’t know what a stereotypical calligrapher looks like, but I’m willing to bet it isn’t a six-foot beefcake with skulls tattooed on his knuckles. “All right,” I concede. “I might’ve made an assumption about you based on your appearance. Can’t lie, you look like a biker.”
The teasing glint in Tam’s gaze fades. “I was once.”
That gets my attention—as if he didn’t already have it. Skylar has lots of biker friends who dress like Tam. Men most people would cross the road to avoid, but I happen to know are some of the nicest people on earth, once you get past the gangster vibe. “What happened to change that? I mean, if you want to share. It’s okay if you don’t.”
I shift my focus to a sheet of recycled cardboard with Christmas greetings etched on it in chalk-white ink. It’s gorgeous in its simplicity and so very Tam that I can’t believe I didn’t see this in him. That Isawink staining his hands and took him for a carpenter. “How do you get the letters like that? I can barely write my own name.”
For a long moment, Tam is still—too still. He’s marble in whatever dark place my nosiness has forced him back to. Then Ifeel him move and he fills the space beside me. “You write like a drunk doctor.”
“It’s way worse than that, trust me. I get told all the time.”
“By who?”
“Colleagues, bosses. My mum when I send her postcards.”
“Postcards?”
“My parents live in Tasmania.”
Tam frowns, placing it. “Australia?”
“They emigrated when I joined the Navy.” It’s his turn to be surprised—I see it in his high brows and widened gaze. “What? I don’t look a military man?”
“It’s not that.” Tam rotates a little. It brings him so close we’re almost touching, shoulder-to-shoulder, thigh-to-thigh. “I just see you more as a healer than a fighter.”
“Well, you’re right. I was a critical care nurse in the Navy too, and it’s a non-combatant role. I was never deployed to a conflict. All my overseas tours were on hospital ships managing natural disasters.”
“No guns for you?”
“It’s not as cut and dry as that, but no. Shooting people wasn’t my main occupation.” Tam’s nearness starts to dizzy me. I put a little distance between us and study a piece of work that seems more complex than the rest. “What’s this?”
“Bible shit.”
Looking closer, I can see that. “What’s it for?”
“The big church near the hospital in the city. They have me write out their Christmas lesson every year, then I let them mass-produce it as greeting cards to sell in their shop to help fund their food bank.”
“That’s nice.”
