Searching through the boxes, I found the one I was looking for. The one box I’d kept from high school was the one with all my old sketch pads and art materials. Sketching always relaxed me—it took me out of myself for a little while. I seemed to need that a lot lately.

When I was packing up, I hadn’t had enough time to go through all my old drawings, but tonight I had nothing but time and four grim walls. I needed something to take my mind off my family problems, and I didn’t have money to buy any new books.

Hauling the box over to the bed, I wiped away the dust that had collected on the top of the sketch pads with an old T-shirt and curled up on the bed to look through them. Some of the older drawings made me smile. Drawing wasn’t something that had come particularly easy to me at first. I’d loved to do it but was never able to make a sketch come alive. Until a boy in my first-year class (one I happened to have a massive crush on) in high school showed me how to hold a sketch pencil correctly and how to stroke against the paper, not draw in hard, unbending lines.

From there I caught on quickly and I was hooked.

The art lasted. The first crush didn’t.

A sheet of paper fell out from the third sketch pad I’d picked up and suddenly I was reminded of another boy. A year ago I would have been able to look at the sketch and feel nothing but a prickle of pain—a ghostly reminder rather than the real thing.

Now, however, looking down at the drawing of my ex-boyfriend Nick, I felt bitterness well up in me. That bitterness was becoming a familiar part of me and I hated it. I just didn’t know how to fight it.

But I leaned against my pillow, my fingers crinkling the sketch of the gorgeous Nick Briar. I’d gone out with Nick nine months after my first boyfriend, Ewan, had dumped me out of the blue. For a time Nick soothed the hurt Ewan had left me with. In my immaturity, I actually felt like I had won something over Ewan when I began dating Nick. He was nineteen and gorgeous and the lead singer in a rival rock band.

Nick had been the first of my bad boys . . .

*   *   *

The small club was dingy and smoky and much too hot. But I was filled with giddy excitement as I watched Nick sing onstage with his band, Allied Criminals. I thought their name was stupid and I wasn’t a huge fan of their music, but I loved Nick’s voice and his passion and how excited people were by them. I felt proud standing in the crowd as his girlfriend, and I promised myself I would always support him, no matter what.

Nick played up his brooding persona onstage, but in reality he was such a sweet guy. The night before, when I told him I wouldn’t be able to make it to this performance because of a family thing, he’d been really cool about it. He was disappointed, but he didn’t make a big deal about it like Ewan would have. And he made me feel special in a way that Ewan never had. Nick was always telling me how beautiful I was, how funny and interesting. I’d felt ordinary until I met him. I was completely falling for him, which was probably why I’d had sex for the first time with him a few weeks ago.

My friends were acting all immature about it and jealous, which was ridiculous. They thought it was a mistake for me to give it up to him and were really being unsupportive and ignorant about the whole thing. Lucky I had Nick in my life so I didn’t have to put up with their silly naïveté all the time.

After Nick was so cool the night before, whispering sweet nothings in my ear while he made love to me, I decided I’d get out of my aunt’s birthday party to come and see him play. I couldn’t wait to see the look of surprise on Nick’s face.

The band finished up and I hurried toward the door that would lead to backstage. A bouncer tried to push me back, but after I explained who I was he disappeared backstage and returned with the band’s “manager.” In reality he was Nick’s older cousin, Justin, and I wasn’t really sure what it was that qualified him to be their manager. I didn’t really care just then. Justin recognized me and got me backstage only to disappear before I could ask which way I was going. I wandered in the opposite direction and came upon the band sitting around a randomly placed and barren pool table. They were drinking beer and talking loudly among each other with a couple of guys and girls I didn’t recognize.

Nick was nowhere to be seen.

Alan, the lead guitarist, glanced up and stiffened when he saw me, his eyes flickering beyond me nervously before they snapped back to me. “Shannon.” He stood up abruptly and the guys all looked at me in much the same way. “I didn’t think you were coming tonight.”

I smiled back, but my lips trembled. The tension my appearance had caused had alarm bells ringing in my head. “I wanted to surprise Nick. Where is he?”

“Uh, I don’t know.” Digby, the drummer, shrugged, looking at the other guys with a faked nonchalance that they returned.

Not Alan, though. His lips pinched together as he watched them, and when his eyes swung back to mine I stared into them stubbornly. My directness made him flinch. Alan and I got on pretty well. In fact, I sometimes got the impression he liked me. He flirted with me all the time and was always so considerate of me. I’d always brushed it off because I was mad about Nick and no one else could come close to how I felt about him.

“Where is he, Alan?”

Alan’s eyes softened with regret. “He’s in the cloakroom, Shannon.” He nodded in the direction behind me as the others shifted uneasily.

Feeling my heart bang away in my chest, I turned on my low-booted heels and strode with more confidence than I was feeling down a narrow, dark walkway. I came to a stop in front of a black-painted door with the word CLOAKROOM in peeling white paint across it.

I heard the gasps and grunts coming from inside and I knew what I was going to find, but I just had to see it for myself.

With a shaking hand I turned the door handle and threw it open.

In the small, dimly lit room that was no bigger than a large closet, I saw Nick with his jeans down around his ankles, thrusting into the blonde he had pinned against the wall.

Nausea and pain like I’d never felt before welled up in me as they both jerked their heads around in surprise at the intrusion. Nick’s eyes widened when he saw me and suddenly the blonde was forgotten as he called out my name in horror and let her go. She stumbled to the floor when Nick bent down to pick up his jeans.

I ran out of there, ignoring Alan and Nick shouting my name as they chased after me. I lost them in the crowds of the dirty bar and I hurried all the way to the bus stop. I didn’t go home. Instead I found myself knocking on my friend Caro’s house. She let me in and I sobbed all over her, apologizing for assuming she was naive, when in the end I was the only one who could be faulted for that . . .

*   *   *

Nick was an important lesson. Yet somehow it took another man cheating on me before I learned from it. Eventually I got wise to his type. However, I later got caught up in a different kind of bad boy: the kind who didn’t cheat but still found a way to wreck my life.

But no more.

I tore up the sketch of Nick into a hundred little pieces.

Never again.

CHAPTER 2

I ’d found it hard to sleep the night before I started my new job, butterflies fluttering around like wild things in my belly as I worried about the next day. When I managed to drift to sleep, it was with the hope that my manager would be very much a younger version of Stu. I could deal with a Stu.

So it was with more than the usual amount of first-day jitters that I stepped into INKarnate on Monday, which was probably why I almost tripped over my own feet at the sight before me.

Simon was standing in front of the marble reception desk talking quietly to a very tall guy who had his back to me. I got a brief glimpse of strong, broad shoulders and long legs before he turned and my eyes collided with his bright green ones.

Holy . . .

My stomach plummeted.

Dread filled me.

Please, no, no, no. Be a customer. Please be a customer.

Those eyes crinkled attractively at the corners as their gorgeous owner threw me a friendly, boyish smile that penetrated my anti-bad-boy force field. The eyes and smile would have brought me low on their own, but unfortunately those eyes and that smile were enhanced by sexy scruff on the stranger’s jaw, and the messy, unkempt strawberry blond hair that framed his attractive face. If that wasn’t enough to affect a woman, the tall, handsome stranger had a fit body. A very fit body by the look of things. His navy T-shirt did nothing to hide the perfect V of his torso or his lean, muscular arms. And those arms were covered in elaborate, hot tattoos.

“Shannon,” Simon greeted me, yanking my gaze away from the stunning disaster in front of me. “This is Cole, our manager.”

Was fate really this heartless?

Cole grinned at me again, and familiarity punched me in the chest along with dismay as he took a few steps toward me and held out his hand. “Cole Walker. It’s nice to meet you, Shannon.”

I reluctantly stepped forward and took his hand in mine.

I instantly regretted it.

His strong, slightly callused hand with the chunky silver ring on its middle finger felt really nice. It engulfed my small one and I felt surrounded by him.

Dammit!

I ripped my hand away, unable to meet my new manager’s gaze. My eyes dropped to the loosely laced black engineer boots his dark jeans were tucked into.

“Shannon?” Cole said my name like a question and I had to unglue my eyes from his feet to meet his gaze. Up close the familiarity I’d felt moments ago only strengthened in feeling as he narrowed his eyes on me. He took in my hair for a few long seconds.

Recognition slammed through me.

No.

No way.

“So, are you a hero, Cole Walker?”

“What is a hero, really?”

Months, even years, after our meeting outside my gran’s house all those years ago, I’d often thought of the good-looking boy I’d connected with after only a few minutes of conversation.

Cole Walker.

Cole freaking Walker.

All grown-up.

And he was my new manager.

I was so screwed. I’d be less screwed, though, if he didn’t remember me, which I was pretty sure he wouldn’t. A guy like him—he was bound to have flirty conversations with women every day. No way would he remember a random conversation with a short, pale redhead nine years ago.

“I know you.” Cole stepped back, tilting his head as he scrutinized me with a small smile on his lips. He looked charmed by me, which immediately sent my force field back up at full power. “Shannon.” Unbelievably, recognition lit up his beautiful eyes. “We’ve met.” He grinned back at a smiling Simon before returning his attention to me. His eyes were filled with pleased surprise. “On Scotland Street. Years ago.”

He waited for me to respond.

I could tell him I remembered him, but surely that would only encourage the flirtiness I saw glittering in his gaze. I remembered he liked my hair and my eyes. Who was to say he didn’t still like my hair and my eyes, and moreover would like a chance to see said hair spilled across his pillow as he screwed me? A screwing that he would most likely promptly follow up with screwing me over.

Keeping my face perfectly blank, I shook my head. “Sorry. I don’t remember.”

Disappointment caused his smile to wilt. “Really? We talked about bands and zombies and stuff. Your boyfriend picked you up. You’re from Glasgow.”

Christ, did he have a photographic memory?

I only just managed to stop myself from wrinkling my nose in annoyance. “I am from Glasgow,” I answered calmly, not unfriendly but not friendly either. “And my gran lived on Scotland Street, but I don’t remember you. Sorry.”

Simon tried to muffle a snort of laughter behind Cole.

Cole shot him a displeased look over his shoulder and Simon turned around with an innocent whistle and casually walked into the back.

Sighing, my new manager turned to me with a frown puckering his brow. “You really don’t remember me?”

“Sorry.” I shrugged apathetically, which only caused his frown to deepen.

“Long time ago, I suppose.” He continued to stare at me in an assessing way and I began to squirm uncomfortably. The more he stared, the more I stared, and the more I stared, the more I noticed how deliciously lickable he was.

The tattoos only made him more so.

I blamed the artist in me for my weakness for a man with great tattoos. There was what looked like initials worked into a tribal design tattooed on the left side of his neck. On his left arm was a sleeve tattoo in black ink of a wolf standing on a rocky precipice. It sketched upward into his biceps, and the upper body of a woman in profile appeared to transform out of the top of the wolf’s head—her face was upturned; her hair billowed in the wind and disappeared under the fabric of his T-shirt. On his right arm in a reddish brown and black ink was a flying eagle, the tips of its wings disappearing under his T-shirt too. Dangling from the eagle’s talons was an old-fashioned pocket watch, but I couldn’t make out what time was set on it.

“You like what you see?”

I blinked at the innuendo in Cole’s voice, dragging my eyes from his tattoos to his face. He was wearing this sexy little smirk that would have worked like a charm on me a few months ago.

But a lot had happened since then. I raised an eyebrow. “Do you flirt with all your new employees?” I said, unamused and pretending to be unimpressed.

Cole’s smirk turned into a grin as his eyes roamed over my hair. “I’ve never had one like you before,” he murmured.

“Efficient, smart, responsible, reliable?” I said through gritted teeth.

Laughter danced in his eyes. “Well, I hope you’re all those things too.” Clearly pleased with himself, he chuckled and turned around to head toward the reception desk. “Good hair, by the way,” he shot over his shoulder.