So Steady: Silver Daughters Ink, Book Two (Silver Daughters Ink Book Two) Read online

  So Steady

  Silver Daughters Ink

  Book Two

  By Eve Dangerfield

  So Steady

  Copyright © Published 2019 Eve Dangerfield. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.

  This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents and dialogues in this book are of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is completely coincidental.

  Dedication

  For the food pokers. Especially Peasy.

  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Acknowledgements

  About Eve Dangerfield

  Act Your Age

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 1

  “We are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced.”

  -Joan Dideon, Slouching Towards Bethlehem

  You do not have to be good.

  You do not have to walk on your knees

  For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.

  You only have to let the soft animal of your body

  love what it loves

  -Mary Oliver, Wild Geese

  Nicole DaSilva sat on the couch and folded herself like lady origami—right knee over left, fingers woven in her lap. She scanned the Airbnb for loose papers, stray glasses, but every corner of the apartment was spotless. That should have been reassuring but uncertainty quivered in her belly.

  “Breathe,” she told herself. “Just breathe.”

  But each inhalation only made her chest tighter. Impatient, Nicole stood and walked to the bathroom mirror. She scanned herself for pimples, grey hairs, chips in her manicure. There was nothing. Short of surgery, the woman before her couldn’t be improved. She’d spent the day getting The Full Beauty. A cut, colour, blowout, manicure, pedicure, eyebrow threading and tinting, lash extensions and a thorough wax of her underarms, legs and labia. Her makeup had been professionally done and she’d chosen her outfit a week ago; a Country Road shirt, peach silk shorts and Dior sandals. Pretty but not too feminine, the pastels contrasting her black hair and blue eyes.

  She lingered at the mirror, cataloging the things she couldn’t change—her widow’s peak, her slightly larger left eye, the thinness of her top lip. She’d always been hyper aware of her flaws. When people told her she was beautiful, she wanted to demand, “What about the widow’s peak? The mismatched eyes? Have you taken them into consideration, or do you think they’re quirky or something?”

  The woman in the mirror looked so unhappy, Nicole was embarrassed.

  “Smile,” she demanded. “You’re pretty and well-off and you have a good job. You’re going to see your fiancé for the first time in three weeks. You’re lucky so be happy.”

  She drew her cheeks back, but her smile was joyless. She let her face fall back into gloom.

  Aaron hadn’t wanted to come to Melbourne. He considered the city enemy territory. DaSilva Country. He’d wanted her to spend the weekend at their house in Adelaide and it had taken a lot of arguments to get him to agree to fly to Melbourne.

  “We’re not fucking staying at your house,” he’d said. “Your sisters hate me. They’ll put a frog in my bag or call the cops on me at the airport or something.”

  Nicole wished she could have told him he was paranoid, but he was right; Sam and Tabby did hate him, and they weren’t known for their subtlety. As heavily tattooed extraverts, they were known for the opposite of that. In the end, she’d booked an Airbnb as far from Brunswick as possible and hoped her sisters were too busy for long-distance sabotage.

  Nicole studied her reflection, pushing her lackluster top lip out.

  I could always get some filler put in. Aaron said that girl at work has it and it looks sexy…

  She imagined how her sisters would respond if she showed up to Silver Daughters with lip injections.

  “Oi, someone call the council! There’s a wild duck on the loose and she looks huuuuungry,” Tabby would say, while taking as many photos as possible.

  Sam might laugh or she might be insulted. They were identical twins, after all, and her getting fillers was akin to saying Sam’s top lip was too thin.

  “Our mouth’s not good enough for you now?” Sam might say, though she was the one who’d covered herself in tattoos and separated them into distinct individuals—the sexy artist and her boring double. As the only non-tattooist in her family, Nicole was used to being treated as the vanilla sheep, but it still grated sometimes. Although if she had lip injections…

  She rolled her eyes at herself. “You’d be a boring accountant with lip injections.”

  It was irritating to still be wading in her teenage insecurities. She was twenty-eight and engaged, too old to resent her lack of edginess. Too old to worry about what her sisters thought of her fiancé.

  We don’t want to think anything about him, Sam announced. But he’s such a dickhead, he makes it impossible.

  Yeah, you can do better, Tabby chipped in. For example, Ivan Milat is still alive.

  Nicole prodded her top lip. “Shut up. Aaron and I are getting married. We have a house together.”

  Tabby laughed. Because we all know real estate is the erotic backbone of all relationships. He’s so boring, Nix. His face is a Caucasian blur. Even lip injections wouldn’t jazz him up.

  Nicole snorted and was instantly ashamed. When she’d moved to Adelaide, she’d broken her habit of talking to her sisters in her head, but since her return to Melbourne, Sam and Tabby had taken up their chairs in her mind and resumed commenting on everything she did with intrusive jocularity.

  She’d told herself it would stop when she returned to South Australia, but she no longer knew when that would be. She’d returned home two months ago to help Sam with the family business which had edged close to bankruptcy after their dad left on a spontaneous hiatus. She’d expected to stay a couple of weeks, but Silver Daughters financial troubles were so extensive, she’d filed a remote working request so she could stay until they were solved. Her sisters were thrilled, Aaron was not.

  “Your dad left the studio to Samantha and she can’t manage it,” he snarled down the phone. “She needs to grow up and sell it to someone who can, not keep it on life support with the help of her more successful sister.”

  “Please don’t be mad at me,” she’d pleaded. “Silver Daughters is our home. Sam and Tabby learned to tattoo here! I ran the accounts when I was fourteen! I have more happy memories here than anywhere else!”

  Without warning Aaron had hung up on her. Later he texted to say if she loved the studio so much, she could stay there forever.

  They weren’t doing so good, relati
onship-wise. The problem was, she couldn’t bring herself to tell him what he wanted to hear—that Adelaide was her home and he was more important than her sisters. She knew that should be true, but her heart still belonged to Brunswick, to the graffiti murals and pretentious cafes and weirdos in Salvation Army jumpers. And though her sisters drove her bonkers, her heart belonged to them, too. To their blue eyes and bad language. To their easy, unpretentious love.

  She wanted to miss Aaron, but every day in Melbourne was like a holiday from reality. Everything except…

  She tried to keep the thoughts from rushing in, but it was too late. He arrived in vivid detail—big and mean, wearing black jeans and carrying a fat fantasy novel. It was Noah Newcomb as she’d first seen him, the day she’d returned to Melbourne.

  “He’s great,” Sam said as she drove her and Tabby from the airport. “Quiet but great.”

  “Great at tattooing, or great in general?”

  “Both. Tabby, stop kicking my seat, you dickhead.”

  Nicole had assumed Noah Newcomb was like her dad—a longhaired hippie, spaced out but essentially harmless.

  She’d never been so wrong in her life.

  A hulking beast stood reading a novel at reception, big as a house with blackwork tattoos drilled into every inch of his skin. As she looked at him, a cold snake uncoiled in her belly. She’d grown up above the studio; she wasn’t intimidated by ink, but she knew this man wasn’t some tatt-happy hipster. He had tattoos for the same reason redbacks were splashed with scarlet—a visual warning. He had a thug’s face—broad brow, heavy jaw, a nose that had obviously been broken. That, too, felt like a warning.

  She’d turned to Sam, half-convinced the guy had broken in, but her twin smiled, and Tabby launched herself at the guy.

  “Who is that?” she’d whispered as Tabby and the stranger hugged.

  “Uh, Noah Newcomb? Tattoo artist? The big guy Dad loves?”

  Nicole felt winded. She took a step back, intending to go outside when he looked at her. His eyes were green. Not muddy hazel or dull moss, but green like emeralds or spring grass and fringed with the longest black lashes she’d ever seen. Noah’s gaze sparked with crackling intelligence.

  Oh gosh, she thought. No. No. No.

  But it was too late, excitement burst inside her like an atom bomb, making her skin prickle and her heart pound. He was so big, so beautifully scary and new.

  And while mania hijacked her brain, Noah Newcomb just stood there, cool as anything, cataloguing every inch of her body. She saw him clock her engagement ring and frown slightly, but his gaze still lifted to reexamine her breasts. She’d scowled, trying to shame him but Noah’s upper lip had curled. His smile said, Tell me you don’t like it.

  And she’d tried, but her mouth was too dry. All she could think about was Noah’s body on top of hers, knees shoving her thighs apart. “Tell me you don’t like it.”

  Heat zigzagged down her chest and into her underwear, and as she stared into Noah Newcomb’s eyes, she knew he was a problem. But that was okay. All her life she’d solved problems, she would stamp out her inconvenient attraction and salt the earth where it had grown. And she’d succeeded admirably…if you ignored that little slip in the hallway. And it was easy to ignore that little slip in the hallway.

  Nicole’s pelvic floor contracted, and she groaned aloud at her silliness. She’d done such a good job of not thinking about him since this afternoon. It was so disappointing that she’d caved to these stupid fantasies.

  She exhaled and checked her watch. Ten minutes until Aaron was due to arrive. She returned to the lounge and rearranged herself on the white leather couch. If Aaron knew how she felt about Noah, he would…she had no idea. Though ‘lose his mind’ was probably the most accurate prediction. He talked about women he found attractive, had acted on that attraction more than once, but she hadn’t dared to say Noah’s name to him, afraid he’d hear something in her voice. If he knew about her little slip….

  Her face burned hot at the memory. She’d been standing in the hallway at Sam’s Ink the Night party, staring at the brooch her dad had sent in the mail, and he’d come up behind her, asking if she was okay... They were both drunk, or she was, anyway, and it had only lasted a second.

  It didn’t feel real enough to count as a kiss, let alone cheating, for god’s sake.

  Hey, why not bring up the issue with Aaron? Imaginary Tabby asked. He’ll have great insights into what is and isn’t cheating, being that he’s a big cheating twat-basket. Actual cheating, not just mouth-touching in a hallway.

  “That was different. Aaron was under a lot of pressure at work and I’ve wholeheartedly forgiven him for the affair—”

  Affairsssss, Sam said. Plural.

  Yes, plural. But they didn’t matter, at least not compared to her and Aaron’s commitments, their years of being together. It was the same thing with Noah and the frankly disturbing things she imagined him doing to her body. They were daydreams. The relationship equivalent of fairy-floss. Yes they were distracting, but she could push through them. Mind over matter. Or was it matter over mind?

  It doesn’t matter, Sam chortled.

  Yeah, never mind.

  “Shut up, both of you.”

  Nicole straightened her top so it lay flat against her skin. She and Aaron were engaged, they were having a big wedding at Ascot Manor, then settling down to start a family. That was why the full beauty and expensive Airbnb. She would look and act so perfect that Aaron would understand she needed to stay and help her sisters fix Silver Daughters’ finances. She couldn’t be happy unless her family was happy, but once they were happy, she could re-direct her energy into making him happy and their wonderful married life could begin.

  There was a hard rap on the door.

  Nicole stood, trying to arrange her face into a beatific ‘I love you’ smile. She walked to the entrance and turned the door handle. “Hey, fiancé.”

  Aaron’s hair was tousled, his face tight. “Hi.”

  Her optimism about this visit crisped like saplings in the sun. “How…how are you?”

  Aaron jiggled the handle of his suitcase. “Fine. Can I come in?”

  Wordlessly she moved out of the way. He rolled his silver Fabbrica Pelletterie luggage into the living room. “Nice place,” he said without looking. “Any chance of a drink?”

  “Of course.”

  She nervously poured Aaron a Chardonnay as he stripped off his jacket. He worked out almost every afternoon and the muscles of his back and biceps were visible through his shirt. She watched him, willing herself to tingle, to want to want to touch him.

  She thought of Noah’s hands, thick knuckled and scarred, covered in ugly, gothic tattoos. Her navel pulled tight and she was furious with herself. She straightened her shoulders, handed Aaron the wine. “Good flight?”

  “Good enough.” He drained the glass in seconds.

  “Wow. Do you want more or—”

  “Do you love me more than you love them?”

  Nicole stared at him, baffled. ‘Him’ was one thing, who the hell was ‘them?’ “Pardon?”

  “Don’t fuck around. Them. Your sisters and your dad.” Like her, Aaron had a thin mouth and right now it was a furious line. “Do you love me more than you love them?”

  Nicole swallowed. “I…what kind of question is that?”

  “The only one that matters. It’s been months since you left home.”

  “Barely two,” Nicole corrected and instantly regretted it. There was never any sense arguing semantics in romantic relationships. Fights were about how the other person felt, not pinning down the facts. You never found any vindication in being right.

  Predictably, Aaron’s eyes bulged. “Are you fucking serious? That’s the line you want to take?”

  “I’m sorry, but they’re my family, I need to—”

  “Of course, you need to. You always need to. Meanwhile, I’m coming home to an empty house after work, listening to you tell me you miss me, like I’
m some leftover kid in a divorce. You owe me more than this, Nicole.”

  Tears pricked in the backs of her eyes. If he missed her, why couldn’t he say that? Why did he have to make it sound like he’d hired her to do a job she was slacking off on? “I’m sorry. You know I love you.”

  Aaron shoved his hand through his gold-brown hair. “That’s not good enough. I’m tired of living alone because my fiancée’s ditched me for her sisters and a shitty tattoo studio.”

  “It’s not shitty! It’s the family business and—“

  “I don’t give a fuck! You made a commitment to me. It’s time you came home.”

  Her heart was banging against her ribs, she was pretty sure she knew what was coming. “Or...?”

  Aaron’s nostrils flared. “Or we’re done. Over.”

  A tear slid down her face and she was ashamed of her first thought—I hope I don’t ruin my extensions. God she was vain. She was vain and spoiled and selfish. She hadn’t tried hard enough.

  “What’ll it be?” Aaron snarled.

  She wiped away a tear. “Why does it have to be a choice?”

  “Because I said so.” Aaron grabbed the handle of his suitcase and panic shot through her. She ran to the door, blocking his path. “I love them, Aaron. They’re my family.”

  “And what about our family? What about our kids?”

  Having never given birth, Nicole assumed he meant ‘future kids.’ The ones whose names she dreamed about at night. “What about them?”

  “I don’t want them near your sisters or your dad. They’re irresponsible druggies.”

  “They’re not dru—”

  “Your sister nearly got caught flying with pills and Samantha was arrested for a joint your father petitioned for the legalization of all banned substances. He was on the news, remember?”

  God, that was the thing about Aaron. Any venting on her behalf was stockpiled and kept as weapons in future arguments. He never held onto the good things—that Tabby was insanely funny and smart. That Sam could tattoo like ink ran in her veins and her loyalty was bone deep. That her dad was gentle, and kind, and he’d raised them alone without asking for anything in return.