Mountain Challenge (Mont Blanc Rescue #9)

Chapter 2

2

Isla

I sla Bernard lathered some Derma Shield on her hands, focusing her efforts on her fingertips and the area around her knuckles.

She made a mental note to order some more before she went home for the evening. It was the only product she’d found to help with her extremely dry hands, a product of the five or six hours per day she spent wearing latex gloves. The protective barrier was essential for her job as a tattooist, but it also made her sensitive skin split, crack and bleed if she wasn’t careful.

Still, she’d deal with the pain if it meant she could continue practicing the profession she loved. More than a job, really. Tattooing was her job, but also her creative outlet. And now that she had her own tattoo studio, things were even better. She was finally getting to create more of the tattoos she loved.

Most of the time, anyway.

Isla looked at the calendar on the wall.

February 14th.

Her most hated day of the year was almost over. And the end couldn’t come soon enough. Her brain and her wrist hurt from all the hearts she’d tattooed. So many different types of hearts. Double hearts, broken hearts, flaming hearts, hearts on breasts, hearts on butt cheeks … She was exhausted. Next year, she was closing shop this week and heading into the mountains.

Yeah, right .

It was the same thing she told herself every year, and she’d yet to do it once. But now that she lived in Chamonix, pretty much right in the mountains, things could be different. Perhaps next year she would.

She sighed and stretched her back, pulling on a new pair of latex gloves. This year wouldn’t have been the right time to close shop, anyway. Six months earlier, Isla had gotten the chance of a lifetime when Tim LePetit, one of her long-time mentors and someone she’d worked with when the European Chemical Agency had unfairly decided to ban Blue 15 and Green 7, had come to Brussels to see her. She’d known Tim was the owner of a successful tattoo studio in the Alps, but hadn’t been aware of the fact that his dream was to travel around the world on his bike or that, following a knee operation, he’d decided to do it now, in his early sixties, rather than postponing any longer.

He’d proposed a partnership whereby she would become majority owner of the tattoo studio, taking over the management and day-to-day running of the place, while he became a silent minority investor in the business. Because he knew she didn’t have the cash to buy him out, he’d offered a generous payment structure whereby she could pay him over the next three years.

The deal had seemed too good to be true, and Isla had suggested he think about it again and maybe run it by his lawyer or accountant, but Tim had been completely uninterested in doing so. He’d told her he felt she was the right person to take over his shop, and didn’t need any further input from anybody else.

Even now, so many months later, tears came to her eyes when she thought about it. Tim had found her at her lowest point, and had offered her a direct path to her dream. My very own yellow brick roa d.

Isla shook her head. She’d be damned if she’d let Tim down. She was going to make the business as much of a success as he had, and pay him back what she’d agreed to and some extra for his retirement, regardless of what she had to do. Or how many hearts on butt cheeks you end up tattooing.

It was going to take time, though. She knew that now, better than she had when she’d first arrived in Chamonix with her two suitcases—a smaller suitcase with clothes and personal items, and a larger one carrying all her prized tattooing equipment.

Even though Tim had spoken to his clients about her before he left, giving her a ringing endorsement, she’d learned the hard way that some people didn’t like change, and others were prejudiced assholes. Some were both and, after years of getting their tattoos from a muscled, heavily tattooed, gray-haired biker type, they seemed less than pleased when they came across a young, prickly woman with blue streaks in her hair instead.

If Isla had a dollar for every time someone had asked to see the tattoos on her own body, she wouldn’t have to worry about making rent. As if her tattoos had anything to do with her talent as a tattooist. Her tattoos were private, thank you very much.

The first few months running the shop, she’d made next to nothing. She’d been lucky she could live rent-free in the apartment right above the shop, or she would have found herself on the street.

Then, in the last couple of months, things had started to turn around. She was in the black, and could only hope this meant word had spread that she actually knew what she was doing. Which she did. She wasn’t good at many things, but she was a damn good tattooist.

She preferred the word tattooist , rather than the more formal term tattoo artist , not because she didn’t consider tattooing an art—she most certainly did—but because she liked the stress to be on the tattoo, and not just the art, since the two were intimately linked for her. She was first and foremost a tattooist, an expert at telling stories on patches of skin.

She turned to the computer and pulled up the calendar to see how many appointments she had left before she could go upstairs, take off her Doc Martens, and pour herself a tall glass of the Pinot Noir she’d left ready on the counter.

Three names. She didn’t recognize any of them. The first two clients appeared together in the calendar, which tonight Isla knew meant… more hearts. She didn’t want to get her hopes up about the last client, but at least he was alone, so he might want something else. Perhaps something that allowed her to flex her creative muscle, after a day of drudgery. A girl could dream .

Alain, her assistant, poked his head inside.

“Just got a call from Jérémy Raines,” he said. That was the first name on the list. “He and his girlfriend are running late, but will be here in ten minutes.”

“That’s okay, Alain. I can wait for them. Why don’t you get going, though? I’ll lock up tonight.”

“Really? Are you sure?” Alain’s lips curled in a slow smile, revealing a dimple on his left cheek. Man, but the kid was cute. It probably wasn’t right to refer to him as a kid, since he was only a few years younger than her twenty-nine. She knew Alain had studied business administration and worked in an auditing firm for a few years before deciding that life wasn’t for him, so he’d been in his mid-twenties by the time he started his apprenticeship. None of the other studios in the valley had been willing to give him a chance, and yet that was precisely the reason Isla had hired him. As far as she was concerned, Alain had shown true courage in moving away from the path others had set out for him in order to stay true to himself, and that courage deserved its just reward.

Of course, the kid—there was that word again, she had to stop doing this—was also very talented. One day, soon, Alain would step out on his own. But for now, it was great to have him here, and Isla didn’t mind giving him the evening off so he could take his girlfriend to … well, wherever it was people went to in Chamonix to celebrate the most romantic day of the year.

Isla didn’t mind working tonight. She wanted nothing to do with Valentine’s Day, or with romance. Not now, and not ever again.

“We’re going to Le Starr,” Alain said, though she hadn’t asked. “I made the reservation three months ago.”

Isla, who had no idea what Le Starr was, frowned. “Isn’t that about the time when you and Nicki started dating?”

“A few days later. What can I say? I just knew we were going to be great together.” The dimple grew wider and his caramel-colored eyes twinkled. He was really very good-looking, in that wholesome, cute way that did nothing for her, because she didn’t go for cute, good guys, ever. Her track record was actually dismal—she’d gone from one sexy bad boy to the next, then ended up marrying the baddest of them all, thinking he would of course change once they were married.

Right. Because that really happens.

She could still see her husband’s pale butt up in the air as he fucked one of her friends—make that former friend—on their queen sized bed. The bed Isla herself had chosen and helped carry up to their third-floor walk-up studio overlooking Brussels’ iconic comic museum.

Isla shook her head to clear the image. She did not want to be thinking of this now.

“Get going, then. And say hi to Nicki!” she told Alain, trying for a smile. As much as she despised the holiday, she really was happy for the two of them.

Two minutes later, after Alain had left, humming a happy tune, Isla decided to get a head start on that Derma Shield order. She made her way out to the reception area and opened each drawer in turn, looking for the purchase orders she knew Alain kept around somewhere. She’d only just found it when the door opened and three people walked inside at the same time—a couple, followed by a man.

The couple caught her attention first. They looked young. Way young. She sighed, already eighty percent sure this was going to be an issue. She greeted them and asked them to sit down in the waiting area to the left of the entrance—just a small beige sofa, a couple arm chairs, and a coffee table. One day she might change the furniture for something a bit more stylish but, for now, it did its job. The young man and woman moved as one, holding hands the whole time, and sat on the sofa, close enough to each other that you couldn’t have fit a piece of paper between them.

The girl’s eyes flew to the open photo album in front of them. Isla kept it there in case people needed inspiration, and she’d gone through it earlier in the week to make sure there were plenty of hearts to choose from.

She turned to look at the man who’d strolled in behind them, and who was still waiting patiently by the door. He was … wow … he was the sexiest of sexy. Sexy of a kind you didn’t usually see out in the real world. Carved cheekbones. A strong, stubborn jaw. Windswept dirty blond hair a woman could run her hands through, hair that was just long enough to grab on to, if necessary, during a particularly athletic sexual encounter. And she somehow knew sexual encounters with him would be athletic.

Isla bit her cheek to stop the train of thought, because this was a train about to derail. About to go off a cliff . And then, just when she thought she couldn’t be more distracted, he raised his eyes to look at her, revealing the brightest, greenest eyes, framed by dark eyelashes that any woman would have killed for. Isla’s mouth dried out. He was so handsome, it was hard to look at him.

She finally forced her eyes off his face, but ended up roaming his body instead. A mistake, since it only made her mouth drier. Because he was the whole package. At five three, Isla was used to thinking most people were tall. But this man looked well over a head taller than her. And it wasn’t just his height. It was the way he filled those well-worn jeans, the way his olive Henley stretched over his biceps and muscled forearms, making her wonder?—

“Hello?” he asked, his tone wary. She suddenly realized this wasn’t the first time he’d spoken. He’d been trying to get her attention. While you were staring at him, like a fool .

He must think she was simple. She put on what she hoped was a professional smile and quickly ushered him inside to where the couple was sitting.

“I’ll get you the forms to fill out,” she said, finally finding her voice and addressing the three of them together. “While you wait, feel free to look through the album for inspiration.”