“I won’t cry!” she assured him, laughing.
Tucker made a sound in his throat and squeezed her arm. “Hey there,” he called to the shell-shocked employee. “We would like you to gently put some holes in this girl’s ears, please.”
“Uh. S-sure.” The girl straightened, her phone clattering onto the counter. “Did you bring earrings with you? Or would you like to pick some out?”
“Pick some out, please,” Mary answered, brightly.
“Great.” The girl—and now that they were closer, Tucker could see her nametag said Courtney—gestured shakily to the store. “G-go right ahead. I’ll get my station set up.”
“Poor Courtney,” Tucker chuckled, when the girl was out of earshot. “All right, so this place is entirely pink. Pink…you’ve never seen the color, so that really doesn’t mean anything to you, does it? Well, it’s like…the color equivalent of a giggle. There are rows and rows of maiming devices—sorry, earrings. A lot of unicorns and hearts and astrological signs. Do you have any idea what kind ones you want?”
“How many choices do I have?”
“Thousands.” Tucker studied her expression which was beginning to grow worried. “How about this? I’ll pick out three I think you’d like. Then you can feel them and decide.”
Her distress cleared. “Yes. That’s perfect.”
“Okay.” Tucker brought Mary to the counter and settled her palm on top. “Stay here. There’s barely enough room for my bulky ass to walk through the aisles, let alone two of us. Be right back.”
He waited for Mary’s nod, then squared his shoulders, sauntering through rotating stands of bright sparkly jewelry, so far out of his depth, he couldn’t see the surface. Why would anyone want to wear bacon and eggs earrings? Or ones that identified the wearer as a bitch? These things made no sense to him. But he wanted to pick out the right ones for Mary, so he concentrated, scanning rack after rack until three pairs jumped out at him.
“Here we go,” he said, returning to Mary where she stood at the counter. He arranged three sets of earrings in a row and set her right hand on top of the first, watching her fingers travel over them, a smile flirting around the edge of her mouth. This was supposed to be a friendly date, so he shouldn’t be imagining her with that same flirtatious expression while down on her knees, fingers toying with the fly of his jeans, should he? Eager, a little nervous. A lot excited. Her lips damp, pliable. Ready for a taste of the hardest part of his anatomy. Enough. “I can get different earrings if you don’t like them,” he added hoarsely.
“What color are these?” she asked, indicating the pair of studs.
“Light blue. They’re…they reminded me of your eyes. And these ones,” Tucker continued quickly, the tips of his ears hot. “These are watermelon slices with smiling faces. I thought they were kind of fun.”
Her eyes were trained on his throat, voice soft. “And the last one?”
Tucker moved her fingers to the final pair, watching her index one trace the edge. “Milkshakes. Like the one you had at the diner.”
“Oh,” she breathed. “You did too good of a job. I can’t decide.”
“We can get all of them. You just have to pick the ones you’ll wear first.”
Mary nodded decisively. “Milkshakes.”
Tucker picked up her palm and smacked it against his own. “High five. That was my choice.” He kissed her forehead before he thought better of it, backing up immediately with a hard clearing of his throat. “Come on.”
A minute later, Mary was settled into the chair beside a visibly nervous Courtney. He felt guilty as hell for stressing the girl out, but he couldn’t help but hover, watching how carefully she cleaned her earring gun—they did this shit with a gun?—and making sure she put on a fresh pair of gloves. Tucker crammed a fist to his forehead when the girl asked, “Are you ready, miss?”
Mary chewed her lip. “I don’t know.”
Tucker’s hand dropped away. “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know! I just want to wear pretty jewelry without any of the pain.”
“It’ll be over real quick,” Courtney said. “I promise.”
Mary hesitated, scrubbing her palms up and down her black pants. “I’m being ridiculous, right?”
“No,” Tucker said right away.
Then he frowned at Courtney until she said it, too. And when his guilt prodded him in the gut, he reminded himself the girl wouldn’t remember being utterly terrified, so it was fine.
Mary crooked her finger at him and he leaned down so she could speak in his ear. “What does the piercer look like?”
No way he was going to tell her it looked like a gun.
She wanted to do this. How did he help her feel safe about it?
When the answer came to him, there was no further question in his mind that he was in love, through and through, with Mary.
Christ, did he love her.