Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 74078 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 370(@200wpm)___ 296(@250wpm)___ 247(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74078 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 370(@200wpm)___ 296(@250wpm)___ 247(@300wpm)
“Gotta admit I’m a little worried, though,” he said, nodding a bit.
“About what?”
“That you’ve let her into your world, but she doesn’t seem to have let you into hers.”
That was true. I still hadn’t seen her apartment. I actually didn’t even know, technically, what she did for a living. Sure, her business said she was some kind of consultant, but that could mean literally anything. Or could just be a bullshit cover to keep the tax people off her ass for entirely different kind of work.
I mean, no consultant needed to hijack a bike to go on a high speed chase.
I think I’d just been enjoying the ease between us, and some part of me was worried that if I pressed too much, she might freak out and pull away again.
We’d get there.
I just had to be patient.
Not my best trait, to be sure, but one I could work at for her. Because the last fucking thing I wanted to do was scare her off just when I was getting accustomed to having her around.
“We’ll get there,” I told Seeley. “Things are new. And she likes coming here for now.”
“Alright,” he agreed, nodding. “I’ll back off if that’s what you want.”
“I know you’re trying to look out for me, but yeah, that’s what I want. But I know who to come to if I start having concerns too.”
“Always,” he agreed, about to change the topic when, suddenly, four men in cuts were standing in our side yard. “The fuck?” he hissed, standing, and reaching for his gun, prompting me to do the same.
And that action had the guys in the pool stiffening.
Coast whispered something to Ceerie, then all but tossed her out of the pool, where she got up and ran into the clubhouse, dripping fucking wet.
Not ten seconds later, York and Velle came out. Then, behind them, Alaric and Remy.
Everyone packing.
The bikers in the side yard seemed unbothered by the heat, though. And one look said there were bulges in their hip area that suggested they hadn’t come unprepared either.
“Get Huck,” Seeley called to Velle, who rushed off to do just that.
I took that opportunity to size up the guys.
Three of them were tall and fit. The fourth was also tall, but stockier. All sported ink and dark hair. I couldn’t make out their eyes from so far away, but the three of them all had similar bone structure. Brothers, maybe?
They sized us up in turn, but no one said anything, like we all accepted that this was not for us, but for our president. Who came striding back with Velle just a few moments later. The perks of building his own house to the side of the actual clubhouse.
“The fuck is this?” he commanded, and I could see Che coming from behind the bikers, his house flanking the other side of the clubhouse property.
“Heard you’ve been looking into me,” the one in the front, a little older, judging by the slightest streak of gray in his dark hair, said, taking one step away from the other three.
Levee and Coast quietly got themselves out of the pool, Coast pulling the other club girl out, whispering something to her as he did so, and she rushed inside as well as he went to where his towel was on a chaise, and reaching under it for his gun.
“Don’t know. Since I don’t know who the fuck you are,” Huck said, good at sounding calm and unbothered, even in a potentially dangerous situation.
“Creed,” the man who must have been the president, said, as equally as unconcerned about the altercation as Huck was. “And I don’t like people in my business.”
“And I don’t like men showing up at my place looking to start shit,” Huck shot back.
How the fuck did they know we were looking into them? As far as I knew, we only had Arty on this. And Arty didn’t do shit in person. It was all online research. There was no way they could have figured that out.
I hadn’t checked back with Arty since cleaning his place and telling him about the jobs we had for him.
But none of it was rush work.
And Arty was a busy guy. We tried to give him a couple of weeks if we were springing something non-emergent on him.
No one had thought to pester him since our interest was pure curiosity, not concern. And he’d already confirmed the details Velle had given me about his past. Though we were still waiting on more about the shrink he’d bunked with as well.
That was the way with Arty sometimes. He had to prioritize the emergency sorts of cases. Which, as people who’ve brought those to him before, we had to understand.
“I’m not looking to start shit. I’m here to introduce myself, and some of my men, and let you know that if you want to know something about me or mine, you ask us. You don’t go asking around on the streets.”