30. Chapter 30
“Ineed a place to lay low. Think Beth will let me in?” We’re still in front of the restaurant, X sitting on the bike waiting for me.
“I’ll call her, tell her you’re coming,” Coyote says. “Bryce, Emma and Maddie are out of town. The dog’s at the clubhouse. So make yourselves at home.”
“Thanks,” I say, fully aware I sound ungracious.
Coyote thinks so too. “I’ve cleared my debt to you, Reaper. Now you owe me.”
He’s joking, but also not. A brother helps a brother, but sometimes a brother wants to hold things close. Our charter says we’re supposed to be transparent, but none of us really are except maybe Trigger. He’s an open book.
Security is expecting us when we arrive at the condo building and the guard uses an access card to open the elevator doors. X is unusually quiet and it guts me. Why can’t I be what she wants? Why can’t I take what I want?
When we walk inside the penthouse, BETH says, “Welcome back, Reaper.”
I don’t reply. BETH and I aren’t exactly on good terms.
X, on the other hand, looks up at the ceiling with a bemused smile. “Who’s talking?”
“BETH,” I say, feeling foolish. “This is X.”
“Welcome, Ximina,” BETH replies in that same breathy voice that X uses when she says her name. “Coyote told me to expect you.”
Ice slides up my back for some reason. “X,” I growl. “Her fucking name is X.”
“Well, not really,” X says to me. “But I like it when you say it.”
She seems to be over her mad.
X steps forward, but the door remains closed.
“You are not permitted to wear footwear in the house.” BETH explains.
X looks down at her feet. “What about slippers?”
Beth pauses.
X turns to me. “Did I confuse her?”
BETH replies, “I am not programmed to get confused.”
“Okay then. About the slippers?”
“You are permitted to wear slippers in the house.”
“I can live with that.” X kicks off the little loafers she’s wearing, then looks up to the ceiling. “Now can I get in?”
The door slides open and she barrels her way inside. As I follow, she glances at my feet. “Why do you get to wear your boots?”
“Me and BETH have an understanding,” I say flatly.
She sticks out her lower lip, then nods. “Gotcha.”
I open my mouth to ask her exactly what she means, but she’s already out of sight.
Her voice is distant as I hear her exclaim, “Holy.”
It was my first impression too, but there was no fucking way I was going to let Coyote know.
“Where are you?” I say, raising my voice.
She peeks around a corner. “This place is amazing. I can’t even.” She throws up her hands. “I just can’t.”
Then she sprints by me and up the stairs.
“X!”
“You should come up here,” her muffled words float down to me.
“Or you could come down!”
She trots down the stairs. “I can’t get in all the bedrooms, but the ones that are open are a girl’s wet dream.”
“Coyote has designated the Persimmon bedroom for you and Reaper,” BETH announces.
X’s eyes light up. “Awesome!” And she’s gone again.
“Get down here!” I shout, my patience thinning.
“Come up here!” she yells back.
“Fuck,” I mutter as I climb the stairs.
Her head pops out the door of one of the bedrooms. “In here.” Then she’s gone again.
I follow her in. The room is almost as big as my house. A king-sized bed is set against the wall opposite the door with a closet and a bathroom to the left. A sitting area is separated by a big arch. A couch, and two armchairs block in a coffee table from three sides. There’s a small work center with a computer, printer, office chair. A state-of-the-art entertainment center with a bar sits opposite the couch.
X is on her knees in front of a bar fridge, rifling through it.
“What are you doing?” I ask as I approach. As if it wasn’t obvious.
She hands me a beer, then grabs herself a can of iced tea. “Getting a drink.” She points to a basket of snacks on the coffee table. “Want some chips?”
My stomach growls at the idea, but I say, “We just ate.”
“Pfft. That was an hour ago.” She selects a bag of cheese puffs and pulls them open. “I’ll share mine if you want some later.” Then she wanders out the French doors to the balcony. “Nice view, but too cold to talk out here,” she calls. Then she’s back with a grin. “I like it here.” She plonks down on the couch. “Sit,” she commands as she pats the cushion next to her.
I lower my head and look at her. Chaos, pure fucking chaos. Still, I drop down next to her.
“So you like the place?” I ask drily.
“Totally,” she says without guile. “I think I’m in love with Coyote.”
My mood, which wasn’t great before, sours. “You touch him, I’ll rip his head off and lock you up.” She brings out the fucking beast in me, which is another reason I can’t be with her.
Her eyes widen. “It’s just an expression. You know, like I love pizza. It doesn’t mean anything.”
“Then don’t say it.”
Her eyes flash with laughter. “You’re jealous.”
I can’t stop looking at her. She’s a firecracker. Her deep brown eyes remind me of strong coffee. They’re bright, alert. Like a caffeine hit that stays with you all day. When she’s scared, when she’s mad, when she’s smiling. Those eyes are always dancing.
Guilt sets in as I think about what we did last night and how I treated her today. So does temptation. I reach out and tuck a stray piece of her long glossy hair behind her ear.
She grins like she knows she’s beaten me and grabs a cheese puff from the bag, which she’s set on the coffee table. A couple spill out.
“Jesus,” I mutter as I pick one up off the floor and put it back in the bag. “Were you raised in a barn?” I’m kidding, but she takes it wrong.
“A bakery,” she snaps. “So what do you expect?”
I try to lighten the tone. “That doesn’t even make sense.”
“Neither does your need for folded towels and splash-free counters, but I put up with that.”
Heat slides over me, half anger, half lust. I stand, pace to the French doors and look out. She’s right. It’s a good view.
“Let’s talk,” I say as I return, but sit in a chair that puts space between us.
“Sure. Let’s talk.” Hurt flickers in her eyes and I feel like an asshole, but we need to sort some things out and when we’re too close, sparks fly.
I settle back in the chair and take a drink of my beer. “Let’s start at the beginning. Back at Hook’s, first time we met.”
She crosses her legs on the couch, takes a drink of her iced tea. “I came outside to talk to you because Hulk wouldn’t let me get to you any other way. You were being ogled by a couple of women, but somehow you were able to resist their charms.” She grabs a cheese puff, pops it in her mouth and keeps talking as she swallows. “You were pissed because I interrupted your stake-out of that drug deal.”
“What makes you think it was a drug deal?”
She gives her head a little shake. “I’m Catholic, not an idiot.”
“You don’t fucking do drugs, do you?” Yeah, we’re off topic again, but I can’t let that pass.
“I’ve never even smoked a cigarette,” she says in a flat voice. She holds up her pointer finger, which has a small, tattooed chain around it. “It’s a promise ring to the big man in the sky.”
Funny, I never noticed it before. “Huh.” Smooth, Reaper. King of the comebacks. “Let’s move on,” I growl before I ask if she has any other tats.
“Moving on. We go inside. You reluctantly, me eagerly. Hulk wants to throw me out. You tell him that I’m your future wife, so hand’s off.”
I can’t help but grin at how the words fall out of her mouth.
“Then the guy in the velour suit jacket from the 1970s comes up and talks to you for no discernible reason, all the while looking at me. His wife and her henchmen are pretending they’re not watching, but they are.”
She’s got a good eye for detail and she’s spot on. It seemed weird at the time that Joseph Moliter was at Hook’s but weirder now that she points out the details in the light of day. “The wife and henchmen? Who were they watching?”
She shrugs. “Not sure. Not velour man. You, me. I think the wife was jealous of our togetherness.” She grins playfully.
I kick around the scene in my head. “I thought it was weird that Moliter brought Lorraine to Hook’s.”
“I thought it was weird she let Moliter out of the house in that suit jacket.”
“Forget about the suit jacket.”
She frowns. “Can’t. It’s burned into my memory.”
Something loosens in my chest and I grin at her. “Then we went upstairs and Poppy served us drinks.”
“Oh yeah, then there was her.”
“What’s wrong with her?”
X shrugs. “Don’t know. She made me itchy.”
I think about Poppy. Think about my thoughts that night. She made me itchy too. “Why though?”
“She was fawning.”
“Lots of women fawn.” It’s not ego, it’s experience. They like the idea of who I am. Not the reality, but they don’t ever get to see that side of me. I look at X. She’s seen it and embraced it. I have this sudden insight. When it comes to honesty, I’m the fraud and she’s the genuine one.
“I bet they do. But most women try to be more subtle, I think.” She lowers her eyes and bats her eyelashes. “Like this.”
“No one has ever looked at me like that before.”
“Except Poppy.”
I shake my head. “Even Poppy.” I take a swallow of my beer. “She definitely didn’t like you.”
X shrugs. “Can’t figure it out. What’s not to like?”
She says it so drily, I laugh hard. “Don’t get me started.”
“I don’t know why you’re resisting me, us, because we both know what the future looks like.”
“I don’t know,” I say. Then I become intrigued. “Tell me.”
“We get married. Spot and I move into your house. I learn to pick up towels and wipe coffee off counters. You learn how to loosen up. We have sex three times a day, four if you can manage it. Eventually, all that sex will result in a few babies. Then?—”
“We are not getting married,” I say. It’s a reflex, something I always think. Always say. This time, though, it lacks conviction.
“We gotta. Pops will insist.” She shrugs like it’s a foregone solution.
I try to shift us back to the immediate problem. “We’re off track,”
“Right.” She has a secret smile on her face. “I put my money on Velour-man.”
“You do?”
“Sure, Poppy makes us itchy, but whatever her thing is, she’s small time. But Moliter? He’s where he shouldn’t be, with his wife no less, and a couple of thugs on ‘roids.” She pops a cheese puff into her mouth, chews, swallows. “Why?”
Good Question? They were out of place, and Moliter was evasive. He was paying attention to X, but the spunky little Latina would get that kind of attention from most men. But in front of Lorraine? I don’t like him, but I wouldn’t exactly call him a pig. “I thought it was odd, thought it had something to do with the club, but maybe I’m wrong.”
Her focus on me is intense, unnerving. “Because?”
She already knows the answer, but I say it anyway. “He was interested in you, not me.”
She blows out a breath. “If he was, that changes things doesn’t it?”
I rub the bridge of my nose. “I wouldn’t have noticed him if he didn’t approach me, but he probably wondered why you and I were together. Trying to feel me out.”
X nods. “Maybe he was trying to get close to me. Maybe about the coke.”
It all seems farfetched, but I run with the possibility. “Maybe he was the one who killed Miguel.”
Her forehead wrinkles. “Yeah.”
“Then maybe they watch Miguel’s place, see me go in. Decide to get me out of the picture by calling the cops.”
X’s eyes sparkle as her excitement grows. “They’re not successful so they need to keep looking. Search my place.
“Then they get the cops to raid the clubhouse.”
“Harass my pops.”
“More like try to kill him,” I mutter.
“Yeah,” she says in an almost-whisper.
I decide I’m an insensitive ass. “Sorry.”
X bounces back from her momentary funk. “What I don’t get is why risk getting Hangman mad. Doesn’t seem like a good idea.”
“They want the coke back.”
“Why not just ask for it? It’s not like you guys are related to Mother Theresa. You’d give it back, wouldn’t you?”
I think about this. “Yeah. No reason not to.” I stop, then say, “Unless there is a reason.”
“Like what?”
“Like Moliter’s not movin’ the coke through Reno. Like maybe he’s taken to distribution. Like maybe he thinks he can move in on our territory.”
X snorts. “Would he be that stupid?”
Maybe, I think. Or that connected.