Chapter 11 #2
“Someone,” Tony said, flopping onto a seat at the head of the table, “get me a goddamn beer and tell me what’s going on. Who is this guy? What does he want?”
“He’s . . . well, he’s . . . you,” Ash said apologetically.
Tony squinted at him. “What the hell does that even mean?”
“It means that he wants what you already have,” Tate said.
“The guy’s some corporate stiff, he’s got money, clearly, but he’s just trying to buy what we’ve built, from the ground up.
I told him he could forget about it, that it would never work, but I’ve never seen anyone more determined.
” Tate paused, hesitating. “Except for you, Tony.”
“Oh great,” Tony said, taking the beer that Lucas handed him, leaning into his boyfriend’s embrace—no doubt Lucas was trying to be supportive but Tony had found a captive audience and there was nothing he enjoyed quite as much as that.
“Yeah, he’s kinda your clone. Except that he’s rich. Tacky rich,” Ren said. “And he’s a lawyer. A corporate lawyer to boot.”
“What is a corporate lawyer doing trying to run a food truck lot?” Alexis said, clearly mystified.
“I definitely got that he had money—he kept upping the offer, and the marketing and ad dollars he was going to invest—but I thought he must be some kind of corporate developer. He doesn’t even own restaurants? ”
“Nope,” Gabe said. “He’s probably never been in a kitchen in his whole goddamned life.”
Tony set the bottle down on the table with a thump. “I can’t fucking believe this,” he said. “And Jackson said the lot he wants to open is close, like right here? Why didn’t we know about this?”
“Probably because we don’t know who owns all the property around here,” Lucas said in a soothing voice. “And it doesn’t matter if he does. We’re firmly established, after only a year. There’s nothing he can do to hurt us, babe. You know that.”
Tony sighed, and leaned into his boyfriend’s embrace. “I want to believe that. But he clearly has a fucking lot of nerve, because he tried to poach all of you.”
“And we all told him to fuck off,” Tate said.
“Except Gabe, apparently,” Ash inserted with a sly grin. “Why was that, again? I don’t think we heard why you listened to him?”
“He wants to give me something I don’t even want,” Ren said with an exaggerated eye roll. “My freedom, apparently.”
“Like either of you could ever work for that guy,” Tony said.
“Why shouldn’t we have another truck?” Gabe objected. “Alexis has a whole fleet of them.”
“Because Alexis isn’t going to work for the enemy,” Tony grumbled.
“No offense,” Ren said, “but I don’t want to be Alexis.”
“No offense taken,” Alexis said gravely, inclining his head. “Some days, I don’t really want to be me either.”
Tony turned to Alexis. “You really didn’t want to park any of your trucks at his lot? My . . .” Tony hesitated, like he was tasting out the word, and he didn’t particularly like it. “My copycat?”
“His name is Jonas Anderson,” Lucas inserted and the whole table went silent.
Tony opened his mouth and snapped it shut again. “He tried to poach you,” he stated, rather than asked.
Lucas looked sorry—that Jonas had approached him or that he hadn’t told Tony either, Ren wasn’t sure.
Relationships, they could be a minefield of things you should be sorry for that you weren’t, and things you were sorry for you didn’t have a chance in hell of preventing.
It was one of many reasons why Ren had never gotten seriously involved with anyone.
But Tony and Lucas? They were the backbone of Food Truck Warriors.
It shouldn’t have hurt Ren that Tony was looking at Lucas like that.
But it did.
“He has a lot of fucking nerve,” Tony mumbled. Looking more upset than dramatically angry now. “My own boyfriend.”
“Maybe he didn’t know we were dating,” Lucas said. He leaned into Tony, lowering his voice. But they could all hear, because they were all listening. The blessing and the curse of this group. “And if I’m being honest, he knew I wasn’t going to take it.”
“But he made it anyway,” Tony said. “And you didn’t tell me.”
“I love you, of course I didn’t tell you. The man isn’t an actual threat, but I knew you’d worry about him like he was.”
“Later,” Tony said succinctly. “We’ll talk about this later.” He turned to Alexis. “Back to this rich asswipe, Jonas, none of you really wanted to go with him?”
“We’re happy here, Tony, you know that,” Ash said.
“Yeah,” Tate agreed. “Sales have been good. We’re stronger together than apart, and I think we’re all smart enough to know that. It doesn’t matter the money he’s promising, or the ad dollars or whatever. I don’t need that.”
“None of us do,” Gabe said. “Unless”—he paused, glancing over at Ren, who couldn’t hold back his eye roll any longer—“you want to . . .”
“For the final time,” Ren said between clenched teeth, “I am not going anywhere. You’ll remove me off our truck and stick me into a new one over my dead body.”
Gabe laughed. “Okay, I guess that’s your answer.”
“Yes,” Ren said, “I thought about it, and that’s the conclusion I came to. Took about five seconds.”
Seth squeezed Ren’s knee. “Less, maybe?” he pointed out softly. And Ren knew he was thinking of the afternoon they’d shared yesterday, of the way he’d confided his feelings about Gabe and the business they shared. It should’ve made Ren itchy.
And it didn’t.
Not in the way he expected.
Instead of making him want to run, he itched to take Seth’s hand and find a dark corner they could make out in.
Gabe’s expression softened. “I love working with you, too, cousin.”
Ren shouldn’t have been relieved, because he knew it. They’d been together through thick and thin. He’d never regretted his decision to follow Gabriel down to Los Angeles, and not only because he didn’t fit in at home, in Napa. It was because they’d always had each other.
Lovers could come and go but family was forever.
“Is this the kind of thing you’d take care of for us,” Tony wondered, directing his question to Seth, who looked surprised that he’d just been pulled into the discussion.
“Take care of . . .?” Seth asked.
“Find out who he is, what he wants, exactly,” Tony said. “And clearly I’m not going to be able to pay him to go away, but maybe we can come to some kind of agreement.”
“You want me to dig into him and find some leverage so he’ll stop bothering you,” Seth said.
“That would be fucking fantastic,” Tony said enthusiastically.
“I think I can manage that,” Seth said, amused. “But I’ll definitely be drawing a line at more.”
“Oh,” Tony said, waving his hands. “I’m not asking for a hit or something. Or . . .” He glanced over at Ash. “For you to blow up his lot or anything. Nothing like that. He just seems to know all about us, and we don’t know anything about him.”
Seth nodded. “Good to be informed. And if some of that info comes in handy.” He paused, grinning. “So be it.”
“I like the way you think,” Tony said, reaching over and shaking Seth’s hand. “Now that that’s settled, I’m going to go argue with my boyfriend, and more importantly have some hot makeup sex afterwards.”
Lucas laughed. “Awfully sure of yourself, aren’t you, babe?”
Tony turned to him, and the look in his eyes was what told Ren that they would be okay. “Always,” he said to Lucas. “And even more sure of you.”
They disappeared into the night, a series of catcalls following them.
Alexis wandered off next, followed by Gabe and Ash. Probably they were heading to the Funky Cup, to meet up with their boyfriends.
Leaving Seth and Ren alone.
Ren took a long sip of his beer and wondered how soon he could suggest they take off too. His loft would be empty, and Seth had a whole empty house.
It seemed wrong to not take advantage of either one. Besides, Ren was still feeling itchy, and not uncomfortable itchy, but sex itchy, crawling up his spine, intensifying whenever Seth laughed or pressed his thigh into Ren’s.
“So you’re really okay doing Tony’s dirty work?” Ren asked.
Because while yes, he absolutely wanted to get naked with this man, it was nice to just talk to him too.
“It’s not very dirty work,” Seth teased, leaning in a bit closer. “I’m sure Tony would like it to be dirtier. But no, I expected him to ask. This guy does know a lot about him. Makes sense for Tony to be informed too.”
Ren grinned. “You’re going to threaten him, aren’t you?”
“Oh, maybe a little bit,” Seth said. “But a corporate lawyer won’t spook easily.”
“You’re very good at your job,” Ren stated. He didn’t know why he hadn’t realized it before, but now he did, remembering when Seth was Jake and he’d mentioned the burden of protecting people who were paying him for that privilege.
“And you’re good at yours,” Seth responded. “I knew it the first day we met.”
“I just remember what you said about those guys you were going to protect—you worried about it. You wouldn’t worry if you weren’t really good at what you do,” Ren said.
“I’ve been protecting people for a very long time,” Seth said. “I’d hope that I’m good at it.”
And somehow, Ren knew he was both changing the subject and also, impossibly at the same time, telling him something important about himself.
“Since you were in the Army?” Ren asked.
“Navy,” Seth corrected gently. “But yes.”
Someday, Ren resolved, Seth was going to tell him about his time in the Navy. How he got so good at protecting people. But not tonight.
He finished his beer and set it down, standing up and reaching for Seth’s hand. “Mine or yours?” he asked.
Seth grinned. “Which is closer?”
Ren’s loft was closer. It took less than ten minutes for them to walk there, and by the time Ren let them in, he was half-hard in his jeans just from the anticipation of getting his hands on Seth again.
He turned to him, Seth’s hair still fiery in the dim light of the main room.