Chapter Two
“Yo!” Pete called and waved me over to a table in the corner he’d commandeered before the early evening rush started.
I took the chair opposite his. “What’s up?”
“Shep called. He needs us to look into something for him.”
The team had been home from Dubai for a month. It wasn’t unheard of for us to go out for back-to-back missions; neither was it abnormal for us to be home for a few months. So I didn’t understand the look on my friend’s face.
“Where we going? I’m up on rotation. Mase sitting this one out?”
We rotated who stayed stateside to manage the bar. Since Mason now had Calli and they were newish, it made sense he’d be the one to stay behind.
“The Vault,” he said, weirdly.
“The Vault? The gentlemen’s club?”
“Not so much a gentlemen’s club as it is a private club.
The servers don’t strip, and they don’t show any more skin than on an average Friday night here.
Membership is astronomical, but twice a month, they allow nonmembers to pay a cover charge.
Shep has intel there might be a member there scouting. ”
Scouting for women to sell, right in our backyard.
Hell no.
“When’s the next nonmember night?”
“Next Wednesday.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Chloe walk out into the bar.
Beautiful, smart, hilarious Chloe Baughman—the woman who set my blood on fire and haunted my dreams.
My employee.
If I was a different man, I’d fire her just so I could have the woman.
Unfortunately, I had scruples . . . and a case of blue balls to go with my morals.
Needless to say, my condition was painful.
I shoved aside all thoughts of my balls and morals and refocused on Pete. “Shep give you anything else?”
Pete glanced around, his gaze landing on the hostess station, which was now starting to fill up. “We’ll brief at the ranch tomorrow. But if Shep’s concerned, we should be concerned. Especially when the member in question is Sterling Blackwell.”
I leaned in closer and asked, “I’m sorry, did you say Sterling Blackwell? The Sterling Blackwell who owns Summit Jets?”
“One and the same.”
Well fuck.
Sterling Blackwell was loaded. He owned Summit Jets, the premier executive aviation outfit that flew the most influential and famous people around the US and abroad—that was, the rich and influential who didn’t own personal jets.
You know, climate change and all, yet their pampered asses wouldn’t be caught dead flying commercial in the steerage.
Not only that, but he was the only child of the Gerald Blackwell, who owned a chain of boutique hotels.
Ironically, Mr. and Mrs. Blackwell bit it in a plane crash—not a Summit Jet, but a private plane while vacationing in Italy.
Their death meant Sterling had inherited the Blackwell fortune.
On top of what Sterling had amassed, he wasn’t just loaded—he was loaded.
“Why the hell is a man like Blackwell slumming it at a place like the Vault?”
“The annual membership is sixty thousand. That’s hardly slumming it, but I see your point.”
Pete was correct. Sixty grand a year was nothing to sneeze at, and for us regular folks, insanely high for what was essentially a themed bar up in the mountains, private or not. But for a man like Sterling, that was chump change.
“There are also rumors there’s another membership level that offers more privacy and benefits,” Pete went on.
“Sex club?”
Pete’s brow rose in answer.
I sighed and leaned back in my chair. “I take it I need to break out the suit for our visit.”
“Do you own a suit?” Pete shot back, like I was some sort of low-class gun for hire.
“I’ll have you know, I have a very nice ensemble from Brooks Brothers hanging in my closet.”
“Unless you’ve got a Tom Ford hanging in your closet, you need to get your ass to the mall.”
The mall.
Good Christ, I hadn’t seen the inside of a mall in a decade.
“Nothing like dropping a few grand on a suit I’ll never wear again,” I grumbled.
“Like you’re not going to expense it.”
I shrugged, pretending like that was my intention all along, when in fact it hadn’t occurred to me.
Pete knocked on the table, for reasons only known to Pete, as he announced, “I’ll let you get behind the bar. I’ve got paperwork to finish before I head home.”
Like everything else with the bar, we all rotated shifts bartending, but my shift didn’t officially start for another twenty minutes.
Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a flash of red hair.
And there it was—Pete didn’t give a shit about my shift or about paperwork.
My friend had just zeroed in on tonight’s entertainment.
In the land of sun and sand and bleached teeth and blondes-a-plenty, Pete exclusively went for redheads.
And not pink-champagne red or strawberry—nineties-supermodel-Angie-Everhart red.
The darker the hair, the fierier the personality.
Add in an explosive attitude, and Pete was a goner.
I smirked and pushed back from the table, now understanding Pete’s quick dismissal. “Good luck with all that paperwork.”
On my way to the bar, my gaze slid through the crowd.
When we’d bought the building, it was a wreck.
The marine-themed mural painted on the exterior was old and faded.
Not to mention, it was ugly as fuck. The roof had more leaks than a sieve, and the smell of fried seafood clung to the walls in a way that made it obvious no amount of scrubbing was going to clean away the stench.
In the end, we decided to demolish the building and build new.
That had been a pain in the ass none of us had been prepared for, but well worth it.
What at one time had been nothing more than an investment for the six of us, run by an old teammate when we’d been running missions out of Colorado, had ended up being what brought us all back to San Diego.
It had given us a purpose while we regrouped and decided on what was next after we’d effectively fired Pete’s sister, Mia, in an effort to force her to give up hunting bad guys and get her shot at happiness.
The five of us had gone back to hunting.
Mia found her happily ever after. As had Mase with Calista.
And if that wasn’t a mind fuck, I didn’t know what was.
The guy was the most distrusting person I knew, yet he’d fallen fast and hard for the gorgeous blonde.
Though I knew it had nothing to do with her looks.
Mason had lived his life like a monk—I’d seen him turn down beautiful women night after night.
I didn’t get what was so different about Calli until I saw them together.
Then I got it. It was way she looked at him—not like he was the only man in the room, but rather like she saw inside his soul.
She saw Mason Hughes—not the former Navy Seal, not the warrior—the man beneath his carefully crafted mask.
My other teammate Jack Donovan had found that, too, with Catarina.
And with their couplings, things were changing.
We now had two highly capable women on our team.
They were welcomed additions. What wasn’t welcomed was the rock that had settled in my gut.
The recognition I wanted what they’d found but the realization it was likely unattainable.
“Whoa! Sorry.” Chloe stopped short of slamming into me with a tray full of drinks.
“My fault. I wasn’t watching where I was going.”
Her hazel eyes roamed my face, the intensity of her scrutiny unnerving. “You okay?”
Chloe’s question caught me off guard. With practiced ease I blanked my expression, going for my default while I was at the bar—easygoing and carefree. “The night’s young and the bar’s packed. Everything’s perfect.”
Another long appraisal before she nodded. “Tips should be rockin’ tonight.”
I recognized the forced cheerfulness in her tone.
I should’ve asked her if everything was okay—as her boss, of course.
But I needed to escape, evade, resist the temptation that was Chloe.
Fight the pull of her. Keeping my distance was paramount.
One wrong move and the loose hold I had on my control would snap.
Everything about Chloe was a battle between recklessness and self-restraint.
A war I was determined to win—the problem was I no longer knew what winning looked like.
Which battle I should be fighting.
In the end, I made the smart play and kept my mouth shut and reminded myself she was my employee. The last thing she needed was me rabid for a few nights, with her tangled in my sheets—or hers. I wasn’t going to quibble about the location as long as she was under me, moaning my name.
And that right there was exactly why she was untouchable.
I wasn’t ready to face the reality of what I felt for her.
I wasn’t ready to admit that if I allowed myself even a taste, she’d wreck me when she walked away.
And I was a complication she didn’t need.
Because that was what it would be—complicated.