Chapter Ten
I’d never done the walk of shame in my own home.
Not that I was ashamed of anything that had happened—far fucking from it. But walking out into the kitchen, coming from where I was, was going to blow the lid off something I wanted to keep private until Chloe and I had time to talk about what had changed and exactly how it had changed.
I hadn’t needed her going rock solid in my arms to know I had a battle on my hands. But her reaction was a clear indication I’d been wrong—I didn’t have a battle; I had a war. One I intended to win, and Gavin showing up had totally fucked me.
I rounded the corner, and that war became ten times harder when I saw Pete sitting at the table I’d just fucked Chloe on, and Fallon standing behind him.
Christ, could this get any worse?
“Damn, brother,” Fallon stuttered to a stop and gave me a top-to-toe once-over. “You look like you—”
There it was. It could get way fucking worse.
“Now’s not a good time,” I interrupted him.
The silence that ensued was deafening. More than that, it was assessing. Three highly trained men stared at me with a critical eye. Three men who didn’t miss a damn thing.
Pete’s gaze went to the hallway.
There was no use hiding or attempting to bullshit my way around what they already knew.
“She’s in my bedroom,” I started telling the group but transferred my attention to Gavin because he knew I was bringing Chloe back to the house to talk after our hostess, Grace, had told us about Chloe’s accident.
To be fair, he couldn’t’ve known that if they’d walked in fifteen minutes earlier, they would’ve heard her screaming my name, or alternatively, found me balls deep fucking her at the very table Pete was now sitting at.
Not that they would’ve seen much of Chloe; I hadn’t done more than pull her skirt up around her waist before I lost control.
I’d planned on getting her tits out and finally—fucking finally—getting my hands and mouth on the objects of my torment.
But when I caught sight of the neatly trimmed triangle of hair, all thoughts of getting her shirt up and bra down fled.
Most women waxed or shaved bare. Whether they liked the way it looked and felt or they thought that’s what men liked, I had no clue.
What I did know was I was not one of those men.
And if I was being honest, fucking Chloe in her work shirt was a turn-on.
Not in a creepy, authoritative way, but I’d imagined taking her into my office at work, fucking her much like what happened against the wall, and in those fantasies, she was always in her Dirty Plank T-shirt.
I held my friend’s remorseful gaze and finished. “She’s also embarrassed as fuck and might be climbing out my window to escape since she heard you come in. Which begs the question why the fuck you’re here.”
“I called. And I texted our ETA.”
Well fuck.
I didn’t have to check my pockets to know I’d left my phone as well as Chloe’s purse in my truck.
It still didn’t explain why they were all there, and I needed that explanation so I could get rid of them and get back to Chloe. I was only half joking about her climbing out my window. I didn’t miss the way she’d eyed it as she went to the bathroom before I left her in there.
“Poppy came in right after you left to go find Chloe. Eyes red rimmed and face pale. I asked her what was wrong, and she broke wide open.”
“About?”
“The Vault.”
I must’ve heard Gavin wrong. Or at least I hope like fuck I did.
“The Vault?”
“Yep. She works there, too, has for months. Says she really likes it there. The money’s great.
Management works with her schedule with no complaints, and the other servers are good people.
Not as friendly as the women she works with at the Plank, but still she likes them.
And she’s close with one woman in particular.
” Fuck. “This morning, Poppy went to the club to pick up the playlist for the upcoming dances—”
“Why didn’t she just call?” I interrupted Gavin.
“I asked, she said the only phone number she has is a landline to the front desk, and no one picks up that line when the club is closed to the public.”
A landline? Who the hell still uses one of those? People who didn’t want to be tracked by their phones.
“That’s not shady as fuck.” Sarcasm dripped from my tone, coupled with a shake of my head.
“Shady but not unexpected,” Pete joined in.
“While Poppy was there, a woman, Pamela, was asking around if anyone had seen her sister, Cynthia. Poppy said at first she chalked it up to a sister squabble and Pamela was there to see Cynthia because she wasn’t answering her calls.”
“Sister squabble?”
That was a random assumption to snap to.
“I questioned that too. Poppy explained that she’s close with Cynthia.
They talk a lot while they’re working, and more than once Cynthia has bitched about her sister being, and I quote, ‘pushy and annoying.’ Poppy also said that as annoying and pushy as Pamela could be, she loved her big sister.
Both parents are dead. Mom died when they were in their teens.
Dad when Cynthia was twenty-one, so they’re close because they’re all each other has. ”
Normally dead parents would be nothing more than tragic. However, in this case, with an orphan working in a club that was suspect of human trafficking, it was both tragic and a huge target on her back.
I clenched my molars and stated the obvious. “This isn’t good.”
“Gets worse,” Gavin went on. “Poppy said she remembers Cynthia being jazzed about what she called a ‘side hustle.’ Cynthia didn’t give Poppy the specifics, just that she was doing hostessing at private parties.
And part of why she was so excited was because she was going to take Pamela out to Catalina and get them an ocean suite at the Bellanca for the weekend.
Which made Poppy rethink her sister squabble because the more she thought about it, she hadn’t heard Cynthia bitch about her sister in weeks and no way she’d drop a few grand on an oceanfront suite if her sister was on her case.
So she caught Pamela in the parking lot, they talked, and now Poppy is firmly in the Cynthia-is-missing camp. ”
Pete’s gaze went over my shoulder right before I heard “Cynthia’s missing? Is Poppy okay?”
I craned my neck, found Chloe standing at the mouth of the hall wide-eyed.
She also looked visibly shaken. Part of that could’ve been because she’d been expecting Gavin, not Gavin, Fallon, and Pete.
And she might not have intended to show herself at all, but when she heard her friend’s name mentioned, she’d acted on instinct.
The truth was, I didn’t care why she was wide-eyed, and it might’ve made me a dick, but I wasn’t passing up this golden opportunity to stress the danger she faced if she continued working at the Vault.
“Do you know Cynthia?” I asked.
“I’ve never met her, but I know who she is.” Chloe paused, glanced around the room like it was her first time seeing it, jerked herself from her stupor, and looked at Gavin. “Is Poppy okay?”
“Jack and Cat came in for dinner. I asked them to take her home.”
“Why’d you send her home?”
It was Pete who fielded that. “How much of our conversation did you hear?”
Her cheeks tinged pink, and she glanced down at her sneakers.
Yeah, baby, your participation in the conversation means we know you were listening.
When Pete finished with “Why don’t you come sit down,” Chloe’s gaze snapped to Pete—or more to the point, the table. The pink deepened, and her gaze swung to me.
I felt my lips twitch. Chloe saw it, reacted, and narrowed her eyes.
Fuck, she was cute, and now that the seal had been broken, I really wanted to sweep away that dirty look with my tongue. Or better, kick my friends out of my house and go back to what we were doing before they interrupted.
Like always where Chloe was concerned, it took me longer than it should have to wrest the need to get close and drag her someplace private.
And now that I knew what she sounded like, knew what she felt like, knew she had a generous mouth and an unbelievably tight pussy, the length of time it normally took to beat back the need lengthened.
I managed this feat, but barely, and only when she nervously answered Pete.
“Not a lot. Just the part about Poppy speaking to some woman in the parking lot and her thinking Cynthia is missing.”
“Right. That woman’s Cynthia’s sister, Pamela. She hasn’t spoken to her sister in six days. Yesterday she filed a missing person report.”
“Did you pull the eighty-five sixty-eight?” I asked.
“I did.” Fallon spoke up. “Corroborated what Poppy told Gavin. The sisters spoke every day. They argued like sisters can, but still they touched base daily and there was a solid bond between the two women. Pamela also references Cynthia coming into extra money, but she called it a bonus from work, not a side hustle. The sisters were meant to go on vacation in two weeks. I confirmed: Cynthia made a reservation. She used her credit card and debit card daily. Nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing in seven days.”
“What’s an eighty-five sixty-nine?”
All eyes came to me.
Right.
Chloe had no idea.
“Eighty-five sixty-eight,” I corrected. “Gavin, grab Chloe a water.”
I turned my back on the guys to fully face Chloe.
She’d only made it a couple of feet into the living room.
Holding herself separate and uncomfortable.
I didn’t like that shit one bit, but I couldn’t go to her without causing her more embarrassment.
I liked that even less. And after we got done with this conversation and I kicked my friends out, I’d tell her exactly what I thought about her coming out of my bedroom after what we shared and not coming right to me.
She had nothing to be embarrassed about, though I understood why she did, and that was part of what we were going to go over.
These men might’ve been her bosses when she was at the Plank, but here, in my house, they absolutely were not.
Out of the corner of my eye I caught sight of black lace next to the front door. Obviously Chloe hadn’t seen her panties on the tiled entryway floor or she would’ve run screaming from the room. But there was zero chance the guys hadn’t seen them on their way in.
Maybe with another woman I would’ve given Gavin a signal to get rid of them. But the thought of another man touching Chloe’s panties made me murderous.
Instead of going directly to her like I’d intended, I moved around the opposite side of the couch and skirted the coffee table. All the while Chloe tracked my movements until Gavin distracted her.
Thank fuck.
“How’s your car?”
“Ugh,” she groaned. “Hopefully not as bad as it looked. It happened on Seacoast in front of the Pelican, so I was barely going twenty, but still my front end is toast.”
I swiped her panties up, shoved them into my pocket, and rejoined the conversation. “Jackass was in her face when I got there.”
Fallon did another top-to-toe and noted, “I don’t see blood.”
“Cops showed up before I could deliver the lesson.”
“Ah.”
Chloe’s gaze was ping-ponging between me and Fallon but paused on me to ask, “Lesson?”
Was she serious? A man who had a foot and at least fifty pounds on her was in her face shouting. Though even if he was her size, that shit was not on.
“Baby, he was in your face. But just to say, he could’ve been ten feet away from you and he’d still be eating his teeth, if he called you a bitch one more time.”
Her shoulders went tense, but her face had gone soft. I had no idea how to read her reaction. However, her reaction was a good reminder—she didn’t know me.
She knew what all the women at work knew—I was the nice boss.
When they wanted something, they came to me because they knew I’d talk the others into getting it for them—case in point, a tricked-out locker room that doubled as a break room.
I minded my manners around the women and, as much as I could, curbed my Sailor’s mouth.
I was far from a saint, but they dealt with enough creepy assholes that I made sure all they got from me was respect.
Which meant Chloe had largely the wrong impression of me. Or not wrong, just skewed, because she’d never seen the real me.
That was until about an hour ago, when I decided I was done pretending there wasn’t something between us and that something was beyond wanting to fuck each other’s brains out.
“Here you go, Chloe,” Fallon said, handing her a bottle of water. “Let’s take a seat.”
Without waiting for her response, he used her elbow to guide Chloe to the couch. “And to answer your earlier question, Jack drove Poppy home because she’s upset her friend’s missing.”
Chloe gingerly sat, pinned her knees closed, and shifted her knees in a way that no matter where the others sat, they’d be angled away.
I didn’t need a reminder that Chloe’s panties were in my pocket, but damn if that served as one.
But now was not the time.
Now it was time to see about getting Chloe as far away from the Vault as I could.
Because one thing I knew for certain—Chloe and Poppy were tight.
Thick as thieves at work, and I knew from overhearing stories they spent a lot of time together outside of it.
If I could talk Chloe around, she’d do the work and get Poppy to follow.