Chapter Twenty-Four
Coffee in hand, sitting at Chloe’s kitchen table, I scrolled through emails wondering why we didn’t have a Girl Tuesday.
Or was it a Girl Friday? Whatever the name, we needed one of them.
Hell, it could be a Guy Monday as long as I no longer had to sift through emails.
A task that was supposed to be a joint effort, though the rest of the guys seemed to be allergic to the work.
I looked up from my tablet when I heard Chloe’s bedroom door open.
I’d left her snoozing in bed—yes, I’d kissed her before I rolled out, in multiple places.
After I’d had her moaning my name through her orgasm last night, she’d returned the favor, and since she didn’t swallow, she’d pulled off my dick in time to crawl up and ride me.
I watched her stumble into view wearing nothing but my shirt and a smile.
“Coffee’s ready,” I greeted.
She jerked to a stop, opened her mouth, then clamped it shut, and her gaze dropped to my bare chest.
As a matter of course and because my job demanded it, I worked out daily.
I couldn’t say I loved the gym. Most days I had to force myself to put in the hours needed.
But, right then, with Chloe’s eyes going wide before they dropped lower to my stomach, I sure as fuck was happy for every minute I spent sweating my ass off.
Wide eyes turned into rapid blinking—something I noticed she did a lot when she was flustered. But it was the way her cheeks tinged pink that had my dick twitching in my shorts.
It was time to put an end to her perusal before my dick did more than twitch. And with Pete on his way over, there was no time.
“Chloe?” I prompted.
Her eyes raced up to meet mine. “I’ve dreamed of this.”
I felt my chest start to burn.
“Waking up next to you.” She waved in my general direction, then to the kitchen.
“Walking into my kitchen, finding you drinking coffee. Not all my fantasies were . . . you know . . . I told myself they had to be, because the rest, this . . . you here . . . waking up with you . . . was so far out of the realm of what I’d allow myself to think about, I knew that if I thought too hard about how it would feel having the good stuff, the important parts, it’d break my heart. ”
Jesus.
“Chloe, come here.”
By the time she made it to me, I had the chair pushed back so all I had to do was hook an arm around her waist, pull her down, and she was on my lap, straddling me.
My hand went up and slid into her hair before I asked, “Do me a favor, yeah?” I waited until she nodded before I went on. “The next time you want to give me something that sweet, you do it close.”
“Why?”
“So I don’t have to delay giving you my gratitude.”
I pulled her down and captured her mouth. She tasted like toothpaste and a lifetime of beauty. I tilted my head, taking the kiss deeper. Chloe responded by pressing her tits to my chest. Just when I got my hand on her ass and she was moaning into my mouth, there was a knock at the door.
I broke the kiss but kept her close. “Pete’s here.”
“Already?”
“I told you he was coming,” I reminded her.
“Shit.” She tried to scrabble off my lap, but I tightened my hold. “I need to get dressed.”
“In a minute.”
“Ryan—”
“Baby, in a minute.” She stopped struggling but started glaring.
“I’ve been waiting a long time to have you right where you are.
” Her glare dissipated, and she melted into me.
“This morning, waking up next to you, then watching you walk out of your room in nothing but my tee, giving me what you gave me, that was a dream come true. Thank you, baby.”
“Ryan,” she whispered.
“Now kiss me so you can get dressed.”
There was another knock at the door, followed by “You know I can pick the lock.”
Fucking Pete.
“Can he really?”
“Yep.”
She quickly leaned forward, gave me a hard, closed-mouth kiss, and jumped off my lap. This time I let her.
I waited until she closed her bedroom door before I opened up for Pete.
“You’re a pain in the ass,” he said as he pushed past me, holding a box of donuts.
“You’re a cock blocker, so we’re even.”
He followed me into the kitchen and tossed the box of donuts onto the table.
His eyes landed on the folded clothes on Chloe’s coffee table. “You doing something about that?”
He wasn’t talking about tidying up. He was talking about me easing her burden.
“As much as she’ll let me.”
“I heard Marco ask Grace if Chloe’s dad—”
“Don’t.” I interrupted him before he could tell me what he’d overheard between two of our employees.
“She hasn’t given me specifics, and I want those to come from her, not you, and certainly not bar gossip.
So unless there’s something wrong I need to handle within the hour, I don’t want to know what you heard. ”
Pete dipped his chin.
“Anything on the flight logs?”
“No. Not yet. But last night I dug into Tyson Morrison.” Fuck, I forgot to tell Chloe about him. “He has a mortgage. I pulled the loan application, he works for a company called The Tap House.”
“Sounds like a bar. Is it local?”
“There are thirty-six bars in California with some variation of Tap House in their name. None of them match the EIN. Now that was a rabbit hole that took all night to dig myself out of. Bogus companies piled on top of bogus companies. I get setting up LLCs to own other LLCs. We do it to hide our safe houses and other properties. But if someone is trying to fly under the radar or hide their felonious shit, they don’t set up payroll accounts and get the IRS involved.
The Tap House has three current employees—Tyson Morrison, Tobias Reeves, and Noah Farley. ”
“Current?”
“A little over two years ago, Lucy Macmillan received four payments from The Tap House totaling twenty grand, before Uncle Sam took his cut.”
Holy shit.
“The missing bartender.”
Pete nodded. “The missing bartender, with Sterling Blackwell being the sole owner of Blackwell Inc., the corporation that’s buried seven layers deep that owns Tap House LLC.”
A flicker of light flashed at the end of the tunnel.
We needed those flight logs. And we needed to get our hands on the Vault’s membership list. As much as I wanted to abandon investigating the Vault altogether and concentrate on Sterling, you didn’t sheer off a weed—you ripped the roots out of the ground so it didn’t grow back.
“Did you run Reeves and Farley?”
“Both local, no records. I’ll get Fallon to do a deep dive later today.”
I heard the bedroom door open, then close, then open again.
“Everything okay?” I called out.
“Yes . . . no . . . yes,” Chloe returned.
What the hell?
I took a few steps but froze when Chloe came stomping into the kitchen while declaring, “This is awkward. Not as awkward as yesterday but still . . . So to make it not awkward, I’m just going to say, good morning, Pete, who is not my boss while I’m not at work.”
She plopped down in a chair, grabbed my coffee, and took a gulp. When she was done, her nose scrunched adorably and she made a sound that communicated exactly what she thought of my joe.
Christ, she was cute.
“How can you drink that?”
“Government coffee is shit.”
“This isn’t government coffee,” she rightly told me. It was off brand and I’d scooped it out of a yellow canister, so close enough.
“Nope.” I grabbed two mugs out of the cupboard, finished pouring, and looked over my shoulder to find her staring at my mug with pure hatred. “Habit.” Her gaze lifted, and she still looked disgusted. “How do you take your coffee?”
“Not like you,” she declared, and opened the box of donuts.
“I gathered that.”
“A splash of the half-and-half and one small teaspoon of sugar,” she said through an epic grimace that made me want to kiss her.
I moved out of Pete’s way so he could doctor up his coffee and delivered Chloe’s.
“Thank you,” she mumbled around a bite of glazed donut. “Sorry, it’s rude I’m not waiting, but I’m starving and I need to leave soon.”
Right.
The reason why Pete was there. Chloe was borrowing my truck to run errands and to meet up with Poppy.
I was sure one of the places she needed to go was to visit her dad, though she hadn’t come out and said it.
Neither had I asked. Not that this was an issue, beyond the fact I’d prefer to go with her.
“Good Lord, how much sugar do you take?” Chloe hilariously gasped, staring at Pete’s mug.
“Eight.”
“Eight what? Heaping tablespoons of heart disease?” she asked Pete.
“Ryan takes ten,” he said, throwing me under the bus.
“Ten? Holy mother of dragons, Ryan, you’re gonna die. Seriously, this might be your last day on earth if you’ve been using ten tablespoons of sugar to cover up the government coffee taste. And I drank some. My poor arteries are in distress. I can feel it.”
Pete stared at Chloe like he was unsure if he was going to bust a gut or run.
“Your arteries are in distress from one sip?” I asked.
“It was big sip, and now I know why it was gritty. There’s so much sugar it couldn’t all dissolve. I hope you’re up to date on your CPR certs. You know, in case I have a heart attack from the seventeen spoonfuls of sugar I ingested.”
There were only ten in the whole mug, but I wasn’t going to correct her. Something else I was finding cute about Chloe Baughman—she was dramatic as fuck when she ranted.
“Don’t worry, baby, my mouth-to-mouth is top notch.”
Chloe winked and shoved the last of the donut in her mouth that had more sugar in it than my and Pete’s coffee combined. It seriously sucked she had places to be when what I wanted to do was kick my friend out and drag her ass to back to bed and show her exactly what I thought of the wink.
Unfortunately, that couldn’t happen.
“Last night I forgot to tell you something. But before I do, this information needs to stay between us.”
Chloe’s gaze bounced between me and Pete. “Okay.”
“That means you can’t talk to Poppy about it.”
Immediately her eyes went guarded and she held up her hand.
“Will this information harm Poppy now or in the future?”
“No.”
“Is this information about a man?”
I was beginning to wonder if I should’ve taken Pete’s advice, even though he told me not to. My need to unburden myself in fear she’d be pissed if she found out I’d kept it from her was now putting her in a bad place.
“Yes.”
“Let me rephrase, is this information about a man who Poppy’s been in a relationship with?” I was shaking my head preparing to answer when she tacked on, “Or about Beckett?”
“Beckett?” Pete asked.
“Yes. I’m not sure what’s going on there.
She refused to tell me, and since she did, I’m not breaking the girl code since I’m only speculating, but I think she thinks he’s hot.
And last night when Miss Watermelon Boobies was all over him, Poppy was pissed.
So, if this secret has something to do with Beckett, I don’t want to know.
And if it means I have to lie to her, don’t tell me.
And if it’s something that would upset her that I knew and she didn’t, I don’t want to know. ”
“Miss Watermelon Boobies?” Pete asked through a chuckle.
“What? Beckett didn’t tell you about her?”
I glanced at Pete. He shook his head, so I answered for both of us. “No.”
“He didn’t tell you there was a woman sitting next to him who was attempting to surgically connect herself to him?”
“Yeah, he told us there was a woman at the table who goes by the name Chantilly, who he thinks is a porn star, but he didn’t mention her boobs.”
“I can totally see that.” She looked thoroughly perplexed.
“See what?”
She didn’t answer. Instead she tapped her fingers on the table.
“Chloe, what can you see?”
“At first I thought she looked like a Victoria’s Secret runway model, but when I got close and saw the skintight leather dress, I thought she looked more like a dominatrix. But porn star, that totally fits.”
Pete grabbed his coffee off the counter and joined us at the table. When he sat in the chair across from her, he asked, “How does that fit?”
She glanced over at me and furrowed her brows. “I don’t know how to explain this without sounding crass and bitchy.”
“Chloe, just say it however you need to say it,” I urged.
“Okay.” She blew out a breath and started.
“I need to bring up the boobs one more time because they’re relevant.
You can ask Beckett. I’m not a guy, but those things were so big they weren’t attractive or sexy.
They were attention-seeking watermelons barely stuffed into a bra.
Which jibes with how she was behaving. It wasn’t the behavior of a woman who is openly sexual and enjoyed a little PDA with a hot guy.
It was a woman desperate for attention. If Beckett would’ve told her to drop to her knees and blow him in front of the bar, she would’ve.
If he told her to get on her knees under the table so no one could see what she was doing, she wouldn’t have done it.
Now, I get people get off on voyeurism, but this wasn’t that.
Maybe a better way to say it is she was desperate to perform.
The attention she gets from her performance is what she’s after. ”
“She could be an escort,” Pete threw out.
“Or a stripper,” I added.
“No.” Chloe shook her head. “She ordered a gin and tonic. I asked her if she wanted Nolet’s or Watenshi.
She had no clue what I was asking. Which means she doesn’t know top-shelf liquor, which means she can’t afford it.
An escort would educate herself on what to drink and how to order as not to embarrass herself or her date by ordering a well brand.
A stripper might not know a top-shelf brand, but she’d understand what I was asking.
Chantilly just stared at me like I was speaking in a foreign tongue. Len Taylor had to order for her.”
“That’s damn impressive, baby.”
Chloe shrugged. “I told you I’ve worked in a lot of bars.”
No, her ability to read people didn’t come from working in a bar. She might’ve honed the skill working around people, but that was a gift she was born with.
I knew Pete felt the same way I did by the way he was staring at her.
“We got sidetracked,” Chloe said. “What did you want to tell me?”
I shook my head, no longer sure telling her was the right thing to do.
“I trust you, Ryan. I don’t even know why I questioned you in the first place. I know you’d never put me in the position to have to lie or hurt my best friend.”
Fuck, that felt good.
Really fucking good.
Almost good enough to forget that she hadn’t talked to me about her dad but she had told her coworkers.