Smoke and Steel (Wild West MC #2)(104)

I loved that Beck and Janna were cute, and I loved it especially for Janna.

She leaned back so she could again catch my gaze in order that I wouldn’t miss her rolling her eyes.

I laughed, but I didn’t commit fully to it.

Core said nothing, but he did come to lounge against the counter with me, gliding an arm around my waist.

So there was that.

Janna called all hands on deck to get dinner on the table, and we all moved to help, with her giving direction in her quiet way of who she wanted to do what.

I liked that. I liked it wasn’t formal. She made it seem like family with all of us putting food in bowls or carrying it to the table.

I also liked Janna, and not only because she was wise, and she shared that awesomeness with me. But she did it honestly and kindly.

It always felt good when you knew you’d made a new friend.

And soon after we sat down, I learned her stuffed porkchops were the most delicious known to personkind.





On the way home, I addressed it.

“I’d just mentioned you were in a mood.”

“Come again?”

“That’s all I said. I wasn’t talking about you to Janna. I’d just mentioned that you seemed to be in a mood.”

“I lived with Kiki for three years.”

I wasn’t sure why he was repeating this information to me.

“Okay,” I said slowly.

“I know women talk.”

Ah.

“Okay,” I muttered.

After that, the rest of the ride home was silent.

So yes.

Core wasn’t a chatterbox, but he wasn’t the quiet broody type.

This meant I was right.

Something was bothering him.

Hmm.

When we got home, we had sex I instigated that Core didn’t shy away from in the slightest, and after, he cuddled me close just like usual and fell asleep.

However, I lay awake thinking that something was playing on his mind. The work he did with the club was heavy. And maybe he’d give it to me when he was ready.

The sex had been no less intimate and intense. The cuddle no less loving.

People had moods. Core was human (regardless that he sometimes seemed godlike when he was fucking me), of course he’d have them too.

I just needed to give him space to have them and patience until he was ready to share the reasons for them with me.

On that thought, I fell asleep.





25





EXCRUCIATING CARE





Hellen





It all went down three weeks later.

I was exhausted.

I was because, in assessing what might contribute to Core’s mood the night we went to dinner with Beck and Janna, I decided to alleviate what I thought might be a part of it.

In other words, in order to give Core more of my time, finish up the move, slide through the first family Thanksgiving with Core (which went great, obviously, because Core was awesome and my family was amazing), and get work done, I was getting up at four thirty rather than my normal six.

Also, to get to work even sooner, I shaved off time in the morning by picking an outfit and switching purses the night before. I was further in the throes of training my hair to take a once-every-two days wash, rather than every other day, to save the half an hour of a blowout two days in a row.

All of this because I made it my personal goal to leave the office no later than six (drop dead, six twenty) so I could get home to Core.

Sometimes I snuck in some work when Core was off doing things with the club. Or when we were hanging in front of the TV, Core with a joint and chilled mood, watching something he dug that I had no interest in, so I’d grab my laptop.

Sometimes he went to bed without me so I could spend an hour or so on my computer getting a jumpstart on the next day.

I was doing this for him, but things for me were rough.

The conference was more work than I expected. Christmas was approaching and I had at least a dozen new people to buy for. I’d called an all hands on deck with my girls to do a fast pack and clean of my old apartment, they’d pitched in and we’d gotten it done. But I hadn’t yet had the time to work with Core to decide what stuff of mine we could use in our kitchen and what could be stored.

This meant those boxes, as well as other detritus from my apartment, were stacked at the front of where I parked my Mini in the garage. This was annoying to face every day, those boxes taunting me that they needed to be gone through. But also, they were in my way.

We couldn’t put them in front of Core’s huge-ass truck. That barely fit in the garage as it was.

They needed to be sorted, and stuff we weren’t going to use put up in his attic to get those boxes out of the way.

So yes, I was exhausted and there seemed to be a mile-long work and life to-do list I faced every day.

And okay, maybe I was a little crotchety because of all of this when it all kicked off.

But who wouldn’t be?

It began before we left the house.

We were going Christmas shopping, something I usually loved to do.

What was more, Core had no decorations at all, and mine were meagre, so we were off to augment that and Christmas-ify the house.

I should be in a great mood. I loved Christmas, and the little decorating we’d already done—putting up my tree—had been awesome (because we’d had sex under it after it was up but only halfway through adding the decorations).