Smoke and Steel (Wild West MC #2)(13)

“I’m in,” Core said, also to Marcy, immediately after Hellen stopped speaking. Then he made the plan. “We’ll meet at Moynihan’s.”

After he said that, he left them standing on the sidewalk, rounded his hood, got in his truck and started it up.

He waited behind the wheel, his vehicle humming, going into staredown with Hellen, and this lasted so long, he started chuckling.

She couldn’t hear it, but she saw it, and it made her madder.

Which made him start laughing.

Marcy dragged her to her car.

He followed them to Hellen’s apartment.

He parked and his long legs got him close fast, so he followed them into her pad.

Her complex wasn’t the greatest, it wasn’t the worst. A bunch of fake adobe with different floor plans for the studio, one-and two-bedroom townhome units.

He knew this because he’d dated a woman who lived there and then later partied with some friends who also lived there.

Resurrection had made a deal with the apartment manager (which meant cash had exchanged hands) so they could hang in an empty apartment across from Hellen’s to keep an eye on her. They’d lucked out with this scenario. It was a lot easier to get made, day in and day out, sitting in a vehicle staring at an apartment.

When she let them in, even though he could see some of it through her windows, getting the full view, he was mildly surprised at what he saw.

She was young, but she had her shit tight.

It wasn’t a big place, it wasn’t full of stuff, it wasn’t in-your-face chick either. All of which he approved of.

Whites. Blacks. Grays. Browns. There was space. Room to move. Room to add to what she had. Comfort.

And style.

He liked it.

It was her.

“You want a beer?” Marcy asked as Hellen was turning on some lights.

“Yeah,” he answered at the same time Hellen said, “Don’t get him a beer. He isn’t staying that long.”

In response to that, Core sat his ass on her gray-white couch and stretched his legs out in front of him.

She glared at him.

He smiled at her.

She rolled her eyes.

He smiled bigger.

Marcy came back with beers for all of them.

She handed them around and made a point to park her ass in a brown-leather butterfly chair, which meant Hellen’s only choice was to hit the couch with him.

She looked like she smelled rotten eggs while she did it.

He burst out laughing.

“What’s funny?” she demanded through it.

“You are so into me,” he teased, still laughing.

“And you are so full of yourself,” she shot back.

“All right, kids, you two can hammer this out later, when I’m not here,” Marcy butted in. She then added in Core’s direction, “I hope you brought condoms.”

Core busted out laughing again.

He also decided he liked Marcy.

“Oh my God, Marce!” Hellen snapped.

“Moving on,” Marcy decided, her attention going back to Core. “The deal is, we have a friend who’s dating some guy she met on Bumble. She thinks she’s falling in love with him. In the beginning, he gave her the full treatment. Fancy car. Fancy restaurants. Flowers. Gifts. A weekend away. Promises of more good times to come. Now he’s bumming money off her.”

Well, hell.

Core took a drag off his beer as Marcy continued.

“So Hellen did an online dive into him, and on the surface, he seems legit. He has social media. He’s got friends. He’s posting pictures of him with Bree, or just Bree, and he seems really into her. He’s a partner at a firm that has a website. You call the number and ask for him, they say he’s not in, but they’ll take a message for you.”

“But you don’t buy it,” Core surmised.

“We don’t buy it,” Marcy agreed.

“What tweaks you?” Core asked.

“Well, now it’s the fact he lives at a house of quintuplets, him being one of them,” Hellen said. “So, if he’s a hotshot venture capitalist with tons of money to hand out to aspiring entrepreneurs, why does he share a three-bedroom house in Littleton with four other guys?”

“Pertinent question,” he grunted.

“Four other guys Bree doesn’t know he lives with. She thinks he lives in that house alone. She thinks this because she never mentioned any roommates, and she’s been to that house more than once. Did those men look like they were hanging at a friend’s house, that friend right now out on a date with his girl Bree?” Hellen went on.

Core wasn’t feeling this situation, because no, they didn’t.

They were making themselves at home because they were home.

“But all this started because he’s supposedly in a partnership that invests millions of dollars in startups.” Hellen kept at it. “And if that’s the case, why would he be cash poor and need to borrow what would amount to chump change to him, but it’s two months’ rent for his girl?”

Jesus.

“Another pertinent question,” he replied.

“Oh, and by the way,” she carried on, “he’s been seeing that girl for all of three months. He drives a BMW, and he wears a Patek Phillipe that could be knockoff, and is, I’m guessing at this juncture. And so are the Chanel earrings he gave her for their first month anniversary.”