Smoke and Steel (Wild West MC #2)(35)

“It was something.”

“Tables are turned, I do something jacked, you telling me you wouldn’t be that pissed at me?”

She ground her teeth again.

She’d be that pissed at him.

“Shout in my face? Make your anger clear? And then when it’s done,” he tossed both hands to his sides, “get me someplace good to work it out?”

“Is that what we’re doing? Working it out?”

“I’m gonna grill a steak. I’m gonna grill you one too if you haven’t eaten. We’re gonna have some beers. You’re gonna tell me what a dick I am, I’m gonna admit I was a dick, because I was serious pissed, but I recognize I went over the top. Then I’m gonna take you to your car and follow you so I know you’re safe home.”

He said something there, something that penetrated, because her head ticked and the feel of her eyes on him changed from hot as lasers to hot as weaker lasers.

But she said, “I’d rather call an Uber.”

He shook his head. “Those aren’t safe for a woman alone, baby. Are you nuts?”

That was when it happened. Something clicked for her then, he saw it. This wasn’t a minor thing. The way she was watching him completely changed.

Then she said, “It’s late. I’ve already eaten.”

“I haven’t.”

“Well then,”—she indicated the steak on the counter—“eat.”

He wanted to smile, but he didn’t.

“You still mad?”

“Yes. Very.”

He opened his arms. “Wanna come here and hug it out?”

She took a step back, and a little bit of his sassy Hellen could be heard in her, “No. Thank you.”

That was when he smiled and finally went back to his steak.

He dug her phone out of his pocket, put it on the counter and invited, “Help yourself to beer.”

“Is that your way of saying you want me to get you a beer?”

He turned his head her way. “I got opposable thumbs. When I’m ready for a beer, I can get my own. You’re offering to pop one for me, knock yourself out. But I’m doing something right now so I can’t drink it. In other words, no, that was my way of saying, if you want one, grab a beer.”

Now she was studying him like he was an alien.

“What?” he asked.

“Nothing,” she murmured and headed to his fridge.

Meat was involved, so Nanook got up and sat by Core’s leg while he finished seasoning.

He gave up on the grill and decided to pan fry.

“So you help women?” she asked.

He turned from the skillet he’d dropped butter into and saw she was at his back window, staring at his yard.

“Women. Men. Kids. Mostly women and kids.”

“And to be the Angels of Death, that entails?”

“You know much about MCs?”

She turned to him and shook her head.

He laid it on her gently.

“Brother business is brother business, sweetheart. There might be men who share with their old ladies, but only if their old ladies are woven into the fabric of the club and dig that they never open their mouths, not ever to anyone, even other brothers, about the club business they know.”

“Mm,” she hummed, took a sip from her beer, and looked back out the window.

He was going to bake some tots to go with his steak, but instead, after he put the meat into the sizzling butter, he pulled out some chips.

That was when he got himself a beer.

He’d just flipped the filet when she asked, “You brought me here, to your place, does that mean you don’t have a girlfriend?”

Well, shit.

A woman asked that question for one reason.

So now they were here.

“Nope,” he answered.

It was then he needed to say that wasn’t what this was. He needed to share that he was definitely into her, but they weren’t going to go there. He was seeing at that juncture that taking her to his house might have been making a statement he didn’t want to make.

Strike that, he did want it.

He just wasn’t going to allow it.

On top of all that, he needed to try to explain why he lost his shit about her putting herself in danger when they weren’t going to go there.

She was attracted to him, he knew.

She was sucking him deep, he knew that too.

He cared about her, a lot. That night, he’d made that clear.

She cared about him too. No woman put up with a man being that deeply in her shit if he didn’t matter to her.

It was time to build the wall to keep her safe.

But Core didn’t say any of that, and he didn’t lay that first brick of the wall she needed him to build.

Because he was a sucker for her.

Because she made him laugh.

Because there was something about her standing in his kitchen, even still ticked at him, that felt so right, he’d never felt that rightness in his life, except the time he’d signed Resurrection’s charter with his own blood.

“I forgot your dinner with your folks. Did you decide what to do about your dad?”

“We’re meeting with him,” she told the window.

Not smart.

He kept that to himself.