Because we were still trying to verify who in the Bratva could be trusted, and if there were any rats, we’d had to decide what details could be relayed to our soldiers and lieutenants, a predicament I don’t think we ever thought we’d be in.
But now we were ready.
Chapter Nineteen
Nell
Four weeks later…
“So, what’s the deal with you and my brother?” I asked Lena as we folded up the latest load of laundry.
It wasn’t the first time I’d asked her, but I was hoping if I kept it up, she’d finally give me an answer that wasn’t, “Who?”
“I didn’t know you guys knew each other.”
Turning her back to me as she folded a towel, she mumbled, “He looks familiar, but I don’t know where from. I haven’t had a chance to ask him.”
It would have been a plausible excuse four weeks ago, but there was more to it than that. Hunter had been spending a lot of time with us since she’d arrived, more than usual, and you’d have had to have been blind to miss the looks thrown between them.
He watched every move she made, and constantly tried to start conversations with her, but Lena only answered with one or two-word answers, and went out of her way to avoid him as much as she could.
Just then, the front door opened, and my brother walked in, his eyes going straight to my best friend.
Knowing I wasn’t going to get far asking questions, I decided to see if I could provoke some answers. I knew just how to do it.
I might have been kept out of the MC and the goings-on in it, but I’d seen him with enough women to know he didn’t usually give a shit what happened to them. They were there for the fun that helped the guys de-stress, and that was it.
Maybe that sounded bad, and I didn’t like it myself, but I wasn’t stupid. They did things that would make a normal man crumble, so when they were home, they used that time to remove the weights from their shoulders as much as they could.
I’d also met some USAF guys when I was in Florida who’d displayed the same stress-busting techniques, so labeling it as MC guys just being dogs wasn’t right. If it was consensual—and it always was—maybe both parties were using each other to chase away the specters of life?
If he reacted to what I was about to do, there was definitely more to this than she was letting on. I didn’t need to know the details, but I cared about both of them. If your own love life was shit like mine, fixing someone else’s would be rewarding. I’d hashed and rehashed everything between Taras and me with Lena, and I could relax now and get into the swing of co-parenting with him, but I never allowed myself to do it when his attention was on me.
So maybe I could live vicariously between these two? I wanted to see them both happy and with someone who loved them, and what better way than with each other.
“You know,” I said to him, not even saying hi first. “I’m starting to think I don’t exist, and that all the guys come over here just to see Lena. There was a time when people would say ‘hi, Nell’ when they walked through my door, now all they do is look right at her.”
Seeing him grinding his teeth together, I looked back over at my best friend. “Is it like this when you’re modeling?”
Because she had her back to the door still, she didn’t know Hunter was in the room with us, so her answer wasn’t said to make him jealous.
“I doubt they come here to see me, but the attention when you’re modeling lacy bras and panties is definitely worse. Most of them probably look at me when they come in because they’ve seen the photos, Nell.”
“It more than likely isn’t helped by the advertising boards with photos of you on them all over the country, either.”
“True that,” she chuckled, bending over to pick up the pile of towels, before looking over her shoulder at me, and pausing when she saw Hunter standing behind me. “I’ll… just go put these away.”
I waited until she’d rounded the corner and was walking down the hallway to the linen cupboard, before I asked Hunter innocently, “Have you seen any of the photos? If not, you’ve got to.”
I wasn’t lying when I said that, seeing as how Lena’s beauty had to be seen to be believed. And it wasn’t the underwear that drew all of the attention, like she thought.
She was tall but curvy, and had a full sleeve of tattoos on her left arm, all done in bright colors. It was all feminine things like flowers, with wisps of what looked like smoke joining them all together, which she’d had done in pink instead of the standard choice of gray.