Velvet Fire - Ashby Crime Family Romance

“You too, Mo. Think you can add a plate of boxty for the table?” I didn’t want her thinking she had any claims on me. It was one night a year ago, and that was before I learned about her connection to Sadie.

“Sure thing. Coming right up,” she said and walked away.

Maisie’s eyes lit with amusement but she wisely said nothing about what she’d just seen. “Boxty?”

Cal groaned. “Fried potato pancakes. They’re delicious. Make it two plates, Mo!” His voice carried across the place but no one batted an eye, the people inside Midnight Mass were used to it from the Ashby family.

“Sounds good. Bonnie also said this place has the best shepherd’s pie. Maybe I’ll get some to go.”

“Maybe,” I began with a grin and leaned in close to whisper in her ear just as her flowery perfume invaded my nose. I stumbled over my words for a moment and when I recovered my phone vibrated on the table. “Dammit. Hold that thought.”

“Nice and tight,” she whispered softly and I growled at Jasper’s serious face staring back at me on the screen.

“What’s up, Jas?” Those words got Cal’s attention and he leaned forward, straining to hear.

“Crusaders latest shipment came in a day early. They’re unloading now.”

Shit. Play time was over. “I’m on my way.” The call ended and I turned an apologetic look Maisie’s way, ignoring her friend’s snort of disbelief.

“Something’s come up. Business. I need to handle it.”

I stared into her blue eyes, waiting to see if she was a whiner or anything else. I fucking hated a woman who whined like a child.

Disappointment flashed but she nodded and slid backwards from the booth. “Business comes first, at least that’s what all the business books say.”

I committed her wry grin to memory before she slid out of the booth to let me get by.

“Y’all should probably go, then,” she said.

“Right.” I needed to go. It would take a couple of hours for The Crusaders to unload whatever they tried to bring in this time, but between traffic and finding them, I needed every extra second I could get.

“You have my number,” she said as I squeezed out of the booth and stood next to her. “Maybe you’ll use it?”

She flashed a sweet smile and lifted on her toes to press a kiss to my cheek. “Hope to see you around, Virgil.”

She slid back into the booth, her gaze on me another moment before she turned to Bonnie.

“You will,” I told her. “Your lunch is on the house. No worries.” I turned on my heels with my kid brother at my side and left Midnight Mass behind.

“Fuck,” I said, “I’m starving and I only got a few bites.”

Cal let out a loud, booming laugh. “More flirting and less eating,” he said unhelpfully. “I didn’t get much either. Fucking Jasper, the king of terrible timing.”

“I need to head over to Industrial Station. The Crusaders’ shipment came in early. You good to get home on your own?”

“Fuck you, I’m comin’ with.” He glared at me but he wasn’t asking for permission. “I have the equipment we need for proper surveillance, so we can argue here or we can argue on the way to my lab and get the intel we need.”

“Let’s go.” Calvin was a grown ass man, no matter what Sadie thought. If he wanted to help, his tech gadgets could see better than me.

“That was easy. I expected more shit from you.”

I drove the fifteen minutes to one of Cal’s many labs filled with gadgets and devices to surveil and record without being detected. Some days I thought my plaid-wearing baby bro was secretly an evil genius.

“I don’t have a problem with you helping when and where you can, Cal. I’m not Ma.”

“That’s for damn sure.” We spent less than five minutes in his lab, leaving with a black bag and a silver case that I soon learned were filled with the kind of high-tech shit you’d expect in those big budget spy thrillers, not an industrial park in the desert.

It took another twenty minutes to arrive at the train yard on the edge of town.

“Okay, what’s the deal?” Cal asked as we got out of the car and studied the layout. A maze of tracks wound through the busy freight yard, some bearing cars and locomotives waiting to be reconfigured before departure to their next destination. Semis and cranes stood waiting on standby to load and unload their cargo.

I’d been here before and signaled Cal to follow me to a lookout point.

We crossed several tracks and climbed around idle freight cars before we came to a structure in a clearing made of three cargo containers stacked on top of one another to create an office. The metal stairs snaking up the side promised a brutal climb, nevertheless, I said, “Up there and I’ll explain everything.”