Page 26 of Lockout

“Lockout, that’s a serious breach of privacy. Not to mention illegal-”

“It’s not illegal to run a background check,” he said, interrupting me.

“It is the way Riptide does it,” I shot back. He looked amused again, but didn’t argue with me.

He leaned forward, his forearms on the desk. “We’ll figure out the job situation after all this is over, Keely.”

“That’s so sweet of you,” I said with a little shake of my head. “We’ll worry about it then.” What I wasn’t saying was that I didn’t know if there was anything to be done. Joe wasn’t kidding around. He was going to do his best to get me blacklisted. But I didn’t want to think about that right now.

“In the meantime, if you need anything,” Lock said, “just let me know.”

“Okay,” I told him with a soft smile. He was so nice. It was shocking that he didn’t have a flock of women hounding him to make them his. Hell, he could probably have multiple women if he wanted to.

“I mean it, Keely,” he warned. “Money? No problem. If anyone starts hassling you, let me know. Anything.”

“Who’s going to hassle me while I’m living here?” I asked. I didn’t comment about the money. I had a pretty good savings tucked away, just in case something like this ever happened. I’d always been the type to save and prepare for the worst. It was going to benefit me now. But even if I didn’t, I wasn’t about to take Lockout’s money.

“Those dickhead bosses of yours,” he suggested. “The FBI. Whoever.”

“Okay, Lock,” I said with a grin. He was going into full-blown protection mode. I could tell because he always got this sexy tic in his jaw whenever he started to get worked up about something. And every time he did, it always made this twisted little piece of me want to poke at him. He was so easy to rile up in this state.

Normally, he had the patience of a saint. Living with Butcher and Toxic and no one being murdered—well at least not the guys living here—was a testament to that. But the few times I’d seen him spooled up, I’d taken the opportunity to make things worse for him. Which was kind of a jerk move, but I couldn’t seem to help myself.

His heavy sigh pulled me out of my thoughts. “I’m serious, Woman.”

“And I’m agreeing, Man,” I shot back, but I was fighting to keep from grinning again.

He raised his hand, pointing his finger at me. “If you think this is-” He was interrupted by the phone on his desk.

I bit the insides of my lips because if I kept laughing at him he was going to lose his shit. I watched as he lifted the phone, then hit the speaker button.

“Yeah?”

“Hey, Boss. That new toy just came in.”

“Thattoy,”he said as he scowled down at the phone, “is a Sikorsky S-76, Matt.”

“It’s a beaut. Where did you find it? I’m going to assume you didn’t pay the seven-to-ten-million-dollar price tag for it?”

I nearly swallowed my tongue. My jaw was hanging open because while I knew Lock had a business outside of what the club did, I never even thought about what his net worth might be.

But holy crap!

“Paid a bit less than that,” he said, his tone amused. “You just need to know where to look.”

“Yeah, sure. You going to come test it out?”

He was back to studying me. I motioned toward the door and mouthed,I can go.

“I’ll be there in a couple hours to take it for a spin,” he told him.

As soon as he hung up the phone, I asked, “What’s a Sikorsky S-76?” Not that it was any of my business, but I was curious and I’d left my phone upstairs so I couldn’t look it up myself.

“It’s a helicopter.”

“Don’t you already have a helicopter?” I asked.

“Yeah. This one is going to be used for tours of the Grand Canyon. It’s bigger than the one I have.”