Chapter 25 #2
“Are you done taking over the world?” he asked in an attempt to distract himself. “And is that a fucking satellite dish?”
It sure looked like one. A tiny fold-out satellite dish.
“There’s no cell signal here. Another reason hiking is a bad idea. And no, I’m not taking over the world, only a small corner of Amador County. Did you know Roy Leland bribes food critics to write nice things about his products?”
No, but it didn’t entirely surprise Nolan. Roy had no problem with running a smear campaign, so bribery was just a natural evolution of his shady character.
“Do I want to know how you found that out?”
“Probably not.”
But dammit, he was curious. “Can you tell me anyway?”
“As long as you’re not planning to drip all over my picnic blanket.”
“Our picnic blanket, and it’ll dry.”
“Are you going to put on underwear?”
“Not while I’m still wet.”
Alexa rolled her eyes and muttered about butt cooties, but she also moved over to make room, and the trust she was putting in Nolan wasn’t lost on him.
But his ass had barely touched wool when Juno gave a low growl.
Her ears were twitching, her nose pointing east as she sniffed the air.
The hair on the back of Nolan’s neck prickled, and not because of the cool breeze.
Something was out there. Or someone.
Alexa gripped his arm, her fingernails digging into his skin. “Is she going to bite?”
“No. I mean, she’s not going to bite you or me. But she’s heard a sound she doesn’t like,” he said as the dog inched forward. A moment later, Juno shot off into the trees. She considered chasing deer or rabbits beneath her, but she’d scare off any predators.
“Are we talking a mountain lion? A bear?”
“It’s possible, but they’re more active around dawn and dusk.”
Alexa was already packing away her satellite dish. “Okay, let’s go.”
“The only bears around here are black bears, and they tend to avoid humans. So do mountain lions.”
“‘Tend to’? So there’s still a chance they could decide we’re lunch?”
“It’s pretty unlikely.”
“That isn’t a no. Now will you put on underwear? Or do you want to run for your life with your twig and berries flapping around?”
“My twig? Are you kidding me?”
“Log and walnuts, whatever. Put your damn clothes on.”
“Relax, it’s more likely to be a trail biker who doesn’t understand boundaries or those Hayes boys messing around. Juno will bark if there’s a threat.” Nolan reached for his boxer briefs. “I’ll go take a look.”
“You will not.”
“So you’d rather sprint down the mountain for no good reason? Babe, you hate running. You don’t even like walking.”
“I’ll take a look.”
“You? No way. I’m not sending you into potential danger.”
“Aha, so you admit there could be danger.”
“Alexa…”
She rummaged around in her giant backpack, pulling out sunscreen, a box of cookies, a gun, a bottle of sunscreen, spare socks— Wait a second… A gun?
“Is that an actual pistol?”
“Yup.”
“Why the hell is it in your backpack?”
“In case someone tries to kill me.” She used an “isn’t it obvious?” tone. “Shouldn’t you be putting on shoes?”
“Do you even know how to shoot it?”
“I figured I could watch a YouTube tutorial if the need arose.”
“Heaven help us all.”
“Of course I know how to shoot it, dumbass. Jez made me learn.” Alexa pulled out a slim box, flipped the lid, and removed a cross between a tablet and a game controller. “If you want to make yourself useful, screw on the suppressor.”
“Alexa, we’re not shooting anything.”
“Look, if it comes down to the choice between you or a bear, I’m picking you.
I know most women would pick the bear, and up until a couple of months ago, I would have too, but…
” She paused to launch a drone, a fucking drone, and Nolan just stared as it rose into the air.
Other women carried make-up and breath mints.
Alexa brought enough tech to make James Bond weep.
“But then you showed me there’s at least one straight man who isn’t a monster, and— Actually, I guess there are like…
eight, but I’d never consider dating any of the others. ”
Nolan hopped around with one leg in his pants. “Eight? Who are the other seven?”
“Dawson, Zach, Brax, Justin.” She didn’t look away from the screen. “Cole, Rusty, and Priest.”
“Who’s Priest? And what about Greyson?”
“The jury’s out on Grey. He didn’t seem like too much of a douche in Blackstone House, but then he went into politics.” She made a “yikes” face. “And Priest is a guy I work with sometimes. He’s mostly okay, but he does have a bad habit of marrying random women. That’s always fun.”
“How do you marry a random woman?”
“First, you move to Vegas, then you get depressed, then you get blackout drunk, and voila… You wake up with a ring on your finger. He has a whole spare apartment where he stashes the wives until he works out how to get rid of them.”
“When you say ‘get rid’…?”
“Mostly, they only last a few days, a month tops, so he just buys them a car or fancy jewellery and they go away quietly. Sometimes they cry. Sometimes they throw things.”
It struck Nolan that the Blackstone men were the closest thing to male role models that Alexa had ever known. A sobering thought, especially considering Brax ran a chain of sex clubs and Zach liked his women tied to his bed.
“When we get married, it’ll be for keeps.”
Alexa’s head snapped up, her eyes wide. “What?”
“You heard me.”
For years, Nolan had suppressed his feelings, but now he’d given up trying to deny the truth, and the floodgates were open.
Alexa was the only woman he wanted. Perhaps the only woman he’d ever wanted.
She didn’t have to worry about sifting through a parade of douches because he’d always be by her side.
“Fuck! I nearly crashed the damn drone.”
“I thought you knew how to multitask?”
“I do, but not when you’re (a) standing there without a shirt on, and (b) talking about marriage.”
He pulled his rumpled T-shirt over his head. “Better?”
“Not really. Nolan, I’m not marriage material. I’m not even girlfriend material, and I spend every day wondering what I’m doing here.” She angled the screen so he could see. “Are those the Hayes boys?”
“Sure looks like them.” He knelt to see better just as fourteen-year-old Wyatt raised a rifle and fired. “What the fuck?”
Juno began barking in the distance, and now Nolan was worried. Those kids shouldn’t be on his land, and they shouldn’t have a gun, and did they even know what they were shooting at?
“Juno!” he yelled, but the dog didn’t come.
Another shot rang out, and Nolan sprinted toward the sound, but halfway to the trees, he realised he’d left Alexa’s gun behind and paused.
There was no time to go back. The boys wouldn’t shoot him on purpose, he was confident of that, and they probably thought Juno was a deer crashing through the forest. The fact that they were on Nolan’s land at all, never mind taking potshots at animals, was a problem for later.
For now, he just had to get them to stop.
Bang. Another shot.
He ran faster.