Chapter 3
ALEX
Alex shifted his weight as he stared at his wife. The news that they couldn’t get the divorce she’d asked for was going over like a lead balloon. Those blue eyes were burning a hole through him, and if he didn’t divert the attention somewhere else soon, he’d crumble under the pressure.
“What?” she snapped, her tone sharper than he’d hoped.
His features scrunched. “It’s just a temporary setback.”
“How temporary?” she asked, her eyes wide.
Alex shrugged as he tugged his lips back. “I don’t know. Maybe a week or two?”
Her eyes went wider as she balled her fingers into fists. “Two weeks? Alex, I can’t be here for two weeks.”
“Sparky, I’ve got the most amazing office set up for you. You can totally–”
“I have a fiancé. I can’t just tell him I’ll be here for two weeks because there’s a problem. I just reassured him that there was no problem at all after I dropped this bombshell.”
He knitted his brows. She’d only just told him about their marriage? Why had she kept it secret? The tidbit gave him some hope for their relationship. “You just told him?”
Ava pressed a hand against her forehead. “Yes, I just told him.”
“Why?”
She offered him another icy warning glance.
He held up his hands, knowing her well enough to know when not to push her. “All right. It’s your life. But…I guess you’ll just have to tell him things are a little more complicated than you expected.”
She blew out a long breath as she shook her head. “You know what? It’s fine. I’ll just…go home Monday, and we’ll sign the papers whenever they’re ready.”
“Wellllll,” Alex said, his voice higher than normal as he rubbed the back of his neck.
“What?” she asked.
He puckered his lips as he shrugged. “Like I said, I have a slight sitch, and I really need your help with it.”
She wagged a finger at him. “You said weekend.”
He narrowed his eyes, wincing. He twisted the words he said into a new meaning, hoping it worked. “Did I? I meant we could start on the weekend.”
“Oh, Alex,” she said with a shake of her head. “Are you kidding me?”
“I really need your help, Avs.”
She sucked in a breath as she crossed her arms. “You could have just said.”
“Would you have come if I had?” he asked.
Her expression twisted into a questioning one. “Of course. Alex, I’ll always help you.”
“Well, that’s good, because I’m going to need it.”
“That sounds ominous,” she answered, her brows pinching. “What’s going on?”
“Well–” he started as her phone rang.
“Oh, just a second, I need to get this.” She swiped to accept the call. “Hey, hon…yeah, I made it…no, there was…” She shifted her blue eyes to him. “A slight problem with my room.”
She twisted away from him to continue the conversation.
He narrowed his eyes at the words. Her room? Had she not told her new fiancé she was staying with him?
“No, it’s…I’m still getting settled…Yeah, I was going to call you before I went to dinner…Not yet…As soon as I know more, I’ll let you know.”
He skirted the couch and sank onto the edge of the cushion as she spoke. The reality of her situation became too real for him. She was on the phone with her fiancé and she was expecting the divorce they’d always said they’d get. The divorce he never wanted.
“Okay…yeah…yeah, I love you, too. Bye.” She lowered the phone from her ear and toggled it off before she faced him. “Sorry.”
“Your fiancé?” His voice came out more bitter than even he had expected.
She nodded. “Yes.”
He pressed his lips together, staring down at his clasped hands. “I guess the Blueprint Boss keeps tight tabs on you, huh?”
Ava rolled her eyes as she stalked to the armchair and collapsed onto it. “No, he–”
Her words cut off as her gaze cut to his. “What did you call him?”
He slid his eyes sideways. “Did I call him something?”
“Alex,” she said, her tone a warning.
He leapt from his seat as he stalked back and forth in front of the fireplace behind her. “I may have made a reference to his profession.”
She twisted to face him. “That’s what I thought. But you wouldn’t know his profession because you don’t know him.”
He tugged one corner of his lips back as he furrowed his brows. “I’m certain you mentioned it.”
“I’m certain I haven’t. In fact, I’ve never really mentioned him at all to you. Not his name, definitely not his career.” She stepped in his path, her arms crossed. “What did you do?”
“Nothing,” he answered.
She arched an eyebrow at him. The simple gesture was enough to strike terror into his heart.
That coupled with her black belt in Jiu-Jitsu was enough to make him spill everything.
“I may have hacked your phone, scanned your texts to find him, noted his number, hacked his phone to get his info, and then ran it through various agencies for any hits.”
Her eyes went wide. “Alex!”
“What?” he shot back. “He could be a killer, Avs.”
“He’s not a killer,” she answered.
“Well, we know that now, but we didn’t until I hacked the FBI which you would think would get harder as I get older yet…it doesn’t.” He grabbed his laptop from the coffee table and popped it open.
A picture of her fiancé, Chris Maxwell, filled half the screen along with a report on the side.
“Did you know that he has an outstanding parking ticket from two years ago?” Alex poked a finger at the screen next to the crime.
Ava offered him an unimpressed stare as she closed the laptop. “Very cute, Ace. Very cute.”
“What kind of maniac doesn’t pay their parking tickets? And why did he have one anyway? What was he doing there that required him to park illegally? All questions we do not have answers to, Sparky.”
“And we don’t need them. His meter probably ran out.”
“Did it? Or was he committing another more heinous crime while he double-parked?”
She heaved a sigh and shook her head. “We’re not discussing this. You shouldn’t have hacked Chris’s phone or his criminal record.”
“We had to know,” Alex answered.
“One of us already knew,” she retorted.
He cocked his head. “You can’t hack the FBI. You’re impressive, Avs, but not that impressive.”
“I meant that I know because I know Chris.”
Alex set the laptop on the coffee table with a shake of his head. “You may think you know the Pillar Pro, but you didn’t know about that parking ticket.”
“Point taken,” she said as she sank onto the couch. “I’ll confront him right away about it…right after I tell him my quick trip to get a divorce is now going to take weeks.”
Alex plopped onto the couch next to her. “Maybe don’t say it that way…just a suggestion.”
“I don’t get it, Ace. What is the problem?”
He shifted on the cushion with a frown. “I don’t know. Some…financial anomalies at StoneCorp. I don’t know what it all means.”
“Financial anomalies?” she questioned.
He shook his head, leaning back into the cushions. “Accounts that now show different values on the paper files than they do on the electronic ones. Projects that never existed but show up as expenses now.”
She knitted her brows at the words. “No one in your accounting department knows about this?”
He leapt from his seat, pacing the floor again as he rubbed the back of his neck. “Most of this predates them. It’s years’ worth.”
She twisted to face him. “Years? How far back does this go?”
“A decade. We’re still digging into the files. But you have experience with forensic accounting. So, you could help me track this all down, right?”
“Alex, I did a few investigations back in college for my internship. It’s been years at this point.”
“But you’ll remember.” He leaned his forearms on the back of the couch. “You’ll help me, right?”
She eyed him, sucking in a deep breath. “Yes.”
“Excellent. We’ll go into the office tomorrow, and you can dig into the files.”
“Okay,” she said with a nod.
“Thank you, Avs.” He grabbed her hand as he blew out a long breath.
“Seriously? Ace, all you had to do was ask. You didn’t have to lure me out here with the divorce stuff.”
He winced as his fingers intertwined with hers. “Yeah, that’s not totally fake, but let’s not deal with that now. Let’s see where we stand with this investigation.”
She settled back into the pillows. “All right.”
“Sorry, you may have to pinch hit with Build-a-Chris until we assess the situation.”
She sucked in a breath as he climbed over the back of the couch to slide onto the cushions next to her. “I’ll handle it.”
“So, why didn’t you tell your Beam-Beau about our situation?”
Her eyebrows pinched as she stared at the sea undulating outside as the moon rose. “I don’t know.”
“That sounds…interesting.” Interesting was hardly the word.
Ava rarely did things without a good reason.
She hadn’t told her fiancé about their marriage.
And she’d lied to him when he’d called. Why was she hiding information from him?
Was she less sure of their relationship than the ring on her finger suggested? Or was there something else?
She leaned closer to him, making the corner of his lips tug up as he let his arm drape over the back of the couch behind her.
“It’s good to have you back, Avs,” he said, his voice soft.
“It’s good to be back, Ace.” She twisted to stare up at him through her eyelashes with a slight smile.
It reminded him of old times. They’d been able to pick up where they left off. They always had been able to. No matter how much time or distance was between them, they connected on a deeper level.
“Hey, what do you say to a little old-school game night?”
The corners of her lips turned up, and she raised her eyebrows. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. Do you want me to prove I can still beat you in Mario Kart or do you want to team up on Super Mario Three?”
“Mmm, Mario Three,” she answered as he grinned at her.
“You got it.” He grabbed his remote and switched on the television over the fireplace before he leapt from his seat.
“Where are you going?” she called.
“I got orange soda and cheese puffs.”
“No,” she said, her voice teasing as she scrambled to her feet to follow him. “You’re not serious.”
“I’m totes serious, babe,” he answered as he backed his way to the modern kitchen. “You didn’t think I’d forgotten, did you?”
“I didn’t expect you to actually do our college-era junk food run.”
He grabbed the barrel of cheese puffs from his cupboard before he tugged open the fridge. “I didn’t. I’ve got people for that now.” He twisted to offer her a wink.
“Right. Hey, mind if I change before we settle in?”
“Not at all. Some of your stuff’s still here if you want to rock it completely retro.”
She shot him a grin before she hurried from the kitchen. He pulled two orange sodas from the fridge, grabbed the bucket of cheese balls, and made his way back to the living room.
After he set the drinks and snacks on the floor, he shoved the coffee table out of the way. He tugged the cushions from the couch and scattered them on the floor.
He stepped back to admire his setup before he dug the old-school controllers from the storage cupboard. With the game loaded, he cranked up the volume and plopped onto one of the pillows.
Ava appeared a few minutes later in her unicorn onesie.
“I see you went old school.”
“I did,” she said with a grin as she tugged a controller from his hand and dropped onto a cushion next to him. “Dibs on first play.”
“Ouch, I am getting slow,” he said as she toggled into the game and selected her character.
She shot him a coy grin as the first world loaded, and she smashed through it like she’d played the game yesterday.
As she deftly navigated through the pixelated world on the screen, Alex kept his eyes trained on her instead of the screen, a mix of admiration and wistfulness coursing through him.
She still had the same concentration face, the same crease between her eyebrows, and slight puckering of her lips. The sound of button mashing filled the room along with something more–a mix of regret and longing that tugged at his heart.
“You haven’t lost your edge at all,” he said, cracking open both sodas and passing one to her as she finished up another round.
He grinned at her as he tilted the bottle to her. “To old times.”
She clinked her bottle against his. “To old times and beating this entire game before we go to bed.”
The sound of their laughter echoed through the room, a reminder of less complicated moments.
Yes, it was just like old times with her. Like time hadn’t even passed. They were so close once before. And they could be again. They were soul mates.
Would she realize that before they’d tracked down the issue in his financials or would he have to make the hard sell later? Either way, he couldn’t let her divorce him. He could not lose Ava Collins to Chris Maxwell. Or to anyone.