Chapter Fourteen
The entire building was scared to death of her.
That was Hawk’s impression when he opened the door to his car and Alex slid in.
“That was painful,” she said while pulling the seat belt across her lap.
Hawk took his place behind the wheel and donned his sunglasses before pulling away from the building. “I couldn’t agree more. But I think we may be talking about two different things.”
“What are you talking about?”
He glanced over his shoulder and pulled away from the front of the building.
“No, no. Ladies first.”
“Okay, I’ll bite. All the stares and sideway glances with you as my shadow,” she said.
“You thought they were looking at me?” he asked.
“They were.”
Hawk eased onto the street.
“No, Alex, they weren’t. A few, maybe ... but those stares were directed at you.”
From the upper management to the cleaning staff, there wasn’t one warm bone in the building when it came to Alexandrea Stone.
“I know when people are looking at me.”
“You feel it, but you’re not aware who is doing the looking. It’s a bad habit that could stand breaking.”
“I’m the boss, I command attention by my name alone,” she defended.
“Isn’t Chase the boss, too?”
“Yes.”
“Yet he wasn’t the one with daggers being tossed at him. It’s my job to identify the people in that building that see you as a threat, and lady ... I lost count by the fourth floor.”
She shifted in her seat. “It was your presence.”
“If that’s what you want to believe.” She’d demanded the same attention at the Bakshai event.
Open stares, quick change in focus when she turned in someone’s direction.
Tense smiles and even more stressful laughs and attempts at conversation.
It was painful for Hawk to witness. In the short time he’d known Alex, he’d seen her in control, out of control and scared, angry, and vulnerable.
Then there was what he’d just traveled through over the last seven hours.
The mask she wore in the building was wholly different than what she was around her family. It was as if she were stepping onstage when the office doors opened and off when she exited.
“I need to stop by my place and pick up some of my things.”
Hawk detoured past the freeway that would take them back to the estate and headed in the opposite direction.
He opened up the navigation on his phone and pressed her address, which was already preprogrammed.
“You know where I live.” It wasn’t a question.
“Yup.”
“Why doesn’t that surprise me?”
He didn’t answer. “Did you and Chase make any changes when you took over the company?”
“Not changes. We stopped the excessive spending, the acquisition of the Starfield properties.”
“No layoffs?”
“No.”
During the meeting with Human Resources, they both learned that Fitzpatrick had requested and obtained a list of the internal employees that had been let go in the past six months. There weren’t that many, and those that were in the unemployment line hadn’t been with the company for long.
“Why the animosity, then? Who fed them that fear?”
“A CEO of a company dies, and everyone worries about their jobs. That’s natural.”
“But the fear doesn’t apply to Chase,” he mused.
“I think it’s because I was the face they saw for several months in the beginning.
He and Piper spent quite a bit of time searching for Max.
Then Chase brought his entire operation of CMS to the third floor, where his staff is much closer and comfortable with him.
And he married Piper. Someone who was the buffer to our father and likely much more approachable. ”
That made sense. “More human.”
She shot him a look over her shoulder. “I’m not human?”
“I didn’t say that.”
She sighed. “You didn’t. Truth is, I don’t know exactly why I’m such an enigma. I had friends at Regent.”
“Are they still your friends?”
Alex blinked a few times.
He took that as a no.
“Everyone on my team at Regent signed nondisclosures. My guess is people would worry for their jobs if they continued happy hour with me.”
Hawk couldn’t see her knocking back drinks at happy hour, not after what he’d just witnessed in her office building.
He pulled into the parking lot of a home improvement store.
“What are we doing here?”
“I need a few things for your condo.”
Dressed in suits, and Alex in her three-inch heels, they turned several heads as they walked a store filled with construction workers and do-it-yourselfers.
From Hawk’s vantage point, Alex noticed none of the stares.
Hawk loaded up a cart with everything he needed from the home security section. “Do you have screwdrivers, a basic tool kit at home?”
“Very basic, but yes. I made Chase step up when I needed stuff done.”
They started for the register. “You two are close.”
“We are. We both had an overwhelming desire to make our mom happy after the divorce. I know that sounds strange. Most kids only worry about themselves, but we felt how unhappy she was. We weren’t about to make that harder.”
“She loved your father?”
“I assume so, in the beginning. Then she felt guilty for walking away. We still catch her apologizing for the actions of our father. The man is dead, and she still says ‘I’m sorry’ for him. Such a screwed-up thing women do.”
“Gaylord doesn’t seem to pull that personality from her,” Hawk said.
Alex’s smile really did light up her face. “No, he’s good. I’m glad they found each other. She deserves to be happy.”
They stepped up to the self-serve register and scanned in the items.
Hawk reached for his wallet.
Alex stopped him. “It’s for my place.”
He opened his lips to argue, then stepped back. It was her home, and she was a client, not a woman ... not a woman he was seeing, in any event.
Those thoughts rolled around in his head while they walked out of the store.
The complex Alex lived in was three stories. She lived on the top one.
The two-bedroom condo shared a hallway with several other units. As Chase had told Hawk, the security wasn’t existent, and neither was the privacy.
They reached her door. Hawk lifted his palm.
It took her a second, but she sighed and handed him her keys.
“This will get easier,” he said.
The door across the hall opened, and Hawk immediately tensed, stopped with the lock, and stepped in front of Alex. His hand moved to the firearm under his jacket.
A white-haired lady, all of four foot eleven and likely north of her eightieth birthday, poked her head into the hall.
Alex placed a hand on his arm. “Easy, tiger. She isn’t packing.”
“Alexandrea?” the woman asked, squinting her eyes and fumbling with a pair of glasses. “Is that you?”
Alex stepped around Hawk. “Yes, Mrs. Steiner.”
The woman managed to place the glasses on her nose and smiled up at Alex. “I was starting to worry. I saw you on the news again. Did someone blow up your office?”
“No. Nothing that dramatic. It was all a false alarm.” Alex smiled at the older woman and reached for her frail hands.
Mrs. Steiner made a ticking sound and kept shaking her head. Or maybe the ticking and the shaking were from some kind of medical condition.
“When you didn’t come home—”
“I was with my niece. My brother and his wife needed some time away.”
Hawk was surprised to hear the lie roll off her tongue with ease.
“Ahh, that’s nice of you.”
It was then Mrs. Steiner took notice of Hawk.
The older woman released her hands from Alex’s and smoothed her bed-brushed hair with one. Her smile stretched from ear to ear. “Who is this young man?”
Alex looked up.
Their eyes met. And the unspoken communication was clear. Go along with whatever she said next.
“A friend .” She tilted her head, her eyes wide.
“Like your friend Nicholas?”
Hawk cleared his throat.
Alex’s eyes narrowed, and a sly smile took form.
“No,” Hawk quickly said, not giving her the opportunity to change his sexuality in a white lie to save the old woman from knowing he was a bodyguard.
Mrs. Steiner leaned back a little then and did a full body scan behind her thick glasses. Her smile was slower.
“I’m Hawk,” he introduced himself.
“Nice to meet you, Hawk.” Again, her eyes moved up and down him. “I was starting to think she was a lesbian,” Mrs. Steiner said in a hoarse whisper.
Alex sucked in a breath. Her cheeks flushed.
Hawk laughed.
“Mrs. Steiner. Are you trying to embarrass me?”
The old woman patted Alex’s shoulder. “No, honey. I just ... well, I don’t see much company for you. Pretty girl like you should have more company.”
She glanced at Hawk.
He nodded behind a smile he was poorly attempting to stifle.
“I’m glad you’re all right. You usually tell me when you’re going away,” Mrs. Steiner said, changing the subject.
Alex cleared her throat. “I won’t be home much the next few weeks. Can you keep an eye out for me?”
“Don’t I always?” Mrs. Steiner looked up at Hawk again. “I’ll leave you kids to ... whatever.”
Alex leaned over and kissed the woman’s cheek. “Call me if you need anything. Do you have all your medicine?”
“Yes.”
“Did you take your saltshaker off the table like the doctor said?” Alex asked.
“My blood pressure is fine. Don’t worry about me.” She shooed them away. “Go. It was nice meeting you, young man.”
“Likewise,” Hawk told her.
A few moments later, they stood behind the closed door of Alex’s place.
Hawk started to laugh.
“Don’t,” Alex said, lifting a hand in the air. “She’s old and very imaginative.”
“I didn’t say anything.” But Mrs. Steiner’s lesbian comment said everything.
“Good.”
Alex moved into the modest living room and around the corner to a kitchen. When she emerged again, she held a toolbox.
A lime-green toolbox.
“That’s very . . . bright.”
“You can thank Nick.”
He took the box, and Alex walked to a hall.
“Wait.” He stopped her.
She hesitated.
After setting the box down, he walked in front of her and checked the remaining rooms.
No one lurked.
“All clear?” she teased.
Amusement bubbled under his chest when she walked out of the room. “Lesbian,” he whispered.
“I heard that!”
Hawk laughed louder.