Chapter Twenty-Three
Before they took off, she was texting Chase about a call he needed to take from someone in Sydney.
Hawk didn’t even try and understand why the call was so important that it required an entire Wikipedia page of text before Alex finally put her phone down.
He stretched out and watched her struggle with whether she should call Chase and explain more or was clear enough with just a text.
“When was the last time you took a vacation?” he asked.
“October, year before last.”
“Where did you go?”
“Nick and I went to Sedona. We saved to go to an all-inclusive resort spa.”
“So, before Dad died.”
Alex tossed her phone in her open purse and gave up on staring at the screen.
Mission accomplished, he thought.
“Yeah.”
“Expensive?” he asked.
“The spa?”
He nodded.
“Very. But worth it. Daily spa time, organized hikes, yoga classes, organic food. We had a great time.”
“And did you call in to work? When you were on this trip?”
Alex peered closer. “I didn’t own the company.”
“That wasn’t the question.”
She pulled her hair over her shoulder and played with the ends of it. In all the time Hawk had spent with Alex, he could only count on one hand the times she wore her hair down. It was either up in a ponytail, her work style, or up on her head ... the cocktail party style.
He liked it down. He felt a part of her inner circle. Only the chosen saw her like this.
“Is this the way the week is going to be?”
“Depends on how many times you reach for that phone.”
She growled, and he laughed.
“You’re enjoying this entirely too much,” she told him.
He leaned forward and rested his chin on tented fingertips. “I promised your brothers I’d keep you safe and bring you home relaxed. Unplug, Alex. It will all be waiting for you when you get back.”
“I can’t unplug. How will I know if there’s an emergency?”
“Everyone of importance knows they can call me.”
He saw the wheels spinning behind her eyes.
“Tell you what. Give me your phone.”
Her eyes widened, horrified.
“You can check it once a day. Giving it to me will keep you honest.”
The expression on her face was almost comical in her desperation to stay connected.
“Unless you’re too addicted to the drama.”
“I’m not addicted to drama.”
“Prove it.” Hawk reached his hand out, palm up.
“Fine!” She removed the phone from her purse, stared at it, then thrust it toward him.
That had been much easier than he thought it would be.
He made a point of powering the thing off.
Alex all but gulped before looking out the window.
Stepping off the plane and into the cool, crisp air of the Colorado Rockies brought an instant smile to Alex’s face.
It wasn’t that she relished the cold, but it was a welcome relief from what she called her “seventy-degree life.”
No matter where she was, her world was seventy degrees.
In the car on the way to work, the temperature was set somewhere between sixty-eight and seventy degrees.
In the office ... seventy degrees. Same with the house, the grocery store.
And the constant outside temperature in Southern California, in the cities, didn’t fall all that low, and even when it did dip to, say, fifty or forty-five, it wasn’t long before she was back in that seventy degrees.
Bone-chilling thirty, or windchill minus two, was cold. It snapped you awake and forced you to pay attention.
Alex liked it.
Hawk had distracted her on the plane. Asking about her trips with Nick. Quizzing her on how she used to spend her weekends.
Relaying her life schedule brought to light that she was truly a workaholic. And with the fact that she’d reached for her phone more times than she could count since he put it away, Alex had to conclude that she was addicted.
Addiction was proof of not being in control.
That didn’t sit well in her chest.
From the airport, Hawk drove a four-wheel-drive Land Rover that had been dropped off from the cabin. Another possession of her father’s. Alex looked at the odometer. Less than three thousand miles. She wondered if her father drove any of his vehicles.
Even though Hawk assured her that the cabin had been stocked with food, they stopped at a grocery store anyway to pick up a few things that wouldn’t hurt to have more of.
There was snow on the ground, but the roads were clear.
Aspen sat in a valley with the Rockies surrounding the city. A skiing and snowboarding destination, arguably for the rich and famous, meant that it was busy, but not socked with tourists who were priced out.
As they left the city and followed the GPS up into the hills to the Stone cabin, Alex noticed a street filled with shops and restaurants. A place she wanted to explore before the vacation was up.
The first turn off the main road meant more snow on the ground.
The second turn, and the pavement held patches of black ice.
The third, and that ice turned to snow tracked by tires. “I’m glad you’re driving,” she told Hawk.
“You haven’t driven in the snow?” he asked.
“No.”
“You should before we leave.”
“I’m good,” she said.
“For a woman that likes control, I’m shocked.”
Was he laughing at her?
“When would I use this particular skill?”
“The next time you’re up here.”
He had her there.
“Maybe,” she conceded.
The homes spread out, and the trees and snow thickened.
Even though snow drifted on the edges of the road, the evergreens weren’t burdened with tons of the white stuff on every limb.
It was still beautiful. The sky was clear, and the sun did a great job of making the untouched snow glisten like a million diamonds had been tossed in just to add sparkle.
Their final turn was the most snow-covered of them all.
From what Alex could tell, only one, maybe two sets of tire tracks trekked in and out.
They crossed over a bridge with a frozen creek underneath. And then the “cabin” came into view.
Hawk slowed the car, and they both stared.
“Holy shit,” Hawk exclaimed first.
Her thoughts exactly. “I told you he didn’t do anything small.”
They looked at each other and smiled.
From the drive, they could see the cabin was made with logs, or at least that was what the veneer suggested. Two-story and sprawling, with a garage on one side.
A giant porch with wooden columns and short fences wrapped around the front of the home.
Hawk pulled in front of the garage and pressed what seemed to be a garage door opener.
Nothing happened.
Not that it mattered, the keys to the Rover also had the keys to the front door.
They both jumped out of the car and walked to the snow-filled steps to the front door.
Hawk tried several keys into the lock before he found the one that worked.
Inside, the caretakers had turned on the heat. Not quite seventy degrees, but Alex would bet it was close.
Two giant coatracks framed the front door, as well as a cleverly designed boot tray.
The foyer had a two-story vaulted ceiling with massive timber beams that opened into a giant great room. The back of the room was nothing but windows. Cut up only by the material needed to keep the panes of glass in place.
Alex walked in with her jaw hanging open.
The sectional sofa in the living room alone would sit ten.
At one end of the room, a fireplace that could swallow a small child just asked for someone to strike a match.
The stone carried all the way up the wall to the second story of the home.
At the opposite end of the great room was a dining table for at least twelve and an open kitchen with a wood island that appeared to be cut from one massive tree.
Behind her, Hawk whistled. “This is something.”
It was.
She smiled Hawk’s way. “Should we find the garage so we can pull the car in to unload?”
“I like that plan.”
Alex tossed her purse on a sofa table and shrugged out of her coat.
They walked through the living room and down a wide hall to where the garage needed to live.
They found one guest room and then a laundry room.
At the far end of the hall, a mudroom, complete with space for boots, skis, all the winter wear, and cubbies filled with towels, did justice to the size of the house.
It was there they found the door to the garage.
Hawk flipped the switch, and the entire three-car garage lit up.
A two-door Jeep sat on one end, and the Rover appeared to have the majority of the space.
Hawk pressed the button and opened the garage door while Alex moved deeper and kept looking around.
Beside the Jeep was a wall of cabinets. They were mostly empty inside, but they did have bags of some kind of gravel, or maybe it was salt.
The kind that service workers put on pavement to keep the ice from forming .
.. or making it melt. Alex wasn’t sure exactly how that worked.
Hawk drove the Rover inside as Alex opened what she thought would be an exterior door.
It wasn’t.
This was the toy room.
As soon as she heard the door to the car open, she called out, “You’ve got to see this.”
Hawk walked to her side and gaped. “Holy shit.”
There were two snowmobiles and two quads.
Winter and summer fun were considered. One wall had snowboards of varying sizes and colors.
A rack, three levels high, was filled with snow boots .
.. all different sizes. Some still had the price tags on them.
On the other end of that same wall were skis.
A clothing rack had snow jackets and pants; most looked like they’d never been worn.
“It’s like he bought up a store going out of business.”
“Looking at this, you’d think my father liked to entertain.”
“He didn’t?” Hawk asked.
“To be fair, I don’t really know. I’ve never been here before.”
Another garage door opened to the other side of the property to pull out or put away the toys.
They backtracked through the house, this time bringing their luggage with them.
Hawk encouraged her to leave her bags behind while they figured out which rooms they were going to stay in.
A spacious staircase led them to the open second level.