Chapter Fourteen #2
He opened the toolbox to see what he had to work with and then started to remove the packaging on the cameras and sensors. “How long have you known Mrs. Steiner?”
“Since I moved in. About six years,” Alex called out from her bedroom.
“Is she always aware of who is coming and going around here?”
“She’s old and has nothing better to do to occupy her time. What do you think?”
Two thoughts came to mind, first ... Mrs. Steiner was probably a better camera than the one he was holding. And two ... had Alex never brought home a man?
Naw . . . that couldn’t be.
Hawk scanned the code on the camera into his phone, then looked up at the ceiling. “Do you have a step stool?”
“In the kitchen between the fridge and the wall.”
In the kitchen, he found what he was searching for and then paused.
The white cabinets and stainless-steel appliances looked a lot like his. The simple décor was clean, fresh, with white and fawn green tones.
Back in the main room, which had a dining table at one end, he saw much of the same. There wasn’t anything fancy or overstated in the home.
A sofa with an occasional chair across from a television that sat on a cabinet, not mounted on a wall.
There was a picture of Hailey and another one of Alex with her brothers.
A third of her and Nick with a white sand beach and turquoise blue water in the background.
In the beach photograph, she was in a bikini top and shorts, her skin kissed with sun, large-rimmed sunglasses covering her eyes.
Of course , the woman had a killer body.
That was obvious even in a business suit. But the bikini?
Hawk’s mouth went dry.
The sound of Alex’s footsteps had him turning away from the pictures and placing the step stool next to where he wanted to mount a camera.
Alex returned to the room wearing a slim pair of jeans that hugged low on her hips. The belt she wore was more fashion than function, and the button up silk shirt was tucked in just enough to look casual and show off the curves of her body.
Hawk removed the mount kit for the camera, grabbed the tool he needed, and stepped up the small stool. “I find it hard to believe that a woman of your wealth doesn’t have a security system in her home.”
Alex moved to a closet and removed a suitcase. “You’ve seen my security. She has a name.”
He smiled at that. “I think Mrs. Steiner’s crime-fighting days are behind her.”
“That camera isn’t going to stop a criminal.”
“True, but it won’t require glasses to get a good description if someone did break in.”
Hawk stretched his arms over his head and twisted the screwdriver. “You don’t happen to have a drill?”
“Sure.”
Hawk stopped what he was doing and glanced at her.
“It’s right next to my welding kit I use on the weekends.”
She rolled her eyes and went back to the bedroom with the suitcase.
Hawk kept making slow progress with the manual tool.
“I’m more surprised by the fact that you’re still living here,” Hawk said.
“I like here ,” she told him. “It’s the only part of my old life that I still have.” Alex paused. “That and my car.”
“The 2015 Lexus?” That shocked him, too.
Especially considering the cars that filled the massive garage at the Stone Estate.
Ferrari, Porsche, Aston Martin ... a dead man’s cars, Hawk had been told, but much more in tune with what a billionaire would drive.
Not a car old enough to require a smog check annually in the state of California.
“I bought it used from the dealership. It was a loaner. I got a great deal.”
Hawk shook his head. “Have you spent any of the money you inherited from your father’s estate?”
“Sure.” Alex walked back into the room, rolling the suitcase with one hand and holding two large garment bags with the other. “On clothes,” she said as she draped the bags on the sofa. “And shoes.” She tapped the suitcase.
“That’s filled with shoes?” Hawk asked, his hands overhead, his eyes focused on the rolling bag.
She nodded. “I’m fairly certain there is more money in shoes in this bag than I spent on my car.”
“Seriously?”
“When your best friend is a gay fashionista, you can’t get away with shopping at Target anymore.”
Hawk chuckled at the image of Nick at Target.
Alex left the living room and moved into the kitchen. “I was happy with my life before my dad up and died.”
It was strange to hear someone talk so flippantly about a parent dying. It was truly a testimony to how unloved Aaron Stone was by his children.
“I had my job with a competitor and was doing everything in my power to succeed as a fuck you to my father. There were people I hung out with after work. I’d come home to find another plant dead from neglect or overwatering. I was fine.”
Fine ... that was never a word that meant “fine” when said by a woman.
“And before you say it, I know the ‘fuck you, Daddy’ thing is all about childhood trauma.”
At least Alex was self-aware.
Hawk finished with the first camera and moved to the second one. He glanced into the kitchen to find Alex tossing food from the refrigerator into a garbage can.
“Did anyone like your father?”
She peeked from behind the door, then moved back to what she was doing. “If he had any true friends, the kind that were there for him and not his money, I never met them. There were plenty of people at the funeral, all very sorry for our loss . But none came around after the reading of the will.”
“After they realized they weren’t named,” Hawk surmised.
He moved back into the living room and angled the second camera in place, then started the whole process all over again.
“Yeah. Then those phony smiles and insincere words of wanting to be friends and the desire to know me on a personal level started reminding me of the things people would say to Aaron.”
Hawk paused and digested her words. “You kept the car and the apartment to downplay your wealth.”
Alex was quiet in the other room.
Were his words a surprise to her?
“Huh. Maybe.”
The second camera went in a little faster. “I hate to break it to you, Alex. But you carry yourself like a wealthy woman. Anyone would have to be blind to not see it. And this place is a liability to your safety.”
“That’s the bodyguard in you talking,” she said.
He thought about another time, and another woman. “That’s experience talking,” he corrected. “How many times have the media knocked on your door?”
“Too many to count.”
“And those cameras with those reporters, do they show this building? The street?”
Alex walked in from the kitchen with two bags of garbage in her hands. “I’m not here when the media is chasing a story.”
He sneered at her as he pushed in the last screw. “You’re too intelligent to not recognize where I’m going with this.”
She dropped one bag by the front door and reached for the doorknob. “I know. But leaving this condo is the last piece of the puzzle that will then cement my new life in place.”
He stepped off the stool and stopped her from opening the front door.
Her dark, piercing eyes found his and held.
Hawk stood close enough to feel the heat of her frame and smell the scent of some exotic oil, or maybe it was her shampoo.
“Your personal bodyguard is stopping you from taking your trash out and tightening up ... no ... placing security measures in your home. Your old life is a ship that sailed a while ago, Alexandrea. You are dog-paddling to try and catch it while caught in the riptide. You can’t go back.
The sooner you come to terms with that, the longer you’ll live. ”
They were silent then.
Either because she was processing his words or trying to find a weakness in them.
“No one calls me Alexandrea.”
“Did your father call you that?” he asked softly.
“No.”
His gaze drifted to her lips.
The image of kissing her, lowering his mouth to hers, was as intoxicating as a flame was to a moth.
Bad idea.
Those soulful eyes found his again. Damn if he didn’t see a flame flicker behind those lids.
Alex cleared her throat and stepped from the door. Away from him. “I’m going to grab a few more things. How much longer to finish this?”
Hawk turned away. “Twenty minutes.”
“Good.”