Chapter Twenty-Three #2
An expansive game room, complete with billiards and a bar, a card table, and a foosball table, led into the hallway that housed the bedrooms.
At the farthest end, the primary bedroom might as well have been outside for all the windows brightening up the space.
The king-size bed sat in the center of the room, a fireplace in front of it, and windows all around.
Two sitting chairs faced the back of the house, with a view of the mountain beyond.
The cream carpets over the dark hardwood floor were stunning, and the faux fur gray and white blanket on the bed begged to be curled up in.
“Do you want your bags in here?” Hawk asked.
She hesitated and moved to the chest of drawers. “I bet this was his room.”
The furniture was empty.
“Think of it like an Airbnb. You’d never let the best bedroom go unused.”
She peeked into the closet. It, too, was empty.
“Okay.”
Hawk claimed the room beside hers. It also had a view of the mountain.
There were two more guest rooms on that level, one had two sets of bunk beds with queen mattresses on the bottom and a single on top.
“Looks like it’s set up for kids,” Hawk said.
Alex shook her head. “If he expected kids, there would be child-size skis and clothing. This was likely here when he bought the place, and he never switched it out. Anyone looking would think of him as considerate and welcoming.” Alex looked Hawk in the eye. “His own children knew he wasn’t that.”
By the time they were done exploring the house, they’d found a cozy study, brightened by the snow outside the windows and warmed by another fireplace.
This one smaller. Books filled a wall, and a desk sat to the side.
A small home gym had a treadmill, some free weights, and a few exercise mats.
To the side of that, a steam sauna and a door that led outside to a covered patio with a hot tub fit for ten.
Outside the covered area, a firepit was surrounded by Adirondack chairs.
Once they’d explored the house, Alex said to Hawk, “I nominate you to schlep all our stuff upstairs, and I’ll see what the caretakers think I can cook.”
He paused. “You can’t cook?”
“Can you?” she asked with a straight face.
He lifted one finger at a time. “French toast, scrambled eggs, and bacon. And I can grill.”
Well, shit. “That’s two more things than I can manage.”
“Seriously?”
She smiled. “I’m a really good ‘warmer upper.’”
“We didn’t think this through.” The man actually looked worried.
Alex grinned. “I can follow a recipe. I don’t think we’ll starve.”
As soon as the sun fell past the mountain, the temperature outside dropped.
Hawk deposited their bags and then brought in several armloads of firewood. Even though the center of the house proved warm enough, the windows sucked in the cold. He couldn’t even imagine what it would cost to heat the massive space.
Not his circus and not his monkeys, Hawk reminded himself.
Bottom line, this was Alexandrea’s, and she seemed just as clueless about what was there. According to her, neither of her brothers had ventured to any of Aaron Stone’s extra homes.
It all seemed excessive for one man. Even one man with his one wife. Even split between the Stone children, it was over the top.
But it was damn nice.
No denying that.
Hawk took the liberty of piling up logs in the fireplace and springing flames to life.
All the way across the great room, Alex was busy putting something together for dinner.
He paused and took her in.
She wore a soft white oversize sweater with a pair of jeans. Her long straight hair was free of any binding and hung down her back. Alex sipped wine from a jewel-colored wineglass and hummed around the kitchen.
Hawk wasn’t sure how it had happened, but she’d relaxed before their coats were even dry after coming inside.
“The fire is nice,” she told him as he walked toward her.
“Made better by the snow outside.”
“I couldn’t agree more.” She lifted her glass to him. “Wine?”
Hawk shrugged. “Sure.”
Alex had already figured out the space and twisted around to get him a glass.
“Anything I can help with?”
“Tomorrow night for sure. Whoever stocked this place had a casserole ready with instructions.”
“That’s what I smell coming from the oven.”
She handed him a glass of wine. “Chicken, rice, veggies, and some kind of crispy top. We’ll get a couple meals out of it.”
“Did you find any cookbooks?” He took a seat at the island and tasted the wine.
“No. And that’s a problem. I’m going to have to find something online.”
“Are you trying to get your phone back?” he teased.
Alex was busy cutting up vegetables for a salad. “Maybe.” She popped a chunk of a carrot into her mouth.
“This is good.” He lifted his wine in the air.
“I found Dad’s stash. There’s a wine fridge in the pantry.”
“Expensive?”
Alex lifted her shoulders. “I wouldn’t know. Someone took my phone, and I can’t look it up.”
“You’re working every angle.”
She finished with the salad and took a seat beside him. “I’m okay. I was afraid this place would feel stuffy or pretentious. Like him.”
“It can’t be stuffy with this many windows. As for pretentious ... it feels like a model home. A designer one, but a home furnished to sell.”
Alex looked around. “You’re right. None of the art pieces, paintings, or sculptures that are everywhere in the Beverly Hills house.”
“Your father’s taste?”
“So it would seem,” she said quietly.
“No family photos or vacation pictures either.”
“You have to be invested in your kids to have pictures of them. And if he brought a mistress up here, he wouldn’t want pictures of his wife all over the place.” Alex delivered the words so coldly, Hawk winced.
“He sounds like a real charmer.”
She rolled her eyes. “The thing that surprises me most ... no office. Yeah, there’s a writing desk in the library nook, but no office. It makes me wonder if he had ever been here.”
“It was a vacation home.”
Alex moaned. “Much as it pains me to admit this, the one trait I have from him is a work ethic. Or addiction. If he was ever here for more than a weekend, he worked. Guaranteed.”
“Maybe Melissa used this place.”
“She would have left a closet full of clothing.” Alex paused. “Unless she came here after he died and cleared her space out.”
“Wouldn’t you have been told if that happened?” he asked.
“You’d think. But we were so distracted trying to find Max after our father’s death, a lot of things, like Melissa salvaging what she could, would have gone unnoticed.”
That made him wonder what else had gone unnoticed.
By the time they dug into their dinner, they were both on their second glass of wine.
“I’ve spent a whole lot of time talking about me,” Alex said from across the dining table. “I haven’t learned much about you.”
“What do you want to know?” Hawk asked.
“Tell me about your family. You said you had a brother.”
He nodded. “One. No sisters. Rhett and I were a handful from the get-go. I’m sure my parents decided that three of us would be too much to handle.”
Alex smiled at that. “What kind of trouble did you guys get into?”
“The usual. Building something, tearing something up. Climbing up a tree just to fall out of it ... then try it again with a cast.”
Alex laughed.
“In high school, if Rhett cut class, I followed. If I got caught, he’d cover for me. The first punch I ever received was from my brother, the first one I delivered was to my brother.”
Alex’s eyes widened. “You beat each other up?”
He nodded. “If we fought at noon, we were shooting hoops by dinner. Drove my mother crazy.”
“I can’t imagine.”
“We moved around a lot. Outside friendships were formed, but they didn’t last any longer than a year or two.” Hawk took a bite while Alex asked her next question. “We became each other’s best friend.”
“Why? Why did you move around?”
That was a big answer.
He swallowed and dug in again. “We were told it was because our father’s job required it.”
“ Told ?” Her brows lifted in question.
He nodded. “It started right as Rhett was going into middle school. We lived in the suburbs of Chicago. Our parents started fighting, so much that Rhett and I thought a divorce was coming. Instead we moved to a suburb of a suburb in Dallas. Then there was a shithole town outside of El Paso, then it was Nevada. Nevada didn’t last long.
We ended up on the West Coast and, eventually, close to our grandparents on our mother’s side in Orange County. ”
“But this wasn’t a job transfer,” Alex stated.
“No. Dad was running ... hiding. He worked for a textile company in accounting. He and a pissed-off colleague weren’t happy with the profit margin the company was making while the people on the floor were barely making do.”
“He stole from his employer.” Alex put her fork down and picked up the wineglass.
“More like embezzlement,” he said point-blank.
“Mom made it sound like Dad was a modern-day Robin Hood.” Hawk shook his head, took a bite, and talked around it.
“Total bullshit. It may have started off that way, but in the end, he was skimming off the top and upped his own lifestyle. We went from having anything we wanted to practically living out of a suitcase.”
“Holy crap.” Alex had stopped eating to listen. “How did it end?”
“Rhett was in his senior year, I was in my junior year. Dad wanted to bounce again, and Mom put her foot down. She convinced him to turn himself in.”
“He went to jail?” she gasped.
“Yup. And the crazy thing, he was out in eighteen months. Turns out the punishment for corporate embezzlement in Illinois is much more lenient than in places like Texas. An entire childhood of disruption, and he could have just gone to ‘Daddy Camp,’ and we could have led normal lives.”
Alex began to laugh. “Daddy Camp?”
Hawk laughed along with her. “Wise words from my grandfather.”
“And your mother stuck with him?”
Hawk shrugged. “What can I say, she loves the man. As she put it, she ignored the signs that we were living beyond our means. When he told her what was really going on, they fought but ultimately thought it was best to run. Then Rhett started showing interest in joining either the military or some type of law enforcement.”
Alex used her glass to point at him. “That’s why he turned himself in. Oh, the hypocrisy.”
“Irony. Our grandfather put us through college, where we both earned degrees, and we ended up in the same field of law enforcement.”
Alex pushed back in her chair. “Wow.”
“You’d like my dad. He fucked up, no doubt about that. But he’s a decent guy. Never missed a birthday or Christmas.”
“Until he went to ‘Daddy Camp’?”
“Hey, some camps have hiking and canoes. Dad’s had yard time.”
Alex started laughing so hard she had to put her wine down.
It felt good to laugh along with her. Hawk had come to terms with his father’s crimes a long time ago. But seeing Alex’s reaction was a welcome relief. “I half expected you to be overly judgmental about that story.”
“Why?”
“You own a big company. I’m sure there have been cases like this somewhere on the books.”
“I have no doubt. But in my case, it seems someone wants to hurt me, not rip me off.”
Her comment splashed cold water on his face.
Alex slowly stopped laughing.
He leaned forward, reached for her hand that sat on the table. “I’m not going to let anyone get close enough to hurt you, Alex.”
She took a deep breath, blew it out. “You should eat that while it’s still warm. It might be the only good thing you get all week.”
Hawk thought of how she responded when he kissed her and wondered how soon she’d let him repeat his efforts.
The smile that sat behind her eyes while they stared at each other promised that the time between thinking about touching her and actually pulling her close was going to be short-lived.
Hawk lifted the fork to his mouth and said, “We’ll see about that.”