Silent As A Stone: Heart of Stone Series #10

by K. M. Scott

  For good reason, of course. I was there trying to get to see his daughter. The fact that I was failing epically at that didn’t change the reality of what I wanted to do.

  So I’d graduated from stalking Diana to hiding from her father all in one afternoon. Not exactly my most auspicious outing.

  Left with few choices and none of them good, I figured my best move was to get the hell out of there and try my delivery guy idea another day. I’d hoped to have more success that afternoon, but absent Diana texting me her number in the next thirty seconds before I walked out the Richmont’s front doors, I’d have to settle for at least having a plan for my next attempt to see her.

  Turning around, I walked away from my hiding spot near the pillar in the lobby and took two steps toward the door before Summer appeared on her way out. Caught without anywhere to hide, I hurried myself into a nearby chair and sat down with my back to her. Never before in my life had I had a plan go so horribly wrong. If Ethan showed up and sat down next to me, I wouldn’t have been shocked in the least considering how this had turned out.

  Thankfully, that didn’t happen because I had no answer for the obvious question he’d ask of why the hell I was lounging out in the Richmont hotel lobby. Still wired from the excessive caffeinating I’d done to myself, I pressed my hands to my knees to get them to stop shaking as I lowered my head and watched Summer walk out the front door.

  One down. One to go. Now I just had to come up with a way to get out of there without Diana’s father seeing me. Or the doorman asking me why the hell I was acting like some coked up jackass. Or the desk clerk, who had noticed me lingering about, inquiring what business I had there since I didn’t seem to be meeting anyone and I didn’t appear to be a guest at the hotel.

  Or maybe way too much coffee was just making me nervous and paranoid.

  Whatever was happening, I needed to get the hell out of that hotel lobby before Tristan Stone appeared and there’d be no charming him. He’d been less than thrilled with his son hanging out with me in high school, and my choice of career had done nothing to make him like me any more. Owner of a nightclub didn’t seem to rank high on his list of reputable jobs. The fact that he’d been the owner of a nightclub years ago when he and Nina met didn’t seem to change his opinion of me for the better either.

  So coincidentally running into him was the last thing I wanted to do.

  Slowly, I stood and looked around to see if the coast was clear. A number of families milled about in the lobby, their children running around as one parent dealt with the check-in process while another parent chased after the kids. An elderly couple walked through the lobby hand-in-hand toward the bank of elevators, and a few stray single men and women sat reading or doing work in an area set aside from the main area near the front desk.

  If I could blend in with any of them, I might be able to escape without attracting too much notice. I began walking toward the front door, but a second later, I sat back down and lifted a magazine from one of the tables in front of me to hide my face after seeing Nina Stone walk through the front doors and make a beeline toward the hallway her husband had disappeared into.

  Didn’t any of these people work, or did they just gather at Diana’s room every day?

  Frustrated, I pretended to read a few lines of some magazine about modern art and quickly tossed the magazine back onto the table once I didn’t see Nina anymore. Never in my life had I had to dodge so many people in one day. Hollywood stars didn’t have to avoid people as much I had this afternoon.

  I silently prayed to any god who wanted to help to keep the Stones out of the lobby long enough for me to get myself out of the building and once again looked around to see if anyone I knew was nearby. For what seemed like the tenth time, I took a step toward the door. Then I took another.

  So far, so good. Nobody looked at me oddly, as if they knew what I’d been up to there, and by the time I was about ten feet from the front door, I believed I was in the clear.

  The afternoon had been nothing but failure, but at least I hadn’t been caught and had to stammer out a poorly thought out excuse for one of Diana’s parents.

  Smiling at the doorman as I approached him, I felt the heat from the air outside rush toward me. I gave him a nod, which he returned as one of the mothers yelled someone’s name, but just as I started through the doorway, he clamped his hand down on my arm.

  “I think someone wants you, sir.”

  I shook my head, sure the name I’d heard wasn’t mine. “I think they want someone else.”

  He didn’t let go of my arm, though, and for a moment, I wondered if he’d been watching me the whole time I was there and just wanted to detain me until the cops showed up. Not that I had broken any laws, unless loitering in the Richmont lobby was a crime. Tristan Stone did have a hell of a lot of pull in this town.

  As my mind kicked into overdrive and thoughts of him seeing me and immediately calling the police raced through my brain, I heard someone behind me say, “Thanks, Frankie.”

  Then, in the next second, a woman said, “I almost didn’t catch you. Are you leaving?”

  I turned around and there stood Diana smiling at me. Not knowing what to say, I mumbled, “I was just…you know how it is. Heat. Just trying to cool off. It’s hot for May, isn’t it? Really hot.”

  Nothing I said made any sense. I’d be lucky if Frankie or Tristan didn’t call the mental hospital to have me taken away to have my head examined with the way I was talking gibberish.

  “I know. It’s pretty hot out there today. I think I might have gotten a little sunburn on my nose,” Diana said as she touched her cheek. “I was just coming out to see where my mother went and I saw you.”

  “Yeah. Just popped in. You know, for a second. Cool off. Yeah,” I said as Frankie loosened his hold on my arm.

  More gibberish. For a man who had been known to sweet talk women into bed with little effort, I suddenly seemed incapable of speaking like a normal human being.

  “Would you like to have a drink and hang out for a little while?” she asked shyly, her words full of an innocence I hadn’t heard in ages from a woman. With anyone else, the question would have been an invitation for sex, but I had a feeling she meant just what she asked—that she wanted to have a drink and hang out.

  “Yeah, that sounds great,” I said as casually as I could, reeling from how bizarre this afternoon had been and how great it had turned out.

  She beamed a smile and nodded. “Great! We can go to the lounge.”

  Chapter Seven

  Diana

  Even though I’d lived in the Richmont for years, I’d only been to the lounge twice, and those times were with Summer. We used it as sort of a practice spot to get me used to being around people. Unfortunately, I couldn’t muster up the courage to do anything during nighttime when the lounge got busy, so there had never been more than a handful of people around when we went there.

  On the positive side, it tended to be dimly lit, which would make talking to Cole easier. And I found the seats comfortable the two times I sat in them.

  Cole and I walked through the lobby toward the back of the hotel where the lounge was located. With each step, I felt like every eye in the place stared holes through me. Silently, I told myself this wasn’t true. Likely, no one bothered to notice me at all. My anxiety always liked to play tricks on me at times like this.

  Not that there had been a single time when I’d gone to the lounge or anywhere else with a man since I moved into the hotel, so I had no real reference as to what a time like this should feel like. All I knew was with every moment that passed by, my palms grew sweatier and my insides began to shake. I couldn’t imagine what this would be like with someone brand new. At least I knew Cole.

  Or used to.

  Ten years was a long time. He’d changed since high school. A little taller and a little more muscular, he was a man now compared to the boy he’d been then.

  Oh, God. A man.

  I hadn’t been with a
man since college. Eight years ago. The only men I ever spent any time around were my father and Ethan, and they didn’t count. I’d tried online dating when Summer convinced me it was fun, but it turned out to be nothing but disappointment. All the men I met wanted naked pictures of me, and when I didn’t send them, they vanished before I could ever meet them in person. I gave up after two weeks.

  Since then, I’d worked on trying to meet people’s glances and not look away. Being afraid of virtually everything made that far more challenging than anyone could understand. I did it, and sometimes I added a smile and got one in return, but in the grand scheme of things, I hadn’t done anything to meet anyone.

  That’s why when I saw Cole standing there with the Richmont doorman I took a chance and yelled for Frankie to stop him before he left. Trying out my new techniques of meeting people probably didn’t count as much with an ex, but I had to start somewhere.

  “Do you hang out here a lot?” he asked as we approached the frosted glass doors that led to the lounge.

  I wondered for a split second if I should lie and pretend I did spend a lot of time there. It sounded strange for someone who’d lived in a hotel for years to say she never went to the single place in the building intended for socializing.

  But I’d never been a very good liar and would likely get tripped up on some small detail, so I simply shook my head and smiled. If Cole wanted to be friends or anything else again, he’d soon realize strange described me in so many ways I practically owned that word.

  He smiled back at me, and a memory from one warm spring night toward the end of our time together all those years ago flashed through my mind. Cole had been so different with me than he was whenever Ethan was around. With me, he didn’t say much, preferring to listen to me talk about school and any other topic that popped into my head. When he and my brother were around one another, he became just another teenage boy, his behavior crass and graphic and so unlike the person who spent time alone with me. I never understood why he changed so much when he got around me, but it didn’t matter. I liked the quieter version of him.

  Summer had warned me earlier when I confided we’d dated in high school that the person I knew back then didn’t exist anymore. I got the feeling she wasn’t a big fan of Cole’s. Other than saying he was good looking and agreeing to believe me when I swore he wasn’t awful to me, she had nothing nice to say about him. Every story she had involving the man I was about to spend time with centered on easy women and too much drinking.

  I’d been warned, but still when I saw him standing in the door with Frankie, I couldn’t stop myself. Now I’d see if that had been a mistake.

  Cole pointed to a table in the corner away from the bar and made his way there as I followed. We sat down, and I expected us to begin talking, but a look of disgust came over his face. Even in the dim light of the lounge, I saw now that he was alone with me, he regretted it.

  I opened my mouth to tell him this was a mistake, but he shook his head and said, “I’m sorry. I don’t know my manners sometimes. I should have pulled out your chair for you, Diana.”

  So he was disgusted by that and not by the way I looked? I didn’t know what to say, so I shrugged and shook my head. “It’s fine. Really.”

  “No, it’s not. I would have never forgotten that back in high school. My father would have found a way to tunnel out of prison and beat some manners into me if he saw me act like that then.”

  The mention of his father brought back the memory of him being taken away that day they arrested him. My friends and I had watched from down the road as Anthony Knight was led out of his home in handcuffs like a common criminal. I saw Cole and his brothers watching from the huge bay window in their living room and hated how sad he looked. I didn’t know what had happened or what his father had done until later when he told me the story, but at that moment as I clutched my school books close to my chest and stared in rapt attention at the only person I’d ever seen taken away by the police, all I could think about was how devastating it must be to see your father treated that way.

  Cole forced a smile and quickly changed the subject. Looking around at the lounge, he said, “This is nice, but I wouldn’t expect anything less. It is a Tristan Stone hotel, after all.”

  “I doubt my father has ever stepped foot in here, to be honest. And if Tressa heard you call the Richmont hotel chain my father’s, she’d be the first person to set you straight.”

  “Oh, that’s right,” he said, nodding. “Tressa was made COO of the chain last year. Well, that explains the posh feel in here even more. This place screams Tressa Stone.”

  A quick glance at the black leather booths and chairs and pendant lighting above each table that reminded me of some high fashion design with sharp angles and muted pale green glass told anyone who wondered that the person responsible for the lounge’s design loved to be unique. That certainly was my sister. I would have never considered green glass shades for the lighting in here, but it was so Tressa.

  “Stark, unique, and an attention-getter. Just like her,” I said quietly, suddenly feeling like I paled in comparison and she wasn’t even nearby.

  “What do you want to drink?” Cole asked, standing to head to the bar.

  “White wine, please.”

  He strode off to get our drinks while I sat looking around at my sister’s design choices and wishing anything like them would ever occur to me. Tressa never failed to be bold. I wouldn’t know bold if it came up and bit me, which since it was bold likely would.

  Thankfully, the bartender didn’t have more than one or two other customers, so Cole returned quickly before I could get lost in my head and all my insecurities. Placing the glass of white wine down in front of me, he sat down in his seat and raised his bottle of beer.

  “To old times.”

  As I took a sip of wine, I wondered if he thought of our past like I did. Probably not. He’d changed so much that he likely looked back on those nights sneaking around as quaint or childish.

  He didn’t speak for a long time, which only made my insecurities kick into overdrive. A man about my father’s age dressed in a three-piece grey suit distracted me for a moment, but when I turned my attention back to Cole, something had changed in his expression. Now he looked uncomfortable sitting there with me.

  “Is something wrong?” I asked, almost certain I didn’t want to hear his answer.

  He shook his head no but lifted the small menu from between the salt and pepper shakers on the table and buried his face in it. Was he hiding?

  “If you didn’t want to be seen with me, you didn’t have to say yes when I asked you for a drink.”

  Cole turned his body to watch the man who’d just walked into the lounge and then turned back to face me. Lowering the menu slowly, he whispered, “It’s not that. Really.”

  Whatever the problem was, I’d made a mistake. Summer had been right. Cole wasn’t the person I knew all those years ago. I stood up to leave without saying another word, but he grabbed me by the arm, surprising me.

  “What?”

  “I thought that man was your father. If he or Ethan see us here together, I have a feeling I’d end up in the hospital with two broken legs.”

  The way he talked about us having an innocent drink infuriated me. “I’m a grown woman, Cole. My family might think they should make decisions for me, but they don’t. For example, I’m moving out of the hotel soon. Did you know that?”

  His dark brown eyes opened wide in what looked like shock at what I said. “No, I didn’t. I don’t really know much about you at all anymore. But I’d like to.”

  “You would?”

  “Yeah.”

  Happy to hear that, I sat back down with him and took another sip of my drink. “I’d like that.”

  But then we fell back into silence, like neither of us knew what to say after admitting we wanted to know more about the people we’d become over the last decade. Unsure what to say, I fell back on our past and asked, “Do you remember th
e first time we kissed after that baseball game? I don’t think I’ve ever been more surprised in my life. It was a happy surprise, but definitely a surprise.”

  Cole smiled and shook his head. “I must have been a madman back then. If Ethan or your father ever found out, they would have ripped me limb from limb. I was taking my life in my hands, but I’m glad I did.”

  Was he exaggerating or did my brother and father really terrorize males back then? As I wondered about that, Cole added, “I didn’t mean anything bad by that.”

  “No, it’s okay. I was just thinking that maybe the men in my family were the reason why I didn’t have many dates in high school. Then again, I was pretty nerdy and spent most of my time studying, so that didn’t help, I’m sure.”

  Cole laughed. “Trust me. Guys never got past thinking about liking you. Most guys, at least. As soon as Ethan even got a hint that someone was checking you out, he let the guy know that wasn’t going to fly. That’s why I knew we had to keep it a secret or he’d put an end to it.”

  “Why was he like that back then?” I wondered aloud.

  “It’s not just back then. I have a feeling if he saw us sitting here, I’d get to feel his fist on my jaw again today.”

  “Again?” Had he done that recently because he saw Cole talking to me at Tressa and Killian’s party?

  Rubbing his jawline, he nodded. “Yeah. Again. I made the mistake one time of mentioning you in a carnal way, making it seem like I wanted to hook up, and he leveled me with a shot to my face.”

  “Oh,” I said quietly, relieved my brother hadn’t done it lately.