Perfect Paige

by Ines Saint

  Before he could answer that he didn’t know what life ultimately was, someone knocked on the door, and he knew it was Paige. Part of him was sorry to see Sherry go, and part of him was relieved. The conversation was getting too heavy for comfort. And when Sherry answered the door and he saw Paige standing there, holding a book, her hair tied back with a pink ribbon, wearing pink heart–covered shorts and a matching top, something in his chest felt as if it had lifted.

  It was like Sherry had said—it was tempting to deny it because it screwed with his approved version of reality, but he could no longer ignore it. He liked Paige because she was likeable. And he thought she was pretty because she was pretty. It was no big deal. He could deal.

  He sat back, feeling more relaxed. It was good to no longer be in denial.

  Sherry studied him a moment, before sighing and mumbling, “Oh brother.”

  * * *

  Before Paige could enter, Grandma Sherry closed the door behind her. “He’s a good one, Paige,” she said, her eyes teary.

  “Why are you crying? What did he do?”

  “I’m not crying. I’m feeling grateful. Now, don’t rough him up too badly, okay? He’s only doing his job.”

  Alex was six-foot-two and built of granite, how could anyone think she’d “rough him up”? It seemed everybody was forgetting that Alex was the same man who had tackled her all the way down a hill, handcuffed her, and threatened her on numerous occasions.

  When she opened the door again, she saw Alex was only wearing shorts—and no shirt. “What did you say to my grandmother to make her cry?” she asked, even though she knew her grandmother hadn’t been shedding sad tears. But she needed to put distance between her and Agent Hooke.

  “We were talking about life. It’s a subject that makes some people emotional.”

  “Some people. But not you.”

  “Not me.” He sat back, looking surprisingly calm for someone who’d taken a mean blow to the head, and then spent time with Ruby, Hope, and her grandmother—all in a row. Maybe he’d taken a nap.

  “How long have you been up?” She directed the question to the area above his head, carefully avoiding his naked upper body. There was no way she’d allow herself to peek.

  “I haven’t slept a wink.”

  “But you need rest. Go to your room. I’ll stay here to guard my apartment and read, and I’ll rouse you at five, and then again before I leave,” she instructed.

  “I’m not tired.”

  And Paige didn’t want to spend any more alone time with him. “You already wasted today, Alex, and if you’re tired tomorrow, you won’t be at your best. You still want to solve the case as soon as possible, don’t you?”

  “I’m not six, Paige. I don’t need that particular lecture. I know my mind and body well, and they both rested during the eight hours I was out. I’m planning on working on the assignment right now.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means you and I were having a conversation before this whole thing happened.” He met her eyes and she steeled herself, expecting to see Agent Hooke, like she had this morning. But instead, she saw Alex. When had she even met Alex? “Look, Paige, I felt like a jerk for questioning you this morning, right when you were so excited about finding a house that could work for you, and especially after I made you feel like I’d keep you from getting a job. But being considerate isn’t my priority here. We agreed that finding the journal is what’s best for your kids, and we agreed to be truthful. I need you to honor that. You had an ulterior reason for being at your old house yesterday. What was it?”

  “I did have an ulterior motive. But I wasn’t trying to keep it from you. It was a stupid idea, one I wanted to check out, just in case. And I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to waste your time with it unless it checked out. It didn’t.”

  He nodded, as if he believed her and understood. “All right. But tell me anyway.”

  Paige sat back, crossed her legs, and folded her arms across her chest, studying him. It would not be easy to send him off to bed. “I’m treating you like a six-year-old because you’re behaving like one. Your eyes are red and the bags underneath them are a highly unflattering shade of purple, you look pale and haggard, and yet you’re propping your eyes up and swearing you’re not sleepy.”

  He crossed his arms, too. “And you think you can order me to bed the way you do with Tyler and Riley?”

  “I think I can negotiate with you the way I negotiate with Tyler and Riley.”

  “Negotiate?”

  “It seems you’ve somehow gotten everyone around me to like you and trust you. I’m tempted to think you rigged the whole monkey brain incident.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “No. You’ve proven to be both resourceful and a good actor.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  The memory of his hot breath on her ear and neck came back to her then, and she inadvertently looked down at the naked upper body she’d been avoiding; a knee-jerk reaction that had her body temperature rising on an already hot night. He was rock-hard, mostly smooth and glossy, with a sprinkling of hair that led . . .

  She jerked her head toward her apartment and pictured her kitten and her sleeping children. Cute little Jinx, playing with the curtains. Riley and Tyler’s baby cheeks. It did the trick. “You pretended to be concerned yesterday when I got home, and you had a towel ready for me.” Good save.

  “I wasn’t pretending. You looked like you could have been in an unsafe situation. Why do you think I became an FBI agent?”

  “I’m supposed to know?”

  He rested his elbows on his thighs, looked down for a moment, and nodded. “Informants who are also victims often feel especially vulnerable and exploited. Not only have they already suffered harm at the hands of another, but they are now expected to cooperate in another unequal relationship, this time with law enforcement. It’s what you were trying to tell me yesterday morning.”

  She gritted her teeth. “You sound like you’re reciting from some training manual.”

  He looked up. “No, I’m paraphrasing.” He nodded toward her book. “You’re not the only one who’s been brushing up for work.”

  And she was “work.” Well, he was “work,” too. Right now, she was a nurse and he was her patient. But he’d brought up a topic she’d been wondering about. “Here’s my deal. It’s three fifteen a.m. Even if my information somehow tells you something new, it’s not like you can do much about it right now. I’ll tell you everything that happened yesterday if you promise to answer one question, and then go to sleep until at least seven a.m.”

  “But you’ll tell me everything before I go to bed?”

  “No. After.”

  He looked like he wanted to tackle her and handcuff her again, but she wouldn’t back down on this. He looked like hell. Well, his tired eyes did, anyway. “Make it until six a.m., and you have a deal,” he said, jaw clenched.

  “Six a.m. Deal.”

  “Who’s pretending to care now, Paige?”

  “Hey, as long as I get rid of you for a while.”

  “You can get rid of me by leaving. I don’t need anyone to watch over me.”

  “Then you won’t get my information until after I get back home from taking the kids to school.”

  “You’re worse than Hope, Ruby, and Rosa combined.” He threw his head back on the sofa, defeated. “What do you want to know now? Fire away.”

  She hesitated only a moment. This was something she really wanted to know. Needed to know. “You said you’ve seen the very real ways white-collar criminals hurt others, and you seemed far away when you said it, like you were reliving a painful memory. Would you tell me about it, Alex? It’s okay if you don’t, but I’d like to understand.”

  * * *

  Alex stared up at the ceiling. Definitely worse than Hilda, Helga, Ruby, Rosa, Sherry, and Hope all wrapped into one. The tarot cards were right after all. A near-death experience that could lead
to either a permanent state or rebirth . . . The woman in front of him was going to be the death of a part of him he guarded closely. She wanted him to talk about things that would reveal his feelings.

  Not knowing where to start or whether he should even go there, he closed his eyes. But that was a mistake. An image of the disfigured boy in the stairwell floated there, in his mind’s eye. He sighed, heavily. “There was this boy . . .” He shook his head. “I was on SWAT in Chicago, and we worked mainly on drug busts. We broke up huge operations, and I felt good about what we were doing. Still do. But something always nagged at me in the back of my head, this feeling that there were a dozen agents who could do what I was doing. That there was something I was particularly good at, and that I was being selfish, enjoying the adrenaline and the satisfaction of a job well done when I could be putting other talents to work. I could see there was a need. I’d been told there was a need. But I’d pat myself on the back, because I was risking my life, and what more was I expected to do?”

  He was quiet for a moment, not knowing how to talk about things that hurt.

  “That’s no small thing, Alex. Risking your life and busting up drug operations. That’s pretty huge.” Paige’s tone when she spoke, soft and understanding, felt undeserved.

  “I know,” he breathed the words out. “The men I worked with were brave, loyal, and highly intelligent. They had a strong sense of right and wrong. Everyone had everyone else’s back. It was a privilege to work with them. There’s nothing like it. I’d never say the work wasn’t important, or that I felt it wasn’t important enough for me. That’s not it.”

  He opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling again. He couldn’t look at Paige, and he couldn’t close his eyes and see the child while talking about him. Would Paige even understand how complicated his feelings were about this boy? It was probably best to just be out with it. It wasn’t something he’d ever talked about before. “There was a raid on this run-down, multi-level property on the Southside early one morning. From the outside, the place looked abandoned. Inside, it was dark and full of trash, and it stank. It was a place where they hid people wanted by rival gangs and police. We had followed one of our informants there. We had little time. Their MO was to torture and kill, in quick succession. We were in and out in minutes. It was well-planned and executed. But there was a woman and a boy there, too . . .” And the boy was cowering, because he couldn’t see what was happening.

  “It’s okay, Alex. You don’t have to tell me.”

  It took him a moment to get out of his head and process her gentle words. He lifted his head and looked over at her, surprised and grateful.

  “It wasn’t my intention to bring back anything so painful,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

  He looked into her eyes, and the awareness he saw there made him feel exposed, as if she’d taken a look into the very place he’d been reluctant to share, and had seen all the things he felt conflicted about, even though he hadn’t said a thing. The sensation was powerful. Frightening. He didn’t want to talk, wasn’t ready to, but he didn’t want to lose that intense feeling. It was new. It begged to be explored.

  Before he knew what he was doing, he reached his hand out, to offer her something because he couldn’t offer any more words. She took it, and he pulled her over. She sank on the couch next to him and they sat there, ramrod-straight, holding hands, experiencing the strange tides surging between them.

  When he caught his breath, he chanced a look down at their hands. Paige began to pull away and his eyes snapped up to hers. She was frightened.

  * * *

  Paige felt as if she were suffocating. She began to slide her hand away. They both looked down, as if neither knew exactly how to let go. He loosened his grip, and she opened her hand just as he opened his, their palms now side to side.

  A heart was clearly etched out where their palms met.

  Paige snatched her hand away, shaking herself back into reality. The man had been unconscious only hours before, and she’d just unwittingly forced him into reliving something that was obviously very emotionally painful. They were both confused and overtired. Sleep deprivation was a terrible thing. She got up. “A deal’s a deal. And now off you go to bed.”

  * * *

  What seemed like hours later, an alarm went off. Alex shot up, grabbed his Glock, and was out the door and scanning the area in seconds.

  It was Paige, her sister . . . and Bessie White.

  Paige glanced up and sent him a pleading look. He stepped back inside to give them some privacy. When he heard footsteps across the hall, he glanced back to see Riley and Tyler. “Mom,” Riley called. The looks on their faces as they stared at him and kept their distance told him they feared him. Not that little kids should trust strangers, but they hadn’t looked at him like that before.

  “Mom!” Tyler bellowed, looking like a Charlie Brown character. Alex took a step out of sight.

  A door shut. “It was a false alarm. Nothing to worry about,” Paige called up.

  “Will the police come?” Riley asked.

  “Mr. Hooke had a gun, I think. But Dad says he’s not a good person and we have to stay away from him,” Tyler whispered loudly. Alex had to hold his breath and count to ten. He’d suspected Glenn would say something to the kids about him, but it still rankled that he’d make his kids feel unsafe in their own home when Glenn knew they weren’t in any danger from him.

  “There’s nothing to worry about, kiddos.” Paige’s voice got closer. “There’s no such thing as ghosts, no one is breaking in, and Grandma Sherry would never allow a bad man to live across the hall from you. Let’s go inside and talk a bit before school.”

  Alex glanced at the clock. It was 6 a.m. His hand went to the top of his head and he winced. He had quite the goose egg. The monkey brain must’ve given him quite the blow if he couldn’t even remember his head hitting the pillow. All he could remember was a powerful, yet uncomfortable moment with Paige. A moment he didn’t want to relive, because he didn’t know what to make of it.

  Good thing he was wide awake now, and ready to go. Ready to finish the assignment and get back to his own world. The moment Paige came back from dropping the kids off at school, he’d finish questioning her.

  * * *

  “Are you sure that was a false alarm?” Tyler asked while they ate breakfast. “The other kids say Mad Maddie screeches like that!”

  Riley rolled her eyes at him. “Bessie White haunts the bridge. Mad Maddie guards the top of the stairs, I’ve told you that. And there was no one on the bridge or on the stairs. And that wasn’t shrieking. That was an alarm, like at our old house. You should be more scared of Mr. Hooke.”

  Paige took a moment to gather her thoughts. She’d been anticipating this, and yet it was tricky. Alex was a good man. A man who felt things more keenly than he let on, a man with such a strong sense of responsibility that he felt deeply conflicted when he wasn’t sure what was right and what was wrong. And now Paige felt that conflict. The truth would confuse and hurt them. Lies would come back to haunt them all when the kids were old enough to understand.

  Anger at both Glenn and Alex, and even her grandmother for putting the kids in such an impossible position filled her, but she knew it was pointless.

  Move forward by making the best decision possible under each circumstance. That was all she could do. She’d grown up before her time, and yet, she knew she was mostly okay. Her kids were about to grow up before they were ready to, and it was also up to her to make sure they’d be fine. She took a deep breath. “What exactly did your father say about Mr. Hooke?”

  “He said we have to stay far away from him because he is one of the FBI people who want to put him in jail for no reason.” Riley looked upset, scared, and accusatory at the same time. It broke Paige’s heart to see that she was also trying to understand.

  “The truth is that Agent Hooke is one of the FBI agents who has been investigating your father’s coworkers who did bad things.” The FBI and the peop
le at Glenn’s job who were doing bad things was something they’d talked about many times over the last four months, and it never got easier. “But Agent Hooke is not a bad man. He’s doing his job and his job is a good one. It’s to keep people safe. He’s also trying to keep your dad out of jail, by trying to prove who the very bad people are. Your father is angry at him because he loves you and doesn’t want this whole mess close to you.”

  “But why is he here?” Tyler asked.

  “He needs to find something that will help your dad. I promise you, that’s all it is. It’s a strange situation, and I don’t expect you to understand it all, and I hate that you have to live it, but try to concentrate on one thing: We all want to help your father. Can you try to trust me that this is the truth? That I wouldn’t lie to you or try to hurt your father?”

  They both shrugged and looked so confused and dejected, Paige’s heart felt like it was tearing apart. “Did your father say anything else?”

  Tyler shook his head no, but Riley hesitated.

  “You can tell me anything, Riley.”

  “Dad says you’re divorcing because you don’t believe him. Why don’t you believe him? We could live together again.” A big fat tear rolled down her face.

  Selfish, rotten, no-good . . . Glenn hadn’t even waited for the investigation to be over with before he demanded a divorce, not even for the kids’ sake, and now it was her fault? Paige gathered both kids in her arms. “We told you the truth together the first time. We are divorcing because we are no longer a good fit as a couple, and that wasn’t good for us, or for you. We will be better friends and parents this way. We’re really sorry that being together became difficult for us, but it’s not anything you’ve done at all. And I do believe. I believe your father loves you.” Even though he was so self-centered, he thought what was best for them revolved completely around what was best for him. “This situation is hard and it makes people have stress. Your father is under a lot of stress.”