And hoping to God it happened before he got sent back out into the wild blue yonder and they lost their chance forever.
Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a flick of motion as something arced low across the sky. Adrenaline surged. Before he could think, muscle memory had him ducking behind a bench. An instant later, he rose, shaking his head at himself. And he saw it again—a sphere of white against the blue sky. Snowball fight, he thought. Just a holiday snowball fight.
And what did it say about his life that his first thought had been that it was incoming?
He could see them now, a collection of boys maybe ten or eleven, a couple of them socked in behind the Revolutionary War cannon, methodically going through their stocked-up ammo while the opposition fired from behind the fountain. The cannon was the best location, Lex remembered from when he was a kid—better sight lines, higher ground. He and Bradley had defended it more than once, even when they’d been significantly outnumbered.
Grinning, Lex circled the common, snapping shots rhythmically, capturing the narrow-eyed focus, the strategy, the glee of a direct shot. Christmas vacation in Chilton. Some things never changed.
He was still grinning an hour later when he walked into the house to see Olivia.
“What have you been up to?” she asked.
“Knocking around, taking some shots.”
“Cub photographer, on the job.” Her smile faded. “I still have the camera Nana bought you. You didn’t take it when you left.”
“No choice. I couldn’t take everything.” But it had changed his life. From the time he’d gotten the camera at twelve, photography had been all he’d cared about. It had driven Pierce wild. He hadn’t wanted to know about art classes or the awards Lex won, just moved Lex to a school that didn’t deal in that sort of thing. Olivia tried to support him from behind the scenes but there was little she could do when Pierce got an idea in his head.
“I’m glad you’re back. I need your help,” she said now, glancing down at the papers in her hands. “Some bills and things have come over the past few days. I’m not sure what to do with them. I always set them aside for Bradley.” She looked up, a hint of pink staining her cheeks. “Can you help?”
Lex raised his brows. “Are you sure you’re ready to trust another one of your sons with your money?”
“You’re not Bradley,” she responded tartly and handed him the stack. “I just need to learn how it works.”
“Mom, you’re talking to a guy who lives in the field,” Lex protested, flipping through the swath of bills and statements. “I don’t have things like utilities. Every bill I do have is hooked up to my checking account to get paid automatically.”
“Perhaps that’s what I need to do. Can you help?”
He bit back a sigh. “Yeah, let’s go look it over.”
He walked into the office with familiar sense that he was stepping back into a world where Pierce still might come walking in at any moment. Even the same art hung on the walls, down to the photo of Pierce and some of his cronies with the president.
He saw Olivia glance at it and blink.
“Why don’t you redecorate in here?” he suggested. “It might make it easier on you.”
“It would seem like wiping him out of my life,” she said in a low voice. “I changed the rest of the house but this part, this is still him.”
“Is that a blessing or a curse?”
“I’m not sure,” she said.
Lex studied her. “Why did you marry him?” He asked it before he knew he was going to.
Olivia stilled.
“Forget it.” He shook his head and sat at the desk. “You don’t have to answer that.”
Olivia didn’t take the out, though. Instead, she took her time settling on the upholstered chair that sat before the desk, crossing her legs, studying her hands.
“Things don’t always turn out like you expect,” she said finally. “In the beginning, I thought he was just confident. It was exciting to be with a man who made the world do his bidding. It was only later that I realized that it applied to us, too. When you’re young, you don’t realize that people only become more so as they get older.” She toyed with her rings.
“And maybe I changed, too. I was so young when we married and just starry-eyed over him. He was good-looking, so obviously going places. And he wanted me. Me,” she repeated, still sounding amazed.
“It shouldn’t surprise you.”
“It does. I felt like I was living a dream, like he was my prince. When I grew up enough that I wanted him to share the running of our lives and our family, he thought that I was suddenly changing the rules on him. It made him angry. As far as he was concerned, he was doing the same thing he always had. And maybe he was, except instead of giving orders to his staff, he was giving them to his family.”
“You tried to protect us.”
Her laugh was short and bitter. “I didn’t do very well, did I? Not if you had to run away.”
“I was eighteen. It was time.”
“To go off to college, maybe. Not to disappear.”
“I’d had all I could take.” He remembered that last afternoon, the hard words, the lightness he’d felt as he stood on the shoulder of the highway watching a truck slow down to pick him up.
“I’d have left him if he’d ever raised a hand to any of us. He never did.”
Lex gave a faint smile. “Like those frogs they put in water that heats up so slowly they don’t realize they’re on their way to being boiled alive.”
“Not that bad, I don’t think. Or maybe it was. I’d like to think he was better after you left, but maybe I just didn’t care.” She let out a sigh. “In the end, we came to an accommodation. I miss him. Hard to understand, I know, but I do. For better or worse, that’s what the vows say.”
“Was it ever for better?”
To his surprise, she nodded. “There were some good times. You don’t remember them—maybe you don’t want to—but they were there.” She paused. “Bill Hartley is calling me again.”
“Interesting segue.”
“You shouldn’t avoid it just because you’re still angry at your father. This is bigger than that.”
“I already told you, I’m not interested.” Restlessly, Lex toyed with the gold pen on the desk set.
Olivia watched him. “It would come with a block of stock.”
“I don’t need a block of stock.”
“Of course you do. The price is down because of this situation with Bradley but it’ll come back up, especially with your leadership.”
He shook his head and reached out to the glass bowl to pick out a pair of steel balls that sat atop the paperclips. Bogie in The Caine Mutiny, rolling the balls in his hand. “I don’t have any leadership to offer. I don’t know anything about the business.”
“You could. You should,” she added.
“I’m a photographer, not a business exec. I’m not cut out for a desk.” The steel balls clicked. “Alexander Technologies will survive without me. Pierce was right about one thing—” He broke off at the burble of his cell phone. “I’d better get this.”
“A phone call, someone at the door…Trey, you can’t keep evading this conversation. We need to finish it,” Olivia said.
“As far as I’m concerned, we already have,” Lex returned.
She didn’t answer, just turned and walked out of the room, closing the door behind her.
Lex glanced at the phone display to see the number of his New York boss, Joe Flaherty. “Joe, my man, you’ve never had better timing than now,” he murmured, flipping the phone open and leaning back in his chair. “Yeah.”
“Lex?”
“Joe. What’s up?”
“Glad I caught you. How’s things at home?”
Lex rolled the steel balls in his hand. “All right, as long as you don’t ask me for up close and personal wire photos of the Alexander Technologies scandal.” Click. Click.
“Rough time?” Joe asked sympatheticall
y.
“Makes the Kalahari look like a tea party.”
“Who knew suburban Connecticut was such a struggle? Feel like taking a break?”
“Not if you’re planning to send me out of this time zone. Things are sticky enough around here.”
“Ah, laddie, d’ya think I’d do that while you’re in town to take care of your sainted mother?” Flaherty’s words held a sudden breath of County Clare.
Lex snorted. “For the right shot, Flaherty, I think you’d sell your grandma.”
“Quite possibly true.” Flaherty’s voice reverted to its normal nasal Philly accent. “But in this case, I just thought you might want to come into the city.”
“Come into the city?”
“Lunch, on me.”
Lex sat up, eyes narrowed. “What have you got up your sleeve, Flaherty?”
“What makes you think I’ve got anything up my sleeve?” Flaherty asked with pretended affront.
“Ever heard the phrase ‘there’s no such thing as a free lunch’?”
“You hurt me, young Aubrey.”
“You’re never going to let me forget that, are you?” Lex sighed. His professional byline was Lex Alexander. It had been a long, late night of drinking more than a decade before when he’d broken down and confessed his real name to Joe.
“Would you deny an old man his little pleasures?”
“You’re not an old man, Flaherty.”
“I still like my little pleasures.”
“There’s something just a little perverse about the sound of that,” Lex said, moving to toss the balls back into the bowl. They landed with a little chunk atop paperclips and detritus of business life accumulating in his father’s glass bowl. I think Bradley just started tossing things in there.
The hair on the back of his neck prickled.
“Are you going to come in or not, Alexander?” Flaherty demanded.
What were the chances it hadn’t been searched? Then again, why would they care about a key? How many unidentifiable old keys were floating around the average house? Pulling the bowl toward him, he began rummaging through the contents. Paperclips, rubber bands, binder clips, a couple of Phillips head screws, an adaptor for a headphone jack, more paperclips.
And jammed in the middle of it all, a key.
There was a noise in his ear and Lex shook his head. “Sorry, Joe, what did you say?”
“I said are you there?”
“I’m here.” He tipped the mess out onto the desktop, untangling the key from it all. A house key, he thought, turning it over in his palm.
“The question is, are you going to be here?” Flaherty asked. “Say, day after tomorrow?”
“Sure,” Lex said. “Listen, Joe, I gotta go. E-mail me the time and place and I’ll be there.” He hung up and stared at the key in his hand.
Chapter Eight
“One coffee, two lattes, one skim, no crullers,” Keely ordered.
“One coffee, two lattes, one skim,” Darlene repeated. “And no crullers.”
“No crullers.” Keely’s voice was wistful.
Darlene put the coffee order together with brisk efficiency. “One coffee, two lattes, one skim,” she said, handing Keely a cardboard carrier full of steaming cups. “And no crullers.”
“No very tasty-looking crullers,” Keely agreed.
“Ixnay on the crullers.”
“Exactly. Have a good afternoon.” Keely turned away and took one step, then another. Then stopped and whirled around. “Crullers,” she demanded, “three of them.”
“Crullers, it is,” Darlene said, fighting a smile as she snapped open the waxed paper pastry bag she was holding. “You know, you almost made it out the door this time. I was rooting for you, kid.”
“It’s the smell,” Keely told her in exasperation. “If you didn’t make the best coffee in town, I could go somewhere else, but you do and then I have to walk in here and smell everything you’ve baked and I’m just toast.”
“So to speak.”
“So to speak.”
“How’s the hunt for clues going?”
“Not fast enough. If we don’t find something soon, I’m going to be as big as a house.”
Darlene eyed Keely’s willowy frame as she folded the top on the bag of pastries. “That, I doubt. Anyway, consider your buying habits a personal favor to me. If you eat the crullers, then I have to go make more, which gives me constructive work to do, which means I have at least two or three hours to avoid doing my end-of-quarter tax forms.”
“Your 941?” Keely asked.
Darlene made a cross with her forefingers. “Back, demon. Don’t speak those words here.”
“Darlene, a culinary genius like yourself should not be wasting her time doing tax paperwork. Don’t you have an accountant?”
“I did but he moved a couple of months back. I just haven’t had time to find anyone else.” Her lips twitched. “Too busy making crullers.”
“Well, you should have told me sooner. I spent a whole internship at Briarson just doing tax work and payroll.” Keely slid a bill across the counter and took the bag of crullers. “Listen, I’ve got to get back to the store but I’ve got some time tomorrow morning. Let me come by and take a look. I’m sure I can get you fixed up.” Keely stopped. “Of course, you may not want a ‘person of interest’ in a money-laundering case working on your books.”
“The heck with that. It’s Bradley they’re after, not you. It’s just that you’re supposed to be here lying low, not working.”
“It’s okay.”
“But—”
“No buts. Just say yes and thank you and be done with it.”
“Bossy,” Darlene said, handing her change.
Keely grinned. “So I’ve been told.”
The air outside was brisk, the sky a crystalline blue. Keely headed back toward Jeannie’s, stopping only to dump her change in the Salvation Army bucket.
“Thank you, young lady,” said the bell ringer.
“Anytime, Harvey.” She flashed him a smile and walked on.
It was funny. She hadn’t wanted to come back to Chilton. She’d dreaded it, expected it to be stifling, boring, tiresome. Instead, it was cozy. She slept without waking to sirens, got to work in the morning without the crush of the subway. There was something about her daily schtick with Darlene, something about the sense of community that had always been missing in New York.
Not that she wanted to stay or anything, of course.
She enjoyed having a career, even if, truth be told, the corporate world had proven to be both more stressful and less interesting than she’d imagined it would be. Which raised the all too scary question of what to do about Briarson. Even if they welcomed her back with open arms after she cleared her name, the fact of the matter was still that the company hadn’t stood behind her. They hadn’t cared about the long hours, the hard work she’d put in over the years. They hadn’t believed in her.
When push came to shove, they’d looked after themselves.
As she needed to do. Of course, there was the little matter of paying for rent and food, so she’d have to get busy sending out resumes pretty soon.
“There you are.”
At the impatient words, Keely glanced up to see Lex striding toward her and her stomach did a little somersault. “Hey.”
“Where have you been? I tried calling your cell.”
“It’s at the shop.” She found herself oddly breathless. “I went to get coffee.” She raised the carrier.
He took the carrier from her. “So your mother said.”
“Tell me you didn’t talk to Lydia,” Keely groaned.
“The redhead? Why?”
“Never mind. What’s going on?”
Lex waved something before her.
“What’s that?”
“What does it look like?” he asked.
“A key,” she said absently, and then did a double-take. “A key?”
“Yep. I found it on the desk in Pierce’s
office. The one Bradley used.”
“The key to the house,” she breathed.
“There’s no guarantee but I think there’s a better than average chance. Smart, if you think about it. He’s got a safe house that doesn’t show up on any of his books or the books of his LLCs. The key’s not on him, in his condo, or hidden around the house where someone might find it. All he has to do is stop by my mom’s, say hi, and scoot over there sometime while he’s in town.”
Her heart began to hammer against her ribs. “Have you tried it?”
He raised a brow. “I was waiting for you, partner. Can you drop off the coffee and get away from here for an hour or two?”
“Definitely.” She grinned. “Partner.”
The house was easier to find the second time around. In full daylight, with the early afternoon sun shining, the forlorn air was gone. It looked bright and clean and almost charming.
“I bet it’s really gorgeous out here in summer.” Keely studied the woods that sloped away from them.
“Probably so. I doubt Bradley bought the place for the view, though.” They stood on the side porch by the door. Curtains inside kept them from seeing into the room beyond. Lex raised the key to the lock. “Okay, cross your fingers.”
“Fingers crossed, sir,” she reported.
He pushed and the key slid smoothly into place. “Good sign,” he commented.
Keely’s heart began to thud against her ribs. “Toes crossed, also, sir.”
Lex flashed her a grin and moved to turn the key. It rotated smoothly in the lock with a little snick, and then the doorknob was turning, as well.
And the door opened sweetly before them.
They walked into a small mud room, which opened out into a daisy yellow kitchen. Their rubber-soled shoes were quiet on the linoleum as they walked past the white tile counters. Under other circumstances, it was probably a cheerful room, with its sunny walls and windowed breakfast nook. Shuttered and silent, though, it only gave her a profound sense of trespassing. It didn’t matter why they were there, it still felt wrong.
Lex opened the refrigerator to find it empty and turned off.
Her Christmas Surprise (Silhouette Special Edition) Page 10
