“This is like being at the Ritz,” I muttered.
“It’s nice enough,” Alex said, a little embarrassed. “Now, Jeeves will be along in a minute to get you settled in and fix you some tea.”
He said it so seriously that I fixed him with a confused stare.
Alex smiled. “Just kidding. There’s no Jeeves. You want a snack? I’ll whip something up.” His voice had raised a half octave.
He was a little nervous, I realized. It dawned on me that this was probably the pinnacle of his fantasy. The stripper girl he’d been lusting after for years was now inside his own home, his wife was out of the picture, and he wasn’t sure what to do. Like all men, he was a bundle of hormones, but his were tamed by his impeccable manners and Tennessee charm. All in all, his nervousness was irresistibly cute.
I followed him down two flights of stairs, marveling the whole time at his house, which had the feel of a medium-sized office building except that it managed to be warm and cozy, despite its size. The floor where I would stay had two other guest suites, he said, plus a workout room. The second floor had the master suite, which he skipped on the tour, and a library that looked like it had ten thousand books in it.
“Ever heard of Kindle?” I asked. “You could put all of those on one little device.”
He frowned. I had disappointed him somehow, but he was trying to get past it. “You could. You could put all of Mozart’s symphonies on a little iPod, too. Butâ”
I couldn’t help cutting him off. “It’s better to have the vinyl,” I said, completing his thought.
He smiled, indicating I was forgiven. “What a view,” I muttered, looking out over the backyard. Most of the yard was covered in the typical Nevada gravel, a colorless dun-brown feature that I found a poor substitute for good old-fashioned grass. But there was a manicured path through sculpted shrubs and trees, a sitting area around a gazebo, and a pool area that would have looked right at home at a Ritz-Carlton on the French Riviera. Not that I’d ever been there.
We proceeded downstairs and into the massive chef’s kitchen, a study in steel and stone, with white cabinets adorned with sleek black hardware. Alex was fumbling around in the fridge, probably because he was unprepared for a visitor.
I wasn’t especially hungry, having eaten like a prized pig at Maria’s, but it gave Alex something to do while I adjusted to his home. He ended up finding some fresh mozzarella and began slicing it into little cubes, and then he grabbed a tomato and cut that into similarly sized bites. A dash of basil, some salt, and a healthy glug of olive oil went into a bowl, and he mixed it all together. He disappeared into the pantry and returned with a pint of almond gelato and little Italian cookies.
“Just dip the cookies in there,” he said. “It’s best if you wait a minute until it melts a little.”
I snorted in spite of myself. There was no way I’d be waiting until the gelato melted. It was delicious, if not messy, and my stomach accommodated it by making some extra room.
After a minute, he bent down to a hidden refrigerator and pulled out a bottle of white wine. The label was French, but apart from that, I couldn’t tell what kind it was. Not that it mattered. I was thirsty.
“This is amazing,” I said, the chalky and crisp flavor still lingering in my mouth long after I’d taken a sip.
He smiled, a little embarrassed again. He hadn’t prepared for company, and I wondered if he might be a little bit uncomfortable letting a stranger see how lavishly he lived. Inevitably, I moved towards the windows and the door that opened up into the backyard.
“There’s a great shady spot out there,” he said. “I’ll show you.”
He poured himself a glass and grabbed the bowl of Italian salad. I followed him into the back, which at first was a maze of carefully sculpted greenery and then turned into an expanse of marble and shimmering blue water. There was almost no ornamentation, in keeping with the style of the house. Just rectangles and squares, the clean lines allowing the symmetry of the design and the ubiquitous marble to express an effect that was as calming as it was classy.
It was twilight now, and the pool was lit from underneath, while an endless parade of LED lights was lined up around the paths and the shrubs, sunken into the ground. It was breathtaking. I had rich friends like Cody, and I’d been to the homes and apartments of wealthy clients, but I’d never seen anything like this. It was, above all else, a study in perfect taste.
We sat down in some lounge chairs to enjoy the dusk, the temperature cooling down into the seventies in anticipation of its plummet to the fifties at night. Alex admitted that he’d been a “part” of the home’s design team, which I took as a modest admission that he’d done most of it by himself. The crass American in me was trying to calculate the cost. Was this a five-million-dollar place, I wondered, or was it even more?
“I hate to ruin the mood,” Alex began, “but you don’t seem too freaked out that we were followed here.”
I smiled. “I’ve been followed by Russian spies and Ukrainian assassins,” I said, recalling his earlier attempt at humor. “A guy in a Lexus is nothing.”
The truth was, Alex was right. I admitted to myself that a significant part of my brain, the womanly part, had been jumping the gun, picturing myself living in this house, living with Alex, starting a new life without creepy guys ogling and pawing at me or bad guys chasing me. It was pure fantasy, I knew, but it had clouded my senses, pushing back into my mind’s recesses any notion that I should be afraid right now, that a guy had somehow managed to follow me even after we’d taken evasive measures at the restaurant.
He shrugged but didn’t drop it. “They’d have no way to know which house I lived in, right? I mean, there are twenty-four homes in this subdivision, all behind the gates.”
I nodded. Sometimes you believe what you want to be true rather than what was actually true. This was one of those times. “If they were industrious and motivated,” I said, “they could have your plates run and get your address that way.”
Alex cringed. I sensed he was reconsidering his decision to offer me shelter, or at least to get involved with a nut case hot potato like me. He got up to fetch the bottle of wine from the kitchen. I found myself staring out at the expanse of the backyard, wishing that the lights by the pool weren’t so bright because they made it seem like something was moving out there between a couple of trees far down the hill.
By the time Alex returned, I had decided that I would not be sleeping with him that night. Part of me wanted to, of course. He was very likely the best man I’d ever met, and I was willingly letting myself get swept up into his fairytale of a life. And I knew that, with someone chasing me, I’d sleep better in his room, next to his strong, protective body. But my womanly sense told me that, if this was going to work in the long term, I had to hold off, to deny ourselves what we both wanted. To play it slower.
We enjoyed a partial view of the sunset with its purples and reds gradually morphing into a color wheel of pastels. Almost imperceptibly, nature’s soundtrack changed from dusk to evening, with the occasional whirr of a bat’s wings and the unmistakable call of desert owls screeching from their unseen perches.
“You mentioned Mozart before,” I said, interrupting our silent enjoyment of the dimming sky.
Alex smiled. “I didn’t like him when I was younger. That Amadeus movie made him out to be a real jerk, a kind of playboy with more talent than art.”
“But now? A change of heart?” I asked.
“Part of it was a trip to Austria I made a few years ago. The man’s a national hero over there, and it got me to take a second listen. I put him up there with Brahms, Beethoven, those guys.” He took a sip of his drink. “Not that anyone cares what I think,” he added, chuckling.
“I’m more of a Wagner girl,” I said. “I like it loud and bombastic, over the top.”
He turned to look at me, and I thought he looked impressed. He probably wasn’t expecting his stripper fantasy to have an opinion about classical music
.
“Wagner,” he muttered. “He was another jerk. But some of those operas are fantastic, I’ll grant you that.”
We batted names around, back and forth, names I had learned from my grandma’s collection of old records, recordings from the famous conductors in the fifties and sixties, the heyday of symphony orchestras when even cities like Cleveland and Milwaukee were putting out world class performances. Before we knew it, the sky had become pitch-black.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
“We better get inside,” Alex said. “It’s getting cold out here.”
He wasn’t kidding. The wine had given me the false sense of warmth, but I had found myself shivering every couple of seconds against the plummeting temperatures.
Now for the awkward part, I thought. Being the gentlemen he was, he would make a demonstration of showing me to my own room complete with en suite facilities and on a different floor, with its own set of linens and towels, and probably even a toothbrush. All the while, he’d be hoping that I would decline the offer and try to seduce him, or at the very least, I would sneak into his bedroom when the lights had gone down.
It was close to nine thirty. Too early to go to bed. Alex took me into a studio on the first floor, a large windowless room with acoustic lining on the walls and speakers coming out of the ceiling. He led me into a gigantic closet which proved to be a musical library, almost all of which was vinyl. He found a shelf marked W and drew a plastic-covered sleeve out, turned it over in his hands, and then handed it to me.
“Wow,” I muttered. It was a recording of Georg Solti conducting the Vienna Philharmonic in Das Rheingold from 1958, a recording I recognized as a classic even though I’d never actually heard it.
Alex took it back, disappeared into another smaller closet, and then escorted me out of the library and back into the studio. He directed me to a comfortable recliner and adjusted a pair of headphones to fit my head.
“May I?” he asked.
“You may,” I said, giggling as he gently placed the headphones over my ears.
I heard the telltale scratching of a needle on the vinyl record, although it was so muted that I soon forgot it was there.
And then it started, the familiar low cry of horns followed by other horns, probably French horns and trombones, joining in with a study in smooth harmony in a major chord. The strings then started up, violins, violas, cellos, layering on top of the harmony. I found myself lost in it, my eyes closed, and when Alex touched my shoulder, it was like awakening from an Alpine dream. He was smiling.
“That sound quality is amazing,” I said. “It’s like being there live.”
He was beaming at me. “My wife hates all this stuff,” he muttered. “She thinks it’s a waste of money.” She’d say, “Who would ever just sit in a chair and listen to music?”
“I do it all the time,” I said. “I might never leave if I had a room like this!”
Alex looked as excited as a kid on Christmas morning, I noticed, so I decided to tone it down a bit. As with other men, my fear was that his infatuation, which was based on sexual attraction and a single shared interest, would fizzle out and be replaced not by a deeper, more meaningful relationship but by nothingness and boredom. I was never sure if my strategy was rightâafter all, I was still very singleâbut it was the one I was going with.
I let out a yawn, recalling that the queen-size bed in the guest room had looked plush and inviting. It was almost eleven, a reasonable bedtime for anyone, especially Alex who I assumed had to work the next morning.
“Getting late,” I said.
Alex kept a poker face, pretending not to be disappointed. “Yes, of course,” he said, as though he was about to make the same observation himself, which he wasn’t. “Let’s go upstairs.”
He led me up the stairs, although I assumed there was an elevator somewhere, and both of us found ourselves catching our breaths after two flights of stairs.
“Here you are,” he said, giving away nothing.
“Amazing house,” I said, and leaned in to give him a peck on the cheek. “A date to remember, for sure.”
He smiled. I thought I detected a hint of disappointment in his face, but he was too kind to let much show through. And he certainly wasn’t going to beg for it. “If you need anything, you know where I’ll be,” he said ambiguously. At least he had a sense of humor, I thought as I closed the door.
I knew it must be killing him, but I wasn’t going to budge. He would probably thank me later, I reasoned. No, I thought. That was thinking like a girl. Men just wanted it, and they’d never thank you for not having sex with them. That was not part of their vocabulary.
The room was the perfect temperature, and the bed was indeed plush, with ample covers and a dark-red duvet in case it really got cold during the night. Without any other options, I decided to sleep in my clothes.
I had never been good sleeping in strange beds, but there was something about this one that made me feel safe and at home. I had forgotten about my worries, at least temporarily, although nighttime is when they have a way of bubbling up to the surface, getting in the way of sleep. But somehow my natural grogginess won out, and I managed to doze off within a few minutes of hitting the pillow.
I was in the middle of a bizarre dream where I kept getting ice cream sundaes dumped on me when I heard it. It wasn’t one of those sounds that you hear off in the distance, slowly arousing you out of your slumber. It was more like an air raid siren, a blaring and obnoxious assault on the senses. All the lights had come on. There was a loud knocking on my door, and then Alex entered, all before I could figure out what was happening.
“Let’s get down to the basement,” he said. “Just leave everything here.”
I had no argument to the contrary, so I followed him down the stairs, taking them two at a time, trying to shake myself out of the peaceful sleep I’d just been enjoying.
We passed through the first level, near the music studio, and then Alex opened up a hidden door which led to another staircase. He showed me through and then closed the door behind us, locking it with a deadbolt.
“Turn right,” he said, using a loud whisper. The basement was finished but unfurnished, and it was dimly lit.
“In here?” I asked.
He nodded. “That’s the safe room. Quickly.” He pressed his hand on the small of my back to usher me in, and then he swung the large steel door shut behind us. It made a whooshing sound as it closed, suggesting a hermetic seal.
It wasn’t much to look at from the inside. There was a communications box with a little laptop computer attached to it and no windows. It felt like being inside a bank vault.
“Okay,” he said, speaking to no one in particular. “If the alarm went off, it means someone was outside.”
“Ever have a false alarm?” I asked.
“Actually, it’s never gone off before at all,” he said. He was still panting a little bit from our mad scurry downstairs. “This is the first time since we had it installed, about five years ago now. But it’s set to detect human activity, not owls or coyotes. I would trust it, especially under the circumstances.” He wasn’t dressed like a multimillionaire, I thought to myself. A white T-shirt on top of some beige silk boxer shorts showing off toned legs with a little black hair on them. “So, what now?” I asked, my eyes still on his bare legs.
“Well, supposedly the police have already been called by the system,” he said.
“But they won’t know what the situation is unless we tell them first,” I said. “The computer won’t know anything apart from the fact that human movement was detected. What time is it, anyway?” I asked.
He hunched over the computer and squinted hard. “Looks like one thirty-eight to me,” he said. Apparently, Alex was a wearer of contact lenses, which he would have removed before going to bed.
I pulled out my phone and checked it. As I’d suspected, there was no service down here.
“Does that phone work?” I asked, nodding at the phone
on the wall.
“It should,” he said. “I pay the bill every month.”
Sure enough, there was a dial tone. My first call was to 9-1-1 where I filled in the dispatcher. She was interested to know that we were in a panic room, which was something she had never dealt with. Only rich and famous people had panic rooms in their homes, I figured, and they didn’t call 9-1-1 very often.
My second call was to Carlos. He’d still be working at Cougar’s at that hour, and the club was loud, but I knew his phone was always set on vibrate. I explained the situation to him, and he eagerly agreed to drop everything and drive over. Just like the dispatcher, he had seemed interested in the panic room.
“A damsel in distress,” he mused.
“Just get your ass over here,” I said, shaking my head.
“Who was that?” Alex asked.
“A friend of mine. You might recognize him. He’s a bouncer at the club who sometimes helps me out. And he’s got three or four guns,” I added.
Alex nodded, offering his silent approval.
There was no activity outside, at least none that we could detect. My guess was that the blaring security siren had scared the living bejeezus out of whoever it was, but I wasn’t ready to test my theory until either the cops or Carlos arrived.
“So what’s with the panic room?” I asked.
Alex stood up from his chair and began pacing around to the extent pacing was possible in that small room. “Five, six years ago, I was in Mexico. We were in talks to buy a significant share of a bank down thereâa deal that ended up falling through. Anyway, I was kidnapped, which actually isn’t that rare. They were very professional about it, which was both scary and reassuring. They knew everything about me, including the car I’d be in, my hotel, everything. Someone must have tipped them off.”
“Wow,” I muttered.
Double Down (Raven McShane Mysteries Book 4) Page 15
