Kristin Hardy Read online

  “It’s in your own best interest to work with us, Ms. Stafford,” they’d said.

  “I am.” After hours of questioning, frustration had taken hold.

  “How did he get your personal information?”

  “He was my fiancé, for God’s sake. He was in my apartment all the time. I didn’t watch him every minute.” And sometime when her back had been turned, when she’d been in the shower or kitchen, he’d found her social-security number and used it to link her to an embezzling and money-laundering scheme that might land them both in jail for a good long time.

  Her saving grace was that they couldn’t show she had any of the money. Mostly because she didn’t. She’d known nothing about it, been no part of it, but the only person who could tell them that was Bradley, and sometime between the moment she’d stepped out of his door and the instant they’d simultaneously broken into her apartment and his, he’d disappeared. She’d been walking across town in that time. Bradley? Maybe some sixth sense had warned him. Maybe her walking in and finding him had gotten him out on the street sooner than he otherwise would have been.

  She’d saved him from arrest. And in return, he’d slapped her in the face with betrayal. Then again, cheating on her was nothing compared with the scheme he’d embroiled her in. And now here she was, under investigation, her home invaded and ransacked, her life upended, her very freedom in jeopardy.

  The door opened, startling her. It was Stockton.

  “Ms. Stafford? We’re finished with our questioning for now.”

  “I’m not under arrest?”

  He shook his head. “You’re free to go, but we’d like to be informed of your whereabouts. Don’t leave town without telling us.”

  Of course. They’d want to watch her, see if she contacted Bradley.

  She picked up her purse and rose.

  “Ms. Stafford.” Stockton held out a card. “If you find anything, if you think of anything that will help, call or e-mail. It’s in both of your interests.” His eyes watched her, unwavering.

  “If I find out anything to help you, it’ll be as much news to me as to you, Mr. Stockton,” she said, and walked out without looking back.

  Keely sat at her desk, staring at the parallelogram of sunlight that slanted in through the window and listened to the ringing of the phone held to her ear.

  The way it hadn’t rung for her in the two days since the police had searched her home.

  “’Lo,” said a laughing female voice.

  “Lara,” Keely said with a rush of gladness. “It’s Keely.”

  There was a beat of silence. “Oh. Hi, Keely,” Lara responded, the laughter gone now.

  Lara Tremayne, her closest friend in the city. Lunches and gallery openings, committee meetings for fundraisers, they saw each other once or twice a week. Lara didn’t, Keely noticed, ask what was new. She didn’t have to. The newspapers and television news had taken care of that. Still…

  Keely swallowed. “The cancer ball is coming up and we need to get the planning committee together.”

  “Oh, right. I meant to call you. The committee had a discussion—”

  Keely’s fingers tightened on the phone. “About what? I’m the chairperson.”

  “Yes, well, that’s the thing. The feeling is that with your, er…With what’s going on, well, we thought it was better if someone else took over.”

  “I see.” Keely fought to keep her voice emotionless. “When did you make that decision?”

  Lara hesitated. “The day before yesterday.”

  “When, exactly, were you planning to tell me?”

  “Soon, Keely. I’m sorry. It’s just awkward.”

  It hurt, Keely realized. She’d thought Lara was genuinely her friend. It looked like she’d thought wrong.

  Lara cleared her throat. “Look, for what it’s worth, I don’t think you would ever have gotten into this without Bradley.”

  Keely bit back a reply as the phone line beeped and the caller ID panel flashed her boss’s extension. “Look, Lara, I have to go.”

  “Me, too,” Lara said in obvious relief. “Bye, Keely. I’ll call you.”

  Yeah. Keely would hold her breath for that one. She pushed down the hurt and punched the button by the flashing light. “This is Keely.”

  “Keely, Ron. Can I see you in my office?”

  Ron Arnold, her boss. Normally if he wanted to talk with her, he just stuck his head into her office when he walked by. This time, he was summoning her. With a sense of foreboding, Keely rose.

  Since the day she’d walked in on Bradley, work had been the only part of her life that had been remotely normal. Normal, that was, if you discounted the crowd of paparazzi that camped out around the entrance of Briarson, snapping photos and shoving their microphones in her face. After all, it wasn’t every day one of the hottest couples on the social scene got busted for white-collar crime. They couldn’t find Bradley, so Keely was the next best thing, a photo to run next to the stories. “Fiancée and suspected accomplice Keely Stafford.” Only she and Bradley knew their engagement was off.

  “Sit down, Keely.” Stocky and balding, Ron Arnold had been her department head ever since she’d been at Briarson. “How are you?”

  “Fine,” she said automatically.

  Arnold’s gaze wasn’t unsympathetic, though she wasn’t sure pity was any easier to tolerate than the judgmental or frankly curious looks she got from the rest of the staff. “I’m sorry for what you’re going through. It can’t be easy.”

  Easy? Hounded by the press, watched by the authorities, returning at night to the shambles of her invaded home, no sanctuary anywhere? No, it hadn’t been easy. “I’ll survive,” she said.

  “Have you seen this?” He laid a folded copy of the New York Post down on his desk. It showed Keely walking into the building amid a crowd of reporters, her head down, her coat bundled about her. And on the wall behind her, clearly legible, was the Briarson Financial name.

  “I’m sorry, Ron. I’ve tried getting here early, staying late. They’re always after me, wherever I go.”

  “Hard to escape. Kind of like ticks that way,” he said.

  She gave him a grateful smile. “If it wasn’t for this place right now, I don’t know what I’d do. I think I’d go crazy.”

  “Keely.” He hesitated. “There’s been some concern from higher up in the organization. We’ve gotten calls from clients who’ve read your name in the papers. Some of the accounts you’re working on.”

  Of course, she thought with a sinking heart. Keely Stafford, accountant at Briarson Financial, the center of an embezzling scheme. Not exactly the kind of thing a client wanted to hear.

  “Your work here the past three years has been top notch. All of your reviews have been outstanding, even with the high-pressure accounts. We can’t have our clients upset and doubting the organization, though. And every time you show up again in the press it only gets worse. I’ve been trying to keep things on an even keel but the higher-ups are demanding I do something. I think you understand.”

  Her lips felt cold. “Are you letting me go?”

  “Not now,” he said. “But we need you to take a leave of absence.”

  To where? The confines of an apartment that didn’t feel like hers anymore? To the streets or a hotel, to be hounded by the press? “Ron,” she began helplessly.

  “Don’t you have family in Connecticut?” Arnold cut in.

  “Chilton.”

  “Good. Go there. Take the rest of the month. Go home. After all,” he said, “it’s Christmas.”

  Chapter Two

  How had it happened? Lex Alexander wondered as he drove down the snow-bedecked main drag of Chilton, Connecticut. How was it he was back in Chilton, where everything looked just the same, from the herringbone parking on Main Street to the wrought iron arches that spanned the boulevard? The benches on the town common were green now, rather than the white they’d been twelve years before, but otherwise, little had changed in the time he’d been aw
ay.

  Except him.

  He’d hitchhiked, stowed away and knocked around the less savory parts of pretty much every continent on the globe since he’d turned his back on Alexander Technologies and everything that went with it. He’d sought out places most people in their right minds fled. And those who didn’t faced them armed with a hell of a lot more than just their wits. He was nuts, some said.

  If anything he did showed he was nuts, it was coming back to Chilton.

  He’d known he was in trouble when he’d heard his mother’s voice crackle over the phone. The fact that Olivia Alexander had tracked him down on the back side of nowhere was impressive in itself. In the places he frequented, he wasn’t Aubrey Pierce Alexander III, he was just Lex, the man he’d made himself into since he’d turned his back on the role of heir apparent, turned his back on his autocratic bastard of a father. Or non-bastard, rather, since nobody had more impeccable breeding than the late Aubrey Pierce Alexander II—Pierce, to nearly everyone who knew him.

  As for Lex, he’d been dubbed Trey at birth. Trey. Version 3.0. He hadn’t even gotten a name of his own, let alone a life. Pierce had been relentless in his expectations and pressure. Any step outside the narrow box Pierce had defined earned discipline; the greater the rebellion, the greater the response. Aubrey Pierce Alexander III was by God going do what was expected of him.

  What happened when an irresistible force met an immovable object? In Lex’s case, what happened was that he walked away with little more than the clothes on his back. Walked away from the expectations, the family, the eight-figure trust fund. Walked away to remake himself.

  Forget about Alexander Technologies. He’d been happy to leave that to his younger brother, Bradley, who’d always seemed to relish being the corporate G-boy and society-column staple.

  But Bradley had apparently dug himself a hole that was threatening to swallow him up—and their mother, too. Maybe there were guys out there who could have ignored that desperate call and gone on with their lives, but Lex wasn’t one of them.

  No matter how tough he wanted to think he was.

  God knew coming home was the last thing he wanted to do. If his father had been alive, it flat out wouldn’t have happened, but the old man was gone and Lex knew damned good and well that his mother wasn’t up to dealing with this on her own. Olivia Alexander might run the local DAR chapter and organize two-hundred-plate benefits with the efficiency of a general planning a military campaign, but she was unequal to facing the authorities and family ruin alone.

  Lex pulled his rental car off onto a wide, quiet residential road bordered by stone walls, and felt the familiar sense of suffocation. Beyond the walls, at intervals, rose the stone and brick mansions of the Chilton ton, all decked out in their holiday finery.

  The sudden urge hit him to just keep on driving. There were a dozen places he’d rather be, a dozen things he’d rather be doing. But first, he had to finish what he’d come here for.

  And who knew how long that would take?

  With a swing of the wheel that was as irritated as it was automatic, he pulled into the driveway that led to the Alexander estate and stopped at the intercom by the gates to press the button.

  “Hello? Who is it?”

  A maid’s voice, unfamiliar, not surprisingly. What was he supposed to answer? Lex would draw a blank. Aubrey Pierce III wouldn’t do much better. “Trey Alexander,” he said finally, and the gate buzzed open.

  Trey Alexander. The person he’d thought he’d left behind. The life he’d thought he’d left behind.

  He passed up the drive and pulled the car to a stop at the front steps of the house. Might as well get it over with, he thought, raking his dark hair back off his forehead as he headed up the steps. He’d done far tougher things than this in the years since he’d walked out. At least here, no one was likely to shoot at him, not even verbal missiles now that the old man was gone. If he hadn’t known he was walking into a mess of trouble, he’d have even felt a bit of anticipation at seeing his mother again. Curiosity, at the very least. But there was trouble, he’d known it instantly by the tone of her voice. All she’d had to say was—

  “Trey?”

  She stood at the open door, staring at him. Twelve years had added some lines, but otherwise she looked the same, still trim, still stylish. Still richly, discreetly brunette—Olivia Alexander wasn’t the type to give in to the gray. Except for his father, Olivia had always remained firmly in control of her world. Or maybe not, Lex realized as he kissed her smooth cheek and felt the slight tremble in the hand he held.

  And then she was wrapping her arms around him, hard, in the warmest hug he could ever remember getting from her. “You came,” she murmured. “I wasn’t sure you would. It’s been so long.”

  He hadn’t been sure, either, just found himself on a plane without ever having made a conscious decision. He’d always scoffed at people’s notions of family, at least when it came to his family. Maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t so foolish after all.

  When she stepped away from him, he saw the sheen of tears before she blinked them back.

  “Hey,” he murmured.

  “I thought I’d never see you again,” she said quietly. “Twelve years without a word.”

  “I’m here now.”

  “You’re here now,” she agreed.

  He’d been the one to finally break the silence two years before. Stuck at a godforsaken Somali airfield, flipping through an out-of-date English news magazine, he’d turned the page to see an obit on his father. “The financial world mourns,” the headline had trumpeted.

  Lex hadn’t, not a bit. But he’d spent a long night brooding over a bottle of whiskey and when the day had dawned he’d placed a call to his mother. Granted, three-month-overdue condolences weren’t exactly timely, but better late than never. After that, he’d found himself with a strange compulsion to check in a couple of times a year. The conversations were awkward at times, full of silences during which they both groped for conversation, but he always found himself picking up the phone again.

  And when the time had come, she’d figured out how to find him.

  “Put your bag down and come sit,” she said. “I’ll have Corinne bring us something to drink.”

  It looked different, was his first thought as they walked through the house. Lighter, brighter. There was less of the oppressive heaviness the rooms held in his memories. Perhaps it had been his imagination. Or the shadow of Pierce. “The place looks good,” he said as they walked into the living room, now inviting and airy.

  She hesitated. “I changed a few things after your father passed away.”

  Interesting. Pierce had always insisted that his family home be kept as it had historically been—dark, ponderous furniture, ornate wallpaper, heavy drapes. Left to her own devices, Olivia had recovered the dark walls with pastels, pitched the dark green velvet window hangings of his youth for something softer. Luxurious, sure, and still traditional, but there was an inviting feel to the room, an openness it hadn’t had before.

  “I like it,” Lex said as they walked to the chairs that overlooked the grounds. “You’ve done a nice job.”

  “It was time for something new.”

  Boy, wasn’t that the truth? Too bad the something new involved legal action.

  The maid brought coffee and for a few minutes the conversation was taken up by the safe and easy questions of cream and sugar; no, for him, in both cases. Then the maid bustled away and they settled back, watching one another in the silence.

  “So.” Olivia took a sip of coffee. “How was your flight?”

  He gave a wry smile. “Which one? There were four.”

  “Any. All of them, I guess.”

  “Uneventful. Which is a fine thing in a flight.” Especially the kinds of flights he habitually took. It had taken him days to work his way from the bush to Chilton, just one of the prices he paid for the life he led.

  So different than here. He stared at the grounds outside the w
indow, now covered with a light dusting of snow. “When did you get this?” He nodded at the drifts.

  “A couple of days ago. A nor’easter. I lost two rose bushes. The gardener didn’t get them properly mulched in time.”

  “Don’t you hate when that happens?”

  She blinked. “What?”

  “Maybe they’ll come back in the spring,” he said instead.

  “Perhaps. In the meantime, we’ve got all this snow. I don’t know how much of it will stick, though.”

  “Why, is it supposed to warm up?”

  “For a few days.”

  They both stared out at the snow as though it were the first time they’d seen it. The truth was, they didn’t know how to be with each other after all these years. It was worse than being with a stranger—with a stranger, what he said wouldn’t matter. Here, every word had resonance. The seconds ticked by. The silence stretched to the breaking point. Lex cleared his throat. “This is—”