by Layne, Ivy
She was Alice, and I didn't fucking care that she’d slept with my dad once upon a time.
I told myself that, and it was mostly true. It was also a lie.
I'd never forget the day I found out. Alice had been new at the company, and even knowing she was married, I'd been interested.
I wasn't going to make a move. I wouldn't do that, but I liked her. She sparked like a live wire, dangerous and enticing. I couldn't stay away.
Watching me linger at the front desk for yet another bullshit reason, my dad had pulled me aside. “Don't get any ideas, kid. She looks like she's sweet as pie, and she is—” A lascivious wink that turned my stomach to a lead weight. “Sweet and spicy. A real firecracker. But you don’t want my leftovers, and the husband's jealous. A pain in the ass. She’s not worth the trouble. Find your pussy elsewhere, Son, not in the office.”
With that, he'd strolled off, probably patting himself on the back for a good father-son talk.
My nascent attraction to Alice died in a burst of excruciating humiliation. I'd barely spoken to her for months after that, angry at him, at her, at myself for caring.
She was married. It's not like I could have her anyway. I put it aside, and slowly, over the years, something else grew in the place of that first spark.
Something bigger. Deeper. Something I couldn’t put aside. Something so big it pushed out everything else, including the thing with my dad.
I'd been living with the story of Alice and my father for so long.
And now—that look on her face.
Sheer horror.
Horror because I knew and she was trying to cover?
No. No, not Alice. If Alice had done it, she would have assumed I knew. Would have brazened it out, told me to mind my own business.
No. That horror was because she'd never slept with my father.
Horror because he’d lied, and I'd believed him. Horror that she was sleeping with a man who believed she was the kind of woman who’d fuck around on her husband. Who’d sleep with her married boss.
I rubbed my chest with the heel of my palm, trying to soothe the hollow ache that grew worse every time I remembered the look in Alice's eyes.
After a few minutes, a new worry joined the others.
She’d been in the restroom for too long. What was she doing in there? From the stream of women in and out I knew she didn't have any privacy.
Alice wasn't shy, but she wasn't going to share personal business in a room full of the biggest gossips in town. So why hadn’t she come back?
Uneasy, I shifted my weight back on my heels and shoved my hands in my pockets, trying to pretend everything was fine.
No problem here.
Okay, we’d had a misunderstanding. It wasn't a big deal. I'd explain and apologize. It was a long time ago. I already told her it didn't matter. I didn't care. If I didn't care, why should she?
A flash of familiar red hair caught my eye. Relief blooming in my hollow chest, I grabbed onto it like a lifeline. “Emma,” I called out. She turned, her smile filled with light.
“Cooper. Where have you been? Wasn't that the most beautiful wedding?” She sighed, not waiting for an answer.
Trying to play it cool, I said, “Yeah, it was. Hey, listen, were you headed for the bathroom?”
She cocked her head to the side and gave me a curious look. “I was, why?”
“Could you look around and see if you see Alice in there? She went in a few minutes ago. She wasn't feeling well, and I just want to make sure she's okay.”
Emma gave me a long look, trying to read something in my face I didn't want her to see. I gave her my best blank slate. Her expression told me I wasn’t pulling it off. If I was that obvious, I was in more trouble than I thought. I wasn't sure I cared. I just wanted to talk to Alice.
Emma reached out and squeezed my arm. “I'll check on her, Cooper. Be right back.”
I waited impatiently, rocking from my heels to my toes, shoving my hands in my pockets and pulling them out again.
Where the fuck was Alice?
The minutes stretched into an eternity. The bathroom was crowded. I had to be patient.
Impossible. A lifetime later Emma came out, her brows knitted in concern.
I already knew what she was going to say before she opened her mouth. “She's not there. I checked every stall. Cooper, are you sure you saw her go into that bathroom?”
Fuck.
My thoughts splintered in a thousand directions. Alice was gone. I’d fucked up and hurt her. Hurt her so badly she’d run. Alice, who didn’t run from anything.
Goddammit. I sucked in a breath, trying to force my scattered thoughts in order.
I had to find her. As those words passed through my mind, focus returned in a rush, every disparate thought narrowing into a single goal.
I had to find Alice.
Forgetting Emma, forgetting the wedding and the crowd of guests, I took off, pushing through the crowd, not hearing the gasps of outrage at my heedless flight. The stairs in sight, I put on a burst of speed as a hand closed around my arm, dragging me to a stop.
I turned and swung, not caring who I hit. I just wanted to go. I had to go. I had to find Alice.
Axel’s dark eyes looked at me in implacable concern. Fuck.
“What happened?” he asked, his fingers a steel cuff around my bicep. “Is it Dad? Tsepov?”
I yanked at my arm. There was no give in Axel’s hold. The pounding need to get to Alice fell back. I’d get rid of Axel, then I could find her.
“It’s not Dad. Alice took off. I have to find her.”
“Shit. Is she okay? You’re sure it’s not Tsepov?”
“It’s not,” I insisted, pulling on my arm again. “Let me go.”
Axel tightened his grip, pulling me into the dark corner of the stairwell, out of sight of the rest of the wedding guests. “If it’s not Tsepov why did she take off? What did you do?”
“Why do you assume I did anything?”
“Because I know Alice, and I know you.”
“What's that supposed to mean?” I shot out. He was my brother. What happened to benefit of the doubt?
“I saw Mom talking to Alice right before you two left the ballroom.”
Under my breath, I muttered, “I'm going to kill our mother.”
Axel rolled his eyes to the ceiling in exasperation. “You’re going to have to get in line for that. Right now, Evers and Summer have dibs.”
“Yeah? Well, I just went to the front of the fucking line.”
“Tell me what happened with Alice,” Axel ground out, his eyes black with temper. “What did Mom say to her?”
“She threw the thing with Dad in her face. I got her away from Mom, told her it was ancient history. She went into the bathroom and now she’s gone.”
As summaries go, it wasn't great, but it covered the basics. Axel said nothing, his eyes flat, his face a wall. His voice was dangerously quiet when he said, “What thing with our father, Cooper?”
“You don't know?” The ground tilted under my feet as I took in his expression, felt the weight in his words. Slowly, I said, “The thing with Dad. That she was sleeping with him when he hired her, and it ended a few months later?”
I heard a gasp from behind Axel. Emma. Shit. Alice wouldn’t want her to know.
Axel shook his head, staring at me as if I were the worst kind of idiot. “Alice never slept with Dad, Cooper.”
Chapter Twenty
Cooper
Axel's words fell with such absolute certainty I knew he was telling the truth.
When Alice was hired, Axel hadn’t yet opened the Las Vegas office. He’d still been working out of Atlanta, side-by-side with our father most days. He knew more about what Maxwell had been up to during that time than anyone.
The world I kn
ew turning inside out, I said, helplessly, “Dad told me about it. About them.”
“And you believed him? What kind of moron are you?” Axel raised one eyebrow in a look so familiar I might have been staring into a mirror. Fuck, that was annoying. Did I look this smug and arrogant when I stared people down? Probably.
I opened my mouth to respond, to say something, anything, but no words came out. I tried again. “He— I was— You don't understand,” I finished, lamely.
Emma's voice cut through my protests, her eyes narrowed on me in supreme displeasure. “Let me get this straight. You just accused Alice of sleeping with your father? With Maxwell?”
“No! Hell, Emma, I'd never do that to her. My mother cornered her. I told her it didn't matter. That I didn't care.”
“Oh, that’s so much better. So, you told her you don’t care that she was sleeping with your dad? I'm sure that made her feel wonderful.”
“The sarcasm isn’t helping, Emma,” I muttered.
“I'm not sure I want to help you, Cooper.”
Axel dropped a kiss on his wife's temple. He loved Emma’s spirit. Usually, I liked her attitude almost as much as he did. Not today. Today I just wanted her to shut up. The magnitude of my fuck-up was dawning piece by piece.
Alice's horrified eyes kept flashing in my memory, over and over, each time twisting my insides tighter.
How could everything have gone so wrong so fast?
“I have to find her,” I said.
Emma looked around, her eyes taking in the crowded hallway, people moving in and out of the ballroom, headed for the bathroom or the bar. “She's not going to be down here. If she didn’t leave the bathroom by the door, she must have gone out the window.”
“We’ll check this floor,” Axel said, “just in case. You head to your room. She’s probably there.”
“Yeah, packing,” Emma added. Her words arrowed through my shock, galvanizing me into action.
I didn't wait for Emma to finish, turning and sprinting up the stairs to the fourth floor, cursing myself all the way. I jammed the key card in the door and threw it open.
The room stared back at me.
Empty.
Alice wasn't here. Her things were gone.
Not all of them. A tube of lipstick lay on the counter. A hairpin was forgotten in the sink. Her hangers in the closet were empty, her overnight bag missing. It wouldn't have taken her long to pack.
An image of Alice invaded my mind, her racing through the room like a whirlwind, shoving her things in the bag and going— Where?
Her purse and phone were gone. I unlocked my own phone and opened the tracker app. With a few taps on the screen, I knew exactly where Alice was. On the road back to Atlanta.
The door opened behind me. I ignored it, my eyes locked on her blinking red dot on the screen as it moved millimeter by millimeter down the line of the highway, taking her further away from me.
Axel shut the door behind him, coming to look over my shoulder. “She's not here?”
“Her purse is on the way home. I'm assuming she's with it.” I said, my voice flat, dead. A thought occurred to me, and I strode across the suite to check the dresser in the bedroom. The top was strewn with my wallet and loose change.
My car keys were missing.
“I need to borrow your car,” I said, turning to Axel. “Alice took mine.”
Axel stared at me with assessing eyes, probably trying to decide how much shit he could give me. My misery must have been apparent, too deep for brotherly ribbing.
“Follow me. Emma and I will get a ride back with someone else.” Under his breath, I caught his mutter. “Fucking asshole.”
“I heard that,” I said without heat. I was a fucking asshole. Why had I believed my father? Back then, sure. I didn't know Alice, and it wasn't unlike my dad to cheat on my mom. But later, once I'd gotten to know Alice, why had I still believed him?
Because believing made it easier not to have her, a voice whispered in the back of my mind.
I pushed the voice away. It didn't matter now. All that mattered was finding Alice.
The drive to Atlanta was endless. I'd been in any number of tight spots over the years, times when every second stretched to an eternity, when my life hung in the balance, and with every heartbeat, I saw another way it could end.
None of it was as bad as that trip back to Atlanta.
Alice’s phone was turned off. Every call went straight to voicemail. I thought about calling the emergency line at the office, telling whoever was on duty to restrain her when she got back to the building.
No. That would cross every line. I’d promised I wouldn’t humiliate her at work. If I had her locked up by one of her coworkers… Even in my desperate state, I knew that wasn’t an option. Fuck.
Finally—fucking finally—I pulled into the garage at Sinclair Security, relieved to see my Aston Martin parked neatly in its space.
The elevator crawled up. One flight. Two. Why was it so fucking slow?
I reached her door and knocked. Waited. Knocked again.
The misery and fear in my chest pushed at me and I caved, using my key to let myself in.
What was a little breaking and entering on top of everything else?
The lights were off, her apartment empty. She'd been here. I caught a faint whiff of the perfume she’d been wearing, but that wasn't how I knew.
Her purse and cell phone sat on the kitchen counter.
Fuck.
Such a simple thing, the purse and cell phone. She’d left them lined up, side by side, a message for me. Alice didn’t want to be found.
A stab of agony in my chest. Alice wasn't going to give me a chance to explain. I’d pushed her into this thing with me, knowing she was worried about her job, knowing she’d been unsure, arrogantly assuming that I could make everything all right.
Now she was gone.
Knowing it was useless, I checked her place anyway. Her driver’s license was the only thing obviously missing from her purse. Her dress from the wedding hung in the closet, the hanger tilted at an awkward angle. I straightened it, settling the dress properly, trying not to think about how beautiful she’d looked in it only hours before. When she’d still been mine.
Beneath the dress, her heels were tossed on their sides. A pair of Converse high tops were missing from the shoe rack, along with a backpack.
Where was she? It was close to midnight. I pulled up the security cameras on my phone. Her car was parked in the garage. Wherever she’d gone, someone else had given her a ride.
The next few hours flew by in a fruitless search. Alice was nowhere in the building. The camera showed her leaving on foot a mere ten minutes before I’d pulled into the garage.
She'd walked out the front door, turned right, and disappeared from view. According to her phone, she hadn't called for a ride. Hadn't called or communicated with anyone since a quick text to Emma that morning. Alice didn't have a landline, and her email was equally devoid of clues.
She'd simply packed a bag, walked out the front door, and gone poof.
The sun was rising by the time I fell asleep on my couch, my laptop open on my chest, showing nothing useful.
I was going to miss Jacob's wedding breakfast. I knew he'd understand. I couldn't go back to the resort and risk missing Alice if she changed her mind and came home. I worked the keyboard most of the night, trying to find some trace of her.
I was rusty. There'd been a time when my hacking skills could rival our best guy, but these days I spent too much time wooing clients, more busy running the business than handling cases.
Credit card and phone records gave me nothing. Traffic cameras didn’t cover the block where Alice had vanished.
She might have used a ride share service, but hacking into those was a step beyond my current abilities. The head of our tech divisio
n could get into them in a blink. That was Lucas’s job, after all. But Lucas was with his wife, Charlie Winters, Jacob's cousin, at Château du Jardin.
As much as finding Alice felt like the most important thing in the universe, I wasn't enough of an asshole to screw up Jacob's wedding any more than I already had.
My heart screamed that Alice was out there on her own. It wasn't safe. Tsepov could get to her. I needed to apologize, to make things right. I needed her back. I needed to fix this.
My head told my heart to shut the fuck up. My heart had caused enough trouble already. Alice wasn't stupid. She was furious with me—and rightfully so—but she wasn't stupid.
Wherever she'd gone when she'd walked out the door, she wasn't wandering around the streets of Atlanta with a big sign saying Kidnap Me. If I couldn't find her Tsepov would be out of luck, too.
I didn't want to wait for Lucas to get back. I forced myself to do it anyway, obsessively checking her credit cards in case I’d missed something. Nothing, nothing, and more nothing. Like I said, Alice isn’t stupid.
She’d left her purse and phone behind for a reason. Alice didn't want to be found. If Alice didn't want to be found she sure as hell wouldn't do something as obvious as use her credit cards.
I cursed myself for including admin staff in training. Always have an exit plan. Back-up. Cash, transportation.
I tried to put myself in Alice's place, to figure out what she would have done. Maybe she’d stopped on the way back to Atlanta and bought a burner phone. Called one of her friends. Or her family. I thought about hunting them down, one by one. Her family would be easy. They were all in the D.C. area.
Stalker much?
And that was the problem. Alice is an adult. She was in her right mind. She wasn’t in danger. I didn’t have the right to stake out her friends to see if she was holed up at one of their houses. If Alice found out I’d gone to those lengths to find her, she’d be even more pissed at me than she already was.
The ruthless, hungry part of me didn't give a damn. That part would do anything to find her, to bring her back to me where she belonged.
No. I was on thin ice as it was.
If I wanted Alice back, it wasn’t enough to be ruthless, I’d have to be smart enough not to make this whole fucking disaster worse before I found her.