“Who is it?” Her voice quavered.
Smiling grimly, Dixon nodded. This was good. She was being cautious, following the rules.
“It’s me. Dixon. Open up.”
“What’s your middle name?”
Dixon’s smile faded. This wasn’t part of the prearranged precautions. Something must have frightened her.
“Olaf. Olaf Kenichi.”
“Oh, Dixon! Thank God!” Alexandra drew the bolt and pushed the door open. Then she threw herself on his chest, burrowing against him, hugging him tight.
“Hey, what’s going on?” He held her at arm’s length to study her face. Her eyes looked huge, her expression stricken. A strand of hair was stuck to her cheek. He smoothed it back behind her ear.
“Mark’s here. And Shelby too. I saw them. They drove off a few minutes ago in Mark’s T-bird, but they were here. I swear it.” She was shaking.
Her distress tore at his heart. Dixon pulled her close once more, soothing her with his hands, stroking her shoulders and upper arms. “It’s all right. I believe you. I saw them too.”
She went stiff in his embrace. “Did they see you?”
“Yes.”
“No.” She pulled away from him. “No, I don’t believe this. Not Mark. It can’t be.” She paced frantically across the narrow room, her movements jerky, her eyes wide and terrified.
“Look, I don’t know for sure what Jordan is doing here, but just because he’s shown up, it doesn’t necessarily follow that he’s the villain. He’s a two-timing scum, but I honestly don’t think he’s the one who wants you dead.”
Alexandra halted her frenzied pacing. “Then why’s he here?”
“For the skiing?”
“You’re suggesting his presence is sheer coincidence?”
“Cesar told me yesterday that Jordan’s secretary claimed he’d left town for a skiing vacation.”
“Mark likes to ski the Idaho runs. I’ve never known him to come up here.”
“Okay, say his appearance is more than coincidence. Say he traced us up here somehow. That still doesn’t mean he’s the one trying to kill you. Maybe all he wants to do is talk you into taking his ring back.”
“Never.” Alexandra hugged herself tightly. “But if it’s not Mark, then it must be Shelby. She’s always been jealous of Mandy and me. All through school she made a dead set for every guy we showed the slightest interest in. It was like some sick competition.” She paused, her brow knit in thought. “Hating Mark was a pretense. I bet she’s been after him all along.”
“Or he’s been after her.” Dixon wished the words back as soon as he said them.
“What?” Alexandra met his gaze unflinchingly.
Time for the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Dixon took a deep breath.
“Look, you saw him kissing his boss’s wife, right? And caught him coming out of a motel room with his arm around a blonde. Face it. Mark Jordan is a world-class womanizer.”
“What do you mean?”
“My first contact with him came two years ago when his wife Colleen hired me to follow him.”
“You worked for his first wife? Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you explain all this when I first tried to hire you?” Alexandra sounded as if she were strangling on the words.
“You didn’t hire me to report on the state of your fiancé’s morals.”
Her mouth formed a tight line. “Tell me the rest of it, Dixon. I take it Mark was cheating on his wife?” She turned away from him.
Dixon could see the tension in her shoulders and the set of her head. Oh, hell. Why not just spit it all out? He was sick of keeping secrets. Who was he trying to protect anyway?
“Yes.” He was careful to keep his voice even and unemotional. “I followed him for a week and quickly came to the conclusion that Jordan was cheating on his wife.”
“Who was the other woman?”
“Women,” he corrected. “Six different women.”
She whipped around to stare at him with disbelieving eyes. “Six? Six different women? In a week? Who?”
“I didn’t bother getting all the names. Most of them were one-night stands. Or one-afternoon stands. He did the majority of his tomcatting in the daylight hours. A brunette named Chrissie Koehler was the only one he saw more than once.”
Alexandra shook her head. “I don’t know her.”
“She left town after the divorce. Apparently until she was named as corespondent, she had no idea Jordan was married.”
“He lied to her too?”
“Obviously.”
“So you’ve known all along what kind of man Mark was?”
“Yes.”
“And you didn’t bother to tell me?”
“Be reasonable, Alexandra. I couldn’t tell you.”
“Why not? It seems only simple decency to me. You see someone floundering around in quicksand and you throw them a rope.”
“It wasn’t quite like that.”
“No?”
He couldn’t think of anything to say.
Alexandra planted herself directly in front of him and poked his chest with her forefinger. “You must have realized he was up to his old tricks when you found Shelby’s earring on my mother’s bed. Why didn’t you tell me the rest of it then?” She poked him again. “Answer me, dammit.”
“Sweetheart—”
“Don’t you sweetheart me. I trusted that bastard. I thought he was in love with me. I thought I was in love with him.” Her voice broke on the last word.
Dixon tried to draw her into the comfort of his arms, but she pushed him away.
Her shoulders shook. Tears streamed down her face. She hugged herself, rocking back and forth on the balls of her feet. “How could you keep something like that a secret? Whose side are you on, anyway?”
“Confidentiality is a big part of my job, Alexandra. I didn’t feel the information was mine to share. After all, you hadn’t hired me to do a background check on your fiancé. You weren’t paying me to keep him under surveillance.”
“I never heard such a load of self-righteous drivel in my life. You withheld vital information just because I hadn’t specifically asked you to search for it. Tell me, if you had accidentally discovered that my sister was cooking the books at Gemini Gifts, would you have withheld that information too?”
“Of course not. That would have been unethical.”
“Oh, I see. It’s unethical not to tattle when money’s involved, but when it’s my emotional well-being that’s at stake, then it’s unethical to tell. Listen to yourself, Dixon. You’re not making any sense.”
“Alexandra.” He reached for her, thinking to calm her down, but she slapped him away and backed out of reach.
“Leave me alone, Dixon. I don’t want to talk to you anymore. I need some time to think things through.”
He left without another word. The bolt snapping into place behind him held a note of finality. He’d known this would happen sooner or later. He’d finally blown it big time.
Alex found Kurt in the lounge, staring into the fire with heavy-lidded eyes. He looked as if he were about to nod off, but she’d discovered his chronic lethargy was more pose than reality.
She perched next to him on the edge of the sofa. “Have you seen Dixon?”
His mustache twitched. “Thought you weren’t speaking to him.”
“We had a disagreement.” She spoke stiffly. “Have you seen him?”
“He left for Baker City about an hour ago. Said he wanted to contact that cop friend of his.”
She bridled. “He just left me here unprotected? What kind of bodyguard is he, anyway?”
Kurt lifted an eyebrow. “He did ask me to keep an eye on you. Said he thinks you’ll be safe as long as you don’t leave the lodge.”
“He thinks that, does he?”
Kurt didn’t comment.
In the silence she could hear the snapping of the flames, the ticking of the mantel clock. It was hard to hang on to her ang
er in such a peaceful setting.
Kurt stretched like a big cat. “Want to play a game of Scrabble?”
In the end, four of them played. Ginger and one of the regular guests, Mitzi Murtaugh, a retired college professor from LaGrande, joined Kurt and Alex in a cutthroat competition.
Ginger had just played qiviut on the triple-word score when someone rang the doorbell.
“Challenge!” shouted Mitzi, reaching for the dictionary. “There’s no such word. I’m onto you, Ginger. Remember the time you tried to slip yummox past me?”
Ginger gave her a superior smile. “I wasn’t trying to slip anything past you, Mitzi. I was confusing it with lummox. Qiviut is a real word. Honest. It’s the wool of the undercoat of the musk ox.”
The bell rang again. “I’ll get it.” Kurt, who was wrapped around his chair like a pretzel, slowly untwisted himself and sauntered to the door.
“Damn!” Mitzi slammed the book shut. “He’s right.”
“Told you so.” Ginger’s grin was unbearably smug.
Kurt swung the big front door open as the bell rang a third time. An Oregon State Police officer filled the doorway.
“Is there an Alexandra Roundtree staying here?”
Something was very wrong. She knew it. Alex stood up so abruptly that she spilled her tiles across the Scrabble board. “I’m Alexandra Roundtree. What is it? What’s happened?”
“Do you know a private investigator from Brunswick named Dixon Yano?”
“Sure. He’s my cousin,” said Kurt.
“He’s working for me,” Alex added. Her stomach spasmed, then tried to crawl up her esophagus. “Why? What’s wrong?”
“There’s been an accident. Apparently, the brakes on his Jeep failed.”
Alex took a deep breath. I’m not going to faint, she told herself. “Is he all right?” He must be alive, and conscious too. Otherwise, how would the man know her name? Unless …
She stared at the burly patrolman in growing horror. Unless the whole thing was a lie. Unless the man was just pretending to be an Oregon State Police officer. Trust no one, Dixon had said.
Her voice shook, but didn’t break. “I’d like to see some identification, please.”
THIRTEEN
“No, Alexandra.” Kurt slipped an arm around her shoulders. “He’s on the up-and-up. I swear. Bill, put your badge away. This is Bill Umphrey, Alex. He lives down the road. Ginger and I have known him for years.” He caught her gaze. “He’s one of the good guys, honest.”
Alex shivered. She was getting paranoid, not a good sign. She turned to the state trooper. “Where’s Dixon?”
“At Saint Elizabeth’s Hospital in Baker City. His injuries aren’t serious,” Officer Umphrey assured her quickly. “He was more worried about you than about the gash in his forehead. Made me promise to tell you what’d happened so you wouldn’t spend the night worrying. They’re keeping him overnight for observation.”
The muscles in Alex’s stomach tightened. “I thought you said he wasn’t seriously injured.”
“He’s not.” Officer Bill Umphrey had a direct gaze and a deep, reassuring voice. “Just mad as hell because the sawbones refused to release him. He asked me to tell you to sit tight.”
Alex gave a short bark of laughter. “Forget that!”
“Ms. Roundtree, he’s worried about you. He’s afraid that without him around, you might do something stupid.”
She watched his expression change to one of chagrin as he realized what he’d just said.
“Is that a direct quote or are you paraphrasing?”
Umphrey stammered. “I … no … I …”
Before he could finish whatever he’d been trying to say, Shelby and Mark walked in on the scene, arguing loudly, a circumstance that afforded Alex a moment of guilty pleasure.
“I waited in the ski shop for almost twenty minutes. What were you doing all that time?” Mark was in a snit. She’d always hated it when he’d used that tone on her.
“I told you already. I was in the ladies’ room. I wasn’t feeling well.”
Shelby didn’t look well. She was paler than normal despite having just spent the whole day outdoors.
Suddenly she noticed the uniformed trooper. If possible, she grew even paler, every vestige of color draining from her face. “What’s happened?” she asked in a reedy voice Alex scarcely recognized. “Has there been an accident?”
Alex stepped forward. “Yes. Didn’t you notice the patrol car parked outside?”
Shelby’s jaw went slack. Alex thought for a second she was about to faint. “I—we parked in back and walked around.”
“I didn’t leave the lights on,” Umphrey said. “Thought it might be bad for business.”
“Bless you, dear man.” Ginger jumped up. “For that you earn a reward—a plate of my special maple sticky buns.” He bustled off toward the kitchen.
Mark frowned as he struggled to follow the conversation. “You all look pretty healthy to me. If there was an accident, who was hurt?”
“Dixon,” Alex said. “He’s in the hospital in Baker City. Officer Umphrey assured me his injuries are minor, but I intend to judge for myself. That’s where I’m headed now.”
“We can drive you, can’t we, Mark?” Shelby shot Mark a look of appeal.
He frowned. “But it’s Christmas Eve. We’ll miss dinner.”
What a jerk. Alex could scarcely believe she’d ever been so misguided as to imagine herself in love with this man. “Mark’s car’s only a two-seater.”
“I’ll run you in,” Kurt offered.
“You’ve got your hands full taking care of your other guests. I’ll call a taxi.”
“No need. Ginger can handle things here. I’d like to check out those ‘minor injuries’ firsthand anyway. Besides, Dixon deputized me, remember? He’d kill me if I let you go all that way alone.” He sighed in resignation. “He’s probably going to kill me anyway for letting you go at all.”
Alex set her jaw. “Don’t worry. I’ll deal with Dixon.”
Candy, the cute blonde nurse, fluffed his pillows and adjusted the bed for the second time. “There. How’s that, Dixon? Better?”
“Fine.” In fact, this whole hospital thing was turning out to be a lot more enjoyable than he’d expected.
“Here’s your dinner.” Darbie, the even cuter brunette, set his dinner tray on the bedside table. She cranked on the handle that adjusted the table’s height until she was satisfied, then swung it across his legs. Whipping the plate covers off with all the flair of a professional magician, she conjured up sirloin tips, a baked potato, and asparagus with hollandaise. “If you need more sour cream … just press the call button.” She did this cute little Scarlett O’Hara thing with her eyelashes.
“You know how to press the call button, don’t you?” Alexandra glared at him from the doorway. “Just put your finger down, and push.” Her scathing look lashed across the room at the two young nurses. “I noticed on the way in how well trained the other patients are. There are at least five lights lit up along this side of the hall alone.”
Candy scuttled off at a trot, but Darbie was made of sterner stuff. “Remember, if you need anything, Dixon … anything at all …”
“He’ll call. He’ll call.”
Darbie sidled out with one last flutter of her truly extraordinary lashes.
Alexandra frowned after her. “Short skirts are so unprofessional. I’m surprised the supervisor lets her get away with wearing such a scanty uniform.”
“She is the supervisor.” Dixon hid his grin. Alexandra was jealous. Which meant she still cared for him. Which, in turn, meant she’d probably forgive him sooner or later. Yes, oh yes. Despite the twelve stitches at his hairline, life was good.
“Hi, cuz.” Kurt smiled apologetically over Alexandra’s shoulder.
“Thanks for bringing her down, Kurt.” Dixon’s voice was laced with sarcasm. “She was safe at the resort. That’s why I asked her to stay there.”
Kurt shrugg
ed. “Hey, I figured I was dead meat no matter what I did. And the truth is, cuz, I’m more scared of her than of you.”
“As well you should be.” Alexandra feinted a punch at Kurt’s midsection.
He doubled up in mock pain. “See the way the woman treats me? Do you blame me for caving in?”
Dixon grunted.
“Besides, I wanted to check out your injuries for myself.”
“I’ll live,” Dixon assured him.
Alexandra frowned. “Don’t count on it.”
Kurt shot her a nervous glance. “Well, if you’re all right, Dix, then I guess I’ll head on back.”
Coward, thought Dixon.
“Thanks for the ride,” Alexandra called after Kurt’s retreating back, then pulled the heavy door shut behind him.
Dixon eyed her warily. “Why did you do that?”
“What? Shut the door? I thought you might prefer to chew me out privately.”
He shook his head. “I don’t intend to chew you out. You shouldn’t have come, but I’m glad you did.”
“That’s good. Because the way I see it, a few stitches in your head don’t relieve you of all responsibility. I hired you to guard my body, Dixon Olaf Kenichi Yano, and that’s pretty hard to do when I’m thirty miles away.”
Pushing his dinner tray aside, she perched on the edge of his bed. “I’m glad you’re not angry with me, but it’s a shame to waste all this lovely privacy.” She leaned closer until her lips were within a hairsbreadth of his.
“Definitely.” Smiling, Dixon closed the gap to capture her lips. Sweet, soft, and wildly intoxicating—that was Alexandra. He only hoped the nurse didn’t come in to check his vitals before he had a chance to calm down. The blood pounded in his ears like heavy surf and he suspected his blood pressure was off the chart.
Alexandra was the first to pull away. She nestled against his chest with a little sigh of contentment. “I thought I’d lost you, Dixon. When that cop said you’d been in an accident …” She sat up, cradling his face gently between her hands. Her tender expression filled all the empty spaces in his soul. She loved him. She hadn’t said it, but he knew. Her face said it for her. “I don’t want to lose you, Dixon.”
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