by Eliza Boyd
The no-nonsense man was in Hawaiian shorts, a short-sleeved button-up Hawaiian shirt, and flip-flops.
Maxwell’s eyes nearly bugged out of his head. “I didn’t know you owned clothes that weren’t black and made for funerals.”
“I didn’t until last night, sir.” With a hand, Phillip gestured for them to go into the living space of the suite. He followed behind Maxwell and had a seat in one of the armchairs while Maxwell sat on the couch. “I bought them at the gift shop in the lobby when I saw Mr. Williams surrounded by women at the bar.”
“Gabe was at the bar last night?” Maxwell wasn’t shocked about that, but he was about something else. When Phillip had nodded, Maxwell added, “Why were you there?”
“I was down on the beach to get some fresh air during our last night at this place. But as I walked past him, sir, what I overheard him say contradicted everything I’d learned about him and his relationship with Miss Robinson.”
Maxwell’s gut churned even more intensely now. Shifting on the couch, unable to get comfortable, he said, “We were wrong.” It wasn’t a question. It was a statement. An observation. Something he’d felt at his core the moment he’d opened his eyes that morning.
Since before that, if he were honest. That look on her face before she’d hit him with a truth bomb… He’d never forget it. The hurt. The shock. The betrayal.
He’d known then, but he hadn’t wanted to admit it.
“What did you hear?” he asked Phillip.
Phillip hesitated before speaking. “He told the women Miss Robinson cheated on him.”
Fury flared within Maxwell. Was that a lie? Was everything Gabe had said a lie? Or had Alexis fooled him so completely? He wasn’t sure, so he needed Phillip to hurry up with this story.
“Did she?” he seethed, his teeth clenched so hard that it hurt.
“Well, that’s what I wanted to find out. So I bought these clothes,” he said, pinching the material of his shirt, “and went to the bar to talk with him myself. Either he’d never seen me or he was so inebriated that he didn’t recognize me. And, sir, the secrets tumbled out, so it was probably the latter.”
“What secrets?” Maxwell demanded. “And why didn’t we know about these before?” They would have saved him a world of hurt and trouble. He’d wanted to get on Alexis’s good side, not have to climb that mountain again. She wouldn’t forgive him so easily if he’d made that mistake.
“I think we saw what we wanted to see, sir,” Phillip answered. “Instead, the opposite was true. He cheated on her. He admitted as much when the women had scattered. That is why she left him. It had nothing to do with the money. In fact,” he added, an unusual, sad tone infused in his voice, “she’d told us the truth. She hadn’t known his business was going under or about the bankruptcy. He’d kept her unaware of the situation on purpose.”
At that, Maxwell hung his head, his breath leaving him in a rush. “You have to be kidding me,” he mumbled to his chest.
“Unfortunately, no, sir.” Phillip rose from his chair. “So, what would you like me to do?”
“You confirmed this information?” Maxwell asked, squeezing his eyes shut.
“Yes, sir.”
After raising his head to gaze at the ceiling, Maxwell sighed—long and loud. “Nothing, Phillip. There’s nothing you can do. I’m the one who has to fix this.”
“But, sir, it was my information that—”
“I know, but I should have confirmed it myself, looked into it myself, asked her myself.” Maxwell stood, his hands in fists at his side. Anger flowed through him. He’d been so quick to judge a person with so many more intricacies than a business had. He’d spent more time going over the numbers for the Hartford deal than he had asking Alexis questions and getting to know her. Yet his heart still knew what it wanted. “So, now, I need to handle this myself.”
Phillip nodded. Then he put his hand in his pocket and removed a white card. “Maybe I can help though.” He extended it to Maxwell, who took it.
Jeff the Taxi Man was emblazoned on the front of it along with a phone number.
“She left that in her room upstairs,” Phillip informed him. After slipping his hand back into his shorts pocket again, he handed Maxwell another card. “Along with this one, sir.”
Maxwell didn’t need to read that one to know what it was. His own name stared up at him plain as day, which made his heart clench. She wouldn’t need the card to have his number unless she’d deleted it from her phone. But the sentiment was telling. Very telling. He got the message loud and clear.
Too bad he couldn’t listen. His heart wouldn’t allow it.
After snagging his phone from the charger on the kitchen counter, he dialed the phone number from the first card, mentally begging Jeff to pick up. He did on the third ring.
“Jeff the Taxi Man. How can I be of service?”
“This is Maxwell King. I’m calling to see if—”
Jeff spoke over him. “Whoa. Are you missy’s Maxwell?”
Maxwell raked a hand through his hair. “Uh, I don’t know who Missy is.”
“You know,” Jeff said. “The one who hit her with the car. That’s you?”
Closing his eyes, Maxwell had never been more thankful he’d done that. It wasn’t how he wanted to be recognized—not when he had more money than he knew what to do with. But if it’d help him find Alexis, then so be it.
“Yes!” he replied a little too enthusiastically for someone who’d nearly committed a crime. “Do you know where she went?”
“Ehh,” Jeff answered, the sound not reassuring Maxwell in the least. “I really shouldn’t tell you that, mister. Client-driver privilege and all.”
“That isn’t a thing,” Maxwell deadpanned.
“Yeah, but if you mean to do her harm again…”
Maxwell’s head fell backward. The word again hung in the air, buzzed in his ears, and bounced around in his brain. Was Jeff referring to the car incident? Or had Alexis told him what had happened the day before?
“I just want to apologize to her,” he told the taxi driver. “I was very, very wrong, and she needs to know how sorry I am. How much I regret what I said and did. How much I—” He cut himself off before telling this random guy what he felt for Alexis sooner than he told the woman herself.
Jeff was silent for so long that Maxwell was convinced he’d need Phillip to put his skills to use to track Alexis down. Or that he’d need to do what Alexis hated about him the most: throw money at Jeff until he agreed to give him the information he wanted.
But then he surprised Maxwell and said, “She called me yesterday in a tizzy. I took her to a nice hotel down the road—”
“Which one?” Maxwell said, speaking over the man.
Jeff didn’t seem to like that. “It doesn’t matter which one.”
“It does to me,” Maxwell replied. He was this close to asking Jeff to name his price. But knowing that Alexis wouldn’t want him to do that stopped him before he could try that tactic. So he closed his eyes, scrubbing a hand over his short beard, and said, “Please,” in a raw, honest voice. “I need to see her and fix this.”
“Well, she’s not at the hotel anymore, mister,” Jeff explained gruffly. Then his voice softened as he said, “I took her to the airport an hour ago.”
Maxwell’s eyes popped open, homing in on Phillip. “Thank you,” he said into the phone, exploding into motion. To Phillip, he said, “We need to get on the road. Whatever’s not packed up, we can have shipped. Let’s go.”
“Do you want me arrange for a car?” his personal assistant asked, already on his phone.
Maxwell started to nod, but the voice on the other end of the phone made him stop.
“I can be there in ten,” Jeff said. “I owe you a ride for all the money you paid me on Monday.”
One hundred bucks was not even close to the amount he’d pay to get to Alexis. But he’d gladly give Jeff one hundred times that to make it happen. Sometimes, having enough money to make
a problem go away was worth it.
Even if it meant going back to Montana.
He’d do it for her.
19
“I’m glad you’re home. I really am,” Heather said, a handful of pretzels not keeping her mouth busy enough.
Alexis could feel the but coming with her entire being. She shifted on her couch, squeezing the throw pillow to her side as she waited for the rest of her friend’s speech.
“But…” Heather drew the word out for way longer than necessary. “You could have just told him the truth. If he knew what had really happened, things could be very, very different right now. You might not have left with all of this hanging over your head.”
With her free hand releasing the pillow and shooting out to her side, Alexis said, “But he accused me of all of those horrible things! Why would I want to stick around and tell him how it really went down? If that’s what he thinks of me…” She flopped backward on the couch until she was lying across it. Then she covered her face with the pillow and wished the cushions would swallow her whole.
“No,” her friend gently said. “I meant at the beginning.”
Alexis moved the pillow away from her head and stared off into space as she thought about that. They were supposed to be working together. She’d needed to be professional after her last “dating the boss” mistake. And she’d thought Heather had understood that.
Her heart hurt so much that she couldn’t make sense of it anymore. If she’d just been honest with him, maybe he wouldn’t have thought those things about her. But maybe he wouldn’t have given her the time of day, either. Maybe he would have seen disaster coming because she’d already gotten engaged to her last boss and, well, look at how that had turned out.
She let out a shuddering breath. “It doesn’t matter anymore. What’s done is done, and I’m back in freezing Montana, where it should be spring, but we’ve been graced with snow in April.” That thought made her spring up to a sitting position. “Hey. Shouldn’t you be working?”
“Honestly?” Heather said around a mouthful of pretzels. After she swallowed, she continued. “Yeah, but my friend needed me to pick her up from the airport. The job will be there when I get back. I can pull an all-nighter if I need to. My customers’ taxes will be filed one way or another.”
That made Alexis feel even worse. “Ugh,” she moaned, falling back to a lying position. Her hair spread out all around her, and she dropped a bent arm to her forehead. “Let me help. What can I do? I don’t have a job, so I might as well be useful with you.”
Heather made a soft noise as she smiled. “That’s sweet, but there’s nothing you can do. I’ll be fine. I should probably leave in a few though.”
“Go on,” Alexis groaned, waving her away with her free hand. “I’ll be fine. I’ll look for a real job or something.”
“Or,” her friend said, stretching this word out too, “you could call a certain man and explain your side of the story. Setting the record straight isn’t a bad thing. At least then he’d probably feel horrible for being so rude to you.” She shrugged, pursing her lips, which relaxed into a sly grin as she stood up. On the way to the door, she snagged another handful of pretzels.
Alexis thought about that. She didn’t want Maxwell to feel horrible. She wanted him to feel about her the way she felt about him. Or had felt. With his accusations, she wasn’t sure she should still even like him. But the heart was a stubborn thing.
Time. That’s what she needed. She had the distance. Who knew where he was in the world now? Maybe he’d jetted over to the Bahamas to purchase a different resort there. He definitely wasn’t in Montana, where he’d basically vowed to never go again. Since she didn’t have to worry about running into him any time soon, she’d be able to forget. Or at least move past it. At some point.
Heather put her jacket on before wrapping her scarf around her neck. “Call me if you need me, okay? I may answer frazzled, but I’ll be here for you.”
“Thank you,” she answered in a grateful pout, getting up off the couch and hugging her friend. She didn’t know what she’d done to deserve such a person in her life, but she was thankful for it. “I’ll be fine.”
“You will be,” Heather said. Then she stepped out of Alexis’s embrace and opened the door. She was unable to leave, though, with the tall, dark, and handsome man taking up the bulk of the doorway. “Uh, hello. I think you have the wrong apartment.”
No, he didn’t. And when his gaze flicked from Heather to her, Alexis’s heart thundered in her chest as her head swirled. She thought she was seeing things. She’d just reminded herself that she needed time. That he’d never be in Montana in a million years. Since his normal solution to problems included a payment she’d never accept, he had no reason to be.
Yet there Maxwell King stood. In her doorway. Looking…cold. But also handsome. And out of place yet right at home.
Not a single part of Alexis knew what to think about this.
She wanted to know what he thought he was doing there. Had he come to humiliate her more? Accuse her of more awful things? Or had he come to give her the apology she rightly deserved, admit he was wrong, and wrap her up in his arms? She so desperately wanted it to be the latter even though the former seemed more his style as of late. Would he really have come back to the state he had nothing left to come back to just to rub her fictional mistakes in her face though? She didn’t think so.
So… “What are you doing here?” she asked him, protectively folding her arms over her chest.
“I have some things to say to you,” he answered, his voice rougher than she’d heard it before.
Heather did a double take as those words knocked around in Alexis’s thrumming heart and made her stomach do a somersault. “Do you know this man?” she asked, her gaze bouncing back and forth between them.
Alexis only stared Maxwell down though.
“Ohh,” Heather whispered, this word drawn out too. She’d gotten the hint. “I’ll be going now. Back to the office. Tax returns won’t file themselves.” She slipped past Maxwell, and once she was behind him, her eyes flashed wide. Pointing at him, she mouthed, “He’s gorgeous!”
All Alexis could do was raise an eyebrow at her traitorous friend.
Heather used her fingers to make a fake phone near her ear. “Call me!” she whispered, shaking her hand. Then she waggled her eyebrows and disappeared down the hall of the apartment building.
“How did you get in here?” Alexis asked him. “I didn’t buzz you in.”
“Someone was leaving.” He shrugged. “I slipped in after they walked out the door.”
She peered down the hall, wondering who’d betrayed her. No one was there, but she noticed something else instead. “Where’s Phillip?”
That brought a faint smile to Maxwell’s face. “He declined coming with me. He needed to change his clothes.”
“From one suit to another?” she deadpanned, shifting her stance from one foot to the other.
A small chuckle left his mouth. “You wouldn’t believe me unless you’d seen it for yourself.”
She knew he was right. She couldn’t imagine that man in anything other than business attire, so she wondered what the cause of the change had been. That wasn’t the matter at hand though. No, the matter at hand had much more at stake: her heart.
Her future.
Her life.
“Maxwell,” she said on an exhausted sigh, but he brought a hand up in the air to stop her.
“Let me go first. Please.” The softness to his tone hit her square in the chest. It was earnest, pleading.
So she caved and moved to allow him inside. She didn’t want her double-crossing neighbors to hear this conversation.
“Thanks,” he said, slipping inside her apartment.
She’d had this place before the breakup. That was the one lucky thing out of all of this. They’d never moved in together. But she did have to pay her own rent now. She’d figure that out somehow. On her own. Without Maxwell’s ha
rd-earned millions.
But she wondered how he saw it. It was small. Definitely not a mansion in Malibu. It was hers though. Homey. Comforting. It had everything she needed. Maybe not everything she wanted, but she could live with that. Somehow.
With Maxwell in her space, she felt uncomfortable. She wasn’t sure how to act, not with how little he thought of her. She could only hope he wasn’t there to rip her apart. Again.
“Can we sit?” he asked, looking around. When he laid eyes on the couch, he went over to it. “Is here okay?”
Shrugging, she made her way over there too, sitting on the opposite end. She grabbed the throw pillow and placed it on her lap, ready to squeeze it or cover her face with it if need be.
“Look,” he started, facing her, “I have to apologize. I said some truly awful things and believed the wrong ideas about you. And you never, ever have to forgive me, but I couldn’t go another minute without finding you and telling you how wrong I was and sorry I am.”
A tiny part of her heart thawed. That was a good start. If a man could admit he was wrong, he could do a lot of things. Good things. That’s what she wanted from him. Hope sparked in her chest for a moment before she doused it so she wasn’t disappointed.
“Thank you,” she said in a small voice. “But that doesn’t change the fact that you thought I did those things. Why would you assume that of me?”
“I wasn’t thinking clearly,” he admitted. “And to be honest, when Gabe confronted me with all of that, I didn’t think he was telling me the truth. But Phillip checked into it and—”
“You had Phillip spy on me?” she spit out, squeezing the pillow to death until her knuckles turned white.
“I needed the truth, Alexis.”
She tossed her hands out to her sides, the pillow tumbling to the floor. “Then why didn’t you just ask me?” On the last word, she pointed to her chest.