Kristin Gabriel - Engaging Alex

“How much does she know?” Nico asked, pulling out of the parking lot.

Alex turned to him. “She knows I dated her to try and gather information about her stepfather. She doesn’t know why. Or that you were the one who sent her that damn e-mail proposal.”

“I only sent it because you weren’t making any progress in locating Stanley Weaver. It’s obvious to me now that I should have done the job myself.”

The thought of Nico romancing Paige set Alex’s teeth on edge. “She couldn’t have told you what she didn’t know.”

“Maybe,” Nico conceded. “But it looks like I’ll be making her acquaintance anyway.”

Alex frowned at him. “Why?”

“To convince her to drop these ridiculous charges against you. I don’t want you spending another minute in jail. Not when I should have gone in your place.”

He was talking about the year Alex had been incarcerated on contempt charges for refusing to testify before a grand jury. It had been his bad luck to draw a hardnosed judge who routinely jailed witnesses until they agreed to talk. A judge who didn’t care that Lucian Mackopoulos, the owner of the company under investigation for illegal distribution of funds, was too ill to even realize what was happening.

Alex thought back to how it had all started, when Nico had come across a blackmail threat meant for their father. There was an audiotape, proving that Lucian had recently had a fling with a stripper in his private office, along with a threat promising to send the tape to Thea unless their father handed over twenty thousand dollars.

The blackmailer obviously didn’t know that Lucian had just suffered his first heart attack the day before. Nico, shocked by the evidence of his father’s betrayal, had paid the money to protect his mother. That had been his first mistake. His second had been withdrawing the funds from the company account.

By the time he’d confided in Alex, it had been too late. An overzealous IRS agent had caught the discrepancy months later and an investigation had begun.

Alex and Nico had begun an investigation of their own during that time, after the security firm they’d hired had pegged Stanley Weaver as the probable blackmailer. That’s when Alex had gone undercover as Paige’s boyfriend, hoping to discover Stanley’s whereabouts and try to find the original of the explosive audiotape.

But nothing had turned out as they’d planned. And neither Alex nor Nico could reveal the truth behind the missing twenty thousand dollars. Not without breaking their mother’s heart.

If Lucian hadn’t died of heart complications three months ago, Alex might still be in jail. They’d let him out just long enough to tell his father goodbye. Just long enough for Lucian to extract a promise from both his sons to take good care of their mother.

A promise they both intended to keep.

With Lucian’s death, the investigation against Mackopoulos Imports came to a grinding halt. But it still took almost twelve weeks before the case was officially closed and Alex was released from jail. He certainly didn’t intend to go back again.

“I’ll talk to Paige myself,” Alex said.

“Are you sure?” Nico asked him, turning into the Embarcadero Center. “I’ll be happy to handle it for you.”

“I’m sure,” he said firmly.

Alex tried to ignore the thrill of anticipation in the pit of his stomach. He hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her all weekend. Despite the fact that she’d had him thrown in jail, he still wanted her.

In truth, he wanted her more now than when he’d been forced to leave her a year ago. But he still couldn’t tell her about the grand-jury proceedings. Or the contempt charges. Not without revealing everything.

Alex rubbed one hand over his face, realizing Paige would probably never let him near her again. But at least now he had an excuse. A reason to see her again. It was a step in the right direction.

Nico pulled up to the curb in front of Bay Bouquets. “Just let me know if she gives you any more trouble.”

“Thanks for the ride,” Alex said, climbing out of the Corvette. He didn’t want Nico within one hundred feet of Paige. The intensity of his possessiveness shocked him. It also made one thing perfectly clear.

He wanted Paige back. For real this time.

Alex walked into the shop as the Corvette spun away. The scent of roses hit him immediately and he remembered the day he’d come to pick her up here for their first date. He’d intended to approach the project without emotion, just like he approached his job as the financial manager for his father’s company. But those intentions had evaporated the first time Paige had smiled at him.

And he’d never recovered.

When Alex walked inside the shop, his arrival set off a door chime and he saw Paige’s mother, Margo Weaver, turn from the potted rosebush she was grooming to greet him.

But the moment she saw his face, she fell to the floor in a dead faint.

Alex rushed around the counter, kneeling down beside her. He picked up the pruning shears that lay partially beneath her, then softly called her name. “Margo?”

The sound of footsteps made him look up. He saw Paige gaping at him, horror in her big blue eyes as she looked at her unconscious mother on the floor, then at the pruning shears he still held in his hand.

“Get away from my mother!”

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