Stone Cold Charade (A Stone Family Novel) (4 page)

Laughing, shrewdly
guessing that Alex was not dressing so homely just to throw off the reporters,
Sam replied, “No, but isn’t the band showing up here next week?” If Alex were doing
anything, she was reverting to her teenage habits. Whenever Alex visited she seemed
to fall into the old routine of dressing to depress.

“Yes, after I’ve had a
few days to relax and recoup, then I’ll start tackling the next album. I need a
break. The guys are visiting with their families, like me,” she confessed,
clearly exasperated by the question and a little hurt by Sam.

She thought Sam had
wanted her here!

“Besides, the press
never tails the guys in the band unless Fire is with them, then they follow
like locusts.” She stated, waving her hands around her head to emphasize the swatting
of make-believe bugs. “Why do I get the feeling there is more going on here?
Just reschedule with the bull guy. Let me take the meeting with the security
guy with you? Together we should be able to handle it.”

Was it being alone with
the man that was troubling her sister? She knew her sister would not answer
truthfully. However, it didn’t stop her from trying, once again, to get Sam to
open up.

The mystery behind her
sister’s phobia of men had started after Sam graduated from high school. She
and Maxine, her twin, had embarked on an overseas trip visiting all the hotels
owned by Maximillion Enterprise. Traumatized by something, though they didn’t
know what, Sam had returned changed. Now just the suggestion of being alone
with any man caused her sister to go into a panic attack. They all speculated
that someone hurt their sister. The girls tried to get her to talk about it,
but Sam would close up like a clam. She refused fervently to discuss it and
always changed the subject, never giving the family any idea about what
actually happened.

Trying not to laugh,
Sam beseeched Alex one last time, “I want you here. I just can’t stay. Please,
please... Alex, do me this favor? Speak to the consultant for me. I need to
take this meeting with the owner of this bull. This animal will so help with
the breeding stock on the ranch,” Sam wailed, clutching at Alex’s hand to
stress her desperation.

“Okay, but you owe me
big time, buster. Big, Sam, and I mean really colossal. We’re talking the next
time Max phones; you’re taking the call and talking to his Holiness. And so
help me, if I draw his name at Christmas, you’re switching with me, Sam. You
got it buster?”

Laughing, Sam
reluctantly agreed. Alex blew out a long breath and crossed her arms over her
chest. Sam hugged her sister and vanished through the door before Alex had time
to reconsider.

As Alex stood contemplating the coming
afternoon, she started wishing Samantha had supplied her with a little more
information before she escaped. Still trying to figure out why her sister was
behaving so peculiar, she heard their housekeeper coming down the hall.

Martha, in her early fifties, worked for
the family and had for most of her life; thirty years. Having no kids of her
own and never marrying, she gladly helped raise the girls. The only family she
had left was a sister and her niece who still attended school. Martha looked
after everyone whether they liked it or not. She was like the comforting aunt
you went to stay with once a year during the summer. She was family.

“Did you need something, Martha?” she
asked as she scanned her plump face when she strolled into the office. Her long
salt-and-pepper hair was drawn back from her clean face in a secure topknot.
Her salmon-pink apron, covered in a dusting of baking flour, was draped over a
pastel print dress that covered her ample figure. Her feet were clad in a pair
of tennis shoes, of all things, but it was her deep-brown eyes carrying a vexed
look that held Alex's concern.

“There’s someone here to see your
sister. He claims Max sent him, but I could have sworn your sister just left
the ranch in a big-o’ cloud of dust,” she grumbled, still wearing a look of
confusion. Turning her head, she fixed her full gaze on Alex and raised an
eyebrow questioningly.

“She did,” Alex smiled at Martha’s
expression. “Could you ask him to wait in the den for me, please? I’ll be there
in a minute.”

Crossing her arms over her chest, Martha
clearly showed that she was miffed at Sam for not informing her of the man’s
arrival. She put her hands on her hips and declared, “I’m glad you know what’s
going on! Because me? I obviously just work here!” she huffed, puzzling over
who the man was and why Sam was not there to meet with him.

Swinging away abruptly, Martha marched
back down the hall toward the front of the house to deliver the message. Still
muttering about all the ingrates that she had helped raise to adulthood, she
reached the front of the house. After a couple of seconds of quiet, her voice
once again boomed from the vicinity of the kitchen, this time with a new threat
of TV dinners.

“Sally Jane, the local clerk says
they’re on sale. I think I’ll run right out and load up on the things, enough
for the whole blasted week!”

Alex cringed, while her stomach cramped
at the prospect. When Martha threatened to do something chances were it was no
empty threat. Plus, Alex knew for a fact staying on her good side was about
life preservation--her own!

Jokingly, the girls once questioned
Martha about how she put up with Max for all these years. To which she replied
that if the man ever got on her bad side, she would take considerable pleasure
in seeing to it that the man never complained about her cooking, or anything
else, ever again. She went on to describe things clearly, and gave the girls a
mental picture of what would happen if he did complain.

She painted a picture of Max seated at
the long breakfast table one morning as she calmly strolls in from the kitchen
at his bellow for a second cup of coffee. Raising a bite of fried eggs and
gravy to his lips, he halts as she, not brandishing the coffee pot, marches to
the other end of the table. Wearing her signature flowery apron, she turns,
facing him across its glossy surface. Then, in a flash, she pulls her .45 from
the front pocket, aims, and fires. A quick look of stunned disbelief crosses
Max’s tortured face as he suddenly grabs his gut then keels over. A resounding
splat fills the room as he lands face first in his eggs, over easy, while she
looks on, smiling smugly as the gun still smolders, clenched in her
outstretched hand.

It always caused the girls to go into
hysterics. Straight-faced Martha claimed the cowhands would have no trouble
helping her dispose of the body on the back forty. She was as bad as their
grandmother, which would explain why the two women were such close friends.

Emma, the girl’s grandmother, and Martha
were in constant contact. She received weekly reports detailing how Samantha
was “really” doing while working on Looking Glass Ranch. Martha felt it was her
duty to look after everyone on the ranch.

Martha complained continually that the
house was just too massive for her and Sam to live in, but loved every stick of
furniture and brick that held it together. Her loving hands were what kept it
going and maintained it. She kept it looking as it did when her parents had
refurbished it years before.

The house was a ranch-style, two-story A-frame,
and was not deemed a big house by Texas standards. It had a measly seven
bedrooms and five bathrooms, plus the private wing downstairs that Martha
occupied. Scattered throughout the structure in an array of earth tones, were
fabrics and lightwood furnishings with a southwestern design.

Sandra, the girl’s mother, designed the
home to replace the preexisting structure on the original homestead. Large,
elegant mesquite trees lined the front of the building, providing plenty of
shade during the simmering summer months, and withstood the test of time. They
had been there even before the old homestead was established. Well-groomed
flowerbeds and neatly trimmed shrubs were scattered around the outside of the
house. More were nestled throughout the enormous backyard. Placed beside the
large sparkling swimming pool, an iron patio set beckoned guests to sit and
relax in comfort. The estate was attractive and inviting, lending a sense of
serenity to its inhabitants, except the god-awful rusty oilrig that sat
brazenly in the middle of the back pasture. A detail, which everyone suspected
Emma of having a hand in making sure it, remained after the remodel, whether it
produced oil or not, just to get at Max’s goat.

Alexandria drew in a long breath and
sighed tiredly. “Why do I get the feeling this is going to be a long-drawn out
day?” She mused before squaring her shoulders and heading for the den.
It’s
better than heading to the kitchen to face Martha and her forty-five
, she
chuckled silently.

When she entered the den, her heart
stuttered at what was clearly a hallucination standing beside the fireplace. Ty
Phillips, her teenage nemesis, stood casually observing the collection of
family photos that were scattered in rustic wooden frames along the mantel. She
couldn’t seem to tear her startled eyes away from him. The last person on the
planet she thought she would see in this room was him. Her stomach took another
nosedive for an entirely different reason.

Standing there watching him, she
wondered what he would think of the older Alex, until she realized she was not
dressed as Fire. Life was so unfair, in so many ways. The man still could get
her heart rate up just by being in the same room as she was. The Alex he would
remember from their childhood was all he would see if he turned. It’s what the
world saw when she was Alexandria Stone. They never looked deeper to find Fire.
They only saw what was on the surface.

Now she wished she had followed Sam’s
advice and at least changed into something a little less comfortable. She
quickly chastised herself for even contemplating what he would have thought had
she been dressed as Fire. Ty’s opinion should have been the furthest thing from
her mind. She didn’t need his approval of her after all these years. It was
enough for her to know the little misfit he’d known had indeed grown up. She
wasn’t a child anymore.

It was as if she had stepped back in
time. Resembling the same Ty he had been that last summer she had been at home,
he was still the equivalent of a rodeo star, although his powerful shoulders
were broader than she recalled. Having memorized that chest that led to narrow
hips, flat stomach, and lengthy muscular legs, her memory had not failed her. They
were the same. Her hands still itched to run along their lengths. He wore
clothes similar to every other working cowboy, looking rugged in a
long-sleeved, western-cut shirt that accented his physique. The tan color of
the shirt highlighted his rich, dark brown hair that just reached the collar. A
pair of worn blue jeans wrapped his lower body in denim held up by a leather
belt boasting a silver buckle. Ebony cowboy boots encased his feet, while arrogantly
tilted on top of his head was a jet-black battered Stetson.

She knew that if he had been looking in
her direction, his eyes would be cobalt-blue, wide-set, with long lashes. The
real mystery was their tendency to ignite to a midnight-blue when he was
angered, making them appear almost black. His mouth would be sensuous, his
cheekbones high, and his chin square with a slight cleft. She caught herself
looking at his hands, lean and strong with long fingers and neatly trimmed
nails that seemed in contrast with calluses that showed he wasn’t afraid to
work hard. Her mind replayed the feel of them along her body the last time they
were in the same room together. That day had changed everything. It forced her
to make a decision she had never regretted.

Fleeing the next day from home, and
especially Ty, she had refused to question her family about him. She secretly
suspected that he hadn’t even noticed that she’d left. Knowing undeniably how
little she had truly meant to him, her inexperience and plain looks at the time
placed her out of his league.

Alex cleared her throat, hoping to gain
his attention.

Ty sensed someone was standing behind
him and waited. Even the carpeting, thick though it was, could not hide her
steps as she walked into the room. His training saw to that. He decided to let
her come to him. Ty was meeting with Sam, and she was always on her high horse
around him. Growing up together, she treated him like an older brother. Her
first year at high school had changed that. It got even worse after she
graduated and returned from a trip overseas. He was downgraded to a second-class
citizen. She avoided him as if it were beneath her to be in the same room with
him. He struggled to figure out why there was a change and had come up empty.
There had been no fights before or after she started high school, nothing Ty
could pinpoint, no harsh words spoken between the two over the years, but
whatever he had done altered their relationship and was still a mystery to him.

As he spun around to greet Sam, he was
startled to see Alex standing there, facing him with an unfriendly expression.
Ty schooled his features, trying to hide his disbelief. He had not seen or
spoken to Alex since she had left for college. To say he was shocked would be
an understatement.

As Ty continued to stare, Alex broke the
awkward silence.

“Seen enough? Or should I turn around in
a full circle so you can get a better look?” her voice dripped with sarcasm as
she stepped fully into the large room.