Alix and I actually dropped Dad and Layla off at the docks for the Express, which left us with a lot of time on our hands and no clue in the world on how to spend it. I glanced over at Alix, whose eye was still puffy and slightly swollen, although the bruise had faded from an ugly purple to a merely sickly brownish-green.
Vince had gotten back to me as promised, and said that at least on the surface, Alix’s story held water. She had done a photo shoot on Friday for Men’s Health. The shoot had been done by a guy named Sydney Hale, who was a pretty famous photographer. The other people involved were another model, Karla McDonald, and a guy named Greg, who apparently somehow went by one name professionally, although I had no idea how that could work out. His name was Greg, nothing else. Los Angeles had to have a hundred thousand guys named Greg. In any case, Vince was trying to track down what exactly happened at the photo shoot, and promised he’d get more to me soon.
“There’s something in this that’s tripping my alarms, Kade,” he told me. “I don’t know what just yet, but something.”
I agreed with him, and kept my eyes and ears open all weekend. Now, it was just me and Alix, and I considered my options. I wanted to get her to talk, but at the same time I had to hold myself back. I couldn’t lose control. “So, what would you like to do?” I asked cautiously. “I haven’t been down in this area in a while.”
“I know,” Alix replied, giving me a smile that threatened to melt my heart. God, she was so beautiful, even with the bruise on her face. “I’ve kinda missed you. It was nicer when you were still at USC; you were living in the LA area. Once you went off to Stanford for law school, the house was really quiet. And to be honest, it was easier to understand things when I had you to bounce ideas off of.”
“Come on, Alix,” I replied. “Don’t tell me that you couldn’t figure things out for yourself.”
I really didn’t understand at the time why it was that I felt the need to taunt Alix so much when it was just the two of us. Even when we first met, I almost mercilessly teased her whenever we were alone. Some of it was due to my anger at the way she treated Dad and Layla, sure. But that wasn’t all of it.
Alix, to her credit, took it all without a complaint and never stopped being nice to me. Instead, she grew serious, a look that she almost never gave anyone else. With Dad it was good-natured tolerance, with Layla it was bitchiness, and with most of the other people I saw her with it was bubbly and vivacious. Only with me did I see the intelligent side of Alix Nova. “Things weren’t always as they seemed, I guess. Having you around sometimes helped. Especially when Mom and I were having problems.”
“You wouldn’t have—” I began, before cutting myself off. Dad wouldn’t have approved, and while I thought he and Layla were wrong in it, I wasn’t angry enough or invested enough in the issue to say anything. “Alix, despite having blonde hair, you’ve got a decent head on your shoulders. But we’re getting away from the question. What the hell do you want to do today?”
“You buying?” Alix asked with a little grin, and I shook my head, returning it.
“Hell no. I’m an attorney, you’re the world famous model. You should be buying me stuff.”
Alix paused for a second, and I could see the wheels in her head turning. She’s not dumb; in fact, if she had applied herself, she probably could have been just as good in college as I was. Like I said before, though, I can tell pretty easily when someone is trying to pull a fast one on me, and even before she opened her mouth I knew that Alix was trying to sell me a line of crap.
“Actually, that’s kind of the problem I’ve gotten into,” she said, giving me a shy look that I knew was part manufactured, but still, I had to admit it was effective. “Uhm, I’m really short on funds right now.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked. “I mean, how short are you?”
“Well, I kinda went hog wild after a recent deal,” she told me, “and went out, buying a bunch of stuff for my friends. I mean, it was an out of the blue deal, and they promised me a huge contract, face of the company, all the stuff I could have wished for. They even cut me a check for seventy-five thousand dollars as an up-front as their cover girl. I figured it was the biggest break I’d ever had, so I went shopping, putting it on my credit cards and signing a few loans on jewelry, some swag for a guy who had helped me out, all that sort of stuff.”
The story was decent, but I could already see cracks in it. I mean, who the hell cuts a check anymore? I decided to feed her some more rope, see how long it would take for her to get to the point and hang herself. “What happened?”
“The company went belly up. I mean, even before they’d sent me the actual contract, the owner flew off to Fiji or Peru or someplace like that, and the whole place just disappeared. The check bounced, and now I’m facing a call on a lot of stuff I bought for a lot of people that I can’t exactly go around asking for it back in order to return it or even try and get store credit.”