Breakfast was actually pretty nice, and of course the early morning view of Dana Point Harbor was peaceful as well. We went to a restaurant that I hadn’t been to before, enjoying a light platter of mostly fruit, some delicious scones, and fresh jams. “Hurry up,” Dad said about twenty minutes after we sat down. “Well, Layla, at least you need to hurry. Kade and Alix can take their time.”
“Okay, Derek Prescott, what’re you up to?” Layla asked, grinning as she tucked a last little bit of scone with clotted cream and fresh blueberry jam into her mouth. “Because you didn’t have us drive down here to enjoy your son’s car, or to have scones at just after sunrise.”
Dad grinned and nodded. “You’re right, and I have to apologize for keeping you in the dark. I just changed our original plans. I know I told you and Kade that we were going to drive up to Big Sur, but I thought to myself that we had done that just last year. So I booked us tickets on the Catalina Express.”
Layla stopped chewing, then flushed as she let her emotions show. “Really?”
“Really. Three nights on Catalina, and we fly back into Long Beach on Wednesday. What do you think?”
Considering that Layla nearly tackled Dad in hugging and kissing him in reply, it was a pretty safe assumption that she liked the surprise gift.
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.”