“Just who is it you’re calling?” came a voice from behind her.
Alexa nearly screamed. She jumped and whirled, her heart in her throat, the phone clutched tight in her hand. “Grant! Oh, my God. You scared me. Are you okay?” She rushed across the room to where he sat in the big wing-back leather chair in the corner. Leaning over him, she cupped his face in her hand. “Why didn’t you answer me?”
He stared down at a tumbler in his hand that Alexa hadn’t noticed he was holding. Bourbon, if she had to guess. A quick glance to the Chippendale table next to the chair revealed a mostly empty bottle. His lips pressed into a tight line and his brow slashed downward. He tilted the glass in his hand as if watching the amber liquid was somehow mesmerizing. When he finally peered up at her, it was as if he’d turned into another man.
Grant’s expression was like a storm descending—dark, twisted, calculating. “Did you think I wouldn’t find out?” he asked, the words gritty and harsh.
“Find out what?” she asked, her thoughts frozen, her stomach dropping.
“Don’t play coy with me, Alexa,” he said, batting her hand away from his face.
Stepping back, Alexa shook her head, dread a living thing inside her. “Grant, I don’t—”
“Don’t fucking deny it!” he roared, lunging up from his chair. He grabbed her by the biceps and got right in her face.
“Grant, stop. Deny what? What happened?” she asked as she curled in on herself. His fingers dug into her arms like hooks.
He shoved her free and brushed his hands down his shirt as if to straighten himself, and then he glared at her. “How do you think it felt to have one of the sheriffs tell me, in front of the mayor, that he saw you riding on the back of Maverick Rylan’s motorcycle? A goddamned degenerate Raven Rider piece of shit.” He spoke with a quiet reserve that was somehow scarier than when he’d raised his voice.
Alexa broke out in a cold sweat as nausea swept through her. “I . . . I can explain.”
“I’m sure you can.”
She shook her head and held out her hands. “It was innocent. He was helping me—”
“Oh, I’ll bet. I know exactly what Rylan wants to help you with.” He picked up his glass off the carpet and poured just enough bourbon in it to finish in one big gulp. She hadn’t even seen the glass fall, he’d moved so fast.
Alexa’s mouth was so dry it was hard to talk. “He rode by my mom’s house on Saturday morning and happened to see me hauling trash to the curb. I was doing some cleaning for her, and I wanted to get rid of the garbage instead of letting it sit there in a big pile. He offered to get his truck to take the stuff to the dump for me. That’s all.”
“What do you take me for, Alexa?” he asked.
“I don’t . . . Nothing. It’s true. I only went with him to get his truck because things had been really tense with Mom and I wanted a break before we got into an argument. You know how she is,” Alexa pleaded, her head spinning, her heart thundering in her chest.
“Oh, I do. I live with her daughter, after all.” He chuffed out a humorless laugh and shook his head. Paced back to the table and poured himself more liquor.
His words hit her like a body slam, knocking the breath out of her. Regret and guilt twisted inside her. “That’s all that happened. He was just helping me.”
Grant turned to her and glared, his face flushed. From anger or the alcohol, Alexa wasn’t sure. “You made a fucking fool of me. Twice. First, by parading around town with a known criminal. And second, when I refuted the sheriff’s words, saying, oh, no, that must’ve been someone else because Alexa was at her mother’s. Only to have Davis insist he’d seen your face clearly while you’d been waiting at a red light on 15. Hanging all over another man.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, tears pricking at the backs of her eyes. “It didn’t mean anything. He used to be very close to my mother because of how long he and Tyler had been friends. He was just helping. That’s all it was.” She heaved a breath, trying to calm herself down, trying to keep everything from falling apart.
“It’s not how close he is to your mother that worries me,” Grant sneered.
Alexa’s stomach dropped to the floor. “Seriously?” she asked, the thought voicing itself without her permission.
His head tilted as his eyes narrowed. “You don’t agree that sneaking around behind my back and lying warrants suspicion?”
The air felt thick as she drew it into her lungs, as if her sensation of dread had taken on a physical form all around them. “I wasn’t sneaking around. And we weren’t doing anything wrong. We were in public. In broad daylight.”