Claiming What's His (18 page)

             
Though, she really couldn’t blame anyone but herself on this one because she did tell Maggie that she didn’t want to hear anything about Alex.  But that never stopped her before!  And then he sat with Dean over peanuts and beer and decided that it would be good for them to merge companies. 

             
Now was this the same time they did the coin toss for the name of the company?  Were they sober when they decided that?  This was a lot of information to take in.  He practically just told her what had been going on the past six years (in cliff notes version).  But, lucky for her, this processed quickly.

             
When she found her voice, she asked, “S-so, there was no other hidden reason why you left, other than for a job?  No other woman or anything?”

             
“Only the job.  What?  You thought I had another woman hidden somewhere?”

             
And this was when she semi-lost it (yes, semi). 

             
“Do you know what that does to a girl’s head, Alexander Conrad, the fact that he calls her a bitch one day at his cousin’s party then he calls and stops by but the girl still becomes a bitch by not answering?  Then he ups and quits school and leaves town like the next day without as so much as a
goodbye
, a
bon voyage
, a
sayonara
.  He doesn’t write, he doesn’t call, nothing for six long years.  And then he returns six years later, out of the blue, and expects to pick things back up where he and the girl left off.  Do you see where I might be losing my mind over this that last few years?  Are you seeing where you’re messing with my head here?”

             
His lips twitched and he threw his eyes briefly at her before returning them to the road.  “Point taken.”

             
“This is
not
funny!” she shouted as she slapped his shoulder with the back of her hand.

             
He ignored the slap and asked, “So all this time you’ve been wondering what drove me out of Comfort?”

             
“Yes!” she snapped.

             
“Aww, I didn’t know you cared, babe.  And just so you’d know, there wasn’t any females when I got there, maybe the ones at strip clubs that we went to every now and then,” he told her as his face broke into a smile.  He was teasing her.

             
Her eyes narrowed and she growled at him.

             
He chuckled.  He reached over and twined his fingers with hers.

             
This small gesture had her heart melting in seconds, and for the first time she can admit (to herself) that she was glad to have him back home.  It was the first time she felt somewhat at peace that she wasn’t the cause of him picking up and abruptly leave.

             
She relaxed and took in the feeling of them intertwining their hands together and realized that this could be a normal thing for them, him holding her hands, bossing her around, telling her what to do and where to be all day long.  It was then she realized something else.

             
Sam was silent for a moment before she spoke again.  “I don’t know if I like you guys moving here.”

             
He tensed in a way that almost made her smile.  Then he gave a hand a firm squeeze and asked in a rumbly voice, “Why not?”

             
She crossed her legs and turned her body fully to face him.  “Because you guys might try to use that Yankee influence on us Rebels,” she teased.

             
His chest deflated and she could see the relief across his face as he loosened his hand grip.

             
Who would’ve thought that big, bad Alex Conrad was afraid of what a little ‘ole girl like Sam Daniels would say?

*******

              Sam stared out the window and gazed at the street traffic as drivers made their way, navigating behind other cars and roaming the streets.                The rest of the day she checked and answered emails, downloaded and developed photos, and called current and potential clients.  

             
Work really started picking up and when she wasn’t worrying about her clients, she worked on narrowing down her pool of suspects from their background checks.

             
The other time was spent telling Maggie that her butt wasn’t too big, her boobs weren’t too small and convincing her that she was perfect.  This was, unfortunately, an almost daily thing for them.

             
Alex left sometime a while ago to meet with George, taking the pups with him and was picking up dinner so she was left at the office to work.  

             
She called Kristen Hill on the number she left on her paperwork and asked if she had time to stop by.  She arrived shortly after.  

             
Kristen left the office clutching her purse straps and the envelope of pictures that Sam had developed for her very tightly in each hand.  She paid her bill and even wrote out a check for more than the invoice, calling it her ‘bonus’ for fast results.  

             
Hey, who was she argue.

             
Minutes after she left, Sam walked out to the front where she found Alex asleep on the couch with Buttons and Cuddles on top of him, fast asleep as well.  The pizza box was half closed on the coffee table with Coke cans on the floor.

             
Her phone chirped.  She reached for her phone and noticed her ‘Words With Friends’ game was pending for her turn.  She opened the game and glanced at the letter tiles.  She shuffled the letters and it led her to W, R, M. 

             
Why did that look familiar?  It seemed as though she had seen this recently.  She chanted the letters ‘WRM’ over and over again, but she still couldn’t figure out how or where she had seen it from. 

             
She walked over to the windows to watch the passing cars.  One by one, they drove by, enjoying their day out.  She just stood there, staring, until she finally caught something.

             
The license place.

             
“Alex,” she called out.

             
A dark vehicle passed by and she narrowed her eyes at the license plate.  The street lights illuminated just enough light on the vehicles for her to make out the plates.  All of the memories from that fundraiser night came rushing back, making her see clear as day the partial license plate that she had read.

             
“Alex.”

             
She glanced down at him. 

             
Alex stirred on the couch, his hair all mussed up.  His eyes were still sleepy but slowly they were waking up.  Her eyes slid down his body and she noticed that other parts were awake as well.

             
Hmm.

Yum.

              She moved her eyes back up to his.  His mouth crept up to a smile, as if he read her mind. 

             
Ignoring his know it all smile, she crooked her finger at him, heading straight into her office.

             
“We didn’t have to do it in here.  I figured the couch would’ve been a little more comfortable.  But the desk works for me too.  We could role play –” Alex teased as he entered the threshold.

             
She interrupted his thoughts, “Shut up and get over here.  I just thought of something.  There was something I forgot to tell you and the cops on Saturday.  I remembered a partial plate.”

             
He came to a stop in front of her desk and lifted his hands to his hips.  “What?  How could you forget something like that?”

             
Her brows rose in annoyance.  “You
are
kidding, right?  You were the one who kept giving me those brain-cell-killing kisses!  You were lucky I remembered everything else at the time!  And you expected me to remember after
that
?”

             
A smug grin spread across his lips.  “I guess I got a little carried away.  But don’t deny you didn’t like it.”

             
Ha!
  A little… that was putting it lightly.  And of course she liked it, not that she would feed more into his ego.  But she couldn’t think about his ego; she had other important matters to handle, a case to solve.

             
She ran the partial plates with the make and model of the car and got four hits for the State of Texas.  “Okay, there are four possibilities.  One in Amarillo, one in El Paso, one in Brownsville, and one here in Comfort.

             
“I’ll give you the one in Comfort, but it could really be any of those.  Maybe they came into town for the fundraiser,” he said.

             
“True.  Let’s go through each one.  First up is in Amarillo.  It belongs to a Mr. Nelson, age seventy-four.  No record, not even a speeding ticket.  Next is from El Paso, a Mrs. Mildred owns it, seventy-nine.  Again, no record, except for a couple of speeding tickets back when she was a teenager.  Third, the one in Brownsville belongs to twenty-four years old Daniel Bryson, but the note on here says it’s been at the impound since five months ago.  Last but not least, our last vehicle belongs to –” she paused.

             
Shit
.

             
“Sam.  Who does the last car belong to?” he asked as he placed his hands on the edge of the desk and stared at her as if trying to read her face.

             
“Lynn Summers.”

             
His brows went up.  “Are you sure?”

             
“Well, unless the records are lying to me.  Otherwise, her car matches the description with the partial plate.  But this sort of makes sense.”

             
Alex moved his hands off the desk to his hips as he stood up straight.  “What do you mean?”

             
“That night at the fundraiser I saw her leaving the convention with a duffle bag in her hand.  She was on the phone with someone and she seemed really angry or upset with them.  All I know is that she wasn’t the driver that tried to run me over.”

             
“This is something new.  Maybe when you saw her she was reporting it stolen.”

             
“But, how would she know if she was just coming from inside?  Besides, there’s no report of it stolen here.”

             
“You need to call Chuck and let him know of this newly discovered, but old, detail.”

             
“It’s only
old
now because of someone who made me lose of train of thought the first time!”

             
He was silent as his eyes slowly gazed up and down her body.  That hunger in his eyes made her feel like a prey.

             
This made her hot and aching.

             
Then she admitted, “I think for the first time I’m afraid of what you’re thinking.  What
are
you thinking?”

             
He moved and pulled her from her chair, folding his arms around her.

             
“What I was thinking was that the couch was really comfortable, and we haven’t broken it in yet.”

             
A tingle occurred between her legs.

             
“Alex, we had sex this morning,” she pointed out.  “You can’t seriously want to go again already.”

             
“Are you complaining?”

             
Her… complaining?  Was he kidding?

             
“No, but –”

             
And he kissed her.  It started off a slow gentle kiss then quickly turned into an urgent, hungry kiss.  He pulled her body to his and she felt his erection pressed firmly between them.

             
He was turned on and this made her soaking wet.

             
He lifted her and carried her to the couch, laying her down and him coming on top of her.  She reached back and bunched up his shirt from behind, pulling it further up when his phone rang.

             
He cursed.  She continued, kissing and licking his neck, pulling his shirt up and off, throwing it on the floor before he reached for his phone.

             
He pulled out his phone from his back pocket, checked the screen, and growled, “This better be good.”

             
She kissed her way up his neck to the corner of his mouth where she gave him a small lick.

             
This got her a tight squeeze around her waist.