Page 28 of Burning for Alexander
His use of my first name stopped me in my tracks. There was an intimacy in it that immediately brought to mind that charged moment in my office. I blinked and tried to clear it from my head.
Tavo whispered something in Spanish and started edging away, but Alex caught his arm.
“It’s okay.” Alex spoke to him softly, then looked back at me with a mixture of defiance and desperation. “Look, Chief, can we just… can we talk about this privately?”
I felt Kaidee’s questioning gaze on the side of my face andrealized how this looked—me browbeating a local business owner over what appeared to be a minor safety issue. But every instinct I had screamed that Alex Marian was hiding something big, something that could put people like this kid at risk.
“So you can give me more of your lies?”
Alex’s face flushed, but before he could respond, a short, angry woman in a chef’s coat appeared from the kitchen.
“Everything okay out here?” she asked, taking in the scattered boxes, Tavo’s pale face, and the tension crackling between Alex and me. “I heard shouting.”
“Everything’s fine, Juni,” Alex said quickly. “Chief Kincaid was just… inspecting our light fixtures.”
The chef’s eyebrows lowered as her eyes narrowed. “He wants to check something, he can check how impossible it is to cook with a fire extinguisher up my?—”
“Bupbup!” Alex chirped. “Thank you, Juni. Why don’t you show Tavo out through the kitchen? Appreciate the help, Tavo, but I have it under control.”
“Clearly,” I muttered under my breath. I turned to Tavo, who was sneaking off toward the kitchen. “Hey, kid, one last question. What’s your last name?”
The young man’s eyes went wide with panic, and Alex stepped forward again.
“You don't need to answer that,” Alex said, his voice low and dangerous. For some reason, it went straight to my groin, which was incredibly inappropriate and distracting.
“Actually, he does. He was the one causing the safety concern today,” I snapped. “And you’re hiding his identity, which makes both of you look guilty.”
Kaidee shifted uncomfortably beside me. “Judd, maybe?—”
“I live here,” Tavo said quietly, his voice barely above a whisper. “Upstairs. With Alex.”
The admission dropped like a stone into still water. I felt my assumptions reshuffling, my anger shifting into something more complex and confused.
“You live here?” I repeated.
Alex’s shoulders stiffened, and his chin came out. “That’s right. In fact, we… we’re… together. So you see, not an employee.”
Tavo blinked, and Juni’s eyebrows shot up in surprise before a neutral mask fell over her features.
“The two of you,” I said, wanting, for once, for him to lie to me.
He hesitated just a moment too long before saying, “Tavo and I live together.”
I studied Alex’s face, looking for deception but finding only exhaustion and worry. Whatever was going on here was more complicated than I’d assumed.
Alex glanced at Tavo, who nodded. “It’s true.”
They were both lying. And for some reason, I was so relieved I wanted to laugh.
There was definitely something here I wasn’t seeing, some context I was missing, but it wasn’t about Alex Marian dating jailbait. Before I could press further, Kaidee spoke up.
“Our sandwiches are ready,” she said gently, clearly trying to defuse the situation. “Maybe we should hit the trail before the day is half-over.”
“Yeah.” I ran a hand through my hair, suddenly aware of how public this confrontation had become. “Okay.”
But as we walked back toward the front of the restaurant, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d just seen something important about Alex Marian.
Something that didn’t fit with my image of him as an entitled member of Legacy’s beloved Marian family. And that bothered me more than I wanted to admit.
