Nothing Personal (32 page)

Her mind all but screeched to a stop as the thought registered. She t
ook another sniff. Looked at the soles of his shoes, visible as he sprawled in the chair near the foot of the bed, and felt the memory click into place. Of her pulling Alec by the elbow as they approached the passenger side of the car, helping him avoid the pile of dog poop with its clear mark right smack in the middle, where some unfortunate soul had put his toe into exactly the wrong spot. A mark that was a perfect match for Brandon’s left Ralph Lauren.

“You’ve got dog p
oop on your shoe,” she told him.

“What?”
He stared at her, then turned his foot sideways to check it out.

“I don’t think that’s going to help you,” he said with a smirk
, relaxing with an obvious effort into his casual posture again. “Someday in the not too distant future, I figure I’ll be able to buy about, oh, a hundred thirty thousand pairs just like it.”

“Good
job with the division,” she said admiringly. “That’s what they promised you? Thirteen million? I don’t think you’re going to be seeing that. In fact, I don’t think you’re going to see anything but the inside of a prison cell. Two counts of attempted murder, I think that’s what they’re going to call that.”

“What are you talking about?” He was still trying to brush it off, but she could see the sweat starting to form on his upper lip. Brandon had never been nearly as cool, nearly as smart as he thought he was.

“I got my MBA at UC Davis,” she said.

He
looked at her like she’d lost her mind, and Alec was staring at her too, out of his one good eye, but he kept quiet.

Brandon didn’t, though. “So?
Is that supposed to impress me? Not exactly a Tier One school, is it? I got mine at Stanford, or didn’t you know that? You know what UC MBAs call Stanford MBAs?” He laughed as if he’d never told the joke before. “Boss.”

She ignored that. “You know what else UC Davis has? A vet school.”

“Oh, you’re a vet too? Is there no
end
to your talents? What are you going to do, get your horse and kick me to death?”

“And you know wha
t they have at that vet school?” she asked. “The only animal forensics lab in the United States. Did you know that canines secrete their DNA in their feces? I read an article on it. And do you know what that means?”

“That you’re desperately trying to stall me?”
The sneer was still in place, though it looked a little less certain now. “So you can think of something, something that isn’t there, to keep me from getting away with it?”

“You aren’t going to get away with anything,” she had the satisfaction of telling him. “Because you don’t have the right code. You’ve got a fake, wit
h your fingerprints all over it, and Joe, and Ron, and I imagine the whole rest of the board already know about it.”

“
You’re lying.” The color had crept up, and his posture wasn’t relaxed anymore, but he was still in there swinging. “Nice try, but it’s already gone. You’re too late.”

“
No. You’re the one who’s too late, because Alec lied to you. Joe would’ve seen it, because Alec was right, you need a live goat to catch a tiger. But you’re not a tiger, are you? To catch a weasel, a dead goat works just fine. And your fingerprints are all over that dead goat. But it’s even worse than that, because you’ve put your footprint into something so much nastier.”

She saw him struggling to make sense of what she was saying, fel
t a rush of contempt so strong it nearly overpowered her. “You were always going to fail anyway, though,” she told him, “because you can’t do anything else. You’re so jealous of Alec you can’t stand it, because you know that he’s so much more than you could ever be. He’s better-looking than you, sure. He’s more charming too, and women like him better. But that’s not all. He’s smarter than you, and stronger than you, and braver than you, and kinder than you. And he’s a better man than you. He always has been, and he always will be.”

“You . . .” He could hardly get the words out. “You set me up.”

“Yes,” she said. “We did. But that isn’t what’s going to do you in. If you’d stopped with the code, you’d have been all right. You didn’t even take much of a risk with that, did you? You knew that even if you didn’t manage to steal it, even if you failed—which you must have realized, in some sad, pathetic corner of your sad, pathetic little mind, that you would—even if the worst happened and you were found out, you wouldn’t be prosecuted, because nobody would want it to leak out that the code was ever compromised. You knew it’d be swept under the rug, and you could just slink away like the weasel you are. But in the end, you didn’t even leave yourself that way out. You managed to screw it up beyond redemption.”

“
Because,” she said, and had the satisfaction of seeing his face turn ashen as she went on, “when you stepped in that pile of dog poop in the parking lot, doing whatever you did to Alec’s car, you placed yourself at the scene of the crime. Checkmate, Brandon. We win.”

He stood up, hardly seeming to know what he was doing.
Took a couple steps toward the door, then stopped. Straightened. And turned. “Nice try. But
you’re
the one who’s screwed up. This hospital has an incinerator. All I have to do is dump the shoes, and my ass is free. Thanks for the warning, though.” He sketched a salute. “Guess you aren’t quite as smart as you think you are. But then, we already knew that, didn’t we? Your MBA’s from Davis, after all.”

He smiled at the pair of them, turned back to the door again. Took one step, came up short at the sight of
Dave and Gabe Kincaid coming into the room. It wasn’t just the size of them. It was the expression on their faces.

“You forgot one other thing
, too,” Desiree said. She pulled her hand out of her pocket at last, held up the item that had been inside it all along, and, finally, pressed the “end” button on the call she’d pocket-dialed. “That no matter what I’m doing, no matter where I am, I always carry my phone.”

The interviews took hours, especially since the detectives kept having to wait for Alec to wake up. But at last, Brandon had been taken into custody, his shoes duly confiscated. Only time would tell whether he’d stay there, because he hadn’t talked, had called an attorney and clammed up. But then, the pressure hadn’t really begun to be applied, because there was still that little matter of code theft, and he’d have to be considered a flight risk. Release on bail, she had a feeling, was going to be a tough prospect. One way or another, Brandon was history.

And
for now, he was gone, and she was alone with Alec in his room again. She was dressed this time, discharged, aching, and exhausted, but wanting to say goodbye before she joined Gabe in the waiting room to be taken to the hotel. Where she could lie down again, and where, she had a feeling, she was going to be very well taken care of. By her grandmother, and by Susie, who were both waiting there for her.

“I’ll come back in the morning,” she
promised, still holding Alec’s hand, because she couldn’t bear to let it go.

“I
’ll be counting on it,” he said, the words still a little slurred from his split lip, his voice slow from the Demerol. “And on my mother making you sleep past seven, and making you eat a good breakfast. She’ll probably feed you in bed. Just warning you. She’s going to fuss.”

“Yeah.” S
he smiled. “I might have missed out for a few years there, but I think I’m going to get a fair amount of mothering tonight.”

“Not just tonight. You’re going to get it from now on.”

Her heart swelled a little more at that, and she squeezed his hand. “You’re so tired too. I’ll go, and let your dad and Alyssa come back and sit with you.”

“Wait,” he said. “Something I have to say.”

“Alec. It can wait.”

“No,” he said. “It can’t. Because there’s
one thing I’ve always known, and I need to tell you what it is.”

“
All right. What is it?” She smoothed his dark hair back with a gentle hand.

“I’ve alw
ays known I was the smartest person in the room.”

“Oh.” That wasn’t what she had expected. Not at all. But he was still so beat up, and so doped up, too.
There’d be plenty of time to talk later.

He wasn’t done, though.
“And now I know I’m not, but it doesn’t matter. Know why?”

“No,
why?” she asked, and her heart had begun to pound.

“Because,” he said
, “I’m smart enough to love the smartest person in the room.”

She started to lean over him
, was brought up short by a sharp protest from her ribs, and contented herself with stroking her fingers over the single unmarked patch of skin near his ear.

“Well, that’s good,” she said with a smile
, letting all the tenderness show. No doubts, no fears. Not anymore, and never again. “Know why?”

“No, why?” He smiled back at her, even though she could tell that hurt too.

She looked into his one undamaged dark blue eye, the only familiar feature in his wreck of a face, and surrendered the last remnants of a heart that had long since been his.

“Because
,” she told him, “she’s smart enough to love you right back.”

It was six weeks later, and his cast was off, his ribs were mostly healed,
and they were in Idaho. After a stop in Chico for Gabe and Mira’s wedding, of course, because Alec was the best man.

Standing up with his brother, seeing the look in his eyes as Mira walked down the aisle on her father’s arm, had moved Alec in a way he would have be
en astonished by just a year earlier, when he’d seen the two of them meet for the first time. He watched Gabe take Mira’s hand and, as always, felt what his twin was feeling. But it was so much more this time, because he recognized the emotion, and he welcomed it.

It
was a bit of Old Home Week all the way around, because so many of the
America Alive
cast members were there to celebrate with them. When the bride and groom stepped out for their first waltz to Hank and Zara singing one of their earliest hits, Alec didn’t think there was a dry eye in the house.

“Good Night, Irene” might have been a
bit of an incongruity, the song that had typically meant the end of an evening, not the beginning of a life together. But it was right, Gabe reminded Alec and a few of the others afterwards, because it had been their very first dance together.

“And,”
he said, Mira’s hand in his, “the night I knew for sure that I was going to marry her.”

“Then?”
she protested, her eyes shining with laughter and love. “You’d barely kissed me.”

“You don’t have to touch the stove,” Gabe said with a
sly glance at his brother, “to know that it’s hot.”

Alec looked for Rae, because he needed to dance with her, as best he could with all his tender parts. She was with his mother and sister, and Joe too, and he smiled to see it. Joe took a while to get there, but when he was in, he was all in. No more distance. There were still going to be three partners, but one of them was going to be Rae.

“This is a fine day.”

He turned to look into the wise eyes of Stanley Douglas. Standing, of course, with Alec’s father. They’d taken to each other immediately, because they were two of a kind. Same size, same build. Same way of seeing right through the barriers to what lay beneath.

“It is,” Alec
agreed. “They’re good together.”

“Yes, they are,” Stanley
said. “And they aren’t the only ones.” He nodded in Rae’s direction, exchanged a speaking look with Dave. “Looks to me like the player’s met his match.”

“I’d
try to deny it,” Alec said, “but I’m afraid it’s a lost cause. My playing days are over. Get your trading cards now, I guess, because they’re about to become collectibles.”

The rumble of Stanley’s laugh filled their corner of the
big hall. “This time, son, I think you’ve got it right.”

That had been a good time all the way around, especially after getting the news that Brandon had given up his buyer. Which wasn’t the Chinese at all, but a competitor who, Ron had assured Alec, was going to find his life made infinitely less comfortable.

“Let’s just say,” Ron said, “that he’s not going to be able to afford any more transactions like that, once the SEC gets through with him.” And Alec reminded himself once again never to cross Ron.
Power moved in mysterious ways, and so did Ron.

He’d have been a lot more worrie
d about Brandon, even though Desiree had been right about the animal forensics lab, if it hadn’t been for that other mistake.

“The lesson we take from this,” he had told
his family around the dinner table, its leaves expanded to fit its rapidly growing numbers, “is that stealing’s one thing, and you might even get away with murder. But never, ever try to cheat the IRS.”

“What he got for the code,” Joe guessed.

“Not just that. Turns out he’s been sheltering income for years, as soon as he started making any. They were already checking into him, and that criminal investigation, and a little work in the background by Ron Jacobs too, took it all up a notch. Seems Brandon started out at the screaming edge of that line, and eventually crossed right over it to the tune of quite a few millions that, I’m told, are likely to translate into some fairly good jail time.”

“Well, the IRS
got Al Capone in the end, when nobody else could,” Desiree said. “So I guess Brandon was small potatoes.”

Alec’s return to work had gone slowly, for all that. The pain was one thing, but the lingering effects of the concussion had made him forgetful, slowed his thought processes. He’d been forced to take a big, if temporary, step back, let Desiree and Joe handle things. Which they’d done, of course, including hiring Michael again. The apology had helped with that, and the raise had helped more.

So t
hat was all good, and Alec was eager to get back into it, especially now that the new software was in the midst of its testing phase, and the beta users were every bit as excited as he’d thought they would be. The buzz had begun in earnest, and it was only going to get bigger and better, because he already had ideas about the second generation. But he was going to be implementing those ideas with some differences, he’d already decided. It was fine to have life be all about work when there wasn’t anything in the world you’d rather do, but he wasn’t there anymore, and neither was Rae.

And now they were in Idah
o, taking another week after the wedding for themselves. Two days to drive from Chico to Boise, staying in motels and eating in diners with antlers on the wall, then they’d started up the twists and turns of Highway 95 through the mountains and the forests, beside wide rivers and tumbling creeks, into the rolling hills and farms of the Palouse. They’d taken turns driving, because he was still sore, and she was still scared. The accident had stirred up too many old memories.

“You don’t have to do this,” he’d told her at the very beginning, when her
own ribs had healed enough for her to get behind the wheel. “At least not right now. We can hire somebody to drive me until I can manage it again. And to drive you too. Or just stay out of a car altogether until you’re ready.”

“
I’m not going to be crippled by that fear. I need to be able to ride in a car, and I need to be able to drive a car, too. And I’m going to.” Her knuckles showed white against the wheel of her little clown car, which he’d squeezed into with a few grimaces, but she’d felt more comfortable in it for her first time than in his new Mercedes.

“You’re allowed to have some fears,” he said. “You don’t have to
overcome everything.”

“Yes,” she said. “I do.
I need to learn to sit in the back seat, too. But if you’ll sit with me while I do it all, that’ll help. Just . . . be there.”

“Al
ways,” he promised. And he was, and it helped. She was shaking and white that entire first time, but she did it, and she was doing this too. Driving, and sitting beside him while he drove. It got easier every day, and on the way home, she’d already told him, she was going to try the back seat.

But right now,
it was the highway and the back roads out of Moscow, past the site of the show, and on to the campground in the cedars.

“Are you sure?” she’d asked doubtfully
in the University Inn that morning. “Camping? I know you brought all the stuff, but are you sure you’re strong enough? Do you even know how?”

He had to laugh at that.
“If there’s one thing I know how to do by now, it’s camp. You saw the show. And besides, you know, I was a Boy Scout. In fact,” he said with a little embarrassment, “I’m an Eagle Scout. I have merit badges.”

T
hat made her laugh. She looked at him grinning back at her, and laughed some more. “I’m going to have to get your mom to show me a picture,” she decided. “How come I never read that in an interview?”

“Secrets,” he said, “deep and dark. And, alas, secret no longer. I can build a fire. I can pitch a tent. I can tie knots. And I want to do it. I needed to come back here where this whole thing started, because I feel like it’s been a . . .” He made a
circular motion with his hand.

“A journey,” she guessed.

“Yeah. A journey. And it feels like the journey should end with camping.”

So they camped. He pitched the tent, and he built the fire, and he cooked her a Boy Scout special.
A hamburger patty, sliced potatoes and carrots and mushrooms and onions, seasoned with salt and pepper and wrapped in layers of foil, laid on the grill over the fire to cook, eaten off paper plates.

But they did have
wine, because he wasn’t
that
much of a Boy Scout. And later, they climbed into the sleeping bags they’d zipped together, and made the kind of love they’d nicknamed “porcupine sex,” because, like porcupines, they did it very, very carefully.

“I need you to hurry up and heal
.” She was curled against him, her hand on his chest, kissing his shoulder. “Because I need to be on the bottom again.”

He smiled
at that, turned his head and kissed her cheek. “Well, I’ve got my ribs on the special Advanced Mending Plan, because believe me, I need you to be on the bottom too. Don’t worry. I’ll be doing you on the conference table again before you know it.”

“
Mmm. Will it be as much fun, though, now that everyone knows about us? Now that we don’t have to be so discreet about it?”

“Well,” he considered, “I guess we
could
let people watch, if you need the thrill.” Which made her laugh and hit him, gently, of course, and he laughed too, and held her, and they fell asleep in their sleeping bag, only the netting between them and the clear, star-dotted North Idaho sky.

She slept all the way past seven, and by the time she was dressed and had joined him at the picnic table for the mug of coffee he handed her, he’d already done a morning’s work.

“Sit
.” He waved his spatula at one of the folding chairs by the fire, which he already had going against the morning chill, though he was using the stove this time around. “And prepare for Meal Two out of Two that I know how to cook.”

“
What is it? Eggs?”

“
Nope. Rainbow trout.” He flipped the crispy fillets onto a plate, added one of the cinnamon rolls they’d bought the day before, and handed the plate to her. “Breakfast, courtesy of yours truly, bona fide outdoorsman. Took the bones out for you and everything.”

She seemed to notice the fly rod
leaning against the picnic table for the first time. “Did you
catch
these?”

“I’m not sure your amazement is very flattering.
I may not have many skills, but I do know how to write code, and chop wood, and build a fence, and fish for trout. I even know how to cook them.”

“And run a company,” she pointed out.

“And run a company,” he agreed with a smile. “And love you. There you go. My skill set.”

“Well, if it’s going to be
as limited as that,” she said, and there was color in her cheeks now, “it’s a good thing you do all those things so well.”

She looked down, took a sip of coffee, set her
mug down on the ground and took a stab at the trout with her fork. Her eyes widened as she took a bite. “Wow. It’s really good.”

“Fresh does make a difference. And that fish was swimming an hour ago.”

“I’m impressed. You must be trying to soften me up or something.”

“
Could be.” He sat on the bench, leaned back against the wooden table, and looked at her. Sitting in her folding canvas chair and eating the fish he’d caught for her, her auburn curls in wild disarray, not a speck of makeup on her honey-colored skin, one of his flannel shirts pulled over her T-shirt against the morning chill. And he’d never seen anyone who looked better to him.

“I wanted to do this differently,” he said.

“No,” she protested. “It’s good.”

“I mean,
this.
I wanted to wait until we were home again. I wanted to take you on a helicopter ride over the Napa Valley, and have music and champagne, and have the ring bought. I wanted to give you the romance, and the memory. I had a whole plan. But then, you’ve been messing with my plans since the day I lost my place in line to pick up your Tic-Tacs.”

She didn’t seem to have heard that. She was staring at him, her fork in the air, the fish forgotten.

“But I need to do it now,” he said. “So I’m going to. Desiree, I love you. And I know I’m not a hero, although I wish I could be that for you, because you deserve a hero. I’m sure you could look around and find a better man, someone who’s always done right, someone with steel in his soul to match yours. But I promise you this. Nobody is ever going to admire you more than I do. Nobody is ever going to be there for you the way I will. And nobody is ever going to love you more. At those things, I’m the best, and I always will be.”

“
Oh. Alec.” She’d set her fork down, and her nose was getting red, and her curls were a mess, and he loved her so much his heart hurt with it.

“There’s nobody better
,” she told him. “There’s no better man. You risked your life for me, and if that’s not a hero, I don’t know what is. You’re the man I want. It’s you. It was always you.”