Leo grinned and shook hands with one of the cleaning staff before his long legs ate the distance between him and Julian. “Of course you do, Julian. You’re the boss. You have all the time in the world.”
“Naturally. Now, tell me if Lexi is going to be here tonight.”
Aidan felt his gut tighten. He hadn’t really considered the possibility that Leo wouldn’t clear her for play. “Lexi is sane. She’s not crazy.”
“Oh, she’s buckets of crazy,” Leo announced with a laugh. “Seriously, girlfriend has some problems, but nothing that would keep her from here.”
Aidan relaxed. He could handle that. Leo thought everyone was crazy in their own unique way.
“Did she talk to you?” Julian asked.
“In a sense. Did she get to the heart of her problem? No. It will take more than a little simple conversation to get her to give that up.”
“Give what up?” Aidan asked.
Julian turned to Aidan and seemed to consider whether or not he should talk. “I believe Alexis is hiding something. I don’t know if Lucas knows her secret, or if she’s kept it completely hidden. Jackson and Leo believe this as well. According to Jackson, she was sad and somewhat depressed by your departure, but she didn’t go into a deep depression until several months later. She was in a car accident in Austin. Lucas was the only one she called. Shortly after, she left her job at the newspaper and moved to Dallas. From what I can tell, she’s stopped writing all together.”
That made his heart ache. Lexi was always writing on something. She carried a notepad in her overblown bag so she would always have paper. She even kept a dream journal because she said she got story ideas while she slept. Aidan could remember all the times he would walk in with her coffee in hand to find her furiously writing. He loved those mornings. He would sit and strum his guitar, writing songs while Lexi wrote a new story. Lucas would show up on the weekends, and they would sit outside when the weather was nice. Just the three of them. They wouldn’t talk. They had simply enjoyed each other’s presence.
He couldn’t play anymore. He’d accepted that. But, by god, he would never accept that Lexi wouldn’t write.
“What happened?”
Julian’s shoulders moved up and down in a negligent shrug. “I don’t know, but I doubt it’s the car accident that truly troubles her. The other driver was at fault, and he walked away injury free. He was drunk. He pled out and served a little time in jail. He was caught violating his parole about six months after he got out and was sent back to serve his full sentence. So sad.”
Leo’s eyebrows rose on his head as he stared at Julian. “That’s what happens when a man gets a private investigative team following him twenty-four-seven.”
“I didn’t force him into the bar, Leo. I merely made sure my men called it in.”
Aidan kind of loved Julian Lodge in that moment. Still, he’d spent enough time in a hospital bed that the thought of Lexi being in pain just fucking killed him. He should have been there. He should have been the one she called, and then he would have called Lucas. He would never leave Lucas out. He knew now that he needed Lucas. “She was okay? What do her medical records say?”
Julian’s mouth turned down. “I asked her about it. She told me to butt out. As she is not my slave, I have respected her wishes up to this point. If I do something like buy her medical records, she won’t trust me. This is all about trust, Aidan. I’m risking Alexis’s trust by bringing you in, but we’ve reached a point where it’s worth the risk.”
Leo slapped Aidan on the back. “I think it will work. She seems more open than she has in months. Of course, I don’t expect it to be perfectly smooth, but I think eventually she’ll realize that both she and Lucas need you. You should probably start getting ready. Won’t be long now.”
Aidan said goodbye, trying to process everything he’d just learned. As he reached the elevator that would take him to his room, his cell phone rang. He punched the button code for the hotel portion of the building and pulled his phone out of his pocket. Dwight. He sighed. He was about to get a lecture.
“Hey, man, how is the ranch?”
Dwight Creely was his foreman. He’d also been Aidan’s friend in the Army. They had been in the same squad in Iraq. When Aidan had been injured, Dwight was the one who sat by his bedside. Dwight had taken some heavy fire during the mission that almost cost Aidan his legs, but he’d put it aside to check on his friend. When they were both discharged, Dwight had followed Aidan back home to help on the ranch Aidan had inherited, much to Bo’s never-ending dismay.
“Well, the boss is gone, so Bo is trying to run the show.” The complaint came out as a low rumble.
Aidan should have expected it. Bo hated the fact that their father had left the ranch to him and only left Bo some cash. Aidan had been ready to sign over a portion to Bo when Bo had walked out of the lawyer’s office and threatened to sue and hadn’t said a word to Aidan for a month and a half. Aidan was at loss. He knew Bo hadn’t gotten a fair shake, but he needed to keep the ranch whole if he was going to make it work. Bo, for his part, had made a nuisance of himself around the ranch, fighting with Dwight at every turn.
It looked like baby brother was at it again.
“Put him on his ass,” Aidan said. It was what he would do. He’d been forced to, as though it was the only way to prove to Bo he was still a man. Even when he’d been on crutches, learning to walk again, his brother wouldn’t let up. He was a constant little pest buzzing in his ear.
“As long as I have permission, it will be my pleasure. But seriously, Aidan, it would be better if you came home. Bo isn’t the only one causing trouble around town. Karen is telling everyone that the two of you are back together and getting married.”
He nearly threw the phone. Karen Wilcox was rapidly becoming a pain in his ass. She’d been his high school girlfriend. It had been natural. She’d been the head cheerleader, and he’d been the quarterback. Aidan had done what he’d always done—he had played the role designated to him. When he’d left for college, she’d almost immediately married another man. Karen’s husband was older and established, with money to burn on a young trophy wife.
By the time he’d come home, broken and battered, Karen’s husband had died, and she’d been left very little money in his will. She hadn’t decided to visit his convalescent bed until the day it was announced he’d inherited the ranch. That day she’d been full of heartfelt concern for his injuries and talked about how much she would miss his father now that he was gone. Karen had hated his father. He hadn’t bought her crap back then and didn’t buy it now.
“Goddamn it, I haven’t touched that woman. I have no interest in touching that woman.”
Dwight sighed. “I know that, but the people around here are starting to talk, Aidan. You know how it is here. People expect things. She’s talking about a fall wedding.”
He’d escorted her to exactly two events, both charity events where he’d networked all night long. He’d made it plain to her that they weren’t dating. When she had tried to come on to him and invite herself in, he’d been gentle and gracious about turning her down. It looked like he was going to have to be a bit more forceful. “I’ll talk to her when I get home, but that could be a week or two.”
There was a long pause. “Damn it, Aidan, what the hell is so all-fired important in Dallas?”
“Lexi.” He let the name drop like a jewel, his voice getting soft. He steeled himself because he wasn’t hiding anymore. Aidan O’Malley was done playing roles other people tried to force him to play. “And Lucas. I’m getting them back.”
A low whistle came across the line as the elevator doors opened, and Aidan started walking down the hall to his room. “Damn, Aidan, that’s going to cause a stir in this town. I don’t know that Deer Run, Texas, is ready for you and your, uhm, partners. Maybe if it was two hot chicks you were trying to bring home, it would be, you know, eccentric. They would say your time in Austin corrupted you. You know the church ladies here like to blame everything on marijuana and Austin.”