Too Hot to Handle (Romancing the Clarksons #1)(83)

Refusing to look curious, Aaron nonetheless paused with his hand on the wooden handle of the office’s front entrance. Belmont might have no qualms about ignoring everything that came out of Aaron’s mouth, but when it came to their baby sister, feigning deafness wasn’t an option. “I fell asleep on the beach.” His voice sounded like a creaking boat hull lifting on the water. “When I woke up, you’d gone to the hospital.”

Silence passed. “I don’t remember that,” Peggy said, a wrinkle appearing between her eyebrows. “How did you get hom—”

Belmont moved past them, pushing open the office door and ducking inside. Aaron stared after his brother a moment, weighing the impulse to tackle his hulking ass from behind and maybe divest him of a tooth this time around, but he managed to hold back. Instead, he nudged Peggy with his elbow. “Hey, it’s your fault for surpassing your one-question-per-day maximum.”

This time his sister’s laughter was forced. “Silly me,” she breathed, moving past him to join Belmont inside.

Aaron turned his head to find Sage looking like a deer caught in a pair of high beams. “What about you, Ms. Alexander. Are you the outdoorsy type?”

“I’ve planned some outdoor weddings,” she answered softly, still not giving Aaron her full attention. Pretty unusual, considering she was a woman with a pulse, but he’d had eighteen hundred miles to stop taking it personally. Aaron started to ask if she was planning on standing there motionless all day, but she hit him with a look. “He doesn’t mean it.”

Aaron braced a hand on the doorjamb. “Who doesn’t mean what?” Aaron asked, even though he already knew the answer.

“Belmont. He doesn’t mean to cause everyone frustration. This trip…being away from his boat…he’s trying. Really, he is.” From the way her breath caught, Aaron knew she’d locked eyes with the man in question over Aaron’s shoulder and through the glass windowpane. “While we’re alone, I just wanted to say thank you.” She spoke in a rush now, which probably had something to do with the footsteps that grew louder, pounding toward the exit. “For complimenting my dress yesterday. It was really nice. But if you do it again—or flirt with me to make Belmont angry anymore—I’ll break your nose.”

Sage delivered the final word of her promise just as the door swung open, Belmont’s shadow appearing on the staircase where Aaron stood with Sage, with what felt like a bemused expression. Fair enough.

“Come inside,” Belmont rumbled. “Please.”

With a final nod in Aaron’s direction, Sage pushed a handful of hair over her shoulder and sailed past, somehow managing to keep a thin sliver of daylight between herself and Belmont as she moved through the doorway, joining him and Peggy inside the rental office.

Aaron dropped his head back, imploring the bright blue Iowa sky for patience, consoling himself with the fact that as soon as he got away from his family there would be peace. Maybe not in the classic sense, but at least he would definitely be in a situation he could decipher and handle.

A prickle at the back of his neck had Aaron pausing once again, one foot inside the door as he looked toward the woods, but he shrugged it off and continued into the office, holding up his credit card in a signal for his party to make way, allowing the plan man through.

*



What brought Aaron to the edge of the forest in the middle of the night? No idea. His excuse for pulling on rumpled dress pants and crunching through the woods was to look for Old Man, but when dog found him first, their party of two had kept on going. Now, the mutt walked alongside him, throwing him an occasional What the fuck? glance.

“You’re free to go back, you know. I don’t remember issuing an invitation.”

Sniff. Sniff sniff.

“What is that? Morse code?”

Okay, Aaron had some idea what had sent him on Nature Quest. He just had zero notion of what he hoped to achieve by walking to the site of tomorrow morning’s Breakfast and Politics, a nationally televised, invite-only event for which he was most definitely not on the list. Oh no, he was on only one list, and the word NAUGHTY was in permanent ink at the top. Presidential hopeful and Iowa senator Glen Pendleton, however, would be in attendance, and Aaron needed to get the man’s ear. Before Aaron had flushed his career down the toilet back in California with one bad decision, his boss had confided that Aaron was on the short list for adviser with Pendleton himself. A big-ass deal when the man already had one foot in the White House. What he’d needed was the youth vote—and that was where Aaron would have come in, if he hadn’t neatly erased his chances.

Tomorrow, he needed face time with Pendleton. The question was how.

As Aaron and Old Man reached the perimeter of the forest, a series of connected buildings came into view. The local high school, which would serve as the site of Pancakes and Politics come morning. Already news vans were parked outside. Police vehicles. What the hell was his goal here? To get arrested for trespassing?

Old Man seemed to be asking the same question with a silent look, so Aaron moved in the opposite direction of the congregated vans, prepared to head back toward the cabin and get some much-needed sleep. The kind that would allow him to bring his A-game in the morning. As if he ever brought anything else.

Just as he turned, Old Man stopped, ears pricked, nose twitching. A noise behind them. Aaron heard it, too. A long slide, followed by a soft, feminine hum. Better than the sound of a gun being cocked, but definitely not what he expected to hear in the pitch-black woods at midnight. Aaron stepped back behind a tree, giving himself a good view of the school’s closest building. He watched as a leg dropped over the southernmost windowsill and dangled a moment before a head ducked under the frame. The figure jumped to the leaf-padded ground without a single crunch, the hum never ceasing or losing its melodic rhythm.