Unbreakable (City Lights, #2)(62)

“Yes, Your Honor,” Alex said and I could see she was biting back a smile. “Thank you, Your Honor.”

“Hmph.” Judge Walker banged his gavel. “Dismissed pending receipt of all that stuff I just said. Next.”

Georgia stormed out of the courtroom, Jeffries following after like a whipped dog. Alex turned to me. “So. Would you like to see where you’re going to be living?”

“You didn’t have to do this,” I said. “You don’t have to do this.”

She smiled and touched my shoulder, briefly.

“It’s done.”

#

I followed Alex’s dinky little car from the courthouse to Santa Monica, noting the close proximity of the beach. I’d always wanted to live close to the ocean. I’d grown up in a little seaside town south of Los Angeles and spent a lot of time surfing and swimming when I was a kid. I’d wanted the same for Callie, but it always seemed to hang just out of reach. In Los Angeles, to a working guy like me, the beach was like Disneyland: so close and yet so far.

But now…

I whistled softly between my teeth as she turned onto California Avenue. Not fronting the beach but walking distance. Close enough I could smell the salt air instead of traffic smog. I watched Alex’s Mini pull onto the driveway of a one story Craftsman—one like many others on the street, but lacking the lush greenery or manicured gardens out front many others had. She’s too busy to keep up a garden, I thought, my mind already envisioning better landscaping. Quit that. You’re not going to be here long enough. A few weeks at most.

I’d done a lot of thinking on the drive over. What Alex was doing for me was more than generous, and I was touched that she would go to such lengths for me. It was the best thing that could happen to keep Callie in L.A. But for me…

I can’t think of anything worse.

When Alex had kissed me goodbye at the hospital it was the most bittersweet of moments. As much as I wanted to grab her and hold her and keep her with me, the impossibility of it was a cold slap of reality. She was marrying someone else, and even if she weren’t, she was cut from a different cloth. A much finer cloth. We were from different worlds that only collided when hers hired mine to remodel a kitchen or build an addition on to the mansion. I hadn’t wanted to say goodbye, but it was what needed to happen. For her and for me.

And then she’d somehow marched back into my life, wielding a briefcase like a sword, to slay the dragons that sought to separate me from my daughter. I suspected Vic Ruiz was behind this. I was grateful to my friend, but cursed his name too.

I watched Alex step out of her car, one long gorgeous leg at a time, and reaffirmed my vow. “Two weeks. Three max. Time enough to find your own place.” I thought that would give me enough time to study and pass the GC license test too.

That getting my license was back on the table and that suffocating mountain of debt was gone, was miraculous. In twenty short minutes, Alexandra had completely altered the course of my life. It had been careening off a cliff and she steered it back onto solid ground. Whatever I felt for her, the nameless emotion I couldn’t allow myself to confront, deepened.

I exited the cab of my truck, and reality reared its head, reminding me that this wasn’t her house we were pulling into, this was her spare house. As we walked in the front door, I noted the smell of coffee and her perfume, faint but tangible, hanging in the air. She must have come this morning. To air it out, maybe.

“So.” Alex’s confident, killer shark demeanor she’d worn in the courtroom was gone and a slight nervousness tinted her movements and colored her words. “Uh, yeah, I’ll give you the grand tour.”

She gestured at the living area immediately to the right where a sectional couch formed an L around a low, square coffee table, an entertainment center with a 52” flat screen, a state-of-the-art stereo system, and a game console.

I eyed the Playstation 3 dubiously. “You play?”

“Oh no,” she said. “That’s for Callie. It’s not new or anything,” she added quickly. “A friend bought the latest model and said I could have this one.”

I rubbed my chin.

Alex elbowed me in the side. “It’s nothing. A little fun. Come on.”

On the left side of the house was a bedroom that was currently used as an office space.

“This is going to be Callie’s room. I couldn’t move the furniture out on my own, but between the two of us, we can fix it up nicely. The judge, grouchy though he was, gave us plenty of time before inspection.”

“That’s because he liked you,” I said. And who can blame him?

“I’m more inclined to think it was because CPS is backed up like the 405 at rush hour, but I’ll take it.” She gestured at the beige walls. “Some pink paint—or whatever her favorite color is—some cute little girl furniture…This room will knock the inspector’s socks off.”

“Wait, paint and furniture…?” I shook my head. “No, no, that’s not necessary.”

“Of course it is. It can’t look like a temporary room designed only to pass inspection. No. It’s going to look legitimate because it is legitimate.”

I said nothing—for now—but let Alex lead on.

There was a guest bathroom next to the bedroom. Alex called it “Callie’s bathroom.” Across from that, a kitchen that sported a breakfast bar that faced the front, and a little dining table in the back that looked out over the yard.