That was her takeaway? “I’ll pay the ransom.”
“You won’t. I’ve already gotten one of the videos taken down. I’m working on the second, and my lawyer’s sent a cease-and-desist for the third. This isn’t my first rodeo, Nolan. Your new laptop is on the credenza.”
She nodded to the side, then focused on the screen again. When had she started wearing glasses? They suited her.
“You can’t spend the rest of your days chasing my dick around the internet.”
“It isn’t hard.”
“Well, actually…”
“They put your name in the caption—writing the code to search for it took me less than five minutes.”
Nolan’s breath hitched. “My name is there?”
“Look on the bright side—your face is barely visible. And you’re getting more upvotes than downvotes, just in case you needed an ego boost.” The corner of her mouth twitched. “Or a sideline that doesn’t involve renting out rooms on Couch2Castle.”
“You think this is funny?”
“Grey always told me I should lighten up, didn’t he?”
“That’s because Grey is a douche. Alexa, sending endless cease-and-desist letters is unsustainable.”
Not to mention expensive.
“Oh, that’s just a temporary thing while I get to the root of the problem.” Her gaze dropped, only for a second. “The other root, I mean.”
“Exactly how much time have you spent hanging around with Jerry?”
“Enough. Trust me, okay? I know what I’m doing.”
“Is there anything I can say or do to stop you?”
“Nope.”
That’s what Nolan was afraid of.
And now he was stuck eating dinner with Marielle while Alexa began waging war on a bunch of hackers. He’d long since suspected that she was involved in the darker side of the internet—her online antics had been the subject of many conversations among the roommates of Blackstone House—but she’d generally avoided discussing what she was up to in her basement lair.
“She looks about fifteen,” Marielle said. “Has she even graduated high school?”
“She’s twenty-six.” Probably. “And she knows her way around computers better than most people twice her age.”
Marielle sucked in a breath and rolled her eyes. “Okay, if you say so. Once she’s gone, we can make a start on the study.”
What was it with the women in his life? First, he’d met Alexa, and he’d tried damn hard to look out for her the way a big brother would. It was only when he’d seen that passport that he’d allowed himself to see her differently. To flirt a little and enjoy the view. Then Ruby died, and one of the cops thought he recognised Alexa as a teenage runaway from California. She’d denied it, but while Nolan and his other housemates hid out in a local hotel after their home turned into a crime scene, Alexa had been sent to stay with foster parents. And today, she hadn’t corrected Nolan’s assumption about her true age, plus she’d acted evasive when he suggested her passport had been fake.
Twenty-five or twenty-six was his best guess.
After Alexa, Nolan had stayed more or less single until he met Lisanne on a trip to Sacramento. Moving in together after dating for only three months hadn’t been part of the plan, but she was struggling to pay the rent after her ex left her for his personal trainer, and her background in marketing had made her an asset to Nolan’s growing business. They’d both been starry-eyed over the possibilities. But Lisanne soon got sick of the rural lifestyle, and when Nolan refused to sell Dionysus and move to the city, she’d packed her bags and left. But not before she opened the sampling spigots on three tanks of Syrah and let a year’s worth of profits trickle away.
Now there was Marielle. Also valuable to the business, and the folks in town seemed to think she was a great catch. More than once, a neighbour at the grocery store or a patron at the Doodlebug had told Nolan how lucky he was to have her. But he just couldn’t convince himself to like her in that way, no matter how compatible they might be on paper, and tonight, she was getting on his nerves.
“The study’s staying as it is.”
“Obviously we’ll have to finish the cottages first, I understand that, but we can at least start planning ahead. There’s not much natural light—all those dark shelves will have to go, and how do you feel about switching out the rear window for a set of French doors?”
“No.”
