One
“Lexi, sweetheart, you don’t have to do this.”
Lexi Alderidge adored her father, Winston, but how she hated his instinct to shelter her. It had been one thing when she was a little girl, but she was a thirty-eight-year-old divorcée now. It was time for him to get a new hobby. “Idohave to do this,” she replied. “If I’m going to stay in Royal, I need to work. I can’t sit around all day, waiting for life to come to me.”
This had been a recent realization for Lexi. Recent, as in it had only dawned on her since she’d moved home to Royal, Texas, several months ago in the wake of her divorce. She’d been all too quick to fall back into old habits and under the spell of her high school sweetheart, which ended up with her getting dumped the night before they were to be married. Lexi and romance had gone off the rails. Hence, her determination to forget about men and focus on her new job as VP of marketing for Alderidge Bank, owned by her father.
Sitting behind his humongous mahogany desk, her father crossed his arms over his chest, rocking back in his well-worn leather chair. The morning April sun streamed in through the windows behind him, glinting off his salt-and-pepper hair and adding a softer edge to his sometimes-dark demeanor. “I still don’t like the idea of you visiting a construction site by yourself.”
“It’s my job. The bank is one of the biggest sponsors of Soiree on the Bay, and I need to oversee our involvement in it. Don’t you want a status update on how they’re progressing on the site construction?” The food, art and wine festival was precisely the sort of social event the bank needed to be involved with. It had the potential to bring in a much younger and hipper clientele. Alderidge Bank was stuck in the past, much like her dad. And Lexi intended to shove it—and him—into the present.
“You’re too pretty to spend time with construction workers.” Her father was not about to let this go, nor was he capable of seeing his own impossibly narrow-minded views.
“Now you’re being ridiculous.” She opened her laptop bag, which was sitting on one of the chairs opposite her father’s desk, and stuffed a stack of papers into it. “I’m going.”
“Look at what you’re wearing. A dress and heels? What if you get catcalled? I don’t even want to think about what some of the workers might say.”
“I’ve worn a dress nearly every day of my adult life. This is my look. And I promise you, I can hold my own on a construction site. Don’t worry about me.”Honestly, a catcall might make me feel better about myself.
He pounded a fist on his desk, shocking Lexi in the process. “Alexis Simone Alderidge, I will worry about you until the day I die. You’re just going to have to get used to that.” Her father only called her by her full name when he wanted to underscore his point. “You’re in a fragile state right now.”
Lexi could admit to herself that she was a bit unsteady these days, but she was trying her hardest to put that all behind her. “If I’ve learned anything since my marriage ended, it’s that I’m not going to break.”
“At least take the helicopter down to Appaloosa Island. It’s a six-hour drive round trip. There’s no reason for you to be behind the wheel for that long.”
Lexi had looked forward to some time alone in her new car, a pearl white Jaguar F-Pace SUV. It had been a gift to herself after her divorce. It was supposed to be a symbol of a fresh start and a new beginning, but she’d stumbled since she got back, and all of it could be blamed on her weakness for the opposite sex. She’d no longer be giving in to any of that. Love, and romance, were off the menu for the foreseeable future. “Will it make you feel better if I do that?”
“Yes, actually, it will. I know you’ll be able to make a quick escape.”
She nearly laughed at the mental image of herself running across a construction site in heels, trying to reach the helicopter while several construction workers were in hot pursuit. If only the men of the world were that interested. “I’ll take the copter to save time. I want a few hours in the office this afternoon so I can work on my list of prospective new clients. Lila Jones from the Royal Chamber of Commerce has a few ideas for me.”
“I really don’t want you going out into the community trying to drum up business. I have never, ever courted a customer. People come to us, not the other way around.”
“We’ll talk about it, okay?” Lexi stepped behind the desk and kissed her dad on top of his head. She loved him deeply, even when he could be a thorn in her side. “There might be some things that need to change around here.”
She turned and headed for the door of her dad’s office, but his voice stopped her dead in her tracks. “Just remember, Lexi. There’s no fault in deciding this job isn’t for you. Between your alimony and your trust fund, you certainly don’t need the money.”
Lexi sucked in a deep breath. Yes, her finances were in good order. But she did need something other than a man to cling to. “I’ll be fine. Don’t worry about me.” Lexi ducked out of her dad’s office before he could argue with her again. She didn’t go far though, stopping at the desk of her father’s assistant.
“Can I help you?” Vi asked, her drawl as thick as molasses on a cold, winter day. Her spiky hair was a shock of pure silver that beautifully complemented her tan skin tone. Lexi hoped she looked that good when she was in her late fifties.
“Yes. I need to go to Appaloosa Island and my father is insisting I take the company helicopter. Can you arrange that for me?”
“Absolutely. I’ll call right now. You can meet the pilot out at the pad. Is fifteen minutes okay?”
A pilot was always on call for her father. The bank’s clientele was old money, and in her experience, quite impatient. “Sure thing. Thank you.”
Lexi stopped at the ladies’ room to neaten her hair and check her makeup. She smoothed her red tresses, fighting the frizziness that started in the spring in Texas and continued right through the fall. It was only April. She’d be attempting to tame her hair for months.
Afterward, she headed for the rooftop access of Alderidge Bank, where the small helipad was situated. Sure enough, the black-and-gold helicopter was waiting for her. She put on her sunglasses and rushed ahead, helped inside by the copilot. She sat next to the window in the small but comfortable cabin, and buckled herself in. Moments later, they were airborne, floating in midair above her hometown of Royal. Then, they headed south.
Lexi immediately became entranced by the view below. She loved her state and the varied terrain—stretches of bright green intermixed with urban outposts and dusty rural patches. When they reached the outskirts of Houston, the city that had been her home for the entirety of her marriage to Roger, her stomach soured. It only got worse when she spotted the northern edge of sprawling Memorial Park. Just south of that, over the Buffalo Bayou River, was the ultraexclusive River Oaks neighborhood where she’d lived with her ex.
Their fairy tale had lasted for fifteen years along the golf course, where they made dozens of fabulous friends and hosted countless parties. Roger spent his days at his investment firm, and the weekends hitting the links. Lexi busied herself with charity work and Pilates. But he had never wanted her to work. That should have been her first hint that Roger was more interested in her as an ornament—abelonging—rather than as a woman. The life she’d had with her ex might seem clichéd to some, but Lexi still loved it. Roger was the perfect guy—handsome, well-educated, and most important, her parents adored him. He was exactly what they had always wanted for her—an upstanding man from a well-known, old-money Texas family.
But that life was no more. She was all on her own now and she needed to prove, to herself at the very least, that she could make a life for herself. A tear gathered in the corner of her eye at the thought. She had so far to go. Sighing, she looked up from the view of the city and waited several minutes until she dared to look again at the ground below. They were approaching Mustang Point, an elite waterside community with a large marina for yachts. When the Soiree on the Bay festival happened, visitors would catch a ferry from there, over to Appaloosa Island.
They were only over the clear blue of the Gulf of Mexico for a few minutes before they were closing in on the isle. This dot of land had been owned by the Edmond family for years. The western side had a small resort and a handful of mansions running along the coast, but the eastern side, where she was headed, was still largely undeveloped. Hence the importance of construction.
