LITMIR.BIZ

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nose. She wore a pink knit warm-up suit today with matching pink tennis shoes.

      “I don’t want to read them,” Paige replied.

      “But these are all addressed to you.” Margo pulled a chair up beside the desk and sat down with a contented sigh. “ UFO Watch aired that segment about Alex’s disappearance again Saturday night.”

      “I know,” she said with a groan. “I saw it.”

      Then she’d seen Alex. Literally. Although she hadn’t told her mother about their meeting—or about having him arrested.

      She’d had two days to cool off and now Paige wondered if she might have overreacted just a little. Yes, Alex had taken her by surprise. Yes, she’d been stunned to learn that he’d romanced her under false pretenses.

      Stunned might be an understatement. Paige was still reeling. She was also hurt and disillusioned. But as much as she wanted to wreak some old-fashioned justice, nothing that Alex had done to her was actually criminal.

      Infuriating, but unfortunately not illegal.

      Which left her with two alternatives. She could pursue revenge through the court system and let the lawyers worry about all the legalities. Or she could drop the charges and forget about her ex-fiancé once and for all. The former was the most tempting, but it also meant putting Alex front and center in her life once again.

      “Earth to Paige.”

      She looked up to see her mother’s forehead crinkled in concern.

      “What’s wrong?” Margo asked.

      “Nothing.” Paige stared blankly at the order forms on her desk.

      “You’re thinking about Alex,” Margo surmised. “I can always tell. You get this look on your face.”

      That settled it. “Alex is history.”

      Margo reached across the desk and patted her daughter’s hand. “I know how you feel. Some days I worry that Stanley is never coming back.”

      “Maybe it’s time to file for divorce,” Paige suggested for the hundredth time since Stanley had left her mother. “Time to move on with your life.”

      Margo shook her head. “I can’t give up hope. Not when there’s a chance Stanley may return to me. I know you think it’s silly to give interviews to shows like UFO Watch, but maybe someone will be watching who can help us find Stanley and Alex.”

      “Have you read any of these letters, Mom?” Paige pointed to the stack on her desk. “They’re all from crackpots.”

      Margo sniffed. “Just because you don’t happen to believe in the existence of UFOs or alien abductions doesn’t make the rest of us crackpots.”

      Paige swallowed her retort. They’d had this argument before and it had never gotten them anywhere. Margo clung tenaciously to the belief that her husband had left her against his will. Abduction by aliens seemed preferable to the possibility that he had simply walked away.

      “How long are you going to wait for Stanley to come back to you, Mom?” Paige asked softly. “Another year? Five years? Ten?”

      The chime of the laser door alarm signaled a customer had walked into the shop. Margo headed out of the office, pausing only a moment to reply to her daughter. “I’ll wait for him just as long as it takes, Paige. We shouldn’t give up on the people we love.”

      Paige shook her head as her mother disappeared from the doorway. In her opinion, there was a huge difference between giving up and clinging to a romantic delusion. She’d waited a full year for the man she loved to come back to her. A man she now knew had never loved her at all. She didn’t intend to waste one more minute on Alex Mack.

      Picking up the telephone, she looked up the number of the local precinct in the directory, then dialed the police. It took three operator transfers before she finally reached someone who could help her.

      “Sergeant Phelps,” barked a low voice on the other end of the line.

      “Hello, this is Paige Hanover. I filed a complaint against Alex Mack on Saturday night and the police took him to jail. But now I’m thinking about dropping the charges.”

      “Will you spell his last name for me, please.”

      “It’s Mack—M-A-C-K.”

      “Hold on,” he said in a clipped voice. She could hear voices in the background, as well as the shuffle of papers and the rapid-fire click of computer keys.

      “Yes, we’ve got an Alex Mack in custody,” the sergeant said a few moments later. “He just posted bail. Alex Mack aka Alexander Mackopoulos.”

      “Alexander who?” Paige couldn’t have heard him right.

      “Alex Mack is an alias,” the sergeant informed him. “His legal name is Alexander Mackopoulos.”

      Her grip tightened on the phone. “Are you absolutely certain we’re talking about the same man?”

      “I’m positive. Alexander Mackopoulos was brought in this past Saturday night on charges of trespassing, destruction of private property and attempted assault.”

      “Those were the charges,” Paige concurred, “but are you sure about the name?”

      “It’s the same name that was on file when he was released from county jail a week ago,” Sergeant Phelps replied. “The fingerprints are the same, too.”

      “Did you say county jail?”

      His tone grew impatient. “Do you have a hearing problem, ma’am?”

      “Why was Alex in jail?”

      “We’re not allowed to release that information over the telephone. If you plan to drop the charges against him, then you’ll need to come down to the station and fill out the paperwork.”

      “I will. Thank you, Sergeant.” Her head whirled as she hung up the phone. Alex Mack wasn’t Alex Mack. He was Alexander Mackopoulos. Ex-fiancé and ex-convict.

      A complete stranger. She hadn’t even known the real name of the man she’d been about to marry. When Alex had shown up Saturday night and confessed that he’d been assigned to romance her, she’d just assumed he was a cop. A silly assumption, now that she thought about it. Would the police have arrested one of their own so easily? The officers who had taken him away in handcuffs Saturday night certainly hadn’t seemed to recognize him.

      So if Alex wasn’t a cop, why had he been looking for her stepfather? Why had he been in jail? And why had he suddenly popped back into her life after all this time?

      And the most important question of all—what was Paige going to do now?

      LATE MONDAY MORNING, Alex walked out of the San Francisco county jail a free man. Temporarily, anyway.

      His older half brother, Nico, waited for him in the narrow hallway, one burly shoulder propped against the painted cinder block. “I think we need to have a talk.”

      “I don’t want to hear it,” Alex said, walking past him. Nico had always had an annoying habit of trying to tell him what to do. It had gotten even worse after their father died three months ago, when Nico had declared himself the head of the Mackopoulos family.

      But his brother didn’t give up easily. “I just shelled out five hundred dollars, so I think you can listen to what I have to say.”

      Listening to Nico was what had gotten him into this mess with Paige in the first place. “Don’t worry, I’ll pay you back every penny.”

      Five hundred dollars had been the price of his bond, set by the judge less than an hour ago. His court date was scheduled for one month from today.

      “I don’t give a damn about the money,” Nico said as they walked out of the courthouse and into bright California sunshine. “But I am worried

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