Nothing.
She just stares at me with a horrified look on her face, as though it’s the most awful idea she’s ever heard: giving her name to a stranger. I raise an eyebrow. Is she serious right now? That’s legitimately the least and smallest piece of information I could have possibly asked her for, yet she hesitates. I realize that no matter what she says next is going to be a lie. If not an outright falsehood, then at least a partial truth.
“Alexis,” she finally says.
Now it’s my turn to still.
Alexis.
Really?
For a quick second, everything feels hot and cold and like the walls are closing in, but then I shake my head because it’s just a coincidence.
Unless it’s not.
“Alexis?” I ask carefully, trying not to let my emotions betray me. “That’s a sort of unusual name, isn’t it?”
She shrugs.
“Isn’t it?”
“Not really,” she says nonchalantly. “I mean, I’ve known a few other people with this name.”
“What’s your last name?”
“That’s personal.”
“I’m letting you stay here,” I point out the obvious.
“Cantor,” she says. “Alexis Cantor.”
Now I really know I’m in deep shit.
Chapter Two
Jace
“What an interesting name,” I say quietly. “And your baby? What’s he called?”
“Brandon,” she says.
That’s it, then.
Something is seriously wrong.
That’s what we were going to call our baby.
The baby we lost.
When this woman, “Alexis,” wandered into my home, I knew something strange was going on. Now she’s given me the name not only of my ex-fiancé, but of the baby the two of us were supposed to have.
Until they both died.
I take a deep breath. Maybe there’s a reasonable explanation. Perhaps there’s an easy way to explain how this happened. Perhaps the woman just happens to have the same name as my former partner. Maybe it’s all a coincidence. Maybe this girl was in trouble and simply stole Alexis’ identity. I don’t know.
All I know is that I need to get to the bottom of things, and it’s hard when she’s so very beautiful. This woman looks nothing like Alexis did. Nope. Not at all. She’s soft and curvy: not hard and rigid. Alexis always had to be in control, in charge. She always had to be on top of everything. This girl? Well, she seems lost.
Like, really lost.