To Be The Last Ch. 05

A few years later...

"I'll find those guys for you if you marry my daughter."

Blake Alexander quirked a brow at the suggestion. His face remained expressionless. His current boss, Peter Greene, looked hopeful. For the past two and a half years, Blake worked for the man. This was the eighth marriage proposal and would be the eighth rejection.

"I'm too busy to be married." Blake replied.

"You could at least humor me." Peter grumbled.

"I'm a good bounty hunter, therefore can afford not to kiss your ass."

"Yes, you're one of my best workers. I'm glad I had the good sense to invest in you that day you came into my office looking starved and dirty." Peter tried to joke.

That only caused Blake to inwardly cringe. His reply was dry. "Our recollections seem to differ. I recall being turned away day after day until you got so annoyed with me you gave me a shot...hoping I would mess up so you could fire me and get rid of me permanently."

Peter grinned. "I was testing your tenacity."

Blake changed the subject. "What's up with the next case?"

A long time ago, Peter and Blake had struck a deal. Blake would do a third of his work for free if he could use the company's connections for his own investigative purposes. Peter had agreed and two and a half years later, was damn glad he did. Blake Alexander had appeared with no identification or papers, but the determination Peter saw in Blake's eyes were able to overcome Blake's lack of solid ID.

Peter himself couldn't find anything on Blake Alexander. But he helped Blake create his new identity. Peter didn't know anything of Blake's past other than Blake was obsessed with finding the partners of the infamous Clifford Richardson. The scandal of that had died down, but everyone knew who Clifford Richardson was. Peter could only assume Blake had been somehow involved in Richardson's 'business'.

Peter watched Blake follow the faintest trails that usually led to a dead end. And as frustrated as Peter knew Blake must be, Blake never expressed his anger. Well, Blake never expressed much of any emotion.

Looking over the file he was about to hand over to Blake, Peter wondered if it was time for Blake to take a much need vacation. Unfortunately, it was known that Blake would then just use that free time to look for more dead end trails to follow. After a defeated sigh, Peter handed over the file. Scanning the file, Blake closed it with a snap and then he stood to leave since it was the end of the work day.

"Join me for dinner. CPK at seven. My daughter is back from Milan. I want to introduce the two of you to each other."

"I'll be busy." Was Blake's quick reply.

"See you at seven sharp!" Peter told Blake's back.

----

Blake finished the paperwork he had to do for his last case. Casting a glance at his Timex watch, Blake could still make it to CPK and be on time even in the Vegas traffic. With a look at the picture in his drawer, an ache stared in Blake's chest. He had been staring at a picture of a four month pregnant Alexia for the last half hour. The picture was taken at a charity function for children with leukemia. Alexia was surrounded by a bunch of children who obviously adored her as much as she adored them.

The picture was just too painful to look at and Blake often told himself to get rid of it. He had printed it out nearly three years ago after discovering it on the web. So Blake slowly closed his desk drawer, knowing he'd never be able to throw the picture out. It would do him some good to get out and away from his beautiful Alexia, even if it was just a picture.

Maybe Blake would go out and meet Peter's daughter. It would at least get his boss off his ass about one thing. Peter had been hounding Blake to meet Piper for over a year. But both Blake and Piper were too busy. Blake could only hope he'd annoy her enough so Piper would be just as enthusiastic as Blake to meet again.

Shrugging into a leather jacket, Blake grabbed his car keys and left the small home he was renting. When Blake arrived, Peter had instantly flagged him down. Surprisingly, Peter was alone at the table. But there was an oversized bag covered in black sequence and gold chains on the chair beside Peter.

"So you decided to show." Peter grinned happily.

"I wouldn't pass up on a free meal." Blake half-joked. He was pretty hungry, but his monies had been drained into finding the three men involved with Richardson. So eating was something Blake had learned to usually go without.

"Piper just went to the bathroom." Peter explained, as if Blake might have been curious. He motioned for Blake to take a seat.

"I'm not staying long." Blake replied as he took off his leather jacket before taking the offered seat. "Still gotta write up that Sanchez case."

The waitress came back to the table and put down two drinks. A cold beer and an iced tea. Blake put in a to-go order and returned his attention to Peter. Glancing down at his watch, Blake wondered if it would be rude to leave the moment his food was done. The two men talked for about twenty minutes before Peter commented on his daughter's extended absence. Just then Blake noticed long tanned legs come into view beside him.

"Sorry daddy. You wouldn't believe the line!" Came a cheerful voice. A very attractive brunette with big blue eyes stood at their table. Her four inch heels put her just at six feet. Her smile slipped a bit as she became aware of Blake. Her rosebud lips pursed in question as she stared at Blake and waited for an introduction.

Blake observed the practically non-existent outfit covering her body. She was beautiful in his impartial opinion. Though he found her beauty to be lacking in someway. Almost as if she pretended to be unaware of her beauty, when in actuality, she knew full well that any straight man would find her desirable.

As he observed her, Blake found to his amusement that she definitely knew how to work with her looks. She must have practiced faces in the mirror all the time. It was obvious she knew just how to pout and the right amount of furrow to her brow so it didn't mar her smooth skin with the possibility of wrinkles.

"This is Blake Alexander. I mentioned him before." Peter introduced the two. "Blake, my daughter Piper Greene."

Piper broke into another perfected smile. "Mr. Alexander," She began, taking a seat. "My father tells me that you want to marry me." It was meant as a joke, but obviously Peter had forgotten to mention the bit that Blake wanted nothing to do with marriage and it was Peter who was pushing for a wedding.

As Peter choked on his beer, Blake gave Piper a strained smile. "Please, call me Blake. And your father is mistaken. He is the one persistent on our nuptials."

"Interesting." Piper finally said. She frowned a bit and Blake noted it was the first real and untrained emotion he saw on her face thus far.

Interesting indeed, Piper thought. Blake was actually talking to her face and with enough coldness to make the freaking Antarctic seem like the Vegas weather. That was definitely not the usual response she got from men...heterosexual men.

"Are you by any chance gay?" Piper asked, sending her father into another choking fit.

"No."

There wasn't any humor or offense in his deadpan tone. Piper ignored her father's coughing as he excused himself from the table to get some air. He warned his daughter to behave while he was gone. Blake was busy looking at a file he snatched from her father's seat, giving Piper the best opportunity to study the delectable man before her.

He genuinely didn't seem interested in her nor was he playing hard to get. How interesting. Piper hadn't had a challenge in awhile. Seeing as she had a month and a half off from work, she had more than enough time on her hands.

A waitress interrupted Piper's mooning as she brought by something for Blake. With a polite smile, Blake paid the waitress. But she had laughed and waved him off, saying the pizza was on her.

Piper trained herself not to gape. The waitress was blatantly hitting on Blake with no regard to the possible fact that Piper could be his girlfriend. But what annoyed Piper was that she was totally ignored. She hadn't been ignored since high school before her transformation from ugly duckling to gorgeous swan.

Purposely speaking loudly, Piper interrupted. "Oh! There's a lemon in my iced tea. I don't like lemons. Get me another one. The sooner the better. I'm really thirsty. So like, now."

The waitress broke out of her conversation with Blake and gave a feigned smile before grabbing Piper's drink and rushing off. Turning back to Blake with intentions of starting up a conversation, Piper was surprised to find Blake getting up to leave.

"I apologize, but I have to leave now." Piper watched the fabric of Blake's fitted black shirt stretch over his chest as he put on his leather jacket, not really paying attention to the words coming out of his kissable lips.

She was glad to note he was taller than her. Then his words sank in. "Why are you leaving?"

"I'm not good company and neither are you. I don't see why I have to sit here and keep you entertained when it was your father who invited you out to dinner. And words of advice, you shouldn't treat people like that...especially the ones who handle your food." Blake picked up his packaged food and looked up to see Peter returning. "Have a good night, Peter. I'll see you tomorrow."

With that, Blake left, leaving Piper in an odd state of anger and arousal. No man ever talked to her like that. Not even her father corrected her behavior in such a direct and public manner. Well now, Piper thought, she'd be tagging along with daddy to work tomorrow.

---

Six AM and Piper was not a happy camper. She had insisted on following her father to work and that meant she had to get up much earlier than her usual 10 or 11 AM. But the promise of seeing Blake so early in the morning was too tempting to pass up. She wondered if he wasn't a morning person like her.

Piper wasn't sure if Blake was a morning person or not. He didn't seem much different than the night before. He was the same surly ass. When he arrived in the office, he didn't so much as glance at her before telling her to get out of his seat.

"Oh, this is your seat?" She pretended not to know. The first thing she asked her dad was which desk was Blake's.

He gave her a look as though she knew damn well that was his seat. But at least he was looking at her. Piper made a show of picking up her magazines and bag and putting it on the desk next to his.

"Who sits here?" She asked Blake, but he was walking off to her dad's office. "How rude." She grumbled and dug out her cell phone to text her friends.

Piper looked around the desk, but all the drawers were locked, just like Blake's. There weren't even any pictures or paperwork lying around, unlike her dad's office. Her father was a total pig.

Her friends texted back that they wanted a picture of Blake so she snapped a picture with her phone when Blake was walking back. That seemed to piss him off enough to frown at her. Baby steps, but it was still early in the day and the game.

"Delete that." Blake told her in all seriousness.

"I'm beginning to wonder if anything nice can come out of your mouth." Piper glanced up from her phone after deleting the picture. However, she wouldn't tell him it was deleted already.

"Delete the picture or I burn your memory card. That's nice. I'm giving you an option." His tone didn't change.

Piper batted her lashes at him. "Why don't you come over here and make me, big boy?"

Before she could even think of what he was doing, he was in her face and standing between her legs. His breath fanned against her cheek and she blinked a couple times. Blake pulled away and Piper inhaled deeply before realizing he had her phone in his hands.

"Hey! Give that back you asshole. I already deleted the picture." She put her hand out for her phone.

Blake gave the phone back after checking her gallery. He tossed it and she missed, her phone tumbling from her hands onto the carpet. If she wasn't so annoying, he would have grinned at her fumble and muttered curses.

"Gods, my friends just wanted a picture Mr. Camera Shy." She had to say. At the moment her heart was pounding in her ears and she was a bit aroused just from that instance of closeness. She really needed to get laid if that got her excited.

"You should ask permission next time." He replied and took his seat. He pulled a set of keys from his pocket and unlocked his drawers to pull out stacks of files.

"Can I take your picture?" Piper asked excitedly. Hell, if she just needed to ask permission-

"No." Blake didn't elaborate and he just went back to work.

Piper thought he was the most infuriating man alive. She narrowed her eyes at him and frowned. If she stared any harder, she could burn holes in the back of his head. With a muttered humph, she returned to her magazines after attaching her iPod to her portable speakers.

Her music didn't seem to bother Blake while he tapped away at his keyboard. She tried to peek over at what he was doing, but his monitor had one of those screens that prevented her from seeing what was going on. Unable to focus on her magazines, Piper decided to watch Blake.

He never seemed unsure of himself in his movements. Everything he did was as efficient as it got. His hands seemed so strong and she wondered if they were callused. She couldn't imagine it any other way. Why he even got into the bounty hunting business was beyond her.

"It's rude to stare." She heard him say.

Piper inwardly snorted. Of course the man had eyes on the back of his head. She was silent, ignoring him and flipping another page of her magazine as if he was paranoid. In vain, she hoped he would say something else to her, but he didn't.

By the end of two hours, Piper was going insane. The tapping of Blake's fingers on the keyboard had stopped and now he was flipping through papers. He honestly didn't plan to acknowledge her.

"I'm hungry." She said to no one in particular. It was only around 9AM and she'd still be in bed for at least an hour or two.

"There's a break room down the hall. Your father always has it stocked up." Blake mentioned, surprising her.

Her father had this office as long as she could remember and she knew where everything was. What surprised her was that Blake actually cared enough to comment on her statement. Well that or he wanted her to shut up again. After thinking about it, she decided it was probably the latter.

Pushing out of her chair, Piper stood and stretched. "Do you want something?"

Blake looked up from his paper work and stared at her for a few moments. Piper was starting to grow self-conscious the way he just looked at her, but she wasn't able to tear her eyes from his. Finally, he broke the eye contact and glanced at his computer screen.

"A cup of black coffee, thank you."

Piper felt a smile spread across her face. "Okay, I can get that. And you're welcome."

Progress.

---

After almost two weeks of playing secretary to Blake, Piper was about to strangle him. He could make demands about his coffee and how to organize his papers on finished cases, but he never talked to her outside of that. Her father thought it was friggin' hilarious. Piper had taken to whining about it on the drive home every day.

"Look here, buddy. I am done with fetching your coffee and organizing your papers." She bitched at Blake one afternoon.

"I don't think I ever told you that you had to do that." He commented with no more than a glance in her direction.

She gasped, totally affronted. "Well..." Okay that was true. He never told her she HAD to do those things. He just asked and she never said no...which was a first. She didn't like doing things for other people unless it was her job. "Well, you took advantage of my kindness."

Blake raised a brow, but didn't comment. Instead, he went back to typing out whatever it was he was working on. The nerve of that man!

Fuming, Piper grabbed several files and slammed it on her desk. It wasn't really her desk, but the real owner was on a three week vacation after getting shot. She didn't know there was any real danger in bounty hunting. Dog the Bounty Hunter always made it look ridiculously easy.

"What are you doing?" Blake asked five minutes later.

Piper made a face and mimicked him in an annoyingly high pitched voice. "'What are you doing?'" She repeated and snorted. "Obviously, I'm sorting your papers. I have nothing better to do." She informed him in case he thought she liked doing this.

"I see." He said in amusement.

Amusement?!

Piper's head snapped to the side and she caught the faintest smile tug on his lips. The man was gorgeous. She couldn't imagine how much more beautiful he'd be smiling full out or, the Heavens forbid it, laughing. She felt oddly pleased with her little accomplishment and even gifted Blake with silence until lunch time.

---

Piper had been working on her father for the past several days to let her go 'on the field' with Blake. She would say her 'relationship' with Blake was going pretty well. He didn't ignore her all the time now, but he did seem to have a limit on how many words he spoke a day. When he hit that cap, he clammed up for the rest of the day.

Now that Gutierrez was back, she had to give up the desk and hang out in her father's office. She insisted that Blake needed her, but when it came to business, her father wasn't one to compromise. Gutierrez offered to share the desk if she wanted to sit in his lap, that perv temporarily forgot he was engaged.

So Piper just made a little spot for herself in her father's office. She set up her own phone in case Blake needed to call her for something...which he never did. Throughout the day, she would move between the front desks and her father's office to do paperwork for Blake. Her father even joked about giving her a summer job which always made her roll her eyes.

When her father was on the phone, she stopped what she was doing and listened carefully. The moment the call was ended, Piper jumped at the opportunity.

"Sooo...Blake is heading out? I find this bounty hunter business extremely interesting. I might change professions." She told her father who replied that the only thing he'd let her do in this business was desk bound.

"It's not all fun and games, Piper. It might seem cool and 'oh-so-exciting,' but it can be dangerous. Most of the time boring, but it has its moments." He eyed her suspiciously. She was far too perky.

Piper gave a small shrug. "I find it pretty interesting and not all that dangerous. Ricky got shot because he's an idiot. I heard how he got the wrong address and walked into a shoot out."

"Gutierrez got shot because he was purposely told the wrong address by the suspect's girlfriend. That's the risks in this kind of business. And how the hell did you hear about that?" He noted Piper giving a small glance to the side where his secretary was sitting outside his office at her own desk. He didn't pay that woman to run her mouth.

"I'm still unconvinced. I mean, I can't wait until I get out on the field. I bet it's so action packed and such an adrenaline rush like in the movies...not to mention hilarious. Have you seen 'Dog the Bounty Hunter'?" She asked her father in all innocence.

With a groan, Peter scrubbed his hand over his face. "Fine. You've been pestering me about tagging along with Blake. You can go just this once. It is just to interview an ex-girlfriend. I'm telling you, it's going to be boring."

Time alone with Blake in close proximity, boring? Puh-lease.

---

"This is so boring!" Piper burst out as they sat in traffic.

Blake wasn't talking to her. In fact, he was pissed with her if she wasn't mistaken. When her father informed Blake that he was to take Piper along, Blake stiffened and absolutely refused. Something along the lines of it not being 'take your daughter to work day and pawn her off on your employees'. The door was closed and with her ear pressed to the wall, it was still hard to hear everything.