After an embarrassing end to her teenage crush, grey hat hacker Alexa Stone vowed to spend the rest of her life avoiding Nolan de Luca. Reliving the memory in her nightmares is quite bad enough without seeing him in person. But when her meddling bestie volunteers her to fix a tiny ransomware issue with Nolan’s laptop, Alexa can’t say no.
Nolan’s spent the past decade regretting the way he walked out on Alexa. Yes, okay, he was a murder suspect and she was a minor who lied about her age, but he should still have handled the situation better. Now she’s coming to California, to the vineyard where he sought refuge after the death of their former roommate, and he wants a do-over.
But nothing’s ever simple. Alexa isn’t impressed when Nolan becomes an accidental porn star, then there’s the interior designer determined to give his entire life a makeover. And complications lead to mistakes, mistakes that threaten his business and more.
Alexa doesn’t do complications, or people, or the great outdoors. So why does she keep returning to Gold Country?
Hard Code is a standalone romantic suspense novel with a neurospicy heroine, an uptight hero, plenty of dark humour, and a morally grey girl squad.
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Sneak Peek…
Wait.
Why was there a package of crackers on my desk?
They weren’t even French crackers, they were graham crackers, a snack so tasteless they were barely edible even with chocolate and marshmallow sandwiched between them. Chase would never soil my palate that way, which meant…
No.
Oh, no.
I clutched the robe tighter around me as Jez stepped off the balcony.
“Nice view,” she said. “Being a conniving little bitch does have its perks.”
I groaned as I remembered the message she’d sent me last month, right after I routed her through secondary screening at Miami International in order to delay her boarding until the last possible second.
Jez: I will hunt you down. I will hunt you down and force-feed you dry crackers until you choke on the soggy crumbs.
And my reply? Gotta catch me first. Enjoy San Gallicano.
Now she was here.
Fuck.
“Congratulations on not totally screwing up your relationship with Cole. I take it you’ve come to thank me?”
“Thank you for engineering me into a position where I had to talk to a man I’d been avoiding?”
“Exactly.”
“Even when it was clear I didn’t want to go?”
“It worked out okay, right? You like Cole, and he likes you back. The weirdo,” I added under my breath.
“So you think it’s okay to push an unwilling woman into a man’s arms just as long as she secretly likes him?”
“Absolutely.” I glanced at the crackers. “Those are a joke, right?”
“Yes, they’re a joke.”
Phew. “Well, Chase will be back with breakfast soon.”
“You don’t have time to eat breakfast.”
“Sure I do. I cancelled the second half of my massage.”
How did people find massages relaxing? Having someone’s hands all over you, poking and prodding… Okay, so the kinks in my shoulders felt better for a day or two, but any benefit was outweighed by the yuck factor.
“You’ll be using that time to pack.”
“Pack? What for? I’m staying here for another week unless—” Unless Jez found me, which was an irrelevant issue now. “Never mind.”
“We’re going to California.”
“What? No. I’m going to Napoli next.”
As a teenager, I’d spent months wondering where my next meal was coming from, so was it really a surprise that I made food a priority now that I had the means to do so? No one made pizza like the Italians.
“Guess again.”
“I don’t have to guess again. All I have to do is call the charter company and tell them I need a jet to Italy.”
Yes, I freelanced for Jez’s team of psycho-bitches, but I was perfectly capable of working remotely, and they were based in Nevada anyway. And I hated California. My parents lived there, and in a state of forty million people, I still dreaded the thought of accidentally running into my plastic-fantastic mom. Although time had helped to ease that fear. Would Eliana Rockwell even recognise me these days? I hadn’t seen her since I was thirteen.
Jez made a noise like a game show buzzer. “Nah-ah.”
“Yeah-ah.”
That grin made me twitchy. Jez was one of my oldest friends, and I knew what her cunning smirk meant. It meant she was about to fuck somebody over, and I was the only person in the room. Uh-oh.
“Nolan’s laptop broke, and I volunteered your services to fix it.” Jez glanced at her watch. “He’s expecting you for breakfast, which means you need to pack and get to the airport.”
“What?”
“The airport. It’s the place where airplanes take off. Unless you’re planning to swim across the Atlantic, but you don’t like getting your face wet, so…”
Yes, whatever. I was still hung up on the “Nolan” part.
Nolan.
There was only one Nolan in my life, or rather, out of my life. Nolan de Luca, our former roommate, my teenage crush, and the man I’d never be able to face again without dying of embarrassment. Or reliving the past I’d rather forget.
Ruby’s broken body lying in the tower.
A killer walking among us.
The authorities realising that Alexa Stone and Alexandria Rockwell were one and the same person.
The day before Child Protective Services came to take me away, I broke down in his arms, a first for me. Not the breaking-down part—I’d done that plenty of times before, always alone, and always quietly. But he’d never hugged me that way, and I’d never kissed him. Oh, I’d thought about doing it. Dreamed about it. But not once had those dreams ended with him pushing me away and telling me it couldn’t possibly work.
In the end, it was Dawson Masters who’d come through. My first night in a foster home, I’d called him in the early hours, begged him to pick me up. I think he knew I’d run anyway, and he figured driving me to the bus station was better than letting me walk there in the dark. Except I hadn’t taken a bus cross-country as everyone assumed. No, I’d headed to the airport, chartered a private jet, and flown to Italy on a passport I’d bought from a guy on the dark web. My roommates knew I was making a little money by then, but they had no idea quite how big my bank balance had grown. Except for Jez. Jez saw too much, heard too much, and knew too much, which was how she’d found me yet again, this time in Paris.
“I’m not going to the US.”
“So you’re going to let Nolan down?”
“I’ll mail him a new laptop.”
“It isn’t the hardware that’s the issue. The issue is that he had a decade’s worth of accounting records and his entire CRM database on the hard drive.”
“So can’t he just restore from the backup?”
Jez looked at me, and I looked at Jez.
“Tell me Nolan has a backup.”
Silence. Of course Nolan didn’t have a backup. Nolan was kind, patient, great with his hands, and shit with computers.
“Okay, fine. Tell him I’ll send the laptop plus a technician to transfer the data.”
That damn smirk came back. “Won’t work.”
“Why not? Did he accidentally run it through a wood chipper?”
I mean, anything was possible with Nolan. He’d managed to drop his phone into a blender once.
“No, he accidentally clicked on a phishing link, and ransomware disappeared the data before he panicked and pulled the battery.”
I groaned out loud.
“What type of ransomware? Are we talking about encryption or just a locker?”
“That’s what you’re going to find out.”
No.
No, no, no, no, no.
“I’ll send a cybersecurity expert from Astela.”
“Oh yeah?” Jez leaned in closer, and her grin widened. “What if they fuck it up?”
“They won’t. Jay and I only hire the best.”
But they weren’t infallible. If we were talking about a Fortune 500 company instead of Nolan, I wouldn’t hesitate to send a member of the team, but what if he’d stumbled across one of the new ransomware variants? Some of those were nasty. Or worse, what if a colleague got curious about why they’d been banished to a remote vineyard to fix a single laptop instead of their usual corporate gigs? I said “the team” as if they knew me, but they didn’t, not really, and that was the way I wanted it to stay. Yes, I was Astela’s majority shareholder, and yes, I had the final say in any significant decisions, but I rarely interacted with the staff in person. Most people outside of the board and my close-knit tech team assumed Alex Scoria was a man. On the rare occasions I went into the office, I was Lexi Craggs, a mid-level developer who mostly worked from home.
“You keep telling me you’re the best,” Jez said. “And you’re also a control freak, so…”
That part was probably true, although it had taken me half a lifetime and a long, liquor-fuelled conversation with a Thai therapist to work that out. Okay, a bartender. He was a Thai bartender. But he had a psychology degree, allegedly, and he told me I craved power over everything around me to make up for the helplessness I’d felt as a child. And he might have had more insights, but I’d puked in an ice bucket and then Chase carried me back to our hotel suite, so I never got to hear them.
“You can’t make me go to California.”
“Actually, I can.”
“You’d spend the remainder of your life regretting it.”
“Really? But you should be thanking me for engineering you into a position where you have to talk to a man you’ve been avoiding.”
I scoffed at the suggestion. “I haven’t been avoiding Nolan. I left Blackstone House to avoid being kidnapped by CPS, and then our lives veered in totally different directions.”
“Oh, so you spy on him the way you spy on the rest of us?”
“‘Spy’ is such a strong word.”
“When I went on vacay with a guy, you positioned a satellite over his boat.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Do you know how much of a ballache it is to reposition a satellite? I merely waited for a suitable satellite to pass overhead and directed its surveillance equipment to take a few pictures.”
Jez raised her gaze to the ceiling. “You think that’s better?”
“My so-called spying saved your ass. You should be thanking me for that too.”
“Fine, thanks for measuring the length of Cole’s dick and sending a rescue team. You’re still going to California. What was it you said earlier? Oh, right—it’s okay to push an unwilling woman into a man’s arms just as long as she secretly likes him.”
“No, you said that.”
“And you agreed.”
Because it was convenient at the time. Dammit.
“Can’t you just airfreight me the laptop?” I tried.
“I could. I could also make you choke on dry crackers. Plus you’ll let down Nolan if you don’t go, and he said it would be good to see you.”
“He did? You spoke with him?”
“Brax relayed the message. Did you know Nolan built a couple of guest cottages at the vineyard?”
“Maybe.”
I didn’t snoop, snoop on Nolan, but I did check the Dionysus website every so often. And perhaps I had an alert set up on his name at local hospitals just in case he had an accident. And I also kept an eye on his bank accounts to make sure he didn’t run out of money, but the vineyard was sustaining itself now, although last year hadn’t been as profitable as the one before.
“He’s getting one of them ready for you.”
What if I told Jez about that final night with Nolan? How he’d pushed me away when I needed him most? Would she still make me go?
Probably.
And a part of me was hella curious to see the vineyard. To see the man Nolan had become and the home he’d made for himself. The roots he’d grown, both physically and metaphorically. Could I pretend the past hadn’t affected me as much as it did? He’d clearly moved on, so maybe a trip to the Sierra Nevada would just mean catching up with an old but distant friend, let bygones be bygones, close Pandora’s box and nail the lid shut.
I headed for my desk, for the half-dozen laptops I carried everywhere. Whenever Chase and I hit the road in search of a new adventure, they were the first thing I packed.
“Fine. Fine, I’ll go, but don’t think I’ll forget this. How did you even find me?”
“Simple. Cole and I hung out at the cute little sidewalk café opposite Le Plaisir and waited for Chase to swing by and pick up macarons.”
Another groan. I should’ve gotten that shit delivered.
“Great. Thanks for ruining my favourite food.”
Jez tapped her watch. “The jet’s waiting. Wonder if Nolan has a girlfriend?”
My head snapped around. “What? Does he?”
“How should I know? I haven’t seen him in nearly ten years. But he’s a debt-free homeowner with a reasonable personality, and if he still cooks every night…”
“Shut up.” If the girlfriend lived with him at Dionysus, I’d have to get a hotel room somewhere. The thought of watching him with another woman left me cold.
“And he was always hot in a scruffy way. Not my type, obviously, but I can see why a girl would swipe right.”
I threw a fidget spinner at Jez, but she caught it and tucked it into a pocket.
“Aw, you’re cute when you’re angry.”
I tried to slam the bedroom door behind me, but it closed with a quiet click instead. As Jez laughed to herself, I leaned against the polished wood, sank to the floor, and sobbed softly as my life spiralled out of control yet again.
CONTENT WARNINGS
Child abuse is a reference only.
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