Chapter 14
JORDAN
“You have been avoiding me.”
Baylee’s voice makes me jump. I turn from where I’m sitting at my desk at my old house, checking to see what I need to take with me to Denver.
Most of my work for Redhaven Foundation is done on my computer, and we don’t have a lot of paper files, so the box I brought to grab things with is mostly empty except for the Outlaws mug I put in there.
I don’t even need that, to be honest. I’ll have to fill my office with Denver White Wolves gear after Libby and I move.
I turn to see Baylee standing in the doorway. “I have not been avoiding you. I went to dinner with you the other night.”
She raises an eyebrow. “You arrived with Libby exactly on time and you left the restaurant immediately after Mom and Dad. And you scheduled the family dinner at a restaurant so no one could talk to you about your sudden elopement with someone you didn’t know a month ago.”
I swivel in my chair back to my desk, pretending to go through one of the drawers to, ironically, avoid Baylee’s gaze. “I’ve known her over a month,” I counter.
She snorts. “Forgive me.” There’s a pause, possibly her consulting a calendar, considering she adds, “It’s been five weeks.”
“I’ve been secretly dating Libby Bennet for six months,” I say dryly.
Baylee scoffs, and from the sound of her steps, she comes fully into the room. She plops into her chair. “Why are you avoiding me?” she asks. “You’re moving to Denver in a week, and I’ve barely seen you. Even your wife has had lunch with me.”
A prickle of awareness shoots across my chest at Libby being called my wife, but I ignore it.
Business partner. I shut the drawer full of pens and notepads that I don’t need and look up to face my sister.
“Because I know you probably have all kinds of opinions of how Libby could have solved this problem without roping me into getting married—but,” I continue as she opens her mouth, likely to voice some of her own solutions, “she didn’t rope me into anything. ”
Baylee leans back, folding her arms. “I can see that.”
Heat floods my cheeks. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Baylee opens her laptop, taps some things, and then spins it to show me a picture from the wedding, released to the press this morning.
I still employ my old social media manager from my hockey days, and I gave her my basic statement to handle the thousands of notifications probably flooding my accounts right now.
I haven’t even looked at them. A glance at the picture, which I’m tagged in, shows there are millions of likes, reactions, reposts, and shares.
But I think Baylee is talking about the way I’m looking at Libby just before I lean in to kiss her.
My real feelings—how much I’ve grown to care for her, the desire that pumps through me when I touch her, the need I have to protect her—it’s all bare in my expression if you know me at all.
And my sister knows me better than anyone.
When I meet Baylee’s gaze over the laptop, her expression has turned concerned. “Does Libby feel the same for you?” she asks.
I sigh and push her laptop away from me.
“I don’t know. She has a lot of boundaries set up for us.
To protect us. She’s good about keeping them when we’re alone, and when we’re acting for other people…
” I scrub a hand down my face. “I can tell she’s not entirely comfortable when I touch her or hold her hand.
” Or kiss her. I can’t forget the relief on her face when Baylee’s incessant calling interrupted our kiss.
My sister’s expression falls. “You have to be careful, Jord. The longer you’re with her—”
I hold up a hand to stop her. I’ve already thought of everything she’s about to say. How much harder it’s going to be to hide my feelings the longer we’re together. How much splitting up later is going to break my heart if I continue down this path.
“I know,” I say. “I’m a big boy. I’ll be fine.”
She worries her lip like she disagrees with this.
“Okay,” she finally says. She taps a few more things on her laptop, and the social media site is replaced with a shared, detailed checklist we use to keep track of Redhaven victims who applied to us for financial help.
“The funds went through this morning to pay off the Martinezes’ loans.
That was a close one.” She gives a shudder.
“They almost lost the ranch. I want to investigate some grant options for them once we get the rest of the money disbursed. There’s some stuff that could use updating.
They only applied for enough to keep the ranch, but I know Bryce took a lot more than they asked to be reimbursed for.
” She sighs. That’s the thing about the Redhaven residents—and probably the biggest reason Bryce was able to scam so many people—they want to make sure their neighbors are taken care of.
“There’s something else,” she says after we’ve discussed the Martinezes. “We’ve had some new applications.”
I tilt my head in surprise. Bryce took off almost a year ago with all the money.
It was shortly after that Baylee and I started Redhaven Foundation and asked any residents of the town that he stole money from to come to us.
Some people were happy to fill out our applications, but other people we had to go hunt down, because we knew Bryce had dealings with them but they weren’t going to come forward.
A lot of them out of shame for being duped.
It soothed some egos when we shared that I had also been duped by Bryce and lost money.
But the applications dried up months ago. And Baylee and I have literally talked to every resident of the small town to make sure we pay back everything Bryce stole. Who else is there?
“Who is it?” I ask.
She pulls up the applications, and my jaw tightens when I see the first one. Mitchell Hurst. Baylee’s high school boyfriend, who hasn’t lived in Redhaven for ten years. How would Bryce have gotten a hold of him?
But it says right in his application: Bryce reached out as a friend of Baylee’s and convinced him to invest to the tune of $500,000. I arch an eyebrow.
“He hasn’t attached documentation.” I look up at Baylee, relief spreading through me. Baylee could certainly set up fundraisers without me to recoup new funds for these new applicants, but this is exactly the smoke I thought it was.
She points to the box where applicants can give explanations for their documentation. “I wrote Bryce a check from my checking account. The bank’s online software won’t pull up transactions from that long ago.”
I scoff after reading it. “Is he for real?”
She grimaces. “There are more.”
We scroll through a handful more applicants, all people who used to live in Redhaven and claim that Bryce used his connections to the town to scam them.
Every explanation for lack of documentation is similar: records not accessible because of the length of time, some claim cash investments with Bryce, and other seemingly plausible reasons why they don’t have a paper trail to prove Bryce stole from them.
Baylee watches me as I study each one and then gives me a worried look when I’m done. “What are we going to do?”
I let out a sigh. “We can’t pay all these out. We’d need another couple million. And … they don’t feel legit.”
Baylee shakes her head. “It feels exactly like Bryce’s MO, though. Especially these cash ones for under ten thousand.”
I shrug. “Maybe, yeah. But we can’t just hand out this money. We’ll be the target of anyone looking to get a couple thousand dollars quick.”
“If Bryce stole from these people—”
I reach across the desk to take Baylee’s hand.
“We can’t fix every person Bryce stole from.
There’s no way Redhaven was his first target.
” But Baylee’s expression doesn’t relax.
Since the day Bryce took off with millions of dollars from hardworking Redhaven families, my sister has felt responsible.
She dated the man, got engaged to him, gave him a place of trust in our community.
But honestly? Baylee lost the most out of anyone.
Not just her life savings and the little house she’d saved up to buy.
Bryce charmed her, made her feel loved, promised her a life she’d always dreamed of, and then used her to steal from people she cared about.
Baylee might never trust another man again, and though the way she was taken advantage of is different from many of the clients Libby works with every day, she’s the reason I’ll keep every rule and boundary Libby makes, no matter how I feel about her.
I will never be the reason a woman looks askance at a man.
“You keep working on the applications we’ve already approved,” I tell Baylee. “I’ll start working on these. Calling people to see if we can figure out a way to document what they lost.”
“You’re going to call Mitchell Hurst?”
I hold up my hands in surrender. “I will be nice. Cross my heart.”
She laughs dryly. That’s fair. I did break his nose back in high school when he dumped Baylee right after high school graduation because “they needed to go their own ways.” And only in part because he ripped off High School Musical.
Baylee walks me to the door when I get ready to leave and hugs me tightly.
“I’ll see you soon, Bay,” I promise. “My jet-setting wife will have me back and forth between Denver and Houston plenty.”
She keeps her hands on my shoulders as she leans back to study me. “Be careful. I know you don’t want to hear it, but don’t go falling in love with her willy-nilly.”
“Willy-nilly?”
She slaps me on the arm. “Seriously. I know you think you can handle a broken heart, but I don’t know if I can handle seeing you suffer through one, okay?”
I pull her back into a hug. “Okay. Fine. I won’t fall in love willy-nilly.”
She sighs and pushes me away, then shoves me out the door. She still watches me go down the sidewalk to my car and waves as I drive away, worry in her expression as I pull from the curb.
I wish I could reassure her more, but the problem is, I don’t think I can walk back what I feel for Libby Bennet. How can I when we’re married?