JORDAN
“Youhave 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.Andyou 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 herconsulting 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 calledmy 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 expressionhas 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 thetown 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.”
