Page 81 of The Heartbreaker Next Door

She continued, “You’ve never had a real relationship, but you’re suddenly in love with a single mom with a kid, with baggage?”

“You’re more than a single mom, and Maverick is…he’s not baggage.”

“I know that.” She took a deep breath as she shook her head. “I’m not saying…It’s just…the timing is…I’ve seen what people will do for money, for a few hundred dollars a month. This is millions.”

I could see the pain in her eyes. I knew that her childhood wasn’t the easiest, that her foster families had used her for a check every month. Was she putting me and my family in that same category?

Before I could respond, the sound of footsteps and high-velocity voices came barreling down the hall. There was a loud knock before the door opened, and my mom walked in, followed by Sadie, my soon-to-be sister-in-law. They both looked from Felicity to me and back again, eyes bright with battle gossip and the kind of energy that meant whatever they were about to drag Felicity into, the option of refusing was off the table.

“Felicity!” my mom boomed, the name bouncing off the walls. She locked onto Felicity with the intensity of an air-traffic controller on a distress signal. “So glad you’re here! Do you have a minute to go over last-minute wedding plans?”

Dawson and Sadie’s wedding was only a few weeks away. I’d wanted to ask her to attend as my date, but since she was working it, I hadn’t. Now, I wished I had. Or maybe that would have just been more proof to her theory. I had no idea, since that theory was wrong. My mom didn’t hire her for any reason other than she was qualified, and also probably because she was a single mom new to town, and Walter’s niece. I hadn’t even wanted to hire her. She’d basically given me no choice in the interview. And I sure as hell didn’t want to fall in love with her, but that ship had sailed the first time I saw her standing in the doorway with a tennis racket and mace. I was a goner. But how did you prove that to someone?

During the silence that followed my mom’s question, her gaze swept the room with a general’s suspicion, her eyes lingering on the two battered manila envelopes on my desk, then darting to Felicity’s posture, my own defensiveness, all of it registered in a microsecond.

“It’s not a good time,” I replied.

“Sure!” Felicity enthused, speaking over me as she quickly stood from her seat like it was spring-loaded, looking relieved that our conversation was over. “Let’s go to my office.”

No. I didn’t want to leave things like this with Felicity. I tried to protest but the three women disappeared from my office before I find a reason to keep Felicity from leaving.

The door shut, and I was left in the sudden vacuum. I sat for a minute, just breathing, feeling the shape of her absence in the room. That was the thing about Felicity: she flooded a space with her presence, made everything warmer and better and more alive. When she left, the emptiness was a physical ache.

I looked at the two envelopes, and it hit me how they looked like evidence bags, like the smoking guns of a crime neither of us knew how to confess to. I thought about what she’d said, about the reason for her being hired and our relationship being some sort of a ploy to manipulate her. How she’d implied she’d been used before for money. Her suspicion clearly came from a place old and deep. That hurt, more than I’d expected, and I wasn’t sure what to do with it.

I put my head in my hands and just sat there, elbows digging into the desk, willing the world to make sense for even a minute. It didn’t. All I could picture was Felicity’s face, the confusion and anger and something that looked a lot like betrayal. She was currently being pumped for wedding opinions about floral arches and specialty cocktails, and all I wanted to do was go into her office, tell my soon-to-be sister-in-law and mom to leave, and make her believe it wasn’t true, that none of it was. That I’d never do that to her. That I what? Loved her? Needed her? Was stupidly desperate for her to believe in me?

All of the above.

28

NOT THE ONLY ADULT IN THE ROOM

Dean

Nobody warns you that the moment you blow up your family’s entire financial legacy, you’ll be doing it in a room that smells like lavender candles and passive aggression. I’d called the meeting, made the copies, and rehearsed what I would say—and still, the second I looked around my parents’ living room, my stomach dropped straight to the floor.

Mom was on the couch, knitting needles clicking like a tiny, polite countdown clock. Dylan was draped across the armrest like a sulking golden retriever, phone in hand, scrolling completely unbothered. Damon had his back to us all, on a call, as if whatever deal he was closing was more important than the reason I’d called everyone together. And Dawson—arms crossed, jaw tight, recliner pulled back like a throne—was looking at me like he knew something already. Dad was out of town, but I couldn’t wait any longer to bring everyone up to speed.

To prepare, I made copies of the deal Grandad had made with Walter, and all the pertinent information I’d learned over the past week since discovering the envelope in the archives. I held them in my hand.

When Damon got off the phone, he put it back in his pocket and turned around. “I hope this meeting is going to explain why you’ve been in such a foul-ass mood the past week. You are even more miserable than usual.”

I took a slow breath, the one that always preceded bad news—your loan was denied, your house was underwater, the cancer was back. I started at the top, laying out the story like evidence in a criminal case, which, given the reactions, wasn’t far off, but first I made a request.

“I’m going to tell you everything that is going on, please don’t interrupt me until I’m done.”

My younger brothers tended to talk over people and ask questions as soon as they popped into their heads. I just needed to get everything out. All three of my brothers nodded, and Mom looked up from her knitting. Once I had a captive audience, I began.

“About a month ago, I got a call from Raymond Blackburn. He’s handling Walter Foster’s estate.” I looked at my mom, then Damon, to see if they’d heard anything about this, since they were the two people closest to Felicity. They either had no clue or had much better poker faces than I did. I continued, “It turns out Walter bought a portion of acreage from Granddad in the seventies. The agreement was—” I handed everyone the copies I’d made of the original deal. Dawson frowned as his eyes skimmed the lines. “It was drawn up on a cocktail napkin, then notarized the next day. It’s a mess, but it’s legal.”

No one said anything, so I kept going.

“I spoke to Felicity about it, and she said that she wanted to just leave things the way they are. Her only ask was access to the repair barn for projects around the house and use of the scrap lumber. Then I got a call from Blackburn a couple of weeks ago. He told me that there was another loan, one that had been bought by a third party and it was far more significant than the first. He didn’t have all the information, including who the third party was, but he said he would look into it.” I could feel my family’s eyes on me, each waiting for the bombshell. “You know me, I couldn’t just wait around, so I started going through all of Grandad’s archived files. Turns out, ten years after the original cocktail napkin deal, Walter bailed Grandad out of another bind—this time he bought out a high-interest lien, which gave him more collateral on the property. In total, Walter Foster owned more than half the land.” I watched my brothers process it. Mom’s knitting fell into her lap. “The only part of the land he doesn’t own are the three acres the vineyard is on.”

Dylan’s eyebrows shot up. “That’s… not good.”

“Unfortunately, the same day that I found out, Felicity was also made aware of the situation. Apparently, Walter wrote her a letter over a year ago that her ex had kept from her.” I felt my anger rising at Tanner being such a prick, but I pushed it down. “When she came to see me, she was confused and concerned that we knew about the loan and that had contributed to her hiring and also our relationship.”