“Did you get that other thing I asked about?” I didn’t want to say it out loud. I felt like such a creeper for running a background check on Luke Halston, but I wanted to make sure he was good enough for Hannah.
Bumping into her at the theater last week had felt like fate—until Luke had walked up next to her and called herbabe. That was like a knife to my heart and a reminder that she was taken and better off. I wanted to make sure Luke wasn’t hiding anything, so I’d had Chloe run a top-notch, CIA-level background check on him.
Chloe nodded and tapped on her phone. Then something pinged in my email.
“I’ll leave you to it,” she said and headed for the door.
We’d just gotten out of a three-hour meeting with Jason over whether or not to sell the company to China. We’d decided against it in the end, but I’d been close to telling Jason to sell my shares. Part of me wanted to just go live in the mountains alone for the rest of my life, and the other part of me was terrified of what I would do left alone with my thoughts and no work to keep me busy. No. I wouldn’t sell yet.
I opened the email and braced myself. If there was even the slightest red flag in here, I would call Hannah, confess what I’d done, and send the report to her.
But as I scanned the paper, I felt my heart grow heavier and heavier.
Luke Halston was a model citizen.
He paid his taxes.
He’d graduated as valedictorian from Texas A&M University.
He was a licensed veterinarian.
He’d volunteered on a missions trip in Mexico when he was a teenager.
He went to church.
He was perfect for Hannah, and that realization felt like the final nail in a coffin I’d put myself in.
I sighed, accepting this fate.
Not many women I’d met had made me think about the future. I had a no-falling-in-love rule for a reason. It was safer that way. But for a moment, I wondered if Hannah would be worth the pain—the pain I’d feel when it eventually didn’t work out. I thought she was. Even an hour with her would have been worth a month of heartache, but it didn’t matter. She wasn’t mine. She was Luke’s.
There was a knock on the door, and I looked up and saw Jason. He had changed into a polo shirt and jeans and was holding a to-go coffee.
“Ready?” he asked.
I frowned, glancing at my calendar, because I was most definitely not ready. It was five p.m. and I had been about to go home.
At-Risk Youth Basketball Fundraiser: 6 p.m.
“Oh, crap. I forgot about that.” I stood from the computer, eying the background report one last time before closing it anddeciding once and for all to move on from this whole Hannah infatuation.
Jason laughed. “It was your idea! I’d rather throw money at these kids. You’re the one who wanted to play basketball with them.”
I grinned. Jason and I had been best friends since third grade. We both came from humble beginnings and agreed when we hit our first billion to share our wealth with the less fortunate. The only issue was that Jason didn’t really like children. I mean, he liked them from afar, but they were loud and unpredictable, and he didn’t like that. So I tried to get him around them often just to see him squirm.
“It will be fun. You afraid they’ll whoop you?” I questioned as I moved to the cabinet in my office where I kept my workout clothes.
Jason nodded. “Actually, yeah. I’ve never been good at basketball. That was always your sport.”
I changed in the adjoining bathroom next to my office, and when I came out, Jason handed me a coffee too.
“Thanks, man,” I told him. “So, I was thinking. What if, when we get there, we tell the kids that for every shot they make, we’ll donate ten grand to their school?”
Jason grinned. “I like that!”
We were playing a little game with Jason and me, the principal, and some teachers going against the students. At the end, Jason and I were going to present them with a check. This way, it would be more fun, and we’d go easy on them so they could rack up money quickly.
We got into Jason’s Tesla, and then he started driving us to the high school where we would be donating the money.
