Page 80 of The Heartbreaker Next Door

She didn’t stand. “Hi.”

It was the coldest I’d ever heard her greet me, or anyone for that matter, and when we first met, I don’t think she was a fan.

I eased into the room, shutting the door behind me. The click echoed too loudly in the small space. “I, um—” the words got stuck, because her gaze was fixed on the battered manila envelope in her lap. Not the one I’d taken to Blackburn, I held that, but a different one, with edges curled like burned paper. I lowered myself down behind my desk.

“Do you know anything about this?” she asked, handing me her envelope.

I took it from her and thumbed open the flap. I pulled out a written letter and copies of some of the documents I’d found earlier, including the promissory note and deed.

I met Felicity’s eyes, searching for a clue, an entry point, anything. “Where did you find this?”

She blinked, as if that wasn’t the response she’d been expecting from me, and it hurt her. “Tanner.”

“Tanner? How the hell⁠—”

“We lived together, up until about a year ago. He said that it got mixed in with his mail.”

I could see she didn’t buy his story.

“A year ago. You’ve had this for a⁠—”

“He gave it to me today.”

“Today? That’s…okay. Well, I stopped by your house and left you a message, I even went to Maverick’s preschool looking for you… The reason I wanted to talk to you was I found this in my grandad’s records.” I handed her the envelope I’d found and explained to her that I’d been to see Blackburn and what he’d said.

The way Felicity was looking at me, like I was a stranger, was unsettling. Her eyes were restless, uncertain, like she was working a calculus equation in her head and every answer pointed to catastrophe. I’d watched her face cycle through every possible emotion in the last thirty minutes, and now it was as if she’d arrived at a conclusion so bleak she could hardly get it out.

“What?” I asked. “What’s wrong?”

Did she not understand she held the cards here?

“It’s just…it’s kind of a big coincidence, isn’t it?”

My brows furrowed. “What is?”

She gestured at the matching envelopes, like this new, hellish version of the Montagues and Capulets exchanging bullets instead of roses. “The day I am given this letter, you happen to find the exact same information. I mean, what are the odds?”

I felt the ground shift under us, and not in a romantic, tectonic plates-colliding kind of way—more like we’d both stepped off the same rotten pier and were waiting to see which of us would sink first.

“What are you insinuating?” I tried to keep my voice calm, but I could feel old instincts firing, protect, defend, fortify.

She didn’t answer for a long moment, and when she did, the words came out in a rush, like she’d been rehearsing them. “Tanner said some things.”

“Tanner?”

After clearing her throat and licking her lips, she continued, “He said that your family hired me, and that you showed interest in me…because…well, you know.”

Defensive didn’t come close to what I was feeling at that moment. “No, you’re gonna have to spell it out for me.”

She took a deep breath. “He basically was saying it was specifically so you could get close to me. That it was all some kind of setup to get me to forgive the loan.”

I heard the words she’d said, but it took a second to process them. When it landed, it hit so hard and so stupidly that I almost laughed. Almost. Except she wasn’t laughing and her hands were shaking in a way that told me whatever this was, it was not a joke to her.

“You honestly think I, that we hired you, and that I started, whatever we are, for the express purpose of manipulating you into forgiving a loan?”

She made a helpless, frustrated sound. “No, I’m not…I mean. I don’t know, but I do know that you showed up the first night I arrived like a cowboy superhero to save the day. I got the job the second day I was here. And then you…we…I mean you’re a heartbreaker.”

I fucking hated that name.