The Ruthless Gentleman

by Louise Bay

  She’d turned it down? I knew how much her family needed the money, how much it would have meant for her to have that amount of cash for her brother. She probably could have skipped a season or at least got a job back in Sacramento. Guilt churned in my stomach. What had I done?

  “They were stunned when she didn’t bite,” he said, interrupting my thoughts. “I was surprised. Especially as it kept getting better for us. Cannon pulled a few strings and had her brother’s insurance coverage reassessed. Her brother’s entitlements were cut. We thought she would have been desperate for the cash. I thought it was a perfect moment to make that final, big offer. But she said no.”

  I leaned back and tried to take in what I’d just heard. Avery’s brother—the person she worked so hard for, had given up her own dreams and aspirations to provide for—had had his health insurance cut? Because of me. Her brother, her guilt about the accident and her need for redemption were Avery’s Achilles’ heel and she’d still not sold me out?

  “But she still didn’t take the money?” My heart began to thunder through my chest. I’d been right about her the first time. She’d not betrayed me. She’d protected me. I’d always known Cannon were lowlifes, and I’d been content to walk away from the immoral, illegal things they’d done in order to try to bury me. I’d been determined to take the high road, clear in my mind that my revenge would come with my success despite them. What this guy was saying changed things. Now I wanted to bury them. I might not like it, but I understood that her telling some guy Phoenix’s name in return for her brother’s wellbeing would be a small price to pay. It had been an impossible situation for her.

  “Nope. Not a penny. When she called me from the satellite phone, I thought I had her. I really did.” He shook his head in disbelief. “But she wanted to know who else I’d approached on the crew. Didn’t even ask for more money. Just a flat-out no.”

  Could she really be that good? Would she sacrifice her brother . . . for me? Everything he was saying rang true to me. The Avery he was describing was exactly the woman I knew. The woman I’d kissed on the upper deck while watching the fireworks, the woman who’d worked tirelessly to keep me happy, even when it wasn’t her job, because that was her nature. She was kind and sweet and loyal just as I’d always thought. She really was that good.

  And I’d thrown her away, assumed the worst, accused her of betraying me when really, I’d been the one who betrayed her. I’d not believed in her. I’d not trusted myself.

  I was an idiot.

  “And that’s it? There’s nothing else?”

  Phil shrugged. “A couple of days later Cannon cancelled the job.”

  That must have been when my acquisition of Phoenix had been announced.

  “I want to hear from you if you ever get another job offer from Cannon. I’ll make it worth your while.”

  Phil tipped back the last of his pint and pushed out his chair, leaving me heavy with guilt and unsure of my next move.

  “What was all that about?” Landon asked when Phil left.

  “All what?” I asked. He’d known why we were here.

  “This whole conversation was about Avery. Are you still hung up on her or something? Surely she was just a convenient fuck.”

  I leaned back, staring out the window into the black, and let the dark wave of guilt wash over me. What had I done? “We weren’t just fucking.”

  “What does that mean?”

  I wasn’t sure what it meant. I just knew that between us, it had been different. The connection we had was inexorable. We’d proven that. I’d been drawn to her despite it being the most demanding time in my life, when all I’d worked for, all I’d become was on the line. And she . . . she’d risked her job, her redemption for me.

  And it had all worked out for me. I’d bought Phoenix, defeated Cannon. But our relationship had brought her only misery. I’d believed her guilty of a betrayal she wasn’t capable of. Her being with me had ruined everything for her, yet I’d walked away with a bruised ego and an aching heart and I’d thought I was the one badly off. “It means I fucked up.”

  “There was plenty of evidence,” Landon said. “You were well within your rights to think she was selling secrets.”

  He was wrong. Avery had never shown herself to be the kind of person who would betray me. “I had no right whatsoever. She’d put her career on the line for me. If people had found out about us, she wouldn’t have been able to get another job. Why would I think that after that, she’d betray me? I must have lost my mind.” I thrust my hands through my hair, my body hot with panic. What had I done?

  “Jesus, you sound like this woman was really important to you.”

  I sighed, sliding down in my chair. “She was.”

  “Then go apologize.”

  I scoffed. “Oh yeah, because it’s that easy. Integrity and loyalty are at her very core and I accused her of having neither.”

  Landon winced. “We all make mistakes. Even you, Hayden Wolf.”

  “You saying you do too?”

  He rolled his eyes. “Of course not. But if I did and I had a way of setting things right, I’d like to think that I would try.”

  I groaned, remembering our last conversation. “She’ll never forgive me. I was nasty. Spiteful. I just felt so . . .” Betrayed wasn’t a strong enough word. Vulnerable was how I’d felt, but I wasn’t about to say that out loud. Landon wouldn’t understand. “I’d just thought things were different with her. I mean, we talked. Shared stuff. I thought I knew her and I wanted her to know me.”

  Landon nodded, and spared me the shit I’d assumed he’d give me. “Sounds a little out of character for a guy who divided women into two categories: those he worked with and those he shagged.”

  I cringed at his accurate reflection of my relationships with women before Avery. Avery had felt like a friend, a partner, a soulmate. She wasn’t anyone to put in a category. “Yeah, Avery was different.”

  I had to do something, make it up to her. She’d turned down that money from Cannon only to have me turn on her. And now, because of me, her brother’s insurance was fucked. “I’m going to need you to help me with some stuff. I don’t know how Cannon managed to get to the insurance company, but I need to find a way of setting it straight.”

  “I have her address in Sacramento,” he said. “It’s just a private jet away.”

  “Why would you want me to chase after this girl? I thought you didn’t understand monogamy?”

  “I don’t, but it sounds to me like you have to have this girl.”

  He was right. My pull toward Avery was as strong as ever. It had never wavered, even when I suspected the worst of her. But I couldn’t just turn up on her doorstep. I didn’t even know if she’d be there, let alone if she’d agree to see me.

  “No, this is about paperwork. She suffered, her brother suffered, and all because Avery was part of the crew on the yacht I chartered. I can’t let that stand. She’s done nothing wrong, and yet her family is bearing the brunt of being associated with me. This isn’t about me getting what I want—even if I do want her. This is about me making things right for her and her family.”

  Landon grinned around his pint glass and after taking a sip, set it down. “If you tell anyone I said this, I’ll deny it, but you’re a decent guy, Hayden. I’m kinda proud you’re my brother.”

  Landon was a war hero. He’d fought and sacrificed for his country. For him to be proud of me was beyond anything I could hope for. “I won’t tell a soul,” I replied and clinked my glass against his. I might be terrible at relationships with women and I might have become a paranoid control freak, but my brother and I had something in common: we were men of action and we didn’t stop until we’d got what we wanted. I’d make things right with Avery. It was the least I could do.

  Thirty-Five

  Avery

  The bruises on my heart still ached as if I’d last seen Hayden yesterday. I’d expected Sacramento to revive me, to make me forget the weeks that had come before
. But a month at home had passed too quickly and I was dreading leaving for Miami later that day.

  “Come over here and have breakfast with me and your brother before you go,” my dad said.

  I glanced over at them both. “Sure. Has the mail come yet?”

  My dad cocked his head to the counter top where a stack of mail lay unopened.

  “Dad!”

  Since I’d gotten back from France, I’d spent all of my free time on the internet, finding charities that supported people in our situation and talking to them about what had happened, writing to apply for grants from foundations and trusts, investigating what I could do to appeal the health insurance company’s decision regarding my brother’s care. I’d been busy and it had started to pay off. Some donations were just a few hundred dollars, but yesterday we’d received a check for five thousand from a sports injury charity. It wasn’t going to go far, but it had given me hope and more than anything, that was what I needed.

  My father had seemed content to accept what had happened, as if he knew the odds had never been in our family’s favor, knew that the house always won. He’d shrugged and done the best he could with what he had.

  That was his coping mechanism.

  Michael and I hadn’t talked about it at all.

  The way I dealt with it was to try to fix it. It was who I was—I fixed things for people and the five thousand dollar check yesterday was evidence I could fix this too.

  I grabbed the mail from the counter and dropped into a seat at the table, sorting through the envelopes. Most of them were junk.

  “You want juice, honey?” my dad asked as he held the jug over my glass.

  “Sure, thanks,” I said, sawing my finger across the sealed top of a brown envelope. “You’re going to have to check these when I’m gone. You know that, right? You can’t leave it for me to come home to in five months. Some of them you need to respond to right away. Those you should just scan to me and I’ll deal with them.” I unfolded the letter. I didn’t need to read the line and a half of writing—anything that didn’t require at least two paragraphs was a no.

  “I can email you on this boat you’re going on, right?”

  “Yes, and call me. I’ll have my phone with me. It will be much better than last time.” I wasn’t sure it was the relief at being able to contact my father that made my shoulders sag or if it was the thought that if I had my cell my guest wasn’t Hayden Wolf.

  I’d tried not to think about him, but he was still there, haunting me at the edges of my smile as I settled back into Sacramento, and in that time just before I fell asleep when I couldn’t press down the memories of him anymore. I hoped that if I could block him out for long enough, eventually I wouldn’t have to try, and he’d dissolve into a pot of bad decisions and might-have-beens.

  My rage had faded, at least.

  I couldn’t be angry at him for his accusations. They’d hurt. They still hurt but I understood it. And I deserved it. For a second I’d been tempted. And it hadn’t been how I felt about Hayden Wolf that had stopped me. I just couldn’t do that to my father or brother. Neither one of them would have forgiven me if they’d thought any money they’d received had been from a source like Cannon. It was hard enough for my dad to accept the checks that had been coming from charities and foundations since I’d started applying. He was a man of honor and principle and I wouldn’t sully his legacy by taking money for stolen secrets. I wanted to be worthy of calling him my father.

  My feelings for Hayden remained almost overwhelming whenever my heart and mind grew weak and let memories of him escape. There was no sign of them diminishing, but I kept telling myself it would happen. Surely, thoughts of him would fade and weaken and I wouldn’t have to try so hard to keep them at bay.

  “That’s weird. This one’s to Michael,” I said, pulling out a thick cream envelope from the pile. Most of the letters and applications I’d made had been in my father’s name as next of kin. One or two had been in mine, but I hadn’t made any in my brother’s name.

  “Can I open it, Michael?” I asked.

  He shrugged, focused on his food rather than his mail, and I grinned and blew him a kiss. I flipped the envelope over and worked my thumb under the flap.

  No check, but it was two pages long. I flipped to the second page to see an application with boxes and dotted lines sprinkled down the page. They were asking for bank account details and addresses. That was weird.

  I turned back to the first page, glancing to the headed notepaper. Lycan Foundation. I couldn’t remember writing to them, but I must have sent off four hundred applications, so it was perfectly possible that I had just forgotten.

  I read it once all the way through and then paused. I must have read it incorrectly. They were offering to pay Michael’s physical therapy, for a full-time caregiver and for any health insurance premiums.

  That couldn’t be right. My pulse began to throb in my ears and I started again from the top.

  “I want you to eat something,” my dad said. His voice sounded tinny and far away.

  “Hang on, Dad,” I said, pressing the letter flat against the table and tracing the lines of typed text with my finger. I needed to read more carefully. I had to subdue the fluttering in my gut that was squealing that this letter was a winning lottery ticket.

  I’d been wrong. It wasn’t what I thought. It wasn’t just Michael’s physical therapy, a full-time caregiver and insurance premiums they wanted to pay. It was “all and any costs associated with Michael’s medical or occupational needs for the rest of Michael’s life.”

  Surely I had this wrong? This would mean that if Michael needed other things as he got older or as my father got older, this charity was going to cover it. I flipped over the page. This couldn’t be happening.

  I stood, vaguely aware of my chair falling back behind me.

  “Avery, sit and eat something. Please,” my dad said.

  “Hang on a minute. I just need to check something.” When had I contacted these people?

  I grabbed the laptop, brought up my spreadsheet of applications I’d made, but I couldn’t find anything.

  I typed it into Google. Nothing came up.

  Was this a scam? Would anyone be so cruel?

  “Daddy, did you apply to any charities? Or did anyone we know do that?” For a flash I wondered if my mother had had something to do with it but of course she wouldn’t have. We didn’t exist to her anymore.

  “No, Avery, you know how I feel about that. It’s hard enough seeing you do it but I tell myself it’s for Michael. But I don’t like to . . .”

  I turned back to the computer and searched Google again. “You ever heard of the Lycan Foundation?”

  My dad chuckled, and my heart thudded against my ribcage. Was this a joke? “Lycan? Is this Dungeons and Dragons or something?”

  “What are you talking about?” I held up the letter. “This charity is saying they’ll pay Michael’s medical bills. All of them. Forever. But I don’t remember applying to a Lycan Foundation.”

  My dad froze. “All of his medical bills?”

  “Yes! Do you know who they are?”

  He shrugged, his brows drawn together as he strode over, took the paper from my hands and read the letter himself. “Lycan is . . . I don’t know. It was the name for a werewolf, I thought, but I guess it’s just a surname.”

  Werewolf? Memories of Hayden burst through my mental barriers. It couldn’t be him, right? He had no idea where we lived or that I’d applied for anything. I’d never told him that Michael’s medical insurance had been changed and that his physical therapy had been cut. And he hated me. He thought I was a liar and a thief. Of course it wasn’t him. I shook my head.

  “Call them.” My dad handed me back the letter. “There’s a number on the letterhead.”

  I scrambled to pick up the phone. I had to confirm what they were offering was real. I punched in the numbers, chewing on the inside of my mouth.

  “Lycan Foundation, Alyson speaking
.”

  I took a deep breath and explained why I was calling.

  “Yes, that’s right,” Alyson said as I relayed the contents of the letter. “You just need to fill in all the details. It might take thirty days for us to organize all the payments, but we’ll back pay from the date of the letter.”

  I pressed my lips together, trying to take in what she was saying. I swallowed. “And this has no end date?”

  “That’s right. It’s for the rest of Michael’s life.”

  It was as if she’d unlocked a brace from around my chest and suddenly there was more room to breathe.

  “Thank you,” I said. “I just don’t remember ever making the application, so it’s a lot to take in.”

  “I understand,” she replied. “Other charities and third parties refer cases to us from time to time. That must be it.”

  I nodded. “I guess. I don’t know what to say. Thank you so much.”

  “You’re welcome. Just let us have the forms and we’ll make all the necessary arrangements.”

  I put the phone back down. My father’s eyes were wide. “It wasn’t a hoax?”

  “I don’t think so,” I replied. “I guess we fill out the forms.”

  “That means you don’t have to go to Miami,” he said.

  I’d never told my dad the only reason I did the yachting season was to take care of Michael, just like he never told me he didn’t want to retire because it meant the cost of health insurance premiums would skyrocket.

  This donation gave us both hope for a different kind of future.

  I stood and pulled him into a hug. “I still have to go to Miami. I’ve made a commitment and anyway, I’d like to see this Lycan thing actually happen before I think about making any big changes.” My whole life had been about working to care for my brother. If Michael was really going to be looked after, where did that leave me? My entire focus had been on making enough money to look after my family.