Accidental Billionaire (19 page)

“Hear him out, Baylee.”

She didn’t want to. There was no excuse for what he did. If he had needed the money for anything real, Mom would have told her by now. That money had gone to high-living, gambling, tips, nothing good.

“Baylee girl.”

She wanted to walk on, but his familiar voice cracked her resolve.

He frowned. “I didn’t believe you when you said you wouldn’t take my calls.”

She said nothing and force her muscles to unstiffen so she could leave the room.

“Hold up.” He held out a crumpled check. “It’s good. Your Ma’s already snapped a photo and uploaded it.” He smoothed the surface. “It’s not all of what I owe you, but it’s a full half of my commission check for this quarter. And I’ll send the same next quarter.”

No way. Baylee took the check and stared down at it. $1900. It was a big amount. Nowhere near what he’d borrowed, but a significant amount. She dropped to the couch beside him. It wasn’t even that the amount was significant. It was that it was more than words, he was working to help her. To fix the problem. “Okay.”

Jose cranked up the mariachi music he liked to play during his shifts and nodded up toward the top of the chute.

He didn’t have to tell her the plush pink lizards were stuck again, she could see them, the pink summer toys mixed in with the fall pumpkin orange ones – their tails up in the air disrespectfully. Baylee huffed out a sigh and turned off the conveyer belt. Cheers came from down the line as her fellow workers went for a break. They loved that the lizard tails always hooked on each other and clogged up the chute opening – for them it meant a ten-minute break. For her, it meant climbing the rungs on the side of the chute up two floors and untangling the stuffed creatures. Baylee climbed to the top. She pulled the first big-eyed creature free and tossed it down the chute, then the second, then…

“Baylee.” Logan’s voice came from the warehouse floor. “Baylee.”

She looked down the black conveyer belt at Logan. Here. In Texas. At the Lizard Factory. He wore pressed khaki pants and a white polo shirt with loafers, and looked totally out of place. With that face and build, he’d never end up working on the factory floor. She pulled another lizard free, clearing the clog. They tumbled down the chute, falling to the conveyer line for processing.

“Baylee.” This time the voice came from below her, from on the ladder.

Baylee spun carefully on the rung, facing him, gripping the metal with both hands at her sides. “Get down, Logan. It’s dangerous up here if you haven’t been trained.”

“I wanted to talk to you.”

“My number hasn’t changed.”

“I wanted to talk to you in person.”

Whatever.

“I’d rather be the kind of man who shows up.”

That comment put a dent in her resistance. “Well, go back down and I’ll take my break.”

He kept climbing. “I’ve received my shares of the record company. But I’ve asked the board to let me delay the decision about Tate’s contract.”

She was curious despite herself. “Why?”

“I have a say in his career now. What if I screw it up? If I release his album and it fails…I don’t want to lose him. Not like I lost you.”

“Lost?”

He kept climbing.

“Logan.”

He reached her, standing a rung below her feet, his hands bracing the ladder at her shoulders. “I miss you.”

Her heart pounded, but she said nothing.

“I think about you all the time. I wish I fell for someone I hadn’t screwed up with, but I didn’t. We were the start of something real. I screwed it up. But we have a connection. I know you feel it, too.”

“I need to get down.” Baylee ducked under his arm and climbed onto the chute with years of practice. It was the quickest way down. “Sometimes to get away, you have to let go.” Gravity took her down and she landed in the pile of stuffed toys, then rolled off the belt. A move made easy in her old jeans, a lizard factory T-shirt, and tennis shoes.

Logan didn’t hesitate to follow her, even though his clothes probably cost more than the check her dad had just given her, and then they both stood on the concrete floor. Baylee hit the big green button and a bell rang out, starting the conveyer belt and signaling the workers to return to the floor. She went to the side door where they poured back in and slid her name tag from ‘active’ to ‘on a break’ and led Logan outside.

Texas heat burned down and white gravel crunched under their feet as she led him to the wooden picnic table under a scrubby brush tree. Sage bloomed purple, making the area prettier than it should have been. Country music was playing out here, coming from the small speaker hung in the tree, the ballad a slow waltz.

“I can’t let go,” Logan said

“I can’t even believe you’re here.”

“I want you back.”

Baylee couldn’t even touch that comment and she kept a firm hold on her emotions. She went for a distraction, a topic she knew would cue up her anger and stiffen her weakening knees. “When do you leave for Stanford?”

“Monday.”

Must be nice.

Logan’s phone buzzed but he ignored it. “I want you in my life.”

“Are you driving up or…” Baylee looked out over the row of delivery trucks waiting at the loading dock; it was easier than looking at Logan.

His phone buzzed again. “I have to work out Tate’s contract with the label. Then I’ll go. I’d like you with me when I talk to them about Tate’s career.”

“Sorry, Logan.” Baylee’s shoulders eased as some of the tension left her. “You’ll have to do that without me. I’m better off here.”

“I need you to forgive me.”

“I do forgive you, Logan.” Baylee rubbed her fingers over the weather-worn tabletop.

Logan tilted his head. It was one of those guy-expressions. “After I do what? Give it to me straight. What’ll it take? Flowers? Chocolates? Your mom’s charity brunch?”

“Who have you been dating?” She shook her head. “I don’t want to know the answer to that.”

“I can see it in your face, you don’t forgive me.”

“It’s not that. It’s that you don’t get it. Feelings don’t have price tags, not when they’re real. You can’t buy them.”

“So you forgive me?”

“I do, Logan. That doesn’t mean I want to date you. That doesn’t mean you’re good for me. It’s like your club motto – deeds not words. Since knowing you, things haven’t gone well for me.” Lingering anger lent honesty to her words.

Logan bit off a curse as his phone buzzed again. “Sorry, I’ll…” He stared at the screen, his face blanching white under his tan.

“What?”

He didn’t answer.

The level of concern she felt made her knees weak. Her resistance wasn’t as strong as she’d like. Baylee took the phone from his unresisting fingers.

Dad:
Pick up. Tate’s been in a wreck. Serious. Headed to hospital.

Logan’s mouth opened and closed. He took keys from his pocket. They jangled as they slipped from his grip into the grass. “I have to go.” He strode toward the front of the building, leaving his phone and keys behind. His reaction was extreme, but he’d lost his mom in a car accident.

She understood and his wrecked expression hit her hard. He was leaving, but she had left him first. Was this what Dad felt like every time he left in a huff? Justified? Right? Alone. Was she from a family of leavers? Was that why things never worked out? Baylee scooped up the keys, grabbed his phone, and chased after Logan. “Go to your car and wait for me. I’ll drive.”

He nodded and kept walking, but she wasn’t sure he heard her. She raced inside and told Jose what was going on before she grabbed her daypack from her locker and went out the front. She called her mom on the way.

“Be careful, Baylee.”

“I will, love you, Mom.”

“Love you, too, baby.”

Baylee clicked open the car and pushed Logan around to the passenger side. Logan licked his lips, seeming to come to himself. “The jet’s at Karray Airfield. Do you know where that is?” He started typing the address into the GPS as he spoke.

“It’s a small town. We all know where everything is.”

The sports car had a push button, was a stick, and it roared to life. She’d have had fun driving it in any other situation. The drive was quiet except for Logan repeatedly checking in with his Dad and being told Tate was in surgery. She got to the airfield, parked the car at the front of the small metal building, and followed Logan in. The lady at the counter rushed to take the keys and lead them outside.

“Chart a course back to Vegas, please,” Logan said.

They used Wi-Fi on the plane, and Logan got more details from his dad. “He was driving northeast on I-15 when it happened.” Logan waved off the snack tray.

Baylee took it. It held an array of cheddar and Swiss cubes, crackers and fruit. She asked the flight attendant for apple juice, and to bring something for Logan to drink. “Tate drives regularly?”

“No. Well, yeah, he has a thing for cars. But he’s fourteen, he doesn’t have a license. Cleo lets him anyway.”

“Was she with him?”

“No.” Logan looked out the window. “His arm is crushed and he’s unconscious.”

“Tell me about him. Has he always sung?”

“Yeah, but he plays guitar and keyboards, too.”

“Do you believe he has it? All those traits your mom talked about that it takes to make it?” She wanted to keep him positive and talking.

“Yeah.”

“Does he love it?”

“I don’t know if it’s what he wants. It’s what Cleo wants. She sang. That’s how she met Dad. Her career never took off though. Sometimes that happens, someone with plenty of talent and it never takes off. Once Tate was old enough, she shoved all her dreams on him, and it was hard to know what he wanted.”

Baylee unclipped her seatbelt and lay out on the sofa, letting Logan talk. It seemed to be what he needed. Midway through telling her about how little he’d seen Tate in the last year, he got up and lay beside her. Then he took her hand and toyed with her fingers while he kept talking. There was no romance in the gesture, he just seemed to need a connection with to her. They stayed like that until it was time to move into their seats for landing.

The plane jolted as it touched down and then rolled to a smooth stop on the tarmac. Baylee unclicked her seatbelt and went to rise, but Logan touched her arm, halting her. “Thanks for being here, Baylee.”

The hospital had a medical smell, strong air conditioning, pastel walls, and loads of signs pointing to different departments. When Logan gave his name at the entrance, a staff member led them up to a private waiting room. His dad and Cleo were both in with Tate, who’d come out of surgery, but Tyler was in the waiting room. He was pacing between a picture of a daffodil and a picture of petunia. He strode forward and gave Logan a one-armed guy hug. “Sorry, man.”

He hugged Baylee next, and Baylee broke away to catch Logan’s arm before he left the room. “Just talk to him, Logan. When he’s up for it. Like you did with me in the game. Just talk to him.” It was how they won, working together, no one person making all the decisions.

Logan nodded and left the waiting room.

“You doing okay, Baylee?” Tyler tugged on the back of her ponytail. “The band was bummed you took off before they got in town.”

“I got their emails. Especially when the song broke on the radio.” The flute piece in the rock song had oddly worked. Her friends knew music. She hadn’t seen it.

Tyler grinned and pulled up his phone. “I checked and the label guy’s going to direct deposit your percent of the royalties.”

She’d seen that in the paperwork she’d signed at the studio. She got ten percent. The rest of the band and the label split up the other ninety percent somehow. Ella explained that new musicians got significantly less, but stars of Tyler’s caliber could demand much more. Ten percent seemed fair, but it didn’t make her run to check the mailbox.

“We had over a million downloads.”

“I never doubted it.” She’d totally doubted it, but the circumstances and being here at the hospital made her be nice, rather than default to her usual role of checking his sky-high ego. She smiled supportively.

Tyler raised his eyebrows and pulled up a calculator app on his phone. “With downloads ranging from one to three dollars, here’s what you’ll get this week on our song.” He turned the calculator to her. “Roughly.”

$200,000. Baylee stared at the number and felt the weight of her empty bank account lift from her shoulders. The royalty check had just given her back Texas Tech. Tears burned her eyes. She threw her arms around his neck for a hug. “Thank you, Tyler.” Her voice came out husky.

“You joining the band now?”

“No way.” She shook her head and tasted a salty tear at the corner of her mouth. She swiped her face clear with the back of her hands, and Tyler hugged her again.

“It’s cool, and it’ll topple what you got from that Rain Spin gig soon. ‘Cause that was just one week and my fans rock.”

She laughed. “I get one percent from Rain Spin’s Christmas song.”

Tyler stared at her, and then he grinned big, and then bigger. “I shouldn’t know this, but I’m friends with Rain Spin. They sold that song as a Christmas package to a network. It’s going to be used in movies and ads.”

“Great, me and my flute all over the radio and the TV.”

“Baylee, that deal was fifty million easy.”

She grabbed his calculator app. “$500,000.” Her voice went from squeaky to screechy. “No.”

“Yeah. Not all singers are big on payouts to musicians, but some, like me, really respect what an instrument brings to the piece.”

Her jaw felt tight and she realized her mouth was sort of stuck open. “Tyler. That total’s $700K. This week.”

“Yeah, you’ll top a mil by the end of the month.”

She sat there in stunned silence. She’d gone from secure, to a billionaire, to broke, to no…a millionaire? She could pay back Mom. She could lock this money down and not screw it up. She couldn’t describe the feeling.

Logan came back, looking tired but relieved. “It’s bad, but Tate’s going to recover.” He looked at Baylee and his eyes had a ton of emotion, supreme of which was just gratitude that she was still there. “We talked,” he said.