It was going to be a long road to recovery for her sister, but she could tell that Kara was completely happy and, shortly the incident, she’d become officially engaged to Conner.
Robin was happy for them. Really.
Now that their parents had retired and moved to Pride, and with her sister getting married soon, she tried to be as happy as she could. Her family was coming closer together and growing bigger.
Her parents had always talked about moving to Pride after her father’s retirement, when they no longer had to live in the city for jobs. She was excited that they had decided to build a new home in Hidden Cove, a new housing subdivision that the Jordan family owned, which sat just outside of Pride.
Conner and Kara were having a home built just down the street from her parents’ new place.
With Kara injured, Robin was left to run the business herself. They had more than half a dozen employees that helped them out during each event, but that left the everyday tasks that her sister usually handled to her.
Which meant that every moment of her time was consumed by work. So, when it was decided, without her input, that she needed a bodyguard of sorts, she didn’t put up much of an argument. After all, what did she care if there was someone walking around the grounds all the time looking out for the madman who had shot her sister?
She’d seen George around town plenty of times. What she’d never done is actually talked to him. So when he’d shown up one morning, claiming that he was there for her protection, she’d waved him away. She’d been too busy to care.
George wasn’t really a Jordan. Well, he was, but his last name was Stevens. His mother, Lacey Jordan-Stevens, was the mayor of Pride and his father, Aaron Stevens, was the town’s doctor.
She knew that George had an older sister, Lilly, who owned her own boutique, Classy and Sassy, in town. Lilly owned the successful business with her cousin Riley. The two women had married the twins who owned the local pizzeria, Baked.
The rest of the Jordan clan, as everyone in town called the family, was just as successful. Successful, but also known for being extremely hardworking.
The Jordan family owned one of the town’s local restaurants, the Golden Oar. It was considered one of the best places to eat along the Oregon coast.
They also owned Jordan Shipping, a shipping company that was known globally, along with a bed and breakfast along the shoreline that had some of the cutest cabins. A lot of her own guests stayed there during bigger events.
So when Todd Jordan contacted her and mentioned he’d like to hire and pay for security, she’d agreed. She had to admit that she didn’t know exactly what George did for a living. For the first few days, he stayed out of her way, and she barely knew he was there. She had seen him walking around the building during her scheduled events and, afterwards, he even helped her clean up.
The most she knew about George Stevens was that each time she’d seen him over the past year that she’d lived in Pride, he’d had a different woman on his arm.
She knew the type. A player wasn’t hard to spot. After all, he had the standard rugged good looks of all the Jordan men.
He was tall. Though not as tall as his cousins, he was still over six foot. At five foot seven herself, she was always looking up to him.
He had sandy brown hair, although his was a deal straighter than most of the other Jordan men.
He also had different eyes than the other members of his family. Those haunting silver eyes sometimes drew her in and locked her there until she forced herself to blink and look away.
The fact that she spent most of her time around him thinking of how different he was from his cousins worried her.
George was a player. She’d known it the moment she’d met him earlier last year. She kept trying to warn herself of that fact, hoping it would make him less appealing to her. It didn’t.
She’d first found herself watching him at his sister’s wedding last year, which had been the first wedding that she and Kara had organized in Pride. Their venue, the old red barn they were now in, hadn’t been quite finished with its reconstruction, so they’d held the wedding up at the new couple’s house. The place had been gorgeous. It overlooked the town of Pride and was certainly big enough for the outdoor event.
If she was honest with herself, George was the first man she’d noticed. The attraction to him had been instant. So had the annoyance when she’d realized he was a player.
She had even doubted at one point that he knew the name of his date for the evening. She noticed that he had kept calling her babe and when he went to introduce her to someone else, he just called her his date.
The extremely good-looking woman had giggled and introduced herself as Jennifer. Each time she’d introduced herself to someone in his family, he had looked bored or preoccupied.
The following weekend, she’d seen George with another supermodel type at his family’s restaurant. The fact that the woman had almost been sitting in his lap assured Robin that he’d moved on.
Each time she’d seen him over the year, he’d had another woman on his arm. She was beginning to wonder where he met all of them. After all, Pride wasn’t that big of a town.
Now, however, she’d been in town for over a year and had yet to go out on one date.
The longer George stuck around her place of business, the more she wondered what his uncle had to do to compensate him for giving up his carefree life.
For the first few days, George had focused on making rounds outside the building and helping her clean up.
When they found the man who had shot her sister at the bottom of a cliff off the coast of California, she was surprised that George continued to stick around. Since most of her events happened on the weekends, she had only seen George a few days each week.
Wedding rehearsals and dinners usually happened on Friday nights, followed by the main event of the wedding, which consumed all of her Saturdays.
Most Sunday mornings there was a church group, followed by whatever other event was scheduled for the day. Sometimes it was a birthday or anniversary party, or a baby shower.
A month after getting shot, Kara was able to lend a hand with organization, but so far, Robin hadn’t let her sister lift an actual finger around the place. Not when she still struggled to hold anything in her left arm.
Since their mother was a physical therapist, Robin knew that it was only a matter of time before her sister would be back up to speed.
It had been five weeks since her sister’s shooting, and this weekend’s party was a dual gender reveal party for cousins Lilly and Riley, who were pregnant at the same time by twin husbands Corey and Carter. The brothers owned the local pizzeria in town called Baked.
That meant that George would be a guest instead of a security guard. She wondered instantly what kind of woman he’d have on his arm for this event. Something close to jealousy crept in, and she was in a bad mood before the event. Hoping no one would notice, she went about her business and tried to not keep an eye out for the man she’d had a major crush on for the past year.
Chapter Two
George stood back and listened to his mother talking quietly to his sister, Lilly. How had he allowed his family to talk him into coming to a stupid baby party in the first place.
The rest of his cousins had been roped into attending as well, which meant he wasn’t the only man sitting among a bunch of pink and blue balloons and other baby decorations.