by Layne, Ivy
Hope interrupted my thoughts. “Turn right after the sandwich shop. The stairs to my place are behind the building, next to my parking spot.”
“You live in town?” The only places in town were small apartments tucked over the local businesses. Her uncle was wealthy. She was a professional. Surely, she could do better than a place over the sandwich shop.
I grabbed my emergency bag out of my trunk and followed Hope up a set of sturdy wooden stairs to a small landing that overlooked the back alley where I’d parked.
She pulled out her keys, opened the door, and we stepped into a kaleidoscope of color.
I stopped just inside the doorway, too stunned to move. Given those suits, I’d expected beige. Maybe black and white.
I’d never imagined anything like this. The building was old and even the second floor had high ceilings with ornate crown moldings. Hope had painted the walls a deep, burnished gold. The tall windows overlooking Main Street were framed by thick, bottle-green velvet curtains. The combination reminded me of late summer in the mountains, the heavy sunlight and vibrant trees. I almost imagined I could hear the forest around me. The effect was lush. Inviting. Sensual.
Entirely unlike the woman who’d walked into my office the day before.
Exactly like the woman I’d thought she’d grow up to be.
Here was Hope. She was in the fairy lights strung along the ceiling, twinkling against the gold walls. In the rattan hanging chair in the corner beside a small table piled with books. In the massive, overstuffed, brown velvet couch that should have been too much and somehow wasn’t, even covered in blood-red velvet pillows.
There were things everywhere. I could look all day and not catch all of it. A figurine of a girl holding a wand was propped on the windowsill, almost hidden behind the heavy curtain. Flowers crowded one end table, books and a haphazardly placed coffee mug another. A lamp was shaded with fringed paisley scarves. Paintings and photographs filled the walls.
It was disorderly, a riot of color and texture, and the polar opposite of the woman Hope was pretending to be. How did she hang those bland suits in the closet? I imagined the apartment would eject them straight out the front door, unworthy to exist in this fever dream of a home.
Thinking of her suits led me straight to thoughts of her bedroom. What I could see of her apartment pulsed with energy and passion, with pure hedonistic pleasure. If this was her living room, what had she done to her bedroom?
I turned slowly to see Hope beside me, shifting from one foot to the other, her cheeks pink with embarrassment as I absorbed the impact of her apartment.
“You live here?” I had to ask.
Hope nodded with a jerk and swallowed hard. “I… I know it’s a little… Uncle Edgar said it’s awful, but I—”
“Edgar is an ass. It’s not awful. It’s perfect. I could sleep on that couch for days.”
Hope looked around as if seeing the room for the first time. “I didn’t really have a sense of what I wanted when I moved in. I just saw stuff and bought it. I know none of it really goes, but I like it.”
“I like it, too. It reminds me of you.”
At that, Hope laughed. “It absolutely doesn’t remind you of me. It can’t. But that’s okay.” She crossed the room, leaving me behind. “There’s beer in the fridge if you want one. I’m just going to change and then we can figure out dinner.”
She disappeared through a door at the opposite side of the room. What was Edgar paying her? The son of a bitch was wealthy, but he’d always been tight with a dollar. I wouldn’t put it past him to convince Hope she was lucky to have a job and then pay her a pittance.
Her apartment was cool, especially considering what she’d done with it, but it was small and run down. The appliances I could see in the kitchen were far from new. So were the fixtures in the tiny bathroom that adjoined both the living room and the bedroom. I changed clothes in the cramped space, aware of Hope doing the same in her bedroom, just on the other side of the door.
Like the asshole I am, I found myself wondering what she looked like under that ugly suit. Wondering how long it would be before I found out.
I’d been watching Hope in the car. One stroke of my fingertip over her soft skin and she’d shivered under my touch. Not in fear or revulsion. In arousal. She’d done that in Harvey’s office, too. So responsive, even when I hadn’t touched her yet.
She’d had a crush on me as a girl, but that was a lifetime ago. She was a woman now.
She was my wife.
Five years. No adultery.
She’d had her chance to run, to negotiate, to beg for mercy. Instead, she’d married me.
I’d never trust her again. Not like I had before.
In a fucked-up situation like this, trust is relative.
Did I trust Hope? Not fully. Not to the core.
Was there anyone in Sawyers Bend I trusted more than Hope?
Not even close.
We could make this work. It was only five years. We’d team up—work during the day, in bed at night—and when it was done, I’d set her free.
I exited the bathroom to find Hope in the kitchen, standing over a selection of take-out menus spread across the counter. Her hair was still in a bun, but she’d traded the suit for a slouchy gray sweater and a pair of jeans so old they were white at the seams. The jeans weren’t tight, but they fit the curve of her ass like they’d been made for her.
Her eyes brightened when she looked up. “You changed. I’m glad you had something else.”
“Me too. I like your jeans,” I said, checking out her ass again so blatantly she blushed. I’d always liked teasing Hope, though I’d never teased her like this. She’d been a kid. She wasn’t a kid now. And she wasn’t wearing a bra. She probably thought her breasts were too small to need one.
When she moved her shoulders and the soft sweater slid over her curves, I had to shove my hand in my pocket before I slid it underneath all that loose fabric to see for myself how much of a handful she was.
Her cheeks still pink, Hope looked down at her jeans and shook her head. “I’ve had these jeans since college. They’re comfortable.”
“You look great,” I said. I thought about commenting on her hideous taste in suits and told myself to shut the fuck up. Maybe she liked her suits. Maybe she didn’t want some guy she hadn’t seen in fifteen years commenting on her wardrobe.
Especially when the thing that guy was starting to want most was to see her out of her wardrobe.
Get yourself under control, I told myself. It’s been a long fucking day and your head is spun. You’re stuck together for five years. Don’t fuck it up on day one.
Innocent of everything tangling in my head, Hope pushed the menus across the counter toward me. “Pizza? They deliver, so we wouldn’t have to go out again. There’s Chinese. They do take out, but—”
“Pizza sounds great. What do you usually get?”
“Pepperoni, sausage, mushrooms, and olives.”
“Works for me,” I said.
Hope pulled out her phone and placed the order. “It might be a little slow, but they’re usually not too long.”
I picked up my beer and headed for the couch. I never would have guessed Hope would choose the clunky, brown, velvet monstrosity. The lines weren’t particularly attractive, but damn, the thing looked soft.
I sat, propping my heels up on the wood-and-metal-strapped trunk that served as Hope’s coffee table, and sank into the plush velvet. “Where did you find this thing?” I asked on a groan. “It’s ugly as sin, but it’s insanely comfortable.”
Hope curled into the other end of the couch and took an almost dainty sip of her beer. “I know. I saw it at an estate sale and once I sat in it I didn’t want to get up. Sometimes I fall asleep reading, it’s so comfy.”
I let my head fall back into the cushions and took a long dri
nk of beer with my eyes closed. The day pressed on me. All of it. The coffin in that hole in the ground. Sitting at Harvey’s conference table, my siblings staring at me like I’d stolen Christmas. My father gloating from beyond the grave. Fucking asshole. And Hope trapped in the middle of it. So fucking unfair.
Eyes still closed, I said, “Hope, I’m sorry—”
“Don’t,” she said. “You didn’t do this. You could spend the rest of your life trying to make up for your father and you’d never manage it.”
I let out a bitter laugh. “That’s fucking true. Prentice Sawyer was a piece of work.” I lifted my beer in salute. “Let’s hope the devil keeps him ‘cause God knows we don’t want him back.”
Hope spit out her sip of beer. “Griffen! I can’t believe you just said that.”
“Did I lie?”
She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, shaking her head. “No, but still. What about that whole don’t speak ill of the dead thing?”
“Fuck that,” I said. “He’s not the dead, he’s my father. Undead is more like it. He’s in the ground and he’s still controlling our lives. He’s pretty much the definition of undead.”
“You have a point,” Hope agreed. “I don’t want to talk about your father anymore. What have you been doing for the last fifteen years? I know some—the Army, Sinclair Security—but that’s all.”
I could entertain Hope with the stories I’d collected, but we had time for that later. I didn’t want to talk about myself. I wanted to know about her.
What had happened to the girl I’d known? I never thought I’d come back to find her buttoned up tight, living alone and working for Edgar.
“There’s not much more than you already know,” I lied. “After Prentice threw me out I didn’t know what else to do, so I joined the Army. Turned out I was good at it. I met Evers Sinclair not long after I joined up, made Ranger a few years later. When Evers left to join his family’s company, he talked me into coming with him. I’ve spent most of the last ten years in the field handling whatever the Sinclairs threw my way.”
Hope’s eyes bright with interest, she leaned forward. “You were a Ranger? What’s the most dangerous thing you’ve done? Ever had to shoot anyone? Have you ever been shot?”
At her last question, I rolled my shoulder, feeling the pinch and pull of muscles barely healed. I didn’t want to talk about that. Not yet.
“I’ll tell you all about it later. First, I want to know—what are you doing here? Why are you working for Edgar? Why are you still in Sawyers Bend? I always figured you’d be out there somewhere curing cancer or building a new internet.”
Hope collapsed in on herself, tucking her knees to her chest and cradling the bottle of beer between them, looking down at the label like it held the answers to the mysteries of the universe. She very deliberately did not meet my eyes.
“Hope?” I pressed, “did something happen?”
Chapter Nine
Griffen
Why did you think I would leave? Do something special? I’m not that interesting.”
I stared at her, speechless. Not do anything special? Not interesting? The little girl who’d made up stories of fairies under the toadstools, who’d built a drag racer out of scrap wood and an old skateboard, who’d won the science fair four years in a row and never brought home anything less than an A?
It seemed so obvious to me that she was made for anything other than staying home under Edgar’s thumb. She looked shocked that I’d expected anything different. “Where did you go to college?” I asked.
A half shrug of one shoulder, her eyes still on the label of her beer, her thumbnail scraping at the damp label so it peeled off in long, curling strips. “I went to UNCA. Lived at home with Uncle Edgar. He wanted me to work for him, said he needed someone he could trust. I helped Prentice with some of the admin he and Ford didn’t have time for.”
“And that’s it? UNCA’s a good school, but you were a straight-A student. When I left, you were already taking college classes in the summer. I would have thought you’d go to Chapel Hill if you wanted to stay close to home. You could have gone anywhere. Even if Edgar didn’t want to pay, you could have gotten a scholarship.”
Hope’s eyes flicked up to mine, the normally warm cognac-brown guarded. Troubled. “Not everything is about money, Griffen. I didn’t want to go away to school. I didn’t want to leave Sawyers Bend. Uncle Edgar needed me. I owe him.”
It wasn’t the first time she’d said those words. I owe him. I owe you. They irritated me in a way I didn’t understand.
“What about what he owes you? More than a life trapped in this town—”
Hope erupted. “There’s nothing wrong with this town, Griffen Sawyer.” She slammed her empty beer on the coffee table, cheeks flushed, eyes glittering. “Just because you left doesn’t mean everyone else wants to.”
“We’re not talking about me,” I shot back.
“Aren’t we? Because you don’t know anything about me and Uncle Edgar. I do owe him. I owe him everything. And no one owes me anything. I’m lucky to be where I am. I have a job. I have a home. I have a nest egg in the bank. I’m safe.”
“And that’s enough?”
Hope shoved up from the couch, her glare scathing. “Griffen, you have no clue what you’re talking about. I get that the heir to the Sawyer fortune thinks he’s owed something in life, but life owes you jack shit. The lot of you are a bunch of spoiled brats. Sterling aside, you all work hard. I’ll give you that. But you should have so much more than money. You should be a family, and you’ve thrown it away over petty grudges. All of you let Prentice manipulate you, let him set you against each other, then you whine about it.”
“I haven’t even been here,” I protested weakly. Hope wasn’t interested.
“You have no idea what it’s like to have nothing. To be hungry. To be afraid. So don’t talk to me about who owes me what. I know what I have, and I know what I owe.” Hope stalked to the kitchen for another beer. I sat where I was, stunned speechless.
I’d wondered where my Hope had gone. Here she was. Her temper was as much her as the fairy lights on the ceiling. I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed it.
Or how much I needed to hear everything she’d said.
She was right about us. Sawyers knew how to work, but that was about the only good thing you could say about us. We knew shit about being a family. Maybe if Darcy had lived to hold us all together… but she hadn’t.
I didn’t think we’d lost all chance of being a family. I couldn’t forget the way Quinn had shepherded Sterling out of Harvey’s office, or how Royal and Tenn walked out side-by-side. They ran the Inn together and by all accounts had made a success of it. They couldn’t do that if they hated each other.
But still, Hope wasn’t wrong. We’d been given everything. We hadn’t squandered the money, but the rest? Family, history—that, we’d thrown away. We could blame Prentice—he’d sown the seeds of our discord, after all—but we were adults. We’d made our own choices.
I watched Hope come back, her eyes everywhere but on me, and I realized something else. I knew Edgar had brought Hope to live with him when she was a child, but I didn’t know why. I’d always assumed her parents had died. After her outburst, I realized there had to be more to the story.
Edgar Daniels wasn’t a warm and fuzzy guy. Not the type to inspire such dogged loyalty. I’d seen enough of life to know that there were a lot of things that could make gruff, emotionally distant Edgar Daniels look like a prize as a guardian. I was sick at the thought of Hope suffering any of the scenarios floating through my mind. She knew what it was like to be hungry. To be scared. Scared of what?
I wasn’t sure I wanted to know, but I was going to find out. Later.
Now wasn’t the time to pry. For better or worse, thanks to Prentice, time was something we had plenty of. I said the o
nly thing I could.
“You’re right. I’m an ass. We’re all asses who don’t deserve what we have. And I’m sorry. If you’re happy with the choices you’ve made, that’s all that matters, and it’s none of my fucking business.”
Hope nodded her acceptance of my apology, her eyes glued to her new beer bottle, her thumb scraping at the label just like she had on the last one. She took a sip, swallowed, and met my eyes, her emotions locked tightly away. “What are you going to do about Ford?”
I wasn’t surprised by the change in subject. “I don’t know. You said he’d been arrested. I’m assuming since he missed the funeral and the circus at Harvey’s, he’s still in jail?”
“The judge denied bail.”
I raised an eyebrow. Here I was being an ass again, but come on—Ford is a Sawyer. “Are you telling me Ford couldn’t get the judge to grant him bail?”
Hope shook her head. “Cole Haywood is his attorney. He’s good, one of the best, but the evidence—” She shook her head. “The judge felt Ford was a flight risk and the evidence was overwhelming.”
“What do they have?”
“Harvey might know more, or we can talk to Cole, but I know they found shoes that match footprints found outside your father’s office window, which was open. A gun in Ford’s bedroom closet that matches the bullet that killed your father. He also doesn’t have an alibi, and people saw him speeding out of town not long after the coroner says Prentice died.”
“Shit. That’s bad,” I said. Bad didn’t really cover it. With that kind of evidence, I’d bet the D.A. was thinking it was open and shut. The press was going to have a field day if this went to court. The Sawyer name wasn’t nationally prominent—Prentice made a point of staying out of the news—but we had too much money not to be a factor.
The heir apparent murdering his father in the family manor house? That’s news. “How are they keeping this quiet? Why aren’t there news vans everywhere? Are they holding Ford in town?”