by Layne, Ivy
Alice gave me another slow, assessing scan, this one focused above my shoulders. “You have great skin. Clear, creamy, but not washed out. I love the freckles. Some women try to hide their freckles, but yours are perfect. Just enough for character but not so much that they overwhelm you. And your hair is great. Thick, shiny, I bet it holds a curl.”
“I’ve never tried to curl it. I mostly just throw it in a bun or a ponytail.”
Alice walked closer and did a turn around me, reaching out to sift her fingers through my freshly dried strands.
“Would you be open to a cut? Some help with makeup? My stylist sometimes takes last-minute appointments if I beg and bribe her. She’s saving up for her wedding right now. Totally susceptible to bribes.”
I reached a hand up to finger my hair, eyeing Alice’s short bob, the line of bangs across her forehead. Her hair was perfect for her face and her 50’s style, but it was not subtle.
I was open to a wardrobe change, even a haircut, and I could use some help with makeup, but I was never going to be bold. Subtle was my thing. I just wanted to find a way to be subtle without being bland.
Alice caught the look on my face and laughed. “Nothing extreme, I promise. Your hair is gorgeous.”
“It’s brown.”
Alice made a dismissive pff-fff and spread my hair across my shoulders, smoothing it out. “Calling it brown misses the point. You’ve got a lot in here. Caramel, some threads of blonde, some red undertones. The shine is great, but it’s so heavy. You need layers. Maybe even some highlights. Can I call Danielle? I promise I won’t rope you into anything you won’t like later. I swear. Understated elegance all the way. You just need a little polish, that’s all.”
Understated elegance. I liked the way that sounded. Like Hope, just more dressed up. What it didn’t sound was bland.
“I’m in your hands,” I said, only a little nervous.
“Perfect. Grab either the jeans and sweater or the red dress and get dressed while I make some calls. Do you mind if I invite Lily? She’s Knox’s wife. Evers’ wife, Summer, is out of town. She travels a lot for work. Too bad because she loves to shop almost as much as I do. Lily isn’t a competitive shopper but she’s the best for moral support.”
“Sounds great,” I said, a little breathless.
“Good deal. You scoot, get dressed, and I’ll take care of everything.”
Alice was as good as her word. She was a miracle worker. I heard her bright voice through the door, and by the time I’d thrown on the red dress, swiped mascara over my lashes, and brushed my teeth, she had everything arranged.
“You’re in luck. Danielle was happy to work you in for a donation to her wedding fund.” Alice gave me a saucy wink. “We have just enough time to pick Lily up and get some breakfast. Ready?”
I thought I was ready. I was wrong.
Alice was a whirlwind. In a lot of ways, the opposite of Lily, who was sweet and quiet with a gentle smile that eased my nerves. When we pulled up in front of a fairytale cottage not far from the Sinclair Security building, Lily ran out clutching her purse, her cloud of dark curls flying behind her. She jumped into the car with a laugh.
“I can’t believe we stuck the guys with both kids for the day. Don’t they have a ton of work to do on Griffen’s house?”
“It’s more a castle than a house, and there are four of them, plus they pulled in Lucas and Riley. They can handle it,” Alice said. “Lily, this is Griffen’s Hope.”
Lily gave me the first of her gentle smiles and held out her hand. “It’s nice to meet you, Hope.”
“Nice to meet you, too,” I said lamely, shaking Lily’s hand. Her brown eyes were friendly as they flicked between Alice and me. “Not that I mind, but why are we shopping?”
“Because Griffen gave us his credit card and told us to buy Hope clothes. And no sane person turns down a fully-paid shopping trip. Especially someone with a huge closet to fill,” Alice answered.
“Mmmm. Tell me more about this huge closet,” Lily said. “Is the house really a castle?”
Chapter Twenty-One
Hope
At breakfast, I stuffed myself with French toast and drank way too much coffee. I filled Lily and Alice in on the details of Heartstone Manor, keeping the personal stuff to myself. I didn’t know how much Griffen had told them about Sawyers Bend, but I had a feeling it wasn’t much.
Stomachs full, we piled back in Alice’s car and she drove us to a sleek salon tucked into a shopping center between two boutiques. We’d barely entered when a statuesque blonde pulled Alice into a hug and led us to the back, away from the other customers and into a private treatment room.
The din of a busy salon faded away behind the closed door. Propping her hands on her hips much like Alice had, the blonde gave me the same head to toe scan before saying, “Layers, definitely. And I’m thinking a deep, side-swept bang. Something you could tuck back if you needed to.”
I could work with that. “But you’ll keep it long?”
“I love the length. How would you feel about highlights? I don’t want to change the color—you’ve got a nice, rich brown with good natural variation, but you could use some pop around your face.”
Giddy from too much caffeine and maple syrup, I just said, “Whatever you want sounds great.”
Smart move on my part. I chatted with Alice and Lily and Danielle about everything and nothing as Danielle worked. I learned that Cooper and Alice had recently taken custody of Cooper’s toddler sister and that Lily watched her during the day along with her own son—the kids they’d left with the guys while we embarked on Project Save Hope’s Wardrobe.
Danielle and her fiancé were planning on starting their family as soon as possible, and the three of them talked all things kids while I listened, torn between longing and worry. I’d never really thought about having kids. Only in a vague one day, maybe kind of way.
Now, there was Griffen, and the will, and the understanding that a lot of things would be simpler if I just got pregnant.
I didn’t want to get pregnant.
Not a concern yet. I still remembered sex-ed. I had to have sex first. Or something a lot closer to sex than what we’d done so far.
We hadn’t discussed birth control. I wasn’t using any because I hadn’t needed it. Maybe Griffen wouldn’t want me to.
“Hope, what do you think?”
I snapped out of my musings on sex and birth control to look in the mirror. What I saw drove all thoughts of sex from my mind.
Was that me? It couldn’t be. The woman in the mirror looked beautiful. Confident. Her hair wasn’t brown. It was cinnamon and honey and caramel with blond streaks around her face.
I hadn’t quite been paying attention to what Danielle had done with the makeup, but my eyes looked deeper. More dramatic. She’d left my lips natural, but all of a sudden, I had cheekbones. Where had those come from? Was it the haircut or the makeup?
I blinked, taking in the changes. I was me but not me. I looked… I looked pretty. Really, truly pretty. I looked like a woman who deserved to wear more than boxy, ill-fitting suits and dull colors.
I looked like the woman who had bought that red dress. Maybe I looked like the me I’d always wanted to be.
“I love it. I love the hair and the makeup. Everything. But you have to show me how to do this at home. I should have been paying more attention but—”
Danielle patted me on the shoulder. “I’ve got you, honey. Alice is going to take notes, and I’m going to walk you through it. It’s a lot of impact, but not a lot of work. I promise.”
She was as good as her word. We left a half-hour later with a bag of makeup and hair products as well as video, pictures, and notes on how I could do it all by myself.
As Alice and Lily led me through the mall, I couldn’t stop staring at my reflection in every mirror we passed. It was a
good thing I was dazed by the makeover. Otherwise, I might have argued more about the clothes, the expense.
Griffen had been right. Alice was an excellent shopper. She knew where to look for the right styles and the best deals, and she quickly grasped exactly what suited me and what I liked.
Lily was the perfect moral support. Kind and funny, she distracted me or made me laugh every time I started getting overwhelmed. In a few hours, I’d amassed a collection of shopping bags I wasn’t sure we could carry back to the car, much less fit in Alice’s small trunk. Somehow, we managed.
Our last stop was a small boutique tucked into an upscale shopping center in Buckhead on the way back to the Sinclair Security building. I walked through the door on autopilot and stopped as soon as I saw the filmy bits of lace and satin filling the racks of the store. Lingerie. I’d forgotten I’d meant to buy lingerie. Sometime in the last few hours, my recklessness had begun to wear off.
I followed Lily and Alice through the store, listening as they joked about how long the men would let them wear the filmy bits of nothing before tearing them off. My cheeks burned at the thought. I couldn’t even pretend sophistication here.
I bought my underwear from the big-box store off the highway, usually in bulk packages. One bra for seventy-five dollars? Did it come with an extra set of boobs? I couldn’t even comment on the matching scrap of lace for almost fifty. Fifty dollars and it wouldn’t come close to covering my butt.
Okay, I knew I was missing the point of lingerie versus underwear, but still. I didn’t belong here. Not even with my new haircut and pretty makeup. I didn’t know what to do with any of this.
I stood in front of a floor-length midnight-blue nightgown fingering the soft silk and delicate lace. I wanted it. It was soft and beautiful and I wanted it. Not because it was sexy—maybe there was too much fabric for it to be sexy.
I didn’t know what Griffen found sexy. I didn’t know what any man found sexy. I had no business wearing sexy clothes. Not me. Not Hope.
All of the confidence I’d gained from the makeover drained away. I stood there listening to my new friends laugh and wondered what the heck I thought I was doing.
Was I going to seduce Griffen? Why?
So he could break my heart and leave me later when my usefulness had run out?
I was temporary. A stop-gap measure with a five-year expiration date.
The day so far had been about me, and I was glad we’d done it. I loved my new hair and the piles of new clothes. But this? Sexy underwear would only lead to heartbreak.
“You okay?” I looked down to see Lily standing beside me.
“Yeah. Just, uh, tired, I guess.”
Lily didn’t buy it, but she let me off the hook for the moment. Flipping through the nightgowns I’d been looking at, she found one in my size and took it off the rack. “You should try this on. While you’re in the back you can get fitted for new bras. This place is pricey, but everything is great quality.”
I let her lead me to the back of the store, passively standing there as the saleswoman stretched a measuring tape around me and pronounced my bra size—not the size I’d been wearing all these years, by the way—and told me to pick out some fun things while she put together a selection of bras to choose from.
I followed Alice and Lily to a wall in the back covered in camisoles, bustiers, bras, and panties so brief I wondered why they bothered to exist. They didn’t cover anything. And I mean anything.
Alice pinned me with that incisive stare I’d grown familiar with. “Spill it. What are you stressing about? Is it the lingerie? Is it Griffen and the lingerie? Because you don’t need to buy anything for him, you know. That’s the big secret. Men think this stuff is for them, but really, it’s for us.”
“Well, sometimes it’s for them,” Lily said with a secret smile.
“Sometimes,” Alice agreed. “But not today. Today it’s about Hope. We can worry about Griffen later.”
“I don’t know what I’m doing with him,” I heard myself say in a whisper. “I can’t control myself when he… I haven’t ever… I don’t…” I forced myself to choke out the words now that I’d begun. “We’re married. And we haven’t had sex yet.” The last words came out in a rush of breath. “Every time he touches me it’s like my brain shuts off and I just—I can’t breathe and I can’t think and I… I want. I don’t even know what I want. I don’t know what to do about it and it’s scaring me to death.”
I squeezed my eyes shut, too embarrassed to look at either of them. I bet neither of them were virgins. I mean, I knew neither of them were virgins. They were both happily—and actively—married. But I bet neither of them had been virgins when they’d met their men either. Or for long after adolescence.
I was a freak, and a dork, and I was way out of my league with Griffen Sawyer.
The silence stretched until I thought I might die of humiliation. My eyes flicked open in surprise as Alice’s strong arms squeezed me tight.
Alice said quietly, “It’s okay to be scared. Falling in love is scary. It’s dangerous. You risk your heart and you don’t know. You don’t know what’s going to happen. Cooper scared the hell out of me. I was so terrified of him I ran to another state.”
While I was digesting the idea of Alice being afraid of anything, Lily cut in, “Cooper deserved that. He was a moron.”
“True. But still, I should have known how he felt. I was too scared to see straight.”
“I’m not in love with Griffen,” I said, knowing it was mostly a lie. I didn’t know how I felt about Griffen, but I couldn’t pretend I felt nothing. No one was going to believe that, least of all me.
Ignoring my protest, Lily mused, “I thought Knox was going to kill me. At first. But he thought I’d killed my husband, so it evened out. Then the Russian mob showed up and we realized we were on the same team.”
I couldn’t get my head around that. How could anyone think Lily was a murderer? Now I wanted to meet her Knox.
“You aren’t scared of Griffen like that, are you?” Lily asked.
I shook my head. “He’d never hurt me. But he’s going to break my heart. I can’t stop it. And I want him anyway.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Hope
I couldn’t explain why I was so sure he’d break my heart. The terms of the will meant I had to lie about the reason for our marriage. It didn’t matter. Alice knew Griffen hadn’t wanted to see me a few days ago. They both knew he wasn’t in love with me, knew there had to be another reason he’d married me.
“We’re not falling in love,” I whispered, staring at the scraps of silk in front of me without seeing them. “That’s not what this is. He’ll never love me. He can’t.”
Lily stroked a hand down my hair. Alice wasn’t as soothing. “Forget about that. Love will take care of itself, one way or another. The real question is do you want to have sex with him?”
“I do,” I admitted. “But everything’s upside down when he kisses me. I feel too much and I can’t think. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”
Lily stroked my hair again, her touch gentle. “You can trust Griffen. You don’t need to know what you’re supposed to do. Not like that. He’ll show you.”
“Does he know?” Alice asked. “That you haven’t—”
“I kind of told him accidentally after my uncle told him to get me pregnant.”
Lily’s hand flew over her mouth as she choked back a laugh. I couldn’t help it, a smile cracked across my face as I heard what I’d said. I shook my head. “My life’s such a mess right now.”
“Don’t worry about that,” Alice said. “Lily’s right. You can trust Griffen. All you need to do is pick out what you like here, put it on, and he’ll take care of the rest. That’s a guarantee.”
Could it be that simple? Just trust Griffen? It made more sense than anything else. I sure
as heck didn’t know what I was doing. And if the way he touched me was any example, Griffen absolutely knew what he was doing.
I wanted him. I’d always wanted him. This was my chance to have him, if just for a little while. I didn’t want to waste it because I was scared.
For all these years, I’d thought nothing could happen to me if I was with Uncle Edgar. He’d rescued me. He could keep me safe. And he did.
What I didn’t realize was nothing could happen to me if I was with Uncle Edgar. If I spent my life hiding, nothing would ever happen to me.
I thought about that morning, Griffen’s hands, his mouth, the way he’d touched me. The way I’d come. I wanted more of that.
I wanted something from this wall of silk and satin and lace. Something that would make Griffen crazy.
Crazy for me.
I took a deep breath, pushed away my fear, and reached out for a confection of blush pink silk and creamy lace.
“What about this?” I asked my partners in crime.
“That would be perfect.”
I couldn’t look at the total on the register when Alice paid. Three huge shopping bags filled with everything from everyday bras and panties to a merry widow and stockings, the nightgown I’d been drooling over, matching robe, and so much more. Too much more.
Originally, I’d planned to pay him back, but considering the meager contents of my savings account, that would take years. Uncle Edgar hadn’t paid me much, coolly implying that years of room and board and a college education were expensive.
If I’d been content to remain under his roof I would have had more disposable income. Apartments on Main Street didn’t come cheap, and I’d paid dearly for that small taste of freedom. Too dearly to have a nest egg I could toss at Griffen to make up for all we’d spent. I tried to shrug it off. He was the one who’d handed Alice his card and told her I needed everything.
I tried not to dwell on it as we drove back to Sinclair Security. Alice had hidden the receipts, so unless Griffen told me, I had no idea what we’d spent. Alice pulled into the garage, parking next to Griffen’s Maserati.