by Layne, Ivy
I slid closer to the open doorway and risked a look. Miss Stiles was crumpled in the corner weeping into her apron, but I didn’t see any blood. Griffen knelt on the intruder’s back, both of their guns out of reach on the floor, the intruder’s hands wrenched behind his back.
I stepped into the room. “I called Savannah. Hawk and West are on their way.”
Griffen glared at me. “Get the fuck out of here, Hope. Are you insane? Did you call Savannah and then come back here?”
Relief flooded through me at the strength in his voice. He was okay. I ignored his questions. “Are you all right? Did anyone get hurt?”
“I’m fine. Everyone’s fine. Answer my question. Did you call Savannah and then come back here?”
“Obviously,” was my not so brilliant response. Griffen glared at me. I tried to look contrite. Griffen wasn’t having it.
“Why would you do such a goddamn stupid thing?”
“I wasn’t leaving you. You can yell at me all you want, but I wasn’t leaving you.”
He shook his head but didn’t say anything else. Hawk came in the room from behind me, his eyes like ice. “Hope. Someone gets in the house, you hide in your fucking room until you get the all-clear from me, West, or Griffen. Got it? You do not—”
Hawk looked around the room, trying to figure out what had happened.
Griffen helpfully supplied, “Roll a medicine ball at him.”
Hawk rolled his eyes. “You threw a medicine ball at an intruder with a weapon?”
“It worked, didn’t it?”
Neither Griffen nor Hawk deigned to reply. That’s because they didn’t want to admit it had been a good plan. I’d barely been in any danger and I’d distracted the shooter. They should be thanking me.
Instead, Griffen growled, “Go check on Savannah, see if she and Nicky are okay. Then stay with them in their room until one of us lets you out.”
I thought about arguing, but at the strained expressions on his and Hawk’s faces, I decided to do what I was told. Grabbing the toast and can of ginger beer off the counter, I made my way down the narrow hall in the back corner of the kitchen and knocked on Savannah’s door.
“It’s Hope. Griffen and Hawk have everything under control, but they want us to stay here while they wait for West.”
Savannah opened her door and pulled me in. “You didn’t go upstairs, did you?”
I waved her off. It was over and everyone was all right. Now that the adrenaline had worn off, my arm was killing me and I really needed that ginger beer. Popping the top, and deeply grateful it was still cold, I took a long gulp, my eyes watering at the fiery ginger. It hurt to swallow, but nothing settled my stomach like it.
“Are you two okay?” In a lower voice, looking over Savannah’s shoulder, I asked, “Nicky good?”
“He’s watching cartoons on my tablet and thrilled I’m not rushing him out the door to pre-school. What happened?”
I filled Savannah in and we waited, quickly growing restless as the door to the sitting room remained closed. We could hear male voices, muffled through the solid wood, shouts from a woman—Miss Stiles I guessed—but as hard as we tried, we couldn’t make out any words.
Trying to distract myself, I looked around. “I’m going to talk to Griffen about getting a contractor out here. We need to get your cottage put back together so you have more room than this.”
“It’s fine,” Savannah started to say.
“It’s not. And I really think you should repaint when you turn it into an office. All this institutional white is depressing.”
Savannah shrugged a shoulder. “We’ll get to it. For now, I’m worried about finding a new cook. I have a feeling Miss Stiles is out of here.”
Savannah wasn’t wrong. By the time Griffen opened the door and set us free, the kitchen was empty of everyone, including Miss Stiles.
“West took the guy to the station to book him. We need to follow when we can. Hawk is checking the perimeter and getting security tapes to send to West. Miss Stiles—” He shook his head at Savannah. “Sorry. She quit. Wouldn’t even consider staying until we replaced her.”
Savannah sighed. “I’ll call Mom, see if she can help with breakfast and take Nicky to pre-school. Then I’ll set up some more interviews. In the meantime—”
“I’ll talk to Finn,” Griffen said. “He can dust off all that fancy training for a few days to feed us, or he can take a hike.”
“Good luck with that,” Savannah murmured.
Griffen didn’t speak to me, not really, until we were on our way to give our statements to West.
“Are you going to be mad at me all day?” I asked, trying to tease him out of his mood. It didn’t work.
He slanted me a dark look. “Yes. I’m going to be pissed at you forever. You could have been shot.”
“I wasn’t in danger for more than a second. You had him covered and I was hiding behind a stone wall.”
“Hope—”
“Nope, save it. We both know I wasn’t really in any danger, and I wasn’t leaving you.”
“Stubborn,” he muttered.
“Get used to it,” I said.
“I’m seriously re-thinking our plan to stay at Heartstone.”
“Get used to that, too. We’re staying.”
Griffen sighed. “Unless West gives us a good reason not to, we’re staying,” he agreed.
West didn’t give us a reason to leave Sawyers Bend. “He’s not going anywhere,” he said of our intruder. “John Fredricks. Former Marine. Went for Marine Scout Sniper and didn’t make it, but it wasn’t because of his shooting skills. He admitted to trying to run you down in his truck, and to taking the shot at you in your office and at your tire. He also claims he was working for someone else.”
“Who?” Griffen demanded.
West shook his head. “Says he doesn’t know. He was paid in cash, anonymous drops. Calls came to his cell. I have the number, but I’m betting it’s a burner or clone. Voice was disguised. He doesn’t know if it was a man or woman. Just that they knew he had a grudge and had sniper level shooting skills.”
“So, what now?” I asked.
West gave me a grim smile. “Go home. Keep security high, but live your lives. This isn’t over. Whoever hired Fredricks will find someone else eventually, but for now, you have a little breathing room. Enjoy it while it lasts.”
Griffen didn’t look convinced. Actually, Griffen looked like he was on the verge of packing me up and running for the hills. I wasn’t going to let that happen.
I won’t say I wasn’t scared. It didn’t feel great to know someone was out there looking for another hired gun to aim our way. But West was right, we had a little breathing room. I wasn’t going to waste it.
“Let’s go home,” I said when we got back into the car Griffen had borrowed from Royal. “We can ditch work for the day and you can take my mind off my arm.”
“How bad is it?” he asked, eyes dark with concern.
“It just hurts. I didn’t pull any stitches or anything.”
“You’re sure? We can go by the hospital if—”
“I’m fine. I swear. But if you wanted to take me home and distract me—”
Griffen finally caught my drift. “Distract you, huh? What did you have in mind? A movie? I could find you a book.”
I let my good arm slide over the console between us. My hand landed in his lap. Stroked. “A book? Not exactly.”
Griffen hardened under my touch. His green eyes glinted, the worry chased away by my busy fingers. “We have some spreadsheets we could go over—”
“Hmm, not that either. No work today, remember? I was thinking more like naked distraction.”
“Naked distraction,” Griffen repeated musingly as if his cock wasn’t rock hard and straining against his jeans. “What about your arm? You shou
ldn’t move it.”
“I thought you could be creative.” I squeezed his length through his jeans, loving the sharp intake of his breath.
He shot me a wolfish grin. “Oh, I can do creative, Buttercup.”
And he could. Over my protests that I could walk on my own, Griffen carried me up to our rooms, where he carefully stripped me of my clothes and lay me down in my big brass bed.
Our big brass bed. I’d told myself I hadn’t thought of Griffen when I’d bought the bed, but I’d been lying. Of course, I’d thought of him.
It was always him.
Always Griffen.
And it always would be.
Epilogue
Griffen
Hope looked down at the picture in her hand, a secret smile on her face. To be honest, I thought it looked like a black-and-white blob surrounded by a bunch of static, but the OB swore eventually it would be our baby.
I didn’t so much care about the picture, but I kept hearing that fast thud-thud-thud of the baby’s heartbeat coming through the speakers. Despite the ER doctor’s assurances, we’d both been worried. The car accident. The tree branch sticking out of Hope’s arm. All that blood.
The relief of knowing everything was okay was a weight off us both.
We were having a baby.
I didn’t really have my head around it yet. I wasn’t sure I would until we met face to face. Only seven more months.
Hope turned the picture upside down and squinted at it. “I can’t tell which side is up,” she admitted. “The timestamp is at the top, I think.” She turned it again. “But this just looks weird.”
“The doctor said she’s about the size of a blueberry. There’s not much to see yet.”
Hope slid the picture into her purse. “I know. I’m just impatient, I guess.”
I reached across the console to take her hand. “I know what you mean. It’s going to be a long seven months. And the best early Christmas present ever.”
Hope’s radiant smile pushed the day right over the top. We’d gotten good news from the doctor and I had my beaming wife sitting beside me.
The day we’d married I’d thought my life had fallen apart. Things had changed—no denying that—but once we’d gotten through the rough parts, this new life was better than anything I’d ever dreamed.
Life wasn’t perfect, but we were getting there.
“I don’t want to tell everybody yet,” Hope said. “Not until we clear the first trimester. I know it’s weird with us all sharing the same house, but—”
I didn’t like the shadow on Hope’s face. I wanted the smile back.
“I agree. Who already knows? Officially.” We couldn’t account for town gossip. I was pretty sure the doctor who’d seen us in the ER hadn’t said a word, but I didn’t know about the nurse or any technicians who might have seen the test and Hope’s name on it. Added to that, we’d just seen the OB together. Anyone who’d spotted us would know Hope wasn’t there for her annual check-up.
But rumor wasn’t fact, and it made sense to keep it quiet as long as we could. West had my shooter in jail, and he wasn’t getting out anytime soon, but we still didn’t know who’d hired him or why.
“Officially?” Hope looked out the window of our new armored SUV as she thought. “Savannah, and I’m pretty sure Royal knows.”
“Royal knows,” I confirmed. “I didn’t tell him, he guessed. Same with Hawk. He figured it out when I mentioned that you’d been fainting.”
“I only fainted once.” She aimed an affectionate scowl at me. “Hawk’s a sharp guy. I shouldn’t be surprised.”
“Other than them, we’ll keep it to ourselves. As long as we can.”
We pulled into the long drive to Heartstone, signs of spring everywhere in the daffodils pushing through the soil, the pale green buds on the trees.
Hawk had been too busy with security to do much with the grounds yet. He’d hired a few guys to clean things up, but so far, that was it. Still, the signs of spring, of new life, welcomed us home.
Just before the turn to the garage, I pulled to a stop, my eyes narrowed on the late-model black sedan parked in the courtyard right in front of the stairs to the front door.
“Is that—?”
“Uncle Edgar’s car,” Hope confirmed. “He knows.”
“Looks like it. Do you want me to tell him to leave?” I turned down the lane to the garage and waited for Hope’s answer.
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “No. I haven’t gone this long without seeing Uncle Edgar since he brought me home. Maybe that was for the best, but I think I’d like to see him now.”
Savannah met us in the back hall by the mudroom. “Your Uncle Edgar is here,” she said to Hope. “I put him in the family gathering room. I didn’t think you’d want him in your office unsupervised and that’s the only other room on the first floor that’s fully furnished aside from the dining room. Do you want me to bring in a tray? Tea and cookies?”
I looked to Hope. My instinct was to tell Edgar Daniels to get the hell out of my house, but it was Hope’s call. “No tray. I don’t think this will take long.”
Edgar rose when we entered, his sharp eyes taking in Hope, absorbing the sight of her as if he’d missed her. I didn’t feel too sorry for him. He could have called or stopped by or bothered to acknowledge her existence at all since the day she’d walked into his office to find herself replaced. He hadn’t, so my sympathy wasn’t running high.
Hope crossed the room to kiss his cheek, gripping his weathered hands in hers. “How are you, Uncle Edgar?”
“Not as good as you, I hear. You two have something to tell me?” His gaze flicked between the two of us, expectant. Just short of demanding.
I looked to Hope. Edgar wasn’t on my short list of people to tell about our pregnancy, but I wouldn’t stop Hope if she wanted to share the news. Especially since my bet was that Edgar already knew.
Hope hesitated before she made up her mind. She sat on one of the overstuffed couches that flanked the huge fireplace, the flames merrily burning. Smoothing her hands over her knees, she said, “We’d like to keep it quiet for now, but Griffen and I are going to have a baby.”
“Good news, good news.” Edgar rubbed his hands together, a satisfied smile crossing his face.
“I’d like to know why it’s so important to you,” Hope asked slowly. “You haven’t even talked to me since Griffen and I got married, but you told Griffen to get me pregnant. What does it matter? Why do you care?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, girl. Of course, I care. Raised you, didn’t I? Got you settled with a good husband. The one you wanted—” The old bastard actually tilted his head and winked at Hope. Winked.
I wasn’t sure I’d recover from the sight of gruff Edgar Daniels winking. I didn’t even mind that he was admitting he’d maneuvered Hope into this position. I’d figured that out a long time ago, and frankly, if his reason was to make Hope happy I wouldn’t argue with it.
“Not how I planned to find myself a husband,” Hope said mildly, “but I don’t understand why it matters that we’re having a baby.”
“For one, the will,” Edgar said as if she were dense. “I know the entire Sawyer estate goes to Bryce if something happens to Griffen before there’s a child. I didn’t go to the trouble to get you hitched to him to have you lose everything to that fuckwit. And for another, because you’ll be a good mother.”
Hope straightened in surprise, but Edgar went on.
“Some women shouldn’t have children. You know that better than anyone. You’re not one of them. You’ve mothered me plenty the last twenty years. Now you have everything that should be yours. Griffen Sawyer, a baby—Though if you want to keep your husband, girl, you should throw out those jeans and put on something more appropriate.”
And right there he crossed the line. Didn’t t
ake him long. I sat next to Hope and wrapped my arm around her waist, very blatantly closing my hand on her hip. “I would have thought you’d figured it out already, but I like Hope’s jeans. I like everything Hope wears, except those ugly suits you bought her. And I don’t think we need marital advice from a lifelong bachelor.”
Edgar harrumphed, but his eyes were warm as he took in our closeness, the way Hope leaned into me. “Just you know, I have my eyes on you, boy. I get the slightest sign you’re not treating her right—stepping out, working too much—I don’t care. I get the slightest sign, and I’ll take care of it.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. What was Edgar going to do? Challenge me to a bout of fisticuffs?
No, he’d probably hire a hitman and find Hope another husband.
I tried not to grin at that thought. Edgar wouldn’t have anything to worry about. Treating Hope right was my top priority. Always would be.
Instead of taunting him, I said, “I don’t think that’s going to be a problem. But I want to know—how? How did you know that I’d fall in love with Hope? How did you know I’d be back? That Prentice would die? And how did you get him to agree to force us into marriage?”
Edgar just shook his head. “I didn’t know that you’d have feelings for my Hope. Not for sure. I had a hunch. And Prentice? I can’t answer that. I don’t know who killed him. I just knew he was playing with fire, and it was only a matter of time. I wanted Hope covered in case you didn’t come back on your own.”
“What does that even mean?” Hope asked, exasperated.
“It means I told Weston Garfield everything I know about Prentice’s murder, which wasn’t much.”
“And what about how you got Prentice to force our marriage in the first place?” I pressed. It was the one thing that made no sense.
“That’s not mine to tell, boy. Let’s just say your father owed me and I collected. The rest is in the past. Leave it there and focus on your future.”
“I don’t know that I have a choice, Edgar. Someone seems to have it out for the Sawyers. Feels like the past is coming for me—coming for us—one way or another.”
