Chapter 6
Chapter Six
STERLING
F ive days had passed since my trip to Willow Springs, and I was no closer to figuring out the clue than I had been when I first laid eyes on it.
A mockingbird on my shoulder, singing with my strings in the Poplars.
It was nonsense. But I knew it wasn’t nonsense. It made a very specific kind of sense to Forrest’s father. I just hadn’t discovered what that was. I drifted through the days, going through the motions, my brain turning the clue over and over, inside out and upside down. Still nothing.
It had taken me months to figure out the key to crack the code on the Vitellius. What made me think I’d solve this one any faster? Ugh, I pushed that thought away. Because I could solve it, that was why. I just had to keep trying.
I’d researched everything I could find about mockingbirds and strings and poplar trees. Separately, together, misspellings, literary references. Nothing. I was missing something; I just had no idea what.
Maybe I needed to see the card again. Maybe if…
No . That was the traitorous side of my brain. Or, more accurately, my body. My brain was fixated on solving the clue, but all my body cared about was Forrest Powell.
I’d woken twice in the nights since I’d last seen him, Forrest filling my senses. That trip to Willow Springs was my downfall. I hadn’t spent that much time with him since I’d dumped him. I’d thought I was immune. Didn’t my body remember the heartbreak? The constant ache in my chest, the hollow prickle of tears, the dull pain between my temples—sometimes it had hurt so badly I couldn’t get air in my lungs. I’d thought he was my forever, and he turned out to be another liar. Living with my father, I’d thought I knew all about liars, but Forrest Powell had proven I wasn’t as smart as I thought I was.
All it had taken was a few hours in the car with him, and my body didn’t care about any of that. I’d wanted to ignore him, but sitting that close, his arm beside mine on the console, I’d been far too aware of him. He radiated heat. Or maybe it was just me, feeling him every time he was close.
It had been like that back then. I’d feel a tingle go down my spine, and there he’d be, across the crowded lobby of the inn. We’d share a smile, a second of eye contact, and it felt like he’d kissed me from a hundred feet away.
Sitting beside him in the car had been too much. My body didn’t care that he was a liar, and I hated him. My body remembered the orgasms. So many orgasms.
No man had ever kissed me like Forrest. When that bastard laid one on me at the bank, he’d known exactly what he was doing. I’d started it, making up the story about being his fiancée and kissing his jaw. I shouldn’t have done it—the kiss, not the story.
Once I figured out that the key was Buck, I’d known the code was personal for Forrest’s father. I’d had a feeling there might be a stipulation about family, so I’d grabbed the diamond solitaire from my jewelry box. It was bad luck, but it was the only ring I had that could pass as an engagement ring. My father had given it to my mother when she’d pressured him for marriage after she got pregnant with me. Prentice had no intention of leaving Darcy, but he’d bought my mother the ostentatiously boring diamond to shut her up. Forrest would never have chosen such a generic ring, but no one in Willow Springs knew that.
So, the fiancée story was a good idea. But the kiss on his jaw was not. I’d forgotten. I didn’t know how. It felt like every moment of our short relationship was engraved on my heart, but I’d forgotten the warmth of his skin, the way he smelled. And then he’d kissed me back.
It was only a press of his lips, barely more than a peck. For an endless moment, I’d lost myself, leaning into him, feeling instead of thinking. No more than a moment, but it had been enough to remind my body of everything I was missing.
I hadn’t had sex in a year. At first, I’d been too hurt, too angry to want anything to do with any man. And then I’d looked around and hadn’t seen anyone who seemed worth the effort. I’d met handsome men. Charming men. I organized things for Quinn’s guide business. Plenty of hot guys came through there. Rugged, outdoorsy men. Polished executives who loved to fish. Whatever I thought my type was, I had my pick. Nice men. Funny men.
None of them had sparked the tiniest bit of interest. I’d started to wonder if that part of me had shut down, had broken. And then I’d shaken Forrest’s hand to seal our deal. The second his skin touched mine, I knew that while my heart was still thoroughly broken, my body was very much in working order.
I’d woken the night before from a dream of Forrest, of the two of us stretched out on a blanket in the summer grass. I was draped over his chest, looking up at a mockingbird perched on his shoulder. Stupid brain.
Meow . I looked down to see my black cat, Shadow, sitting at my feet.
“Are you ready for breakfast, baby?” I asked, putting my toothbrush away and leaning down to scoop her up. Shadow belonged to me and my sister Parker equally, but she spent most of her time at my side when I was home. Parker and I had briefly shared a kitten as young children. We’d discovered her lost on the Manor grounds and hidden her from Prentice. When he found out, he gave the kitten to Parker in an attempt to drive a wedge between us.
Prentice had never liked when his children bonded. He wanted us to live in fear—of himself and each other. Sometimes, his scheming worked. It had certainly driven Ford and Griffen apart, but it hadn’t worked on Parker or me. Parker snuck the kitten into my room every night until one day, the kitten was gone. In the end, Prentice always got his way. After our father died, Parker took me to the shelter, and we came home with Shadow. This kitten wasn’t going anywhere.
Shadow had grown out of her kittenhood, but she was still small. Sweet-natured, she rarely meowed except when her belly was empty.
“I don’t have any food up here, sweetheart,” I said, nuzzling the top of her head as I walked to the door of my room. I usually kept a stash of her canned food in my room, but the day before, I’d used the last one. “We’ll have to go down to the kitchen to find you some breakfast.”
She let out another meow .
Silly kitten. Midway down the steps, she squirmed in my arms. I set her down so she could walk beside me, and she ran ahead. I expected her to continue down the stairs to the lower level to the massive pantry where Finn kept the overflow cans of cat food. Instead, she darted into the library.
“Shadow,” I called after her, “I have things to do. I’m not waiting all day. Come on, let’s get you some breakfast.”
When she didn’t immediately return to my side, I changed course and followed her into the library. Only a few feet into the room, I froze. My half-brother Brax stood in the middle of the library, Shadow in his arms. A chill went down my spine. Brax and I had been sworn enemies since I was born, three days after him. You’d think a three-day-old baby would be too young to have enemies, but if you thought that, you hadn’t met Brax. Technically, all my siblings were halves, but Brax was the only one I thought of that way.
Braxton Reginald Sawyer was supposed to be the youngest Sawyer, the crown prince of the Sawyer clan. For a few short years, he had been. The dirty little secret of my existence hadn’t been revealed until my mother’s death when we were four. Prentice had taken pride in producing so many children when his ancestors had managed only one or two offspring per generation. My father might not have liked me, but there had never been a question that I had a place at Heartstone Manor as Prentice’s daughter.
Suddenly, Brax had to share the spotlight with my adorable self. We looked so much alike that we might have been twins. Golden hair and skin, my father’s electric blue eyes, excellent bone structure. And Brax had the one thing I didn’t. Height. He towered over me, my sweet little ball of fluff in his arms, a familiar sneer twisting his lips.
“Put my cat down,” I said.
“She’s fine,” he replied.
Shadow didn’t look fine. She squirmed in his arms, and his hands tightened.
“Put my cat down,” I repeated, tamping down the fear in my voice. If he knew I was scared, he’d never let her go. We had enough years of sibling torment between us. I didn’t trust Brax as far as I could throw him, and given that he was a foot taller and a hundred pounds heavier than me, I couldn’t throw him far.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, striding forward.
I grabbed Shadow and tried to yank her out of his arms, hoping he wouldn’t fight back. At the touch of my hand, Shadow squirmed, sinking her teeth into Brax’s wrist. He let go in surprise, and I gathered her to my chest. She nestled against my neck, the rumble of her purr low and unhappy.
“Why are you here?” I demanded.
Brax lived here. We all did. According to my father’s will, we had to live in Heartstone Manor for five years after his death, or we’d lose not only our inheritance—amount unknown—but also access to any Sawyer-owned property. Since all of us worked for family-owned enterprises, it was either toe the line or lose our jobs.
Brax handled the family’s commercial real estate business. Though he managed properties all over the country, his office was based in the nearby city of Asheville. Until Prentice’s will, he’d lived in a condo there and rarely came home to Heartstone Manor. These days, to comply with the will, he slept at the Manor, but that was it. He rarely attended meals. Until recently, I couldn’t remember the last time I saw him in person. He’d come to Tenn and Scarlett’s wedding, and it was the first time he’d met my newborn niece, Griffen and Hope’s daughter. I’d seen him again at Savannah and Finn’s Valentine’s Day wedding. That was it.
Months of Brax slipping in and out of the house, here only long enough to satisfy the terms of the will, until the last few weeks. Suddenly, it felt like he was everywhere. Was it because Ford was home? I thought back. Ford had finally been released from prison in the middle of May. I hadn’t started bumping into Brax everywhere until the middle of June. I didn’t know if that meant anything.
I should have known Brax wouldn’t give me a useful answer.
“It’s my house, too,” he said in a snarl, rubbing at the bite mark on his hand.
“It’s Griffen’s house.” I couldn’t resist poking at him. Probably not smart, but I didn’t give a crap.
“Yeah, well,” he said, “maybe it’s Griffen’s house, but I have a right to live here, just like you. More of a right since I’m not the bastard daughter of the town slut.”
There was nothing I wanted to say to that. It had taken me far too long to learn that I wasn’t my mother. I knew better than to try to defend myself to Brax. He liked hating me too much to listen. I watched him stride away, heading for the very stairs I’d planned to take to the lower level. Change of plans. I’d use the stairs behind the dining room. They were closer to the kitchens and the pantry anyway.
I turned to my right, using what had once been the billiards room as a shortcut. I stopped abruptly, noticing the fire burning in the fireplace. No one used this room. My eyes were slow to see my brother Ford in an armchair by the fire, a book in his hand. He was so quiet that I almost missed him. Was this why Brax had been home more lately? My mind flashed back to when I’d seen him in the library, holding Shadow. Had Brax come out of the billiards room?
Curious, I asked Ford, “What did Brax want?”
Ford shook his head in answer. I wasn’t sure what that meant, but he hadn’t denied that Brax had been in here.
“You’re in here reading?” I asked.
Stupid question. Of course, he was in here reading; he was holding an open book. I tried to think of something else to say.
I’d never been particularly close to my brother Ford. When I’d been young, it had always been Griffen who paid attention to us kids. Ford was the one who rolled his eyes and called us childish and a waste of his time. Then Griffen had been gone, exiled by my father when Ford double-crossed him.
For years, I’d seen Ford as a distant parental figure, not as cruel as my father but not anyone who particularly cared about me. Like I treated most adults back then, I tried to stay out of his way. A few years before my father died, Ford had changed. Of course, he didn’t explain himself to me, his youngest sister, or to anyone at all. The best we’d been able to figure out, Ford and Prentice fell out, and it had been so bad Ford had moved into a suite at the inn.
After that, Ford had tried to look out for the rest of us, but—except with Quinn and maybe Avery—it was too little, too late. The Ford who had gone to prison for my father’s murder had been powerful, connected, seemingly invulnerable.
We’d known he hadn’t killed Prentice, but whoever framed him did a good job of it, and he’d sat in prison for almost a year until a few months ago when new evidence had mysteriously appeared. The judge had taken his time, but eventually, Ford had been set free. He’d come home, but nothing was the same. This was Griffen’s house now, and while Griffen had enough compassion to welcome home the brother who’d had him exiled, the relationship they’d had was gone. Once they’d been closer than brothers, the best of friends. Now everything was just fucking awkward.
Ford was a shadow of himself, thinner, paler, and so quiet I wasn’t sure what to make of him. I didn’t know what to say. He lifted the book in an affirmative gesture, acknowledging my question with a silent nod.
“What did Brax do?” he asked, his voice scratchy as if he hadn’t spoken in a long time.
“Nothing, really,” I admitted. “I just— I didn’t like the way he was holding Shadow. I was afraid he—” I couldn’t think of how to explain my unease. Brax hadn’t done anything. “Was Brax bothering you?” I asked.
“Don’t worry about Brax,” Ford said. “There’s still breakfast if you want some.”
“I’m not hungry.” At my words, Shadow let out another yowl and butted my chin with the top of her head. “But Shadow is.”
“You’d better go feed her, then.”
At that, I knew Ford was done talking. “I’ll see you later,” I said as I left.
It was so weird not to know what to say to someone I’d known my whole life. But he wasn’t the same Ford. I hadn’t been close to the old Ford, but I’d known how to deal with him. The same as with my father—limited contact. Talk back just enough to be annoying but not enough to get into trouble. They’d leave, and I’d be free to go my own way. I wasn’t sure I wanted to drive away this new Ford. But I didn’t know that I wanted to be friends either.