Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
PAIGE
Iput some antibacterial ointment on the scrapes on my forearms and changed clothes before I went to hunt down the kids, already home from school and probably having a snack in the kitchen.
Now that I was back at Heartstone Manor, I was slowly processing what had happened in the parking lot.
Some of it was still a blur, but of one thing I had no doubt—Ford Sawyer had not killed his father.
The man who’d shoved me under the Jeep, taking on a stranger with a gun to keep me safe, was not a murderer. Neither was the man whose first response had been “I’m leaving.”
Who the hell would want to leave Heartstone Manor? He had a beautiful home in a town where he belonged, with a family who loved him, and he was willing to leave it all behind to keep that family safe. This was not a man who’d shot his own father in cold blood.
I rubbed the heel of my palm against my chest, not liking the hollow feeling I got at the idea of Ford packing his bags and driving away. It shouldn’t matter. We had one kiss and a conversation between us. Barely anything. Whether he stayed or left was nothing to me.
Right?
I was a liar.
I pulled my sleeve over the cleaned and treated scrape and paced down the hall toward the stairs.
Ford and I, in some ways, couldn’t be more different.
He was a Sawyer, with everything that came with being the son of a billionaire, who’d grown up in a castle.
I was a normal girl from a normal family, raised by a single mom.
I’d worked for a living since high school.
And yet, we were both kind of a mess. Ford was caught in limbo, tending bar for his sister instead of running a multinational corporation. And me—I was here in Sawyers Bend on a wild goose chase, for the first time in a long time feeling at home and without any idea what came next.
Despite all the reasons I should keep my distance from Ford Sawyer, I didn’t want him to leave.
I jogged down the stairs to the lower level, hoping to find the kids at the table in the kitchen. Instead, I found them in the hall, huddled around the open door to the gym.
I didn’t bother with the gym often. I was more into yoga, which I did in my room, and long walks in the woods when I had time.
The gym had a few treadmills, plenty of free weights, ancient medicine balls, and a section of floor covered with mats that I knew Hawk, Griffen, and the rest of Hawk’s team used for training—though I’d never been quite sure what that meant.
I came up behind the kids, putting one hand on Nicky’s shoulder and one hand on August’s, standing beside Thatcher, who, at fourteen, was taller than me.
“What are we looking at?” I whispered.
Finn came up behind me and said, “Tea is on the table.” Then, glancing in the room, he grinned. “Griffen talked Ford into staying put. He’s teaching Ford what he should have done with that guy in the parking lot.”
“Oh?” That was all I got out.
Griffen and Ford strode into view, both of them stripped to the waist, and my mouth went dry. Maybe I should have been looking at Griffen. He was ripped, his golden skin tanned, muscles popping, reminding me of an action star from a movie.
Ford, in contrast, was still a little skinny from prison, his muscles rangy and his skin pale. But there was something elemental about him, an energy that vibrated under his skin. He wasn’t there to play around. To him, this was life and death.
Griffen launched himself at Ford, and Ford went down hard, landing on his back with an audible oomph and the sharp smack of skin to mat.
I couldn’t even see what Griffen was doing; he moved so fast. A heartbeat later, Griffen was on his back, his arm around Ford’s neck.
Ford pounded his fist on the mat to indicate he’d given up.
“Fuck, that was quick,” Finn said from behind me.
“I know,” Thatcher agreed, breathless.
“How the hell did you do that?” Ford asked, rolling to his knees and sucking in a breath.
“Like this.” Griffen was on his feet, reaching out a hand for Ford. He pulled Ford up and broke down, step by step, what he’d done.
I hadn’t realized how complicated the choreography of fighting could be as Griffen prompted Ford to step forward with his left foot, turning his hips open and aligning his shoulders, explaining where the power came from as he lunged and took Ford to the ground again.
I expected Ford to protest, but he listened intently, rolled to his feet, and jumped at Griffen.
His movements were clumsier and less efficient.
Griffen let Ford take him to the ground, but once they hit the mat, he had Ford in an armlock again in seconds.
They got back to their feet, Griffen explained the next sequence of moves, and they tried again.
I could have stood in that doorway for hours.
Every move Ford made convinced me further that he wasn’t the man I’d thought he was.
I’d known his family didn’t think he’d killed Prentice, but he’d spent a year in prison, and since he’d been living in the Manor, he’d been withdrawn.
It had been easy to fill in the gaps of silence with assumptions—he was a killer, he was resentful, he was bitter.
But this man, doggedly getting to his feet again and again, taking the punishment inherent in learning to fight so he could keep the rest of us safe—not only wasn’t the man I thought he was, I suspected he wasn’t the man he thought he was. This man wanted to do right.
I rubbed the heel of my palm into my chest again, the hollow space filled with a warmth, a yearning I didn’t want to acknowledge.
“We should give them privacy. Did you mention something about tea?” I asked Finn.
“Probably gone cold, but yeah,” he said, nodding, his eyes locked on the action on the mat. “PB&Js and some cookies to tide you guys over till dinner.”
August and Nicky let me lead them away from the open gym door. Thatcher lingered.
“Be there in a minute,” he said. As we walked away, I heard him call to Hawk. “Hey, can you teach me how to do that?”
“Sure, kid,” I heard Hawk say. “Come on in. You’ve got some size on you. We’ll see what you can do with Ford when Griffen needs a break.”
I went through the motions of getting Nicky and August to wash their hands and sit at the table, asking them about school and deflecting when they asked why Ford and Griffen were fighting.
All the while, I couldn’t get the picture of Ford out of my head.
His lean muscles straining under his skin, the determination in his eyes as he got up again and again.
Those hands—I couldn’t forget how they’d felt gripping my hips when he kissed me.
I had to figure out what I wanted and how much I was willing to risk to get it. Did I want Ford Sawyer? Yes. With heat in my chest, I answered with a resounding yes—I wanted Ford Sawyer.
And my father? My search for the mysterious Sarah? What about that?
I wasn’t sure I could have both.
Ford didn’t talk to me for five days after the attack in the parking lot.
His door was always firmly shut when I went to bed, and still closed when I woke in the morning.
The two times the lights had gone out in the guest wing, Ford had been working at the taproom, so I’d fixed them myself.
I’d seen him every afternoon around tea, training with Griffen in the gym.
Hawk had decided that fourteen-year-old Thatcher was adult enough to serve as a practice dummy.
Since Thatcher wanted to learn to fight, and his mother and Tenn were okay with it, he was regularly getting tossed around on the mat and was having a blast, in contrast to Ford.
Every time I caught sight of Ford stripped to the waist, his rangy body sending heat flooding through mine, all I got from his expression was grim determination. He wanted to learn as fast as humanly possible.
By the fifth night of silence from Ford, I was out of patience.
I lay in my bed, tossing and turning, trying to untangle my snarled thoughts.
I shouldn’t want Ford, but I did. I’d come here under false pretenses, and yet I wanted to stay.
I thought I wanted to teach, but I was happy exactly where I was.
Everything was a contradiction—a war between what I thought I wanted, or what I should want, and what I was feeling.
One thing at a time, I told myself. Career planning could wait.
I had money in my savings account and a job I liked.
I could figure out the future later. I’d come here to find Sarah Sawyer and my father.
It felt like I was supposed to put Ford aside and continue with my search.
The problem was, I wasn’t sure there was anything to find.
It didn’t seem like Sarah Sawyer had much more to do with her family than my father had with me.
Sarah and my father were long gone, living it up somewhere, their families forgotten.
My quest, which had been filled with such purpose after my mother’s death, now felt empty.
It was what had brought me here, but it wasn’t what was keeping me at Heartstone Manor.
The answer to why I stayed was so much simpler.
I liked the Sawyers and the kids and the job.
I liked the town. I felt rooted for the first time in years.
And yes, I liked Ford Sawyer. He might be the last man I should want, but I was having trouble respecting all my shoulds lately.
I didn’t care about should. I wanted Ford.
I wanted to run my hands over all that lean, corded muscle, to feel the heat of him, those strong fingers closing over my hips or cupping a breast. Those kisses—if he kissed like that, what would the rest be like?
And now Finn and I had almost gotten hurt.
Ford was learning to fight and working nights at the taproom.
It didn’t take a genius to put it all together—especially considering the argument I’d overheard between Avery and West, ending with Avery saying, “I can hate this and still agree it’s a good plan. But I don’t like it.”
“Neither do I, Ave,” West had said. “But Ford wants to finish it, and this is the best way.”
I hoped they were right. I didn’t like the idea of it either. Even knowing there must be some kind of guard or something—Hawk’s guys or West’s deputies or somebody—keeping an eye out to make sure Ford didn’t get hurt the next time this guy went after him.
More than just disliking Ford using himself as bait, I didn’t like him shutting me out. We’d had an agreement in the taproom that this—that we—were going to happen. He didn’t get to back out now.
I’d run these thoughts through my mind in dizzying circles for five days, and now I was done.
Enough was enough. Before I dozed off, I set my alarm for 1:35 a.m., a few minutes before the time Ford usually got home when he closed the taproom.
I’d planned to catch him in the hall, but I must have fallen back to sleep after I hit snooze.
I jolted awake to the sound of knuckles rapping lightly on my door.
I opened the door, rubbing at my eyes. Ford stood there, his brows drawn together.
“Were you asleep? I saw the light under your door and thought you were up.”
“I was,” I said, shaking my head, trying to wake myself up enough to remember what I’d planned to say to him. “Come in.”
I closed the door behind him and turned, absorbing the sight of him. Exhaustion was all over him in the slump of his shoulders, the dark shadows under his eyes.
“Are you getting any sleep?” I asked.
“Enough,” he said.
“Doesn’t look like it.” I heard the rudeness in my tone, but couldn’t dial it back. He shouldn’t be punishing himself, but that was what this felt like. “You need tea,” I said. “Sit.” I tilted my head toward the armchair and ottoman in the little sitting area of my room.
“I don’t want tea,” he grumbled.
“You will once I brew it,” I said.
The water boiled as we stood there in silence. The electric kettle was fast, but not so fast that the quiet didn’t start to get awkward. I dunked the tea bag into the hot water, added some honey, and handed it to Ford.
“Give it a minute to steep,” I said. “I love these little coffee and tea stations Savannah put in all the rooms.”
“Except mine,” Ford said, finally sitting in the armchair.
I filled another teacup with hot water and dunked my own bag of tea, taking it to sit on the love seat catty-corner to the armchair Ford occupied. “You don’t have one? Why not?”
He raised an eyebrow. “Not everyone wants me here.”
“That doesn’t seem like Savannah, though. She’s always so thoughtful.”
“Savannah is loyal to Griffen and now Finn,” Ford said slowly. “And while they seem to have forgiven me for the past, not everyone is as kindhearted as my brothers. Savannah knows who I am, what I’ve done, and she knows how to hold a grudge.”
“I think it’s time you give me all the gory details you mentioned the other day,” I said, “because I don’t get it.”