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 drink 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.”