Wide arched doorways opened on either side of the entry hall, one leading into the gallery, the other into the green drawing room. The drawing room was decorated in white and green, with hand-painted silk wallpaper and light, airy furnishings. The original mistress of Heartstone Manor had loved her gardens and it showed in her formal receiving room.
We’d have to figure out how to clean the walls without damaging the delicate vines and flowers some long-ago artist had painted for Lady Estelle Ophelia Sawyer. Darcy—Finn, Parker, Quinn, and Brax’s mother—had loved this room. She’d called it the garden room, retreating to its bright space in the gray of winter and the heat of summer both. Her death had been a vicious wound to the family she’d dreamed of making in Heartstone. I doubted anyone had used this room since.
I was almost afraid to look in the gallery. Once, it had been home to the crème de la crème of the Sawyer art collection. Other pieces were placed throughout the house, but the best, most prized pieces had been here. I was expecting it, shouldn’t have been shocked at the sight, but I was. The walls were bare, the pedestals empty.
“Do I even want to ask what happened to the paintings? The sculptures?” Griffen should have been angry. Millions in art was missing. He sounded more resigned than anything.
“They were here the last time I was in the house,” I said. The surfaces of the pedestals were covered in a layer of dust. Whatever had happened with the sculptures, it hadn’t been recent.
“You can ask Harvey,” I murmured. “We’d better check out the rest.”
The thought of facing almost forty thousand square feet of similar neglect was daunting enough to have me backing up to the front door. Realizing what I was doing, I stopped.
“We don’t need to see the whole house right now,” I said, pulling my notebook from where I’d stashed it. “Let’s check the kitchens, dining room, and the bedrooms. We’ll need food, and somewhere to sleep. We can tackle the rest later.”
“Or we could just let it go. Let it fall to dust and forget the Sawyers were ever here.”
The bleak misery in his voice dragged me from the list on my notepad. His eyes were cold, resentful as he scanned the entryway of his family home, his shoulders hunched forward as if braced for whatever was coming at him next.
“Don’t even think about it,” I said before I could stop myself.
“What?” He jerked a shoulder in a shrug. “It’s my house, isn’t it?”
“No, it isn’t. It belongs to your children, and their children. It belongs to history and to this town.”
“I don’t have any children.” Griffen glared at me in challenge. I wasn’t touching that one.
“Not the point,” I muttered. Drawing in a deep breath, I forged ahead. “I didn’t marry you and agree to leave my life behind so I could live in a dusty mess of a house, Griffen Sawyer. And if you think Savannah will agree to work here and leave it like this, you don’t know her very well.”
“I don’t know her at all.”
That stopped me in my tracks, just as I was gearing up to tell him what a spoiled ass he was. Last night’s rant, part two.
He didn’t know Savannah. Not really. He didn’t know any of us. He’d been gone fifteen years, had been living a life far away from Sawyers Bend, and now he’d been yanked back and had this whole disaster shoved in his lap. Did he look in the green drawing room and see his long-lost mother? The deeply-mourned Darcy? Did the empty gallery bring back his father with his lies and manipulations?
Years ago, he and Ford had run through these halls, closer than most brothers, the white knights who took care of their siblings. Until Ford had stabbed him in the back, stealing his love and his fortune, leaving him homeless and alone.
Not without a little help from you, my conscience reminded me.
Guilt washed away my righteous indignation. Where did I get off calling Griffen spoiled? Maybe he had been, way back then. Then he’d lost everything, been sent from the only home he’d known. And I had been the cause of it all. Because I couldn’t keep my stupid, jealous heart under control. Because I couldn’t keep my mouth shut.
Where did I get off telling him what to do, how he should feel? I’d made this mess as much as Ford or Prentice.
This house was shrouded in the past, haunted by the ghosts of those we’d lost. Griffen and I were the only ones who could drive them off. Who could make this place into something better. Into a home. And it was the last job either of us wanted.
Griffen glared at me, hands shoved in his pockets, his gorgeous face in a sulk that should have been unappealing. Except that pouty lower lip, those angry green eyes. Inwardly, I sighed. I was not equipped to handle a man like Griffen. Not when I couldn’t stop ogling his mouth.