Vanessa was a viper. I hadn’t kept up with my family in the past decade and a half. I did know Ford had divorced her but not without her soaking him for a fortune in alimony.
“What makes you think it was Hope who spilled the beans?” Alice asked.
“She admitted it.” I’d never forget the guilt on her face. Guilt and apology. “I asked my father how he knew, and he pointed at Hope.”
“But surely, he must have known before she told her uncle,” Evers added. “The whole thing with the business deal, Vanessa marrying your brother. That didn’t all come from a sixteen-year-old’s gossip. It’s too orchestrated.”
“I looked into your father,” Cooper said. “He was not a man who’d miss someone fucking with his business. You were what? Twenty-two? Ford was twenty? You’re sharp, but I doubt you were clever enough to hide what you were up to. Especially if your brother was undermining you the whole time.”
Fuck. My brain was definitely going to break. They were right. Hope had been so easy to blame. So much guilt on her face as she’d wept, begging Prentice to reconsider.
I’d been so angry. So fucking angry. And terrified. All I’d known was my family.
I’d lived a life of luxury, walked right into my job with Sawyer Enterprises. I had no idea how to survive on my own, how to make my way in the world as myself, separate from the Sawyers.
I’d walked down the endless drive from Heartstone Manor to the main road shaking with fear and rage. Acting on instinct and desperation, I’d bummed a ride to the nearest army recruitment center and signed up.
It had been sheer luck that I’d taken to the army, had found Cooper and then Sinclair Security. By the time I was settled enough to think about what happened, looking back felt like a waste of time.
I poured more whiskey into my glass and drank, knowing I was getting drunk and not caring. Of all the places in the world, this one was safe. These people were the only family I’d known since I’d been cast from home, and they were better than anyone I’d left behind.
Except for Hope.
Fuck. Hope. All these years she’d carried so much guilt. And I had let her. I’d let her carry it alone. I’d left, hefting my anger and bitterness like luggage I carried through the years and never thought about what I’d left behind. Never thought about Hope, alone, with only Edgar to look out for her.
I stared into the dregs of my whiskey, trying to figure out what to do next. Apologize? Ask her to forgive me? And what about the rest of them?
I glanced up to see Cooper giving me an assessing look, seeming to understand that I’d had enough for now.
“Just what I love the most,” he said. “A drunk client who needs our help. Don’t think you’re getting a break just because you’re family.” He rubbed his hands together and snagged a folder I hadn’t noticed from the coffee table.
“Don’t get too excited about hosing me,” I said, tipsy but not yet drunk. “I’m taking Hawk. I need a groundskeeper and on-site security coordinator.”
“Fuck. He’ll be all over that. Thousands of acres of mountains to get lost in, plus formal gardens. You probably have a fucking greenhouse, too,” Evers grumbled.
“Yes, we do,” I said with a smug grin. Fucking house should be good for something.
“It’ll be good for him,” Knox added in a low voice.
It would, which was why the Sinclairs might bitch, but they wouldn’t mind if Hawk came back to Sawyers Bend with me. Hawk had been a Ranger with Evers and me, then gone black ops when we’d gotten out. No one knew what had happened, but he’d come to us five years before, a changed man.
Where he’d always been quiet, now he rarely spoke. Quick to anger, he had trouble sleeping, spending hours with his hands in the dirt to soothe whatever ate at him.
He knew more about plants than anyone I’d ever met. What he didn’t know, he’d learn. He might not be the most qualified for the groundskeeper position, but when I added in his other skills, he was the only man for the job.
We dug into the security plans, me adding to the layout of the property Cooper and his brothers had pulled together since my phone call, tweaking here and there. If Harvey didn’t approve the initial budget I’d add to it out of my own funds. I wasn’t installing Hope in Heartstone Manor unless I could assure her safety.
Someone called for pizza. Alice refilled my whiskey glass, winking and cracking a joke about padding the invoice. For the first time in years, I felt ever-so-slightly on the outside. The Sinclair brothers were almost identical. Cooper and Knox were more heavily muscled than Evers. Evers shared their other brother Axel’s ice-blue eyes while Cooper and Knox’s were so dark-brown they were almost black. Those minor differences aside, they almost could have been triplets, and they worked together with the ease of years as partners as well as a lifetime as siblings.