If I’d been content to remain under his roof I would have had more disposable income. Apartments on Main Street didn’t come cheap, and I’d paid dearly for that small taste of freedom. Too dearly to have a nest egg I could toss at Griffen to make up for all we’d spent. I tried to shrug it off. He was the one who’d handed Alice his card and told her I needed everything.
I tried not to dwell on it as we drove back to Sinclair Security. Alice had hidden the receipts, so unless Griffen told me, I had no idea what we’d spent. Alice pulled into the garage, parking next to Griffen’s Maserati.
Opening the back passenger door of his car, she said, “Let’s put everything in here, that way you don’t have to haul it upstairs and then back down again. Are you staying another night, or do you have to get home?” Shaking her head, she added, “It feels so weird to think of Griffen’s home not being here. You’re going to visit, right?”
“I’d like to,” I said honestly. “But you might have to come to Sawyer’s Bend for a while. Did he tell you about the will? We can’t be away from the house often.”
“Then we’ll visit,” Alice said. “I want to come stay in your castle. Summer stayed at the Inn with Evers once and said it was amazing.”
We talked on the ride up to Cooper and Alice’s floor—about Savannah and the massive task she had ahead of her, about the Manor and the state Prentice had left it in. About what it would be like sharing the place with Griffen’s estranged siblings.
I let myself get distracted by the conversation, almost forgetting what we’d been doing all day. I was tired and starving despite the coffee and cookie we’d grabbed at the mall a few hours before. And somehow, between my mini-freakout in the lingerie shop and the comfortable conversation with Lily and Alice, I forgot about my makeover.
We walked in to a rush of sound, two small bodies hightailing it across the foyer to barrel into Lily and Alice. Lily’s little boy looked nothing like her with his platinum hair and blue eyes, but he threw his arms around her waist and babbled up at her about a movie or a video game, such love in his eyes I had no doubt they belonged together.
Alice hefted her little girl into her arms, the toddler almost too big for her to carry. The little girl had dark hair and ice-blue eyes in a delicate face. She nestled her head into Alice’s shoulder, murmuring something in a lightly accented voice.
The guys weren’t far behind. I caught sight of three tall men, almost identical with their dark hair and broad shoulders. The one with ice-blue eyes just like the little girl’s made his way to Alice, scooping the girl from her arms and murmuring something in her ear that made her laugh.
I started to say hello when a hand closed around mine, dragging me through the foyer to a hallway off to the side.
Griffen.
“You aren’t even going to introduce us?” a laughing male voice called after us. Griffen didn’t bother to respond.
In the quiet of the hall, he took my hands in his, his eyes warm with something I couldn’t read. At least he didn’t look shocked or repulsed. That was something.
“Do you…? Do you like it?” I couldn’t help asking. “Alice thought I could use a haircut and she—the stylist—showed me some things with makeup and—”
“I want to say you look beautiful, but that would imply you weren’t already beautiful. And you were. You are. You’ve always been beautiful, you were just good at hiding it. Or maybe not seeing it. So, the real question is, do you like it?”
I didn’t know what to say. Tears welled in my eyes at the steadfast assertion in his voice, as if he had no doubt that beauty had always been a part of me. As if he’d always known.
I hadn’t known. I don’t think anybody knew. And even with the hair and the makeup, I wouldn’t call myself beautiful. Pretty. I could settle for pretty.
I wasn’t going to say any of that. Wasn’t going to tell Griffen he was wrong if he thought I was beautiful.
A tear welled over my lid and slid down my cheek. Griffen brushed it away with the ball of his thumb. “You see it, don’t you?”
I didn’t know what he was talking about, but I did know the answer. “I like it. I don’t know why I never did this before.”
I did know. We both knew. But I didn’t want to talk about Uncle Edgar and his horrible taste in clothes and his belief that a woman could be smart or pretty but not both. He was wrong, and I knew enough intelligent, beautiful women that I didn’t need Griffen to tell me so.