I wanted the world to be just the two of us until she was right there with me feeling everything I was feeling.
That wasn’t going to happen. Not anytime soon.
We ate in silence until Hope said, “Are you okay about seeing Vanessa?”
I looked up sharply, “Vanessa? Sure. Are you? Okay?”
“I guess. It was a little weird. She’s mean, but she’s never paid much attention to me.”
“You’re a threat.”
“What?” Hope looked confused.
I clarified, “She thinks you’re a threat. The hair, the new clothes. You want to be seen and she sees you. What she sees is a threat.”
Hope tilted her head to the side as if examining this new idea. “Am I a threat?”
“No,” I said, without thinking.
Her face fell. “Oh.”
I realized my mistake. “To say you’re a threat to Vanessa implies that she has a piece on the board. She doesn’t. She has no position to threaten. She’s nothing.”
“What?” Hope still looked confused. She’d lived her whole life in the shadow of her uncle Edgar, and even Prentice and Ford. Doing their bidding and letting them push her aside. She didn’t realize she’d always been important. Now, with them out of the way, everyone else would realize it too.
“Hope, you are so far above Vanessa she doesn’t even factor. She’s been sitting around wasting her life, probably alienating half the town while living off alimony from Ford. She doesn’t have any skills and she probably doesn’t have any real friends. Now she’s running out of money, and the best she can do is come here in some halfhearted attempt to seduce some cash out of me. She’s nothing like you. You’re so far out of her league she shouldn’t be able to see you.”
“She didn’t like that I was wearing this ring,” Hope commented, staring down at her hand where the Sawyer ruby burned among fiery diamonds.
“Of course, she didn’t. Even back then she was never going to get that ring. It didn’t even occur to me to give it to her, to be honest. Obviously, it didn’t occur to Ford either.”
“Prentice used her. To punish you and keep Ford on a leash,” Hope said, taking a sip of her iced tea, her eyes sad.
“I guess he did. She didn’t seem to mind.”
Hope looked down at her finger again, turning her hand so the ring caught the light. “Not much has changed. At least I got a nice ring out of it.”
A direct stab to my heart. “That’s not what this is,” I protested. “That’s not what you are. Prentice isn’t using you to control me.”
“No, he isn’t, is he? He used the town to control you. I don’t know why I’m even here.”
The bitch of it was I didn’t know why she was here either. It still didn’t make sense. Prentice didn’t need Hope to get me to stay. Starving the town of funds was enough to do that. In fact, he’d used the town against Hope as much as me.
Edgar must have had something on Prentice, some way to strong-arm him into putting Hope in place as my wife. But if so, why did the prenup leave her with nothing at the end of our marriage? Why put a time limit on it at all?
I didn’t know the answers, and I was starting not to care.
It didn’t matter why Hope was here, I was just glad that she was.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Griffen
It looked like my siblings were keeping their distance until the last possible moment. Hope and I ate dinner alone—again—in the formal dining room. It should have been romantic. The great iron chandeliers were working, but Savannah had found candelabras somewhere and we dined by candlelight, sitting diagonally, me at the head of the table and Hope just to my right.
Hope was reserved. Distant. I couldn’t tell if she was shy, or worried, or pissed off at me and not sure how to tell me. She could have just been exhausted. We’d spent the rest of the afternoon and early evening plowing our way through my father’s inbox. Reaching out to business connections on the phone and by email, setting up meetings, and just trying to get a picture of the modern version of Sawyer Enterprises.
When I’d been involved in the company it had been made up of a collection of traditional industries. Sawyer Enterprises had owned a logging company, several quarries, furniture manufacturing, and commercial real estate all over the Southeast. Back then, the Inn at Sawyers Bend had been our only investment in the hospitality industry, and more about legacy than profit.
Prentice had sold off the quarries, the manufacturing, and the logging company. These days, Sawyer Enterprises was made up of the Inn at Sawyers Bend, Quinn’s guide company, Avery’s brewery, and all the commercial real estate we owned in Sawyer’s Bend and across the Southeast.
Beyond those interests, Prentice had invested the profits from logging, manufacturing, and the quarries into investments in various companies. Overall, it was a smart move. We were far more diversified than we’d been in the past, better able to weather changes in the markets. If one of our interests was down, another would be up, and at the core, the Sawyers maintained an iron grip on the town Alexander Sawyer had founded over two centuries before.