Total pages in book: 108
Estimated words: 100853 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 504(@200wpm)___ 403(@250wpm)___ 336(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 100853 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 504(@200wpm)___ 403(@250wpm)___ 336(@300wpm)
The man who’d shoved me under the Jeep, taking on a stranger with a gun to keep me safe, was not a murderer. Neither was the man whose first response had been “I’m leaving.”
Who the hell would want to leave Heartstone Manor? He had a beautiful home in a town where he belonged, with a family who loved him, and he was willing to leave it all behind to keep that family safe. This was not a man who’d shot his own father in cold blood.
I rubbed the heel of my palm against my chest, not liking the hollow feeling I got at the idea of Ford packing his bags and driving away. It shouldn’t matter. We had one kiss and a conversation between us. Barely anything. Whether he stayed or left was nothing to me.
Right?
I was a liar.
I pulled my sleeve over the cleaned and treated scrape and paced down the hall toward the stairs. Ford and I, in some ways, couldn’t be more different. He was a Sawyer, with everything that came with being the son of a billionaire, who’d grown up in a castle. I was a normal girl from a normal family, raised by a single mom. I’d worked for a living since high school.
And yet, we were both kind of a mess. Ford was caught in limbo, tending bar for his sister instead of running a multinational corporation. And me—I was here in Sawyers Bend on a wild goose chase, for the first time in a long time feeling at home and without any idea what came next.
Despite all the reasons I should keep my distance from Ford Sawyer, I didn’t want him to leave.
I jogged down the stairs to the lower level, hoping to find the kids at the table in the kitchen. Instead, I found them in the hall, huddled around the open door to the gym.
I didn’t bother with the gym often. I was more into yoga, which I did in my room, and long walks in the woods when I had time. The gym had a few treadmills, plenty of free weights, ancient medicine balls, and a section of floor covered with mats that I knew Hawk, Griffen, and the rest of Hawk’s team used for training—though I’d never been quite sure what that meant.
I came up behind the kids, putting one hand on Nicky’s shoulder and one hand on August’s, standing beside Thatcher, who, at fourteen, was taller than me.
“What are we looking at?” I whispered.
Finn came up behind me and said, “Tea is on the table.” Then, glancing in the room, he grinned. “Griffen talked Ford into staying put. He’s teaching Ford what he should have done with that guy in the parking lot.”
“Oh?” That was all I got out.
Griffen and Ford strode into view, both of them stripped to the waist, and my mouth went dry. Maybe I should have been looking at Griffen. He was ripped, his golden skin tanned, muscles popping, reminding me of an action star from a movie.
Ford, in contrast, was still a little skinny from prison, his muscles rangy and his skin pale. But there was something elemental about him, an energy that vibrated under his skin. He wasn’t there to play around. To him, this was life and death.
Griffen launched himself at Ford, and Ford went down hard, landing on his back with an audible oomph and the sharp smack of skin to mat. I couldn’t even see what Griffen was doing; he moved so fast. A heartbeat later, Griffen was on his back, his arm around Ford’s neck. Ford pounded his fist on the mat to indicate he’d given up.
“Fuck, that was quick,” Finn said from behind me.
“I know,” Thatcher agreed, breathless.
“How the hell did you do that?” Ford asked, rolling to his knees and sucking in a breath.
“Like this.” Griffen was on his feet, reaching out a hand for Ford. He pulled Ford up and broke down, step by step, what he’d done.
I hadn’t realized how complicated the choreography of fighting could be as Griffen prompted Ford to step forward with his left foot, turning his hips open and aligning his shoulders, explaining where the power came from as he lunged and took Ford to the ground again. I expected Ford to protest, but he listened intently, rolled to his feet, and jumped at Griffen. His movements were clumsier and less efficient. Griffen let Ford take him to the ground, but once they hit the mat, he had Ford in an armlock again in seconds. They got back to their feet, Griffen explained the next sequence of moves, and they tried again.
I could have stood in that doorway for hours. Every move Ford made convinced me further that he wasn’t the man I’d thought he was. I’d known his family didn’t think he’d killed Prentice, but he’d spent a year in prison, and since he’d been living in the Manor, he’d been withdrawn. It had been easy to fill in the gaps of silence with assumptions—he was a killer, he was resentful, he was bitter. But this man, doggedly getting to his feet again and again, taking the punishment inherent in learning to fight so he could keep the rest of us safe—not only wasn’t the man I thought he was, I suspected he wasn’t the man he thought he was. This man wanted to do right.