Page 140 of The Brothers Hawthorne

There it was—the bob of his opponent’s Adam’s apple. “What emails?” Trowbridge demanded.

Grayson didn’t reply. He glanced pointedly at court number seven. “You’ll have to let me know if the judge still wants to play next week.”

Within the week, said the promise beneath that seemingly innocuous sentence,no one will be willing to risk a connection with you.

Grayson turned to leave.

“He didn’t deserve her!” Trowbridge wasn’t yelling so much as vibrating with fury. “She should have listened to me.”

“On the day of her mother’s funeral?” Grayson didn’t even bother turning back to face the man. “Or years earlier when she said that the two of you would be better as friends? Or maybe more recently, when you set Savannah up to think that in seven short months, she would be in a position to solve her family’s problems?”

Protect them.

“Acacia was never going to let Savannah do that,” Trowbridge snapped.

Grayson still refused to turn around. “Acacia would say yes to you first,” he said quietly. “That was the plan, was it not?”

Trowbridge was incensed now, bordering on apoplectic. “You arrogant, spoiled, cocksure—”

“Brother,” Grayson finished. “The word you’re looking for isbrother.” Now, he looked back. “No one hurts my family.”

Whatever Gigi and Savannah thought of him now, hewouldprotect them.

Trowbridge’s phone buzzed again. He looked down at it this time and paled at the number that flashed across his screen.

“I’ll let you get that,” Grayson said with one last, well-targeted smile. “Something tells me that it just might be critical after all.”

CHAPTER 95

GRAYSON

That night, after they’d made it back to Hawthorne House, Grayson lay in his bed staring up at the ceiling. Tonight was clearly going to be a night when sleep didn’t come easily, if at all. His mind wasn’t racing. He wasn’t tossing or turning. He was just… awake.

Trowbridge was taken care of, in a way that would divert the FBI’s investigation for the foreseeable future. Acacia’s financial woes had been remedied. She now had a very good lawyer. Grayson had checked every item off his Phoenix to-do list.

His Grayson family to-do list.

Do you ever play what-if, Grayson?The question Acacia had asked him came back to Grayson, and for just a moment, he let the answer be yes. If he’d had a more normal childhood, if he’d spent even a few weeks a year with his father, with Acacia and the girls, would it have changed anything?

Changed him?

Bullshit, he could hear Nash saying.You know how to love people just fine.Grayson thought about the ring tucked inside his suitcase. In his mind, he could see the magnificent stone as if he were looking straight at it.

Grappling for a distraction, for something—anything—else to hold on to, Grayson considered a riddle, one he could still hear said by a girl with a honey-rich voice.

What begins a bet? Not that.

As if summoned by some unholy magic, his phone rang on the nightstand where it was charging. Grayson sat up, the sheet falling away from his chest. In his gut and in his mind and in his aching body, he somehow expected the caller to be that girl.

But it wasn’t.

It wasn’t Eve this time, either.

It was Gigi. Grayson stared at her name on the screen, unable to quite bring himself to pick up. Less than a minute later, he received a text. No cat picture this time, just words.

I’m at the gate.

Grayson had no idea what Gigi was doing at Hawthorne House—or how she’d even gotten there. But his sister didn’t give him a chance to ask a single question.