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Marry her, give her a couple of cute blue-eyed babies or something. Or three or four, maybe. Maybe two with blue eyes and two with gray eyes? That would be interesting. And maybe her strawberry-blond hair on a couple, and medium brown on the other two and…
Making those babies would be damned fun, too. Seeing her pregnant someday.
He hadn’t ever thought about permanent before. But if he ever was, he thought he’d want it to be with her. She had him after all. Completely.
He didn’t want some other guy doing that with her. He didn’t.
Jarrod didn’t want some other guy swooping in and taking her away from him.
When this guarding the queen gig was over, they were going to have a serious talk. About the future.
And what they both wanted. Then they’d just have to take it from there. Nice and slow—but together. He wrapped his fingers around her wrist. Next to the watch that she constantly fiddled with.
And led her inside.
53
They were just going to go through the house and make note of anything that could be worth money. They were going to poke into every corner of the estate. Everything that hadn’t been covered by the original warrants before.
Those warrants had been far more limited in scope than they should have been back then. No one had missed that. It was one reason Powell had gotten the idea that she should just buy the property. Now she owned every inch of it, and all of the contents. No one could stop them from doing what they wanted now.
Victor Scott’s half sister had been contacted months ago, once his estate was technically settled. She wanted nothing out of the house. She wanted to deny any connection to the Scotts of Finley Creek at all. Same for her teenage daughter. Just the money from the sale of the property itself, and a blanket amount Powell had negotiated for all of the contents.
Powell led the way into the first room. The rest of them followed, like a line of baby ducks. Into a ridiculously large parlor with thirty foot ceilings and white marble floors.
“It’s a music room. Like ours, only much bigger. Our house is like two-thirds this size. Ours is the smallest in the division, I think. I so did not expect a music room from an evil villain dude. I wonder if it even got used?” Hope was the first one to cross the room. No surprise—nothing stopped that girl. Full speed ahead. And so curious about everything. “This is…a...oh.”
A look crossed her face. One of pain. “Hope, you okay?”
“Yeah. It’s just…we had one of these once. Just like it. I think, I’ve only seen pictures.” She shrugged, then looked at Zoey. “My grandfather Iagan, he bought it for his wife, Francisca. She loved to play. That’s really what I remember about her most. Her playing.”
Hope reached out, with the hand not in a cast, and played something. Easily. Skillfully. “I never got to play her piano for real, though. My sisters all did—but I didn’t.”
“What happened to it?” Murdoch asked, patting her on the shoulder. “Francisca was the one who looked like Zo, wasn’t she? We found her portrait.”
“I’d like a copy of that. For…Heather. They were really close. Most of our photo albums got lost. Zoey looks just like her. A little creepy, no offense. Heather does, too, mostly. But not exactly like her, not like Zoey does. Heather’s cheekbones are way different—Heather has Great-Grandma Elspeth’s cheekbones. Well, my great, Zoey’s great-great. A lot of us resemble Francisca, just not as much as Zoey and Heather do. Francisca’s genes seem to dominate in about a third of us. Another third look more like her son, my dad. And the rest of us look like dark-haired, dark-eyed versions of Francisca’s husband, Iagan. Crispin and I…we really look like my dad the most. Pen, too, I guess, right?”
“Our Oakley,” Murdoch said. It wasn’t a question. “She looks a great deal like Heather and Zo. It’s hard for me to miss.”
Hope nodded. Haldyn hurt for them all.
“What happened to the p-p-piano?” Shelby asked softly. She reached out her own hand. Ran graceful fingers over the keys. “It’s a b-b-beautiful piano.”
“Worth a good hundred grand,” Hope said bluntly. “I don’t know what happened to ours. My dad taught the twins—Joy and Heather, I mean.”
Hope just kept chattering away, like she always did. She talked almost as much as she bounced. Sometimes Haldyn suspected Hope’s brain just moved to fast for her to stop talking. “My dad taught Angela, my Bonnie-Mom, Marcia, Heather, Joy, Eden, and Samia how to play on it. He was a gifted pianist. Do you play?”
Zoey nodded. “Pen and I both do, so do Luc and Paige and Ariella. Shelby taught Pen for me when she was younger. Nikkie Jean is teaching their kids, too.”
“Cool. He’d have liked to know that.”
“Where did you learn?” Haldyn asked. It was obvious Hope knew how. She wanted to hug the younger woman, but didn’t. There was so much pain in Hope’s eyes now.
“The rest of us learned on this old upright Bonnie-Mom bought us a year or so later. Heather taught us all on that. Mom bought it for Heather mostly. Heather really needed to play again. Heather still does. You should listen to her play sometime, guys. I have never heard anyone play like Heather does. Or seen anyone dance like she does either. Ever. She was supposed to go to Juilliard and everything. But our parents died a month before my dad was going to take her to the audition.”
Hope ran her fingers over the keys again. She wasn’t seeing that piano, but another. Haldyn wasn’t stupid. The hurt on Hope’s face—it had her breath catching.
“I had to have another heart surgery when I was five—and Angela was sick by then. Then we lost Angela and her girls moved in with us, too, and four months later, we got Crispin when she was like two or three days old. She was turning blue. Heather and Mom rushed her to the hospital forty miles away. Mom had to talk Heather through doing CPR on the drive to the hospital. Heather breathed for Crispin almost that entire time. Heather was really struggling after that. She was fifteen.”
