Total pages in book: 85
Estimated words: 82077 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 410(@200wpm)___ 328(@250wpm)___ 274(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 82077 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 410(@200wpm)___ 328(@250wpm)___ 274(@300wpm)
I am not a fan of change, and no one who knows me is remotely surprised by this news. Having friends to lean on helps me navigate all things I have no control of. They are a blessing as is my growly, sometimes grouchy, husband
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
HE SAID, HE SAID VOLUME 4
Hello all, Jory Harcourt here. Volume 4 of the newsletters were written during 2022 when things were getting better, when there became a new normal, and most importantly, for me personally, when my children left home and spread their wings. One went all the way to California, but the other was, thankfully, closer.
I am not a fan of change, and no one who knows me is remotely surprised by this news. Having friends to lean on helps me navigate all things I have no control of. They are a blessing as is my growly, sometimes grouchy, husband.
JANUARY 2022
Hello, all, welcome to a new year and my first column of 2022 of He Said, he said. I’m hoping that this one will be better than the previous two. I’m cautiously optimistic.
Now, back in early November, I got lots of questions about Hannah and an event that was held downtown. I would have talked about it earlier, but only now was I given permission to discuss the situation. Basically, my daughter got caught up in the attempted kidnapping of her friend David Chan. It was all very hush-hush, even with all the spent rounds of ammunition that had to be cleaned up. Of course Hannah was in the middle of the melee, which, in turn, put George, her bodyguard, right there along with her. In the end, George handled the situation just as he was supposed to, saving my child and also young Mr. Chan.
“You know,” I said softly to Aaron Sutter when he was at my house for Christmas Eve, “I really think that George deserves a raise.”
“Believe me when I tell you that George Hunt is being lavishly compensated for his role as the shadow of a trouble magnet.”
I chuckled. “It’s funny, but did you know that’s what Dane used to call me?”
“You’re kidding, right?” he asked drolly.
“No,” I assured him.
He just shook his head like I was insane.
It was nice to have family and friends over for Christmas Eve, and that night turned out to be the first of many visits from David Chan. Apparently, after he was told what Hannah did for him, how she was not about to let him be taken and how she insisted George save him—as though George Hunt allowed people to be kidnapped when he was on duty—had cemented, in his mind, how special she was. Other women had, he told me, expressed their feelings for him, declared their love, but Hannah… Hannah had shown him. She had let her actions do the talking for her, and David, for one, was utterly gobsmacked.
“You think I’m an idiot,” he said out of the blue as we stood together on the front porch, his driver double-parked on the street, in a holding position, because Hannah had asked David to wait a second before he left. “You think I’m wasting my time because your daughter is madly in love with her boyfriend.”
I turned to look at him. “I don’t think you’re an idiot. There’s nothing wrong with hanging around hoping something will change.”
He nodded. “I know you and Mr. Kage like him. I know he’s basically part of the family, but you don’t understand, she’s already bored with him.”
I didn’t say anything to the worldly twenty-year-old. It wasn’t my place.
“You’ll see, sir,” he said with a grin as Hannah stepped out onto the porch. “I’m going to be the one you call son.”
He was so full of himself that in that moment I wanted Hannah to just decimate him with a word, but that was not in the spirit of the season, nor was it particularly charitable. Just because he seemed like the spoiled rich kid in every Hallmark Christmas movie I’d watched so far, didn’t mean he actually was. I just couldn’t get the idea out of my head that Hannah was something he wanted that had been, thus far, out of his reach. More a trophy than a person.
I watched as Hannah moved to the top step and waited for him. She passed him a small box, and he asked if he could open it. She nodded quickly, so he opened the lid and I saw the utter amazement on his face. Thinking she’d spent some of her Aaron Sutter money on him, I was surprised when he pulled a compass out of the box that looked like it was a hundred years old. And though that didn’t automatically mean it wasn’t worth a million dollars, I suspected that he was staring at her with the stunned expression for an altogether different reason.
“Oh, Hannah,” she said, doing, I suspected, a version of his voice, even though he didn’t really sound like that. He actually had a husky quality to his voice that was quite pleasing to the ear. “Why do you waste your time at that terrible store?”