Sage
“It’s you.” It was hard to temper the accusation in my own voice as I stared at Rhodes Collins. The Sasquatch from last October, who had been in Hattie’s hospital room.
He looked even bigger right now than I remembered standing in front of this house. He was ridiculously tall, overwhelmingly muscled, with a sharp jaw and a mouth that didn’t tip toward friendly.
“Yep. It’s me.” He crossed his arms. “What areyoudoing here?” His gaze ranged over me, probably clocking that my red hair was out of control again, barely restrained by a bandana, and my sloppy t-shirt. Maybe he saw that I was wearing my rainboots, but the fields still were pretty wet this time of year. “Did Wade send you out here?”
My nose wrinkled in confusion. “My brother? No.” I jerked a thumb toward the back of the property. “There’s a nice hike to a waterfall behind this house. On my way back, I heard some construction noise, and it’s been empty for so long that I thought I’d check it out,” I admitted. In fact, my brother had told me nothing about Rhodes being in town.
I’d spotted Holt Construction vests, which meant I had another brother who was going to get a talking to. Apparently, even East couldn’t bother to give me a heads-up either.
Just as I was about to open my mouth with a question, he asked, “You hike alone often?” He crossed his arms over his chest. “Do your brothers know that?”
Rolling my eyes at him in exasperation, I bit back the words I wanted to throw at him. The last thing I wanted to hear was a lecture about all the reasons I shouldn’t be out by myself. Especially from a man. My brothers did actually know, and we fought about it endlessly. “Yes, they know. I’m not an idiot.”
“It’s not smart.” His mouth had thinned into a tight line. “You know, I moved here for some peace and quiet. Not a headache.” Rhodes shot me a disgruntled look that clearly said he wasn’t happy to see me, but then again, I wasn’t thrilled to see him either. His eyes squinted at me for a second. “You’ve got the plant store,” he finally said as if he was finally slotting me into the Holt sibling order, even though he had been here a few times in recent months since the attack on Hattie in the fall.
“Wild Bloom,” I confirmed for him, because even if he was about to destroy my favorite estate in the county, I wasn’t missing a branding opportunity. “Main Street. Across from Chapter & Crumb. That’s Lila’s store,” I added, because I’d go ahead and give my bestie a plug too. “She makes awesome pastries.”
“Wade sure has a lot of family,” he said, making it sound dubious whether it was a good thing or not.
“That’s true. There are a lot of us.” Counting the whole group of Holt siblings, there were six of us, so I could see why what was normal to us would seem overwhelming to someone else. “Whyare you here? Isn’t your whole squad or whatever in Seattle?” I peered around, trying to make sense of what was going on.
Rhodes ran Redhawk Security, a high-end bodyguard company that did overseas work. My brother Wade and he were friends from their time in the military. I knew that much, at least. Wade had been in special operations with the Army and later joined the Rangers, but he’d been tight-lipped about how he knew Rhodes. All I really knew was that when Wade needed something he couldn’t quite handle on his own, he called Rhodes. If he needed extra security or intelligence that he couldn’t get elsewhere, Rhodes was the answer.
“I’m taking a leave of absence. Personal.” He crossed his arms, and I might feel intimidated by the way his muscles bulged, but if there was one thing I knew deep in my bones about him, it was that this man was firmly rooted in the safe zone.
That still didn’t explain the Castleton estate or all the construction, and it didn’t really explain why he was in Wildwood Meadows. His team had come in November to stay in my brother Kipp’s cabins for a work retreat, and they’d all traipsed around the woods for a week doing mountain stuff. Rhodes hadn’t been part of that group, not that I was keeping track.
I hesitantly took a step back towards my van, then paused, unable to help it. “Do you even know anything about this property?” I huffed a breath out, thinking about what someone could just tear up if they wanted. The entire place was a veritable wonderland of foliage. “There’s stuff planted here that isn’t planted anywhere else. The greenhouses were built with cylinder glass in the panes around the doors. I hope you’re going to save those.”
His eyes narrowed slightly. “Do you think that I would buy something without researching it first? I’m still having them look over the back structure to see if it can be saved. Some of the panels are structurally compromised.”
He seemed the opposite of the spontaneous type, but he did remind me of a bull in a china shop.
“You can’t just tear it down.” A note of desperation threaded through me at the thought of the structures coming down. I’d always hoped someone would someday fix them andusethem. They had such promise.
His gaze dropped to the space between us, then lifted again. I realized, with a flicker of annoyance, that even standing this close, I barely reached the center of his chest. Why was he so tall?
“Calm down. I haven’t made decisions,” he said finally. “I’m listening to what everyone has to say about the options. Not that it is any ofyourbusiness.”
It wasn’t my place to say anything, but I still added, “If you tear those down,” I continued, pointing toward the glass peaks visible over the hedges, “I will haunt you. I will show up in your dreams and lecture you about soil composition until you beg for mercy. It’d be super boring. You’d hate it.”
Silence stretched between us, broken only by the distant whine of a saw starting up somewhere behind the house. “You’re very serious about a property you don’t own,” he said.
“I’m always serious about plants,” I replied. “People, not so much.”
Something in his expression shifted, subtle enough that I might have imagined it. His eyes wandered past me toward the trees that rose on the edges of the estate, then back to my face.
His mouth twitched again, not in amusement. “I’m making the property safe. You’ll find out anyway, and I’m guessing you won’t leave it alone. I have a daughter. She can’t be playing around with things going to shit. We moved here for her to have a normal life.” He straightened up even taller.
“You have a daughter,” I repeated, as if I were experiencing an absolute brain malfunction thinking about Rhodes Collins with a kid.
Almost like he had called her, a little girl appeared in the doorway behind him, skidding to a stop. She was about six years old, with brown curls flying around her head. In one hand, she held the remnants of what looked like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, which she was busy finishing with absolute relish. “Daddy, I made a sandwich. It’s yummy, you want one?”
There was peanut butter on one cheek, but her eyes twinkled with curiosity, and I couldn’t help the smile that tugged on my mouth. “Hi.” She lifted her hand in an answering wave. “That looks good.”
Rhodes looked back at her, his whole body softening as if he was taking on another persona. “This is my daughter, Opal,” he said, giving a little chuckle as she crammed the last of the sandwich in her mouth. “Come and meet Sage. She’s Wade’s sister. You met him earlier.”
