Chapter 12
RHETT
Iam reviewing quarterly numbers at my desk when Sadie's text lands, four words, "We need to talk," and I am in my truck before I finish reading it twice.
No context. No "call me." Just those four words and a period that feels heavier than it should.
I leave the numbers open on the screen and don't look back.
Four words shouldn't be enough to move me this fast. But I've learned this season that Sadie Collins doesn't reach out unless she has to, and if she's reaching out now, whatever's waiting for me at that kitchen table isn't good news.
The drive from the main house to Collins Cellars takes eight minutes if I obey every speed limit on Ranch Road 12. I do not obey them today.
She's waiting on the porch when I pull in, arms crossed, phone in one hand. Her hair is pulled back loose, the way it gets when she's been running her fingers through it too many times in one afternoon.
She doesn't smile when she sees me. That's how I know this is bad.
"You didn't have to drive over," she says.
"You said we need to talk."
"I could've called."
"You didn't."
There's a tightness in her voice that wasn't there yesterday, when we walked her fence line and almost didn't pull back from each other at the creek. Whatever's in that text, it's already got its hands around her throat.
She doesn't argue that. She just turns and walks inside, and I follow her into the kitchen without breaking stride.
She sets her phone on the table and slides it toward me.
"Look at this."
I sit down across from her and scroll through three screenshots.
A formal inquiry, filed with the county, against the land deed underneath Collins Cellars.
Ashford Water Holdings, the same name Sadie mentioned the night she told me about the woman who'd cornered her at the Cork and Spur.
Dated three days before that conversation ever happened.
Sadie leans over the table, close enough that I catch the scent of her shampoo under the coffee, and points at the second screenshot. "Read that part again. The filing number."
I read it. It's near enough to the number on my own inquiry that it can't be an accident.
My stomach drops the way it did the morning I found the cut irrigation line.
I scroll back to the top of the filing, checking the date twice, then a third time, hoping I read it wrong. I didn't. Whoever filed this knew exactly what they were doing, and they didn't wait for Camille to introduce herself before they started.
"This is the same thing," I say.
"What do you mean, the same thing?"
"I mean somebody filed something against my land, too. Around the same time. I haven't told you because I didn't have proof it was connected to anything. Now I do."
Sadie goes still. "You think this is one person. One plan."
"I think it's not a coincidence anymore."
She sits down slow, like her legs stopped trusting themselves. "My family has nothing left to lose, Rhett. If someone's coming after the deed itself?—"
"They're not getting it."
I already have my phone out. She watches me dial, watches my thumb hover over a name she doesn't recognize, and I don't explain who Marcus Whitfield is before I put the call on speaker and set the phone on the table between us.
Her hands are wrapped around her coffee mug like it's the only thing holding her steady. I've seen that same grip on her once before, the day I told her about the sabotage at the fence line.
Something locks into place behind my ribs, hot and controlled, the same feeling I get right before I fix something with my hands instead of my mouth.
He picks up on the second ring.
"Marcus. I need a full legal review on an inquiry filed against Collins Cellars. Ashford Water Holdings. Same outfit that's been circling my land."
"The one from last month?"
"Same one. I want to know who's behind Ashford Water Holdings, not just the name on the letterhead. And I want it fast."
"How fast do you need it?"
"Today. And I want a cease and desist drafted by end of day, addressed to Ashford directly. Anything they file against that deed goes through me first."
There's a pause on the other end, the kind that means he's writing all of this down. "You want your name attached to the filing against the land under Collins Cellars?"
"I want my name attached to whatever it takes."
I hang up before he can ask why. Sadie is watching me the way she watches a barrel sample before she'll commit to a verdict, cataloguing the flat edge in my voice, the stillness in my hands, something between disbelief and something softer underneath it.
I catch the exact second she catches herself doing it. Her eyes flick away, like she's reaching for a glass that isn't there.
"You didn't have to do that," she says.
"Yes, I did."
"Rhett—"
"I'm not doing this because you asked me to. I'm doing it because I should've done something like it a long time ago, and I didn't, and I'm done letting that be the story."
She doesn't say anything to that right away. Her eyes drop to the table, to the phone still sitting between us, then back up to me.
"You keep doing that," she says quietly. "Making it sound simple. Like it costs you nothing to fix what your family broke. It's fine, anyway. I'll only be dealing with any of this until harvest's done."
Something about the offhand way she says it doesn't sit right. Like she's already got one foot out the door before this has a chance to become anything.
"It's not simple. And it's not nothing." I lean forward, elbows on the table, close enough now that I can see her pulse ticking at the base of her throat. "But it's the only thing I know how to do about it. So I'm doing it."
The kitchen goes quiet except for the hum of the refrigerator and the sound of her breathing, a little uneven.
She stands up. I don't know if she means to walk away or walk closer, and for a second neither does she.
I stay in my chair, hands flat on the table, giving her room to decide. Whatever's happening between us right now, I'm not the one who's going to push it.
"Every time I think I've got you figured out," she says, "you go and do something like this."
"Maybe you never had me figured out to begin with."
She crosses her arms, which would look a lot more convincing if she weren't standing three feet from me instead of ten. "Is that right."
"You want to test that theory?"
"I want you to explain why a man who hasn't lifted a finger to help anyone outside his own family in years just called his attorney for mine."
"Because it stopped being about your family the day I signed that partnership agreement." I stand up slow, giving her time to step back if she wants to. She doesn't. "And it stopped being strictly business a long time before that, if I'm honest."
"You're not exactly known for honest, Beaumont."
"I'm working on it."
She's near enough now that I can see the exact shade her eyes turn when she's trying not to let something show. I've spent years memorizing that color from a distance. I'm done doing this from a distance.
"Sadie."
"Don't."
"Don't what?"
"Don't say my name like that if you're not going to do anything about it."
I close the space between us before I let myself think better of it.
My hand finds the side of her face, and she doesn't pull back, and that's the only permission I need.
I kiss her slow, careful, like she might change her mind halfway through, and she doesn't.
Her hand fists in my shirt and pulls me closer instead, and every year I spent telling myself this was off-limits falls away at once.
She tastes like the coffee she'd been drinking before I got here, and something underneath that, warm and familiar, like coming home to a place I didn't know I'd been missing.
My hand slides from her face to the curve of her neck, and she shivers under my palm.
She kisses like she's been waiting just as long as I have. Her fingers work higher up my shirt, fisting the collar, pulling me down until there's no space left between us at all.
I ease her against the counter, giving her every chance to stop this. She doesn't.
Her breath catches against my mouth instead, and the sound of it undoes something in me I've kept locked down for years.
I don't know how long we stand there in her family's kitchen with the cease and desist not yet drafted and the whole mess with Ashford still unsolved, her hands anchored in my shirt like she's not ready to let go either.
But for the length of that kiss, none of it exists.
There's just her mouth on mine, the low sound she makes against my lips, and every year I spent staying away from her burning off like morning fog over the vineyard.
When we finally break apart, her forehead rests against mine, both of us breathing like we ran here.
"That," she says, "was not strictly business."
"No," I say. "It wasn't."
She almost laughs. Almost. There's something underneath it that isn't ready to laugh yet, something careful, like she's waiting to see if I'll take it back.
I don't take it back.
Her hand stays curled against my chest, right over the place my heart is working too hard to keep up with everything that just happened. I cover it with mine, and for one long second neither of us moves, like moving might break whatever this is before it's had a chance to set.
"I'm not sorry," I tell her.
"I didn't ask you to be."
"Good. Because I've spent a long time being sorry for the wrong things. I'm done starting with this one."
She looks up at me then, really looks, like she's trying to decide whether to trust the man standing in front of her or the version of me she's carried around in her head for years. Whatever she finds, it softens something in her shoulders.
"For the record," she says, "I texted you about a legal filing. Not for this."
"For the record," I say, "neither did I."
"Liar," she says, one eyebrow arching.
"Maybe a little."
"Sadie, I've been?—"
A knock at the door cuts through the kitchen before I can finish. Sadie steps back fast, smoothing her shirt, and I turn toward the sound already certain it's cost me this moment.
One of my ranch hands stands on the porch, hat in hand. "Sorry to interrupt, Mr. Beaumont. There's a woman at the front gate of the estate. Says her name is Camille Ashford. She's asking to speak with you directly."
The name lands in the room like a struck match.
Sadie's hand freezes halfway to the coffee pot. Neither of us says anything for a second, and in that second every good thing that just happened in this kitchen gets pushed to the back of my mind, replaced by something colder.
Something in me goes quiet and steady all at once, the same calm I've felt right before a negotiation I intend to win. Camille Ashford came looking for a fight. She's about to find out exactly what that costs.
"You're going to go," Sadie says. It isn't a question.
"I'm going to end it."
Sadie's eyes go to mine, and whatever she sees there, I can tell it's not something she's seen on my face before.