Chapter 2
TWO
JACK
I’ve been knocking on the door for five goddamned minutes.
The sun’s barely up, and every other morning of her entire life, Isla May Winslow is already up and working by now. Normally, I wouldn’t make it onto her porch before she’d be swinging the door open, expecting trouble.
I knock again, louder this time. Still nothing.
I step back, crack my neck, and squint at the front of her cottage. The place always looks like it’s about to fall apart in the most picturesque way imaginable. Yellowed wood, crooked porch, paint peeling in little curls.
She’ll tell you it’s a nightmare to maintain. I think it looks like home.
I knock a fourth time because spite is a powerful motivator.
“For the love of God, Isla.”
My breath clouds in the morning air. It’s cold enough to bite. I’ve got a job in the city today, a bigger build than usual, and I need the plum wine she promised me yesterday. She said she’d drop it off; she didn’t.
So here I am, freezing on her porch, knocking like a man possessed.
The door finally wrenches open, and there she is.
My mouth gapes.
Isla is usually all small-town simplicity when I see her. Bare skin, freckles on display, hair pulled back, the smell of whatever she’s been harvesting clinging to her. Today, she looks like she fell through a rough night and barely landed on her feet.
There are dark circles under her eyes. Mascara smudged at the corners. A faint dusting of glitter at her temple. Her usually pin-straight dark hair is a tousled mess. She’s beautiful, of course, but also rattled and raw. Too undone in a way that makes my chest tighten.
Her gray-blue eyes narrow at me. “What do you want?”
I blink. Take her in again, slower this time, because something is off. It must be.
“Good morning to you, too,” I say. “You didn’t drop off the wine yesterday.”
She frowns. “Oh. Right.” She tightens her robe, tugging the belt. “Hold on.”
She disappears inside without waiting for a reply.
I lean against the railing, raising a brow. Glitter is an alarming development because Isla doesn’t usually do sparkle. She wears dirt like perfume.
What the hell was she doing last night?
She comes back with her arms full of clinking chaos. Six bottles of plum wine, pressed to her chest, labels crooked because she probably bottled them at two in the morning while cursing the universe.
She shoves the whole case at me.
“Thanks,” I say.
She crosses her arms, bracing against the morning air, cheeks flushed.
“Did I catch you at a bad time, freckles?”
“Considering the hour and the company,” she mutters, “it’s always a bad time.”
I grin. Can’t help it. This is the language I know how to speak.
“Mmm, I woke you up just now.” I tilt my head. “Were you up late last night?”
Her jaw ticks. “Yes. I was up very late, if you must know.”
“Hot date?” I ask, aiming for casual indifference. It comes out . . . decidedly not casual.
A slow, victorious smirk pulls at her mouth. She heard it. Of course she did.
“The hottest.” She steps back and closes the door in my face. The lock clicks.
I blink, standing there holding the box of wine like a shell-shocked loser. My fingers tighten around the cardboard. Loosen. Tighten again.
It’s fine. I’m fine. She’s messing with me. She’s always messing with me.
I swallow once, shake out my shoulders, brush off that strange twist low in my stomach, and head down the porch steps. By the time I reach my truck, I’ve replayed the whole exchange three times over and come to zero reasonable conclusions.
Was she actually on a date? With whom? Who would she even—
I cut the thought before it finishes forming.
There’s no use acting like I’m entitled to an explanation. We bicker, we trade favors, we circle each other like cowards, but that doesn’t make her mine to question.
The truck door creaks as I yank it open, engine coughing to life. Six bottles of prime Mirabelle wine sit on the passenger seat, rattling with each shake of my hand.
“Get a grip,” I mutter.
I don’t usually get rattled by shit like this. I build things. I keep steady. That’s what people expect from me. That’s what she expects from me. She asks for my support and pretends she still hates me, though she relies on it, savors it. That’s our thing.
And Isla Winslow—thorny as she may be—never looks unkempt. Today, she did.
I pull onto the road, chest heaving as I head into town. It’s too early for whatever the hell that reaction was. Too early for the way it made something hot and aching and foolish stir inside my chest.
I’m annoyed she didn’t keep her word. That’s all. The glitter means nothing. The late-night smudges and sparkle and bed head mean nothing. And I’m absolutely not going to waste time thinking about whoever she might have been with last night.
My truck rumbles around the curve toward Main Street. The sun climbs higher. The world wakes up. Spring in Wicklow County has a way of making everything look worth saving. Blue Willow most of all.
It’s the best place I’ve ever been, and the only one that ever felt like it wanted me back.
I grip the wheel until my knuckles go white.
The drive into the city takes a little over an hour. I try calling my best friend, Wells, once, mostly to talk myself off whatever ledge I’ve climbed onto this morning, but he doesn’t pick up. Which means he’s either still in bed with Elsie or elbows-deep fixing something.
Wells lives at the Blue Willow Inn at the top of the ridge. It’s a sentient old house that likes to meddle. He shares it with Elsie, his girlfriend and the new owner. Her grandmother, the original innkeeper, passed away last year and left it for her to take over.
Elsie is a bit guarded, but Wells is willing to put in the work. It helps, I guess, that two of them are sickeningly in love.
I let my phone drop into the console.
Hartford isn’t quite as beautiful as the place I now call home, but it’s familiar. I’ve done enough jobs down here that half the construction crews know me by name, which helps when I’m trying to stay on schedule.
I pull into the lot behind the renovation site, a historic brownstone being gutted and rebuilt for a new restaurant. There’s a slew of boutiques on one side and a tattoo shop on the other. The whole block smells like espresso and dust.
Nico, my foreman, is already unloading lumber from the flatbed, a cigarette dangling from his mouth. I haven’t smoked in eight years, but God, I could use one right about now.
“You’re late,” he says around the filter.
“You’re mildly incompetent and not supposed to be smoking this close to treated lumber,” I say. “Look at us both stating the obvious.”
He grins, takes one last drag before he stubs the cigarette on his boot. Nico is thirty-two, built like a softball coach, and convinced he’s God’s gift to construction, even though he routinely forgets to charge the drill batteries.
Beside him, Talia waves at me with a gloved hand. She’s our electrician and one of the best workers I know. “Morning, boss. You look . . . like someone microwaved you on low power for twenty minutes.”
I scowl harder. “I’m fine. That’s just my face. Also, the inspector hits at noon. We need the east wall opened and ready.”
“On it,” she says.
I haul the case of plum wine out of the truck and set it near my toolbox.
Nico eyes it. “Man brought the good stuff.”
“It’s for the client.”
This wine is the perfect thing to smooth out all the rough edges. In my experience, contractors respond to two things: money and alcohol. Currency and charm. Plum wine from Mirabelle is both.
It also helps that these plums are a little touched in the head. They carry the kind of magic that can soothe even the meanest bastard after a glass or two. I call it truth serum. Isla insists it simply loosens inhibitions, like any other alcohol.
She’s either shy about the magic of it, or she’s keeping the real secret to herself.
Talia lifts a brow. “That from your orchard girl?”
“She’s not my orchard girl,” I say too fast.
Nico snorts. “Sure, she isn’t.”
I ignore them both and get to work.
We spend the next few hours ripping out old crown molding, reframing a section of the kitchen, and arguing about the correct way to install the new support beams. Talia blasts terrible pop music. Nico manages to drop a tape measure off the second story, shattering it on the ground.
It’s a normal day; the exact kind of day I built Rhodes Renovations on.
I grew up two towns over, raised by a mechanic and a school bus driver. They didn’t have a lot of money, and I was a rebellious kid with a penchant for new hobbies and bad ideas.
By nineteen, I was working for anyone who’d hire me. By twenty-one, I’d started my first unofficial contracting jobs. Two years later, I’d already moved through three different nearby towns and somehow ended up in Blue Willow.
That’s when I bought the old cabin down by the riverbank. It was cheap and easy back then. Now, six years later, I’ve taken on jobs all across the state. Decks, restorations, custom builds, and commercial renovations. It’s a never-ending stream of customers.
I’ve built a solid reputation and a healthy waitlist. Enough that even Wells, the most stubborn man in the northern hemisphere, trusts me with projects at the inn.
I’ve been helping with repairs long enough to know which doors stick in the summer and which floorboards complain on purpose. It’s one of my favorite jobs, but also one of my most annoying.
This one is a different kind of headache entirely. The brownstone client arrives just before lunch, full of ideas she pulled from Pinterest and generative AI, which has done real damage to the public’s understanding of load-bearing walls.
I walk her through the progress, the timeline, and the impending visit from the inspector. At the end, I hand over two bottles of plum wine.
Her eyes widen. “Rhodes, you’re spoiling me.”
“Call it strategic generosity.”
She beams and promises not to change her tile selections again.
By late afternoon, we’ve done everything we can before the mason arrives on Monday. I dismiss the crew early. Talia fist-bumps me on the way out. Nico gives a half-assed two-finger salute.
Once they’re gone, I clean the site, double-check the lock, and haul myself back into the truck. The sky’s already graying. A fresh spring rain is on its way. It’s going to be a muddy-headed drive from Hartford back into town.
My phone buzzes when I hit the county line. Perfect timing.
“Hey, man,” I answer, putting Wells on speaker.
“You called me this morning on your way into the city,” he says. “What’s wrong?”
“A guy can’t just call up his friend to shoot the shit?”
“No, you usually appear in my driveway when you need something.”
“I was bored.”
“Bullshit,” Wells says. “What’s going on?”
“It’s nothing, really.”
He sighs. “Elsie baked a pineapple cake.”
“Oh God.” She’s a terrible baker. I’ll eat her scones on occasion, but they do have a certain hockey puck–like quality to them. Unfortunately, her pies and her cakes are much worse.
“You want to come by and help me dispose of it? Humanely?”
I rub a hand over the back of my neck. “I should head home. Long day.”
Wells is silent for a beat. It’s long enough that I know he’s analyzing me like one of his old house problems.
“Jack.”
I grit my teeth.
He waits.
Eventually, I say, “It’s just Isla.”
“What about her?”
“She looked . . . off this morning. Tired. Glittery.”
“Glittery?”
“Never mind.”
He makes a low, amused sound in his throat. “Did she say anything weird?”
“Just that she’d had a hot date.”
A rustle. Possibly Wells choking on something. “Did she really?”
“How the hell should I know?”
“Well, she’s not dating anyone, as far as I—” He exhales slowly, changes course. “You should come up to the inn. Elsie made this huge cake, and I’m not suffering alone.”
“I’ll pass.”
“Get up here,” he insists. “You sound like you’re about to crawl out of your own skin.”
He’s right, which is annoying. I do feel like I’m crawling out of my skin, and sitting alone with that feeling sounds worse than whatever Elsie did to a pineapple.
“Fifteen minutes.”
“Good man. See you when you get here.”
Rain freckles the windshield on the climb up to the ridge. Through the trees, the inn appears in pieces at first: a porch light, the dark pitch of the roof, the glow from the front windows. Then the whole house emerges, solid and watchful against the gray.
Blue Willow magic doesn’t always announce itself. Some places hum beneath the surface and wait for you to notice them. The inn does that. It pays attention. It will open a door for you when your hands are full or light a fire in the hearth when you’re cold.
It’s always struck me as a place with strong opinions. Which is why I’m still a little surprised it opened its doors to Elsie Hart.
She grew up here, bolted the first chance she got, and came back after her grandmother died. She had every intention of selling the place and tying off the last loose threads. That was her whole sordid plan. Get in, settle the estate, get out.
Instead, the house dug itself in. Wells did too. Somewhere between the broken gutters, the snowstorms, and all the effort she put into pretending she wasn’t falling for him, Elsie stopped leaving in her head.
Now, the two of them are restoring the inn side by side, aiming to reopen next year. The whole place feels different because of it. Lighter and less lonely. There’s more warmth in the walls these days, more life in all the rooms.
I’m glad for Wells. He’s my closest friend, the person who can drag a conversation out of me when I’d rather disappear into my work. I’m glad he found the woman he was always going to end up with.
I’m glad the inn he loves is staying exactly where it belongs. I’m even glad Elsie’s terrible cooking has become a recurring hazard in my life.
Maybe that’s selfish. I don’t care. I like knowing they’re here, right up this hill. I like having a place I can walk into when the day has worn me thin, and I know that somebody will hand me a drink, an opinion, or a plate of something deeply questionable.
By the time I pull into the drive, I’m trying hard not to think about Isla.
The effort isn’t doing much good. She’s still there, lodged beneath my rib cage. She makes me feel unhinged, in a way. She’s the only woman I know who can look at me sideways and then have me thinking about what I did wrong for three days afterward.
Still, I sort of like it.