Chapter 23 Jack
TWENTY-THREE
JACK
It’s not that Isla scares easily. It’s that I think she’s scared, very specifically, of me. Of what happens if she lets herself get too close.
She doesn’t want to ruin the friendship. She doesn’t want to put a wrench in her carefully laid plans because she’s worried it might not work out. If it doesn’t, we’d mess not only with our own feelings, but also with the friend group dynamics and the town’s entire framework.
There are a lot of cooks in the kitchen here in Blue Willow, which is why I let her retreat last Saturday night. I didn’t push, even though I could have. There was space there if I’d wanted to take it.
She apologized and owned up to her jealousy. She said the quiet part out loud about wanting me when she didn’t think she had a right to.
But like a cornered animal, I know she would have panicked. If she’d let me kiss her, take her home, and do more than press my hands to her waist and feel her breath against me, she would have bolted the next morning.
She would have rebuilt the walls around her piece by piece. Found every rational explanation for why it was a mistake and why it couldn’t happen again. She’d tell me we have to go back to being careful and contained.
I’m not doing that with her. Not again.
So, I need to make a proper plan.
I’m not going to crowd her or back her into anything, but I do want to give her something steady enough to move toward. Something that feels safe, so that she won’t bolt the second it starts to feel real.
The plan starts with dinner.
The cottage is mine for now. Isla’s out running errands with Winnie, doing market prep and whatever mysterious ritual convinces people in this town to spend nine dollars on a jar of jam.
That gives me time and a stove to myself. It also gives me the nervous energy of a man trying to be romantic for a woman who once threatened him with a stapler.
I set the groceries on the counter, then move them twice over, because apparently my brain has decided the kitchen is a jobsite and needs optimizing. Quiet, domestic work has never been my strong suit.
With Rhodes Renovations, if I get restless, I cut something, measure something, haul something heavy from one end of a room to the other. At home, I pace. I open cabinets and shut them again. I check the oven clock and then promptly forget the time.
I settle on pasta because it’s forgiving, and because Isla loves carbs.
Water goes on to boil. Garlic gets chopped. I do my best impression of a competent adult and try not to picture her walking in here with her hair half fallen out of a claw clip, mouth loose from laughing with Winnie.
That image catches somewhere in my chest, warm and ridiculous, and I have to clear my throat like it got lodged there.
Once the sauce starts to simmer, I pull out a legal pad and a pen.
The second part of my plan is the proposal. Not a real proposal. That ship sailed, caught fire, and somehow still ended up in a legally binding marriage.
This is more like a pitch or an offering. My one attempt at telling her what I want to without making her feel cornered.
I sit down at the table and stare at the blank page. The page stares back.
I can rebuild a porch from bad lumber and blind faith. I can spot what’s wrong with a frame before anyone opens their mouth. I can walk onto a job and know, almost instantly, where the weakness is.
Ask me to write down a feeling, though, and suddenly, I’m some caveman with a pen in his fist, hoping nobody notices he has no idea what he’s doing.
I write: ISLA WINSLOW,
Then I stop, because that looks like I’m about to serve her papers.
I cross it out and write: ISLA,
Better. Still terrifying.
I tap the pen against the paper. The tapping turns into a rhythm. The rhythm turns into me bouncing my knee hard enough that the whole table shakes.
“Okay,” I mutter to the empty kitchen. “Stop being a little bitch, Rhodes.”
I write: I LIKE YOU.
Then I cross it out so violently the pen rips the page.
Jesus fuckin’ Christ.
Of course I like her. That’s the understatement of the century. That’s like calling Mirabelle “a cute little farm” when it’s basically a living, breathing monument to the Winslows’ generational stubbornness.
I try again: I WANT THIS TO BE REAL.
I stare at it. Way too blunt and forceful.
I cross that out, too.
The next attempt is worse: PLEASE DON’T PANIC.
I slam the pen down and drag both hands over my face. Why the hell am I writing like I’m negotiating a hostage release?
This is going badly.
I shove the legal pad away and head back to the stove. I taste the sauce, add salt, pepper, and a little sugar, then add more pepper because apparently, I’m trying to season my way through a personal crisis.
I set the table with plates that actually match.
I light a candle, then blow it right back out when I remember Isla hates strong scents near her food.
She told me that once, three years ago, when we got stuck sharing fries on the inn porch after a town cleanup, and she complained that somebody’s vanilla candle was ruining perfectly good potatoes.
I know she doesn’t care for performative sweetness, either. What she likes is practical care. She likes things—and people—that do what they say they’ll do. So, I crack open a window, let the spring air in, and decide the candle can go straight to hell.
I’m checking the pasta water for the fourth time when I hear someone muttering outside. I glance through the window over the sink and spot Isla’s dad by the side of the shed. He’s out of his wheelchair, bent over, working on something.
We haven’t spent much time together since Isla and I got married.
Part of that is because he avoids me like I’m a raccoon that found its way onto his property. Part of it, if I’m being honest, is me avoiding him back. There’s only so long a man can stand under the gaze of someone like that.
Someone who sees him as both the answer to a problem and the person most likely to hurt his daughter.
I wipe my hands on a towel and head out the back door.
The air is warm, the sun still high enough to wash the orchard in late-afternoon gold. The rows are quiet for once, leaves stirring in the breeze, the first tiny green buds beginning to form.
Her dad keeps working on a busted hinge on the gate without looking up.
I clear my throat. “Hey, Mr. Winslow. What are you up to?”
He tightens something, then leans back to inspect his work. “Fixing what needs fixing.”
“Good man.”
A wary, workmanlike silence stretches between us.
I shift my weight. “Isla’s out with Winnie.”
“I know.”
Of course he knows. He knows everything that happens on this land. He probably knows when a squirrel sneezes. And yet Isla has still managed to keep the full scope of the financial mess, along with the part where she married me to help save it, tucked out of sight.
I nod toward the orchard. “She’s been working hard.”
“She always does,” he says, and somehow, pride and frustration sit side by side in the same breath.
I wait a second, then try again. “The grant news . . . that’s good.”
He knows the grant will help pay off the seasonal workers. The money will allow the orchard to afford new harvesting machinery—though he’s still old-school and doesn’t quite understand why it’s needed—but that doesn’t mean he’s aware of how dire the straits are.
Isla has kept that mostly to herself, and that’s her decision.
His gaze lifts. “It’s something. Think we could make do without it, though. We always have.”
“Yeah, I think Isla just wants a little more help around here during the busy season,” I say, deflecting. “She’s hopeful this will be a big boost for the future of Mirabelle. More hopeful than she wants to admit.”
That earns the slightest shift in his expression. A hairline crack in the stone. “She’s not much for hope these days.”
“She’s still standing around waiting for the other shoe to drop.”
He goes back to the latch, hands moving with that practiced, no-wasted-motion efficiency. “You know her well.”
I swallow. “I’ve known her a long time.”
He nods once. Then, after a beat, “You fixing that back door?”
I blink. “I was going to. I think the worst of the rain swelled the frame again.”
“Then do it.” The order is blunt enough that I almost laugh.
“I’m making dinner,” I say, which is about the most juvenile and defensive thing I could possibly have come up with.
One brow lifts. “She let you take over in the kitchen?”
“She didn’t exactly approve it,” I admit. “I’m mostly operating under the belief that people need to eat.”
“Hmm.” That’s all I get, but at least he doesn’t tell me to shut up. He doesn’t tell me his daughter made a mistake. He doesn’t tell me to get the hell off his property. At this point, I’m counting that as a win.
“Just so you know,” I say before I can talk myself out of it, “I’m not messing around here. I take this marriage seriously. Isla and me, our families, this land. Blue Willow matters to me. And Isla matters to me even more.”
He studies me the way a man studies a board before he cuts it—checking for warp, for weakness, for the place it might split under pressure.
“Good,” he says finally.
That should feel like almost nothing. Instead, it feels like someone just handed me the keys to the whole goddamn city. I practically shimmy my way back to the cottage, grinning like a fool.
On my way through the entry, I knock the stack of mail off the little table by the door.
Despite her color-coding systems, Isla has a habit of piling it there in neat, doomed stacks and forgetting it exists for days at a time. It’s mostly flyers that scatter to the floor. A bill or two. A handwritten note from someone in town.
Then I spot a thicker envelope, official-looking, addressed to: MR. and MRS. JACK RHODES. My stomach gives a small, unpleasant turn.
I pick it up and flip it over. The return address is from the grant office.
It’s addressed to me, too, so I open it. Inside are several pages of dense language, legalese broken into bullets and subclauses. I skim first, looking for the shape of it.
Final Review Phase Documentation.
Third Party Verification.
Authorized Agricultural Assessment.
I go back and read more carefully, forcing my brain into the same kind of focus I use when I’m combing through a client contract for hidden bullshit. My eyes catch on the final clause.
Quality checks. Site evaluation. Small-quantity sampling.
Sampling of what?
I scan down.
Scionwood. Budwood. Fruit samples. Tissue samples from the property’s oldest producing specimen for potential grafting and propagation trials.
My throat goes dry.
I know enough about orchards to understand exactly what that means. I’ve watched Isla graft. I’ve seen her take a cutting with the concentration of a surgeon. I’ve heard her talk about varietals as though they’re people.
And these trees, Elias’ tree most of all, aren’t like any other.
Limited grafting trials may be conducted under supervision for assessment of viability and long-term sustainability.
My pulse spikes. I set the paperwork on the table and brace both hands against the edge, trying to keep myself upright. This isn’t good.
This isn’t some boring contract quirk or a clerical footnote. This is access dressed up as evaluation. This is someone walking onto the orchard under clean, careful language and leaving with pieces of whatever makes Mirabelle what it is.
Elias’ tree is Winslow bloodline and orchard memory. It’s the reason the plums taste the way they do and the reason the land behaves the way it does. If somebody starts cutting and grafting and carrying pieces of that away, the secret of the magic will leak.
My first instinct is to fix it. Call a lawyer. Call Bobby. Call anybody who knows how to kill this clause without killing the grant itself. My hands itch with it, that old, familiar need to grab hold of something broken and force it back into shape.
My second instinct is worse.
My second instinct is to hide it for one night.
Wouldn’t that be nice? Isla could walk in here hopeful. She could eat dinner without this waiting for her at the table. I could tell her I want our relationship to be real without piling one more weight onto her chest in the same breath.
We could have the evening I planned instead of watching her brace herself the second she comes through the door.
That fantasy lasts maybe three seconds.
Because the woman I’ve come to admire this much can survive hard truths. What she can’t stand is being managed. I know that now. Real intimacy doesn’t come from protecting someone from the truth. It comes from honesty, even when honesty wrecks the moment.
I look at the table. There’s a bowl for the pasta with a decorated serving spoon. Plates already set. Everything waiting for a version of the night that’s already been ruined.
A laugh slips out of me, flat and humorless.
So much for the plan.