Chapter 5
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 are you doing 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.
“Why are 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 and use them. 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 of your business.”
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.”
Opal gave a little nod and stepped farther onto the porch, eyes drifting toward the distant shimmer of glass. “Can we go in there?” she asked, her voice carrying faintly across the yard. “We haven’t splored yet.”
I was still processing the fact that both my brothers had already known about Rhodes buying this property and hadn’t mentioned it.
Rhodes looked back at the structures, then at the contractors still moving around the main house.
“We can go exploring in just a little bit. Remember the rules about exploring on your own, okay?”
Her shoulders slumped with disappointment, and she bit her lip as she looked at her dad. It wasn’t really my place to interfere, but I spoke before I could stop myself. “If you want,” I called to her, “I can show you how to tell if plants are sleeping or just pretending.”
Her gaze snapped back to me, curiosity rekindling, but Rhodes gave me a look that I could only categorize as suspicious.
“Five minutes,” I added, lifting my hands. “If you want to come along with us, then you can supervise.”
“Can we, Daddy?” Opal looked excitedly between us. I guessed that she was more interested in the greenhouses that she hadn’t gotten to check out yet than anything else, but Rhodes’ face immediately softened.
“Sure, sweetheart.”
We walked toward the first greenhouse, Opal skipping ahead, before Rhodes gently called her back, reminding her to wait. I noticed the way he scanned the grounds as we moved, gaze sweeping the tree line, the drive, the workers.
The door creaked when I pushed it open, rust flaking from the hinges like brittle leaves.
The air inside was warm, which was a good sign.
It meant that, overall, it was still in good shape, even though I could hear whistling through a few cracked panes.
Sunlight filtered through the glass overhead, casting fractured patterns across the gravel scattered across the floor.
Opal moved next to me, staying close like her father had told her to.“Are all the plants dead?” she whispered, eyes fixed on a row of drooping vines tangled along the far wall.
“Probably a lot of them are,” I admitted, crouching beside a clay pot half-hidden under fallen leaves.
I scraped gently at the stem with my fingernail, revealing a thin line of green beneath the brown.
“But this one’s not. It’s just sleeping.
” Her face lit up. “See?” I said, guiding her closer.
“If there’s green under the bark, then there’s still a chance. ”
Rhodes stood near the doorway, arms crossed, watching us with an expression I couldn’t quite decipher.
“You can’t always tell,” I continued softly. “Sometimes things look worse than they are. You have to look a little closer sometimes and then be patient.”
Opal nodded solemnly, as if I’d handed her a secret.
Glancing up at Rhodes, I was surprised to find his eyes on me instead of his daughter.
Somehow, the air felt charged suddenly as I looked between him and his little girl as I dusted off my hands.
“When you and your daddy are ready to clean this out, I can give you tips about what kind of plants to put inside.”
“I like plants.” Opal’s eyes lit up. “Especially the ones with the holey leaves that look like cheese. It’s really big in here.” She looked up at the ceiling and down the pathways that led off through the building.
“It is big in here. When it’s warm, some of these windows open, I think.
” Her eyes lit up when I pointed out the winches, but I didn’t make any move to try them.
Even I wasn’t that dumb or brave. They’d been sitting a long time, and even if the structure had been sound, there was no telling about the glass, especially with Opal below me.
There was no way I’d risk it. “You and your dad can decide what kind to put in here. Flowers or plants. It’ll be up to you. ”
“That’ll be fun. Won’t it, Daddy?” She pulled his big, giant hand into hers and swung it. “He’ll let me pick the plants,” she confided as we moved back outside. “Because he loves me.” She gave me a sideways look. “More than even unicorns.”
If my heart hadn’t already been goo when she’d taken his hand, it melted right out of my chest in that moment.
“That’s right.” His whole focus was on her as if they were the only two people there, as he bent and kissed the tips of her fingers. “I love you the mostest.”
She nodded happily before darting off across the lawn, stopping here and there as if she was soaking everything in.
I didn’t blame her one bit. There was a lot to see, and so many great hiding places.
The grounds were an absolute joy for a kid.
Granted, it would take a lot of work to get into shape after sitting so long, but it would be worth it.
“Thank you,” Rhodes finally said quietly as we neared the driveway.
“For what?” I was conscious of his large frame moving in the space next to mine, dwarfing me.
“For being good with her. That was kind.”
My heart gave an unexpected thud. “Of course. I love kids. They’re easier than adults most of the time, and she seems great.”
“She is great.” His mouth flattened into a line, and the words were stubborn as if I was going to refute them in any way (which I wasn’t).
A truck door slammed, jolting us back into the present. I stepped past him toward my van, careful not to brush against him. Opal skipped a little closer, circling her father as if she wasn’t letting him out of her sight, making me wonder what the story was.
“Bye, Opal,” I called. “Nice to meet you. Come by my shop sometime. I’ll give you a plant for you to take care of all on your own.” Her eyes widened, and she clutched her dad’s hand, making my heart squeeze. Her eyes were just like his, and I wondered where her mother was.