Page 60 of Where She Belongs

Tate stared at his twin as he waited on a response. “Sure. One of you can chop up the rest of the roasted red pepper for the sauce and the other one can put the pasta in the boiling water.”

Well, shoot. Tate was okay with switching gears, but he knew there was one more thing to worry about on his list now.

Rylee.

Alexander.

The developer.

His business.

His family.

And now Jason had some issue he wasn’t able to hear the details of yet.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Rylee blew on the strand of hair in her face but it did nothing to dislodge it. So, she brushed at it with her arm and continued painting the wall. The house was coming along. There were definitely some updates she’d like to make to the place—but that would only happen if she decided to stay.

If.

That was the word of the year at this point. So far, she was leaning in that direction and the thought absolutely terrified her—but in the most delicious way. She didn’t feel like she was losing herself when she was with Tate. On the contrary, she felt like she was discovering parts of herself that had gone dormant when she’d been a little girl.

Since she’d arrived at the farm, she’d been remembering what it was like to feel connected to a place so thoroughly that she couldn’t fathom living anywhere else.

And what if Tate decided he wasn’t interested?

While that idea weighed on her like no other, she couldn’t deny that she might be able to stick around—for herself and no one else.

That had to be a good sign.

A firm knocking on her door had her startling and a splatter of paint dripped to the drop cloth on the floor. She huffed, placing the paintbrush in a holder before she headed for the door. There were only a few people around here who would show up without calling. And one of them was Tate. If she had to guess, he’d come to visit.

Her smile grew before she reached the door and then her face changed to confusion. “Lydia?”

Tate’s sister stood on the porch with both arms wrapped around a huge glass vase. Lovely pink and yellow summer flowers with a few white roses scattered in. The whole arrangement was nearly as wide as she was.

“Before you say one word,” Lydia said, “this is not from me and I want that on the record.”

“What in the world?”

“A delivery van sat at the end of our drive a good while because he couldn’t figure out which one was yours. So I agreed to bring them over to you.” She shouldered past Rylee, set the flowers on the drop cloth covering a table, and shook out her arms. “That monstrosity came from a shop in Billings that doesn’t deliver this far. No idea why whoever sent these wouldn’t have looked for the local florist. This must have cost a fortune.”

There was a card. Rylee could see the corner of it from where she stood, sitting up out of the stems in a little plastic prong.

“There’s a card,” Lydia said.

“I see it.”

“I didn’t read it.” A beat. “I did hold it up to the window, though, but I couldn’t see through it.”

Rylee gave her a side glance as she pulled the card free. She read it and immediately felt uncomfortable.

I’ll be here when you’re ready to come home. —Alexander

She read it twice. The second time, her stomach turned over.

“That bad?” Lydia asked.