Page 4 of Oops I Fell For The Billionaire Next Door

That was four days ago. No response. No knock on the door. Nothing.

My name is Beckett Rhodes. I'm thirty-seven. I sold the biggest division of my cybersecurity company eight months ago for a number that made my accountant cry actual tears. Still run the consulting arm, still answer to a board. I bought this property on impulse during what my therapist calls "a breakthrough" and what my board calls "a liability." I left Vancouver because I woke up in a penthouse with floor to ceiling views of the harbour and couldn't think of a single person who'd notice if I didn't.

That's the thing about building a company from a dorm room. You build the company. You don't build the life around it.

Every relationship I've had started at a launch party or a conference or a charity gala and ended when the woman realized that I'm exactly what I look like. A man who works too much, talks about server architecture at dinner, and doesn't own a single piece of furniture he picked out himself because his assistant did all the buying.

So I bought a mountain. The plan was vague. Something about fresh air, perspective, maybe learning to cook something that doesn't come from a delivery app. My architect, Greta, flew in from Vancouver, walked the property, looked at the existing cabin, and said "Burn it." We started from scratch.

The new house is beautiful. It's also freezing at night, half finished, and making sounds I can't identify coming from the crawl space. Greta says it's settling. I think it's judgement.

None of this explains why I'm standing at my kitchen window on a Saturday afternoon watching Desireen Laurent wrestle a four by four post into a hole she dug herself while rain threatens from the west. She's been at it for an hour. No help. No power tools on this particular project. Just her body, a post hole digger, a level, and a stubbornness I find physically impossible to look away from.

The porch railing on her cabin's south side is broken. Has been since before I moved in. One of the balusters snapped clean through, leaving a gap wide enough for someone to fall through if they leaned wrong. She's replacing the whole section herself.

My phone buzzes. One bar. A text from Jake Winters, the security consultant who helped implement our membership software for some private club in a town called Crimson Hollow about an hour from here.

Jake:

Heard you moved to the mountains. You doing ok up there or do I need to send a search party?

Me:

I'm fine. Watching my neighbour build a porch railing in the rain.

Jake:

Why aren't you helping?

Me:

She'd kill me.

Jake:

Sounds like my kind of people. Come visit Crimson Hollow sometime. Trish says you need friends.

Me:

Tell Trish I have friends.

Jake:

Name one that isn't on your payroll.

Fair point. I put the phone down.

The rain starts. Properly now, not the threatening drizzle from the last hour. Full commitment rain. Desireen doesn't stop working. She's bracing the post with one hand, holding the level with the other, and the rain is soaking through her tank top. Her braids are piled on top of her head under a bandana that's slipping. Her arms flex with the effort of holding the post plumb while she kicks gravel into the base.

She's going to lose the post. The hole isn't deep enough for the saturation, the gravel base won't hold without concrete in this soil, and the rain is softening everything.

I pull on a jacket. Grab the bag of quick-set concrete I bought for my own fence posts that are sitting in my garage untouched because I haven't gotten to fencing yet. Walk next door.

She sees me coming. The expression on her face is exactly what I expected.

"No."

"Your post is going to shift overnight without concrete."