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Ben and I remained on the porch. The sun climbed higher in the sky, burning off the last remnants of the morning chill. The air grew warm and fragrant with the scent of crushed leaves and damp earth.

Ben picked up the bakery box and the roll of paper towels. "I should put these inside before the ants find them."

"Wait." I reached out and caught his free hand.

Setting the box back down on the wooden chair, he turned his full attention to me. His eyes locked onto mine, steady and unwavering. "What is it?"

I looked down at our joined hands. The dirt from the yard stained my knuckles, and the soft cashmere of the borrowed sweater bunched around my wrists. I took a deep breath, inhaling the clean, scoured island air. "I like this."

He lifted a brow. "The coffee cake?"

"The dirt. The sweat. The yard work." I met his gaze, refusing to look away. "I like the person I’m discovering right now. In Los Angeles, everything’s sealed behind glass. You move from an air-conditioned house to a tinted town car to a windowless recording studio. You never actually touch the ground. The entire world feels fabricated. Staged."

I squeezed his fingers, finding comfort in the rough callouses covering his palm. "This feels real. Sitting on a porch with your sister and her husband. Eating off paper plates. Listening to you talk about chainsaws and flatbed trailers. It’s messy and completely authentic. I don’t want to go back to the glass house, Ben. I don’t want to fight Nash just to win back my old cage. I want a new life."

Ben remained perfectly still. He absorbed the words with careful precision. "A new life."

"Yes." I stepped closer, closing the remaining distance between us. "Brenna and Hunter treated me like a human being. They know who I am, but they didn’t care. They care about you. If they can keep my presence here a secret, what about the rest of your family?"

Ben tilted his head slightly, a question registering in his eyes.

"I can’t hide in this cottage forever," I explained. "I need to formulate a legal strategy to defeat Nash. I need to contact my lawyers. But before the media circus descends, I’d like to meet your family. I’d like to stand next to you in the daylight. Do you think they can handle the secret?"

A slow, fiercely proud smile spread across Ben’s face. The expression erased the rigid, guarded lines of the paramedic and revealed the deeply loyal brother underneath. He pulled me against his chest, his strong arm wrapping securely around my waist.

"We’re Coleridges," Ben stated. His voice resonated deep within his chest. "We have our flaws, but we know how to circle the wagons better than anyone on this planet. If I bring you into that circle, they’ll lock the shields."

The certainty in his vow settled deep into my bones. He didn’t express concern about the liability. He offered me the full, impenetrable protection of his entire family network.

"Okay," I murmured against his shirt, a smile lifting my lips. "I want to meet them."

"Me too. Give it a day or two." Ben’s hand stroked the length of my spine in a slow, soothing rhythm. "Let the resort dig out from the storm damage. Let Harper fix the immediate crises and get the property stabilized. Once the dust settles, I’ll introduce you. Just remember, you asked for it."

I grinned at the humor glinting in his eyes. "I look forward to it.”

Closing my eyes, I rested my cheek against the solid wall of his chest. The initial fear of seeing Hunter’s SUV, then the man himself flitted through my mind. Mindy said the storm bought me a little time from Nash and the media circus. But now the clouds had blown over, and I didn’t know what lay behind them.

Chapter Twenty

BEN

The air over the Sunset Siesta pool deck carried a stagnant humidity that trapped the scent of two-stroke engine oil, crushed palm fronds, and chlorine under a blanket of heat. I killed the engine on the Stihl chainsaw. The sudden silence left my ears ringing as I wiped a heavy sheen of sweat from my forehead with the back of a leather work glove. The afternoon sun beat down.

"You keep lifting with your lower back, Eli," Austin grumbled. My brothers were on the opposite end of a massive, waterlogged mahogany branch we were trying to clear from the concrete deck. Austin’s dark hair was plastered to his forehead by sweat, and his gray eyes narrowed in their usual grouchy examination. A faded fishing shirt clung to his frame, the fabric damp with salt and sawdust. "Keep that up and I’m not carrying you to the truck when you blow a disc. Lift with your knees. You’re not twenty anymore, dumbass."

"I am lifting with my knees," Eli shot back, adjusting his grip on the rough bark. His sandy blond hair was currently spiked with grit, though his indigo eyes appeared to laugh at the entire world. He stood with a loose, athletic grace, his lean, muscled build moving effortlessly even under the strain of the mahogany. He flashed a brilliant, entirely unbothered grin. "My technique is flawless. You’re just pissed because you haven’t caught a fish in three days and you’re taking it out on the landscaping. And us."

"I run offshore charters. Nobody goes offshore in a tropical storm."

"Ladies, please," Braden interrupted. He hoisted a stack of shredded fronds into his arms, his Tidal Hops shirt completely soaked through. "If we don’t get this deck cleared before Harper finishes her perimeter check, she is going to murder all of us and bury our bodies under the new cabanas."

Moving over to help, I bent down and grabbed the center of the mahogany branch. "On three. One, two, three."

We heaved the heavy wood off the concrete and hauled it toward the flatbed trailer Austin had parked on the lawn. My muscles burned with a familiar, satisfying ache. Physical labor usually grounded me. It organized my thoughts into neat, predictable columns. Today, my brain refused to stay on the property. It kept drifting down the road to a dead-end gravel driveway. I stole another quick glance at the time. Sutton was alone at the cottage. She was safe, locked behind a solid core door, but the urge to finish this job and get back to her was a physical itch under my skin.

We dumped the branch onto the trailer. The heavy wood hit the metal bed with a hollow crash.

"You’re checking your watch again," Braden leaned against the side of the trailer on his elbows, his blue eyes narrowing as he studied my face. "That’s the third time in twenty minutes."