Page 7 of Where the Roses Bloom (Gospels & Grimoires #1)

Willow

The house was quiet by the time I finished unpacking.

Golden hour spilled through the windows like warm syrup, gilding everything it touched—my unpacked books, the floral quilt, the little silver dish on the dresser where I’d laid my rings.

I changed into an old flannel I’d stolen from an ex-boyfriend’s closet years ago, soft and worn at the elbows, and a pair of sleep shorts that hit high on the thigh.

No makeup. No shoes. Just bare legs and nervous energy as I padded toward the kitchen like I wasn’t already imagining what Rhett might look like when I got there.

I could hear him before I saw him—low music playing, the soft clatter of a pan being set on the stove, a hum of something that might’ve been a tune or just the quiet sound of a man thinking. I rounded the corner, bracing myself for casual?—

And lost every coherent thought.

He was standing at the stove, barefoot, in a thin white t-shirt that clung to his back and grey sweatpants that should have been illegal.

His hair was damp from a recent shower, curling just a little at the ends, and his skin looked flushed from the heat of the water—or the heat of the room. I couldn’t be sure.

The outfit was diabolical in the best way. I couldn’t imagine he’d picked it out himself unless he was trying to seduce me.

He glanced over his shoulder, eyes raking down me in one long, unhurried sweep. Not rude. Just…thorough.

“You hungry?” he asked.

Oof…he had no idea .

My mouth opened, but no words came out. Just a soft little hum of acknowledgment—because yes, I was hungry. Starving.

Though maybe not just for food.

“Yeah,” I managed. “I, uh…it smells good.”

He smirked, like he knew damn well he’d fried my brain. “Chicken and dumplings. My grandma’s recipe.”

Of course it was. The house probably handed it to him, carved into the walls or placed carefully in a kitchen drawer.

Rhett Ward didn’t seem like the kind of man who learned to cook from YouTube.

No, this was the kind of man who learned by standing beside a woman in an apron while she smacked his hand with a wooden spoon every time he tried to sneak a bite.

I hovered awkwardly for a second, trying not to stare too hard at the muscles moving beneath that t-shirt as he stirred the pot. “Can I help?”

He looked over, brow raised, and then nodded toward the stack of plates on the counter. “You can set the table. Everything else is handled.”

I stepped into the space like it was mine to borrow—barefoot, flushed, my thighs brushing together in that ridiculous way that made me hyper-aware of every inch of my own skin.

The kitchen was warm and lived-in, the kind of place that had seen big meals and loud mornings and probably a few fights that ended with apologies over pie.

“What needs doing around the house?” I asked as I pulled down two plates. “Besides fixing wobbly bookshelves and charming stray women into staying for dinner.”

He huffed a laugh. “Well, the garden, for one. That place is a mess.”

I looked up. “You have a garden? I didn’t notice the last time I was here.”

“Used to.” He leaned back against the counter, spoon in hand. “Used to be the pride of the county. People came from all over for help with their plants, their land, their bad luck. My grandma always said the garden gave back what you put in, if you were honest about what you needed.”

“That’s…beautiful.”

He nodded, slow. “Yeah. It was. Ain’t much now but weeds and memory.”

He stirred the pot once more, quieter this time. “She was somethin’ else, my grandma. Hazel Ward.”

I smiled at the name. “Hazel,” I repeated. “Pretty.”

He nodded. “She raised me, more or less. Me and my brothers, after our parents passed.”

“Brothers as in plural?” I asked, fishing a little. I’d seen the photo of the family, of course…but I’d thought maybe they were cousins. “Not just Beau, then.”

“Not just Beau,” Rhett chuckled, shaking his head. “Nah…Beau’s the middle sibling. I’ve also got Silas, the second-oldest—Whitlock, who’s a bit of a fuck-up and knows it; and the youngest, Holden, who’s been workin’ overseas with the Peace Corps for close to a decade as an environmental scientist.”

“Big family,” I said, sliding forks into place on the table. “I didn’t realize.”

Rhett shrugged one broad shoulder. “We scattered after Grandma passed. I was the only one stubborn enough to move back in when the house came to me.”

He said it like a joke, but there was something behind it—some ache wrapped up in that soft Southern cadence. Like maybe he didn’t just inherit a house. Maybe he inherited a legacy he didn’t quite know what to do with.

“Do they visit?” I asked.

“Sometimes,” he said. “Silas lives in town, but he’s pretty solitary. Whit shows up when he wants to pick a fight or borrow money…don’t know exactly where he’s livin’ these days. Holden…he graduated high school and ran as far away from this town as he could get.”

“And Beau?”

That got me the smallest, fondest smile. “Beau’s always around. If he’s not under a hood or at the diner picking on Mabel, he’s down by the river fishin’ with the world’s worst dog.”

I laughed. “Milo?”

“The one and only.” Rhett turned off the burner and set the pot on a trivet with care. “He likes you, you know. Beau. Said you’ve got the kind of calm people pretend to have.”

I paused, surprised. “He said that?”

Rhett looked at me, steady. “I agreed.”

I didn’t know what to do with that. With the way his voice went soft around the edges when he talked to me.

With the way I wanted to bottle this moment and hold it to my chest like a candle in a storm.

I looked down at the dumplings, steam rising thick from the pot, and blinked fast.

“So,” I said, voice barely steady, “when do we start on the garden?”

Rhett passed me a bowl, his fingers brushing mine. “Tomorrow,” he said, that same faint smile tugging at his mouth. “If you’re still here. ”

I took the bowl. Let myself smile back. “I’m not going anywhere.”

We ate at the little table in the breakfast nook, knees bumping under the wood, the scent of rosemary and dumplings clinging to the air.

I didn’t think I’d finish my bowl—too nervous, too wound up—but the first bite undid me.

The dumplings were soft and rich, the chicken slow-cooked and tender, the broth kissed with thyme.

“Jesus,” I whispered around my second bite. “This is incredible.”

Rhett ducked his head with a sheepish smile. “Hazel had a rule: if you lived in her house, you learned how to make three meals good enough to feed heartbreak.”

My breath caught for a second. “And this one’s for…?”

“Grief,” he said simply.

We didn’t talk for a minute after that.

I just watched him eat, the flex of his jaw, the way he wiped his mouth with his knuckles like manners didn’t matter when the food was good enough. I refilled his glass of sweet tea, and he reached for the corkscrew instead.

“I was gonna save this for company,” he said, pulling a bottle of red from the counter. “But I guess this counts.”

“Not company,” I said. “Roommate.”

“Huh.” He laughed low in his throat. “Okay…then we’re celebrating.”

I wanted to ask him why he needed a meal for grief…or how he knew that I was grieving, too.

I let it lie.

He poured the wine carefully, then slid the first glass toward me with those big, callused hands.

“To new beginnings?” I offered.

He lifted his own glass. “To second chances.”

We clinked.

The wine was dark and warm, velvety on the tongue with a bite at the back that made me sit up straighter. Rhett didn’t sip so much as savor, eyes half-lidded as he leaned back in his chair, stretching out like a man with nothing to hide.

“So,” he said. “Tell me something about you I wouldn’t know from just seein’ you on a library bulletin board.”

I smiled over the rim of my glass. “I used to think I was going to be a midwife in a commune.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” I nodded, half-laughing. “Bought the books, learned the herbs, even grew my own raspberry leaf and calendula for teas. Then I realized most of the communes I found online were just pyramid schemes with chickens.”

Rhett choked on his wine and set the glass down, shaking his head. “Jesus. Pyramid schemes with chickens.”

“It’s true. There’s this one in Oregon that’s basically just a kombucha cult.”

“I don’t even know what to say to that.”

“Say you’re glad I didn’t join.”

“I’m real glad you didn’t join,” he laughed.

I took another sip, letting the warmth settle behind my ribs. “Okay, your turn. Tell me something I wouldn’t guess.”

Rhett thought for a second, tapping one thick finger against the side of his glass. “I wanted to be a poet.”

That made me blink. “A poet?”

“Back in high school,” he said with a shrug. “Wrote this terrible, overwrought stuff about heartbreak and dirt and stars. Hazel said it sounded like a romance novel fell in love with a tractor catalog.”

I burst out laughing. “Oh my God, please tell me you still have them.”

“I burned them.”

“No!”

“Regret it every day,” he said dryly. “I could’ve made a fortune publishing under a fake name. Rural Erotica Weekly. ”

“Don’t tempt me,” I said. “That’s probably a real market.”

“Hell,” he muttered, leaning back with a soft groan. “Could’ve bought new gutters.”

We fell into silence again, but it was the good kind. The easy kind. I tipped my glass toward him, chin in my hand.

“I like this,” I said.

He looked up. “What, the wine?”

“No,” I said. “This. Talking to you.”

His face went still for a second, like I’d said something he didn’t know how to hold. And then he gave me the softest nod I’d seen from him yet.

“I like talkin’ to you too, Willow.”

Something in the room changed…like a door inside me creaked open a little wider than it had before.

And the house, old and waiting, seemed to sigh with approval.

The sky outside had gone indigo, stars rising slow behind the kitchen window, and neither of us had moved to clear the plates. Rhett leaned back in his chair again, legs stretched long beneath the table, one bare foot nudging out just a little farther than before.

I felt it before I realized what was happening—the soft brush of skin against skin. Just the curve of his ankle, bumping against mine. Not a question. Not a dare.

Just a quiet… presence.

My breath hitched.

He didn’t stop. Just kept that light contact steady, warm and deliberate, his thumb smoothing along the rim of his wine glass like he wasn’t undoing me with the gentlest touch imaginable. I could imagine him touching me with those hands, and it was almost too much to bear.

I pressed my foot forward in return. Bare toes against his ankle, tentative .

He let out the softest, nearly-silent exhale through his nose—and didn’t pull away.

We stayed like that, legs tangled under the table like teenagers pretending not to notice. But I noticed. Every brush of skin, every flex of muscle, every time his thigh shifted like he was trying not to move .

The air grew heavy with it. Thick with something unsaid and impossibly close to breaking.

When I looked up again, his gaze was already waiting for me.

Dark. Intense. Wanting.

But he didn’t make a move.

Just drank me in, like he was taking a moment before doing anything he couldn’t take back.

“I should clean up,” I whispered, because it was the only thing I could think to say.

He nodded once, slow. “Yeah. Me too.”

But neither of us stood up.

And when I finally did—when I slid my chair back and gathered the plates with trembling fingers—I could feel his eyes on me. Tracing the hem of my sleep shorts. The curve of my thigh. The slope of my neck as I turned to rinse the dishes.

He didn’t stop looking until I’d left the room…and even in bed, almost an hour later, I could still feel that look.

I’d said we were roommates—but we were already more than that.

It was just a matter of time before we smashed through whatever boundaries we had left.