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words left her mouth she regretted them, so she quickly followed them with, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
Sage’s silence agreed with her.
Rose took a step toward the car. “Sage, can we go somewhere and talk?”
She held her breath as her little sister looked down and then away. A long moment later, Sage finally looked up and met her gaze. “Gee, Captain Anderson, why don’t you call the office tomorrow and make an appointment?”
Rose sucked in a breath as the arrow struck home. She heard the passenger in her sister’s car say, “Whoa, Sage. That’s cold.”
“It’s complicated,” her sister said before Sage got back into the car and slammed the door. The man she’d been talking to in the grocery store hopped back as the tires spun and the car lurched off.
Rose stood staring after it until the car rounded a corner and disappeared. Weariness washed over her and made her feel old. Old, washed out, dried up, and useless. It would be so easy to plop herself down right here and cry, but she was trying to wean herself away from that habit.
She never noticed the guy approach until he stuck his hand out and said, “I’m Colt Rafferty. You’re Sage’s sister?”
“Yes. Rose Anderson.” She shook his hand.
“What just happened here, Rose?”
She let out a shaky breath and said, “Look, I’m sorry. I just can’t.” She turned away from him and walked around to the side of the building where she’d left her bicycle. She deposited her grocery sack in the woven basket attached to the handlebars, then tugged the bike out of the rack and climbed on.
As she rode back to the place where she’d rented a room, she told herself that the tears trickling from her eyes resulted from the sting of the wind, even though the breeze was almost nonexistent. She also reminded herself that she’d known that healing the wounds in her relationship with Sage wouldn’t be easy. But then, she should be accustomed to that. For the past eight months, nothing in life had been easy.
“So stop the pity party,” she told herself. “That doesn’t help a thing.”
It was a lovely afternoon, in fact, and Eternity Springs was a picture-perfect town with flowers blooming everywhere she looked. Window boxes, flowerpots, hanging baskets, and flower beds adorned houses and businesses and churchyards. The air smelled of sunshine and forest and the aroma of baking cookies as she pedaled by a coffee shop called the Mocha Moose.
Tempted by the scent, she stopped and treated herself to a raspberry pinwheel cookie fresh from the oven along with a glass of cold milk. Comfort food. Sometimes a girl simply needed a cookie.
Her snack finished, she resumed her ride and a few minutes later walked the bike across the footbridge over Angel Creek and up to Angel’s Rest. She parked the bike, then entered the converted Victorian mansion.
The older woman standing behind the reception desk looked up when Rose walked in, and she beamed. “Hello, dear. You must be our newest guest, Dr. Rose Anderson. Your resemblance to your sister is striking. I’m Celeste Blessing, the proprietor here. Welcome to Angel’s Rest.”
“Thank you, Ms. Blessing.” Rose’s smile went shaky at the warmth of the woman’s welcome.
“Call me Celeste, please. I’ve spent hours on the road and I’m stiff as a lodgepole pine. I think I’ll indulge in the soothing waters of our natural springs. I would love it if you would join me.”
“Thank you, but I don’t think—”
Celeste interrupted her, saying, “You know, your sister is one of my closest friends in Eternity Springs.”
“She is?”
“Yes. Sage and I aren’t Eternity Springs natives, so we had that in common, and it helped us bond. Now, I must run up and change into my swimsuit. Shall we meet back here in fifteen minutes?”
“Okay,” Rose replied. “That will be nice.”
To her surprise, the woman reached out and patted her hand. “We’ll have us a nice long talk. You know, I think Sage could use a big sister these days.”
Rose smiled tremulously and spoke past the lump in her throat. “Actually, Celeste, I could sure use a sister myself.”
THIRTEEN
With the sound of Sarah’s scolding still ringing in her ears, Sage took the long way out to her cottage at Hummingbird Lake. She needed time to process the implications of what she had just witnessed.
Colt was here. Rose was here. Which problem did she want to think about first?
Thinking about Colt felt less threatening, so she concentrated on him. The man had come