Page 13 of In Your Dreams, Holden Rhodes

I took a seat behind the desk, acting like my pulse wasn’t racing. “I’m busy.”

Zara breezed into my office. “Here we go.” She set a tea on my desk.

Sadie beamed at her. “Thank you so much, Zara.”

I shook my head at both of them. “She’s not staying. I have another meeting,” I lied.

Zara stared at me with confusion. “You don’t have a meeting until three.”

Damn her and her steel-trap memory. I glared at Zara and she rolled her eyes before sliding the door closed.

I stared at Sadie and my lungs felt tight. This office was too small. My teeth ground together and I folded my arms over my chest, dragging a deep breath in and letting it out.

She rolled her eyes. “Oh, stop it. What does your mom always say? Oh, yeah. Stop being so dramatic.”

Her eyes glittered with amusement and I studied her face.

Jesus, she was beautiful. I pictured myself running my fingers through her hair and my hand twitched on my bicep. Her gaze dropped to my arm and she raised an eyebrow.

I cleared my throat again. “What do you want?”

She straightened up. “We have a few things to talk about.”

I gave her a blank look.

“What realtor are we going to go with? What’s our listing price?” She counted off her fingers.

My eyebrows shot up in alarm, but she didn’t notice.

She wanted to sell the place?

“Do we want to change the inside of the house in terms of staging? I guess we can talk to the realtor about that.” She shrugged. “I can help with staging.”

“We’re not selling the inn.”

She frowned and blinked at me. “Holden, what are we going to do with aninn?” She whirled her finger in the air, gesturing at the office around us. “You have a company to run.”

I raked a hand through my hair, frustrated. IknewI had a company to run, and the inn was going to be a fair amount of maintenance. Grounds that needed to be maintained. I’d need to hire a staff. It wasn’t unmanageable, but it was more on my already-full plate.

Selling felt wrong, though.

“No,” I said in a flat tone.

Her face fell with a mix of confusion, disappointment, and panic. “Why not?”

“Katherine wouldn’t have left half of the inn to me if she wanted us to sell it.” I studied the pinch between her eyebrows. “I don’t need the money.”

Her delicate throat worked and she let out a breath, deflating. She bit her bottom lip. “Fuck,” she whispered.

“Besides, we have to wait until the probate period is over.”

She turned back to me. “What?”

“Probate. We have to wait until all Katherine’s will documents are processed and the inn is in our names before we can sell. It’ll take up to a year.”

“A year?” she repeated, eyes wide.

“But I’m not selling.”

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