“In the living-in-sin sense, yes, absolutely, I want to live with you. But Iwillpay my share.” He grinned, and the Fireworks went off everywhere, in his eyes, in my soul. “How does that sound? Do you want to live together? For real this time?”
“Yes. Yes, please. Can we keep the tower for ourselves?”
“Of course,” he said. “It’s your house.”
“About that. Once we auction off the tools, I should have enough money to feel comfortable about maintaining control of the business, so I talked to Alex for a few minutes today about him investing in the project. He’s totally on board.”
“Excellent!” This time Landon kissed me, and I got lost in his mouth, his touch, before he pulled away.
“I have one more thing I want to show you,” he said. “Before I spray-painted the plywood on the front door, I checked to see how solid it was, and one of the pieces fell off.”
“There’s a shock.”
He chuckled. “Yeah, well, before I put it back, I got a look at the door. I think you might be interested.”
“I didn’t think this place had any more surprises,” I said as Landon produced a hammer from a nearby toolbox and began carefully removing the plywood from the door.
“It’s a shame about these nail holes in this nice carved door, but we’ll fix it up. This is the real centerpiece. Close your eyes for a minute.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really.”
So I did. I closed my eyes for a few minutes while listening to him pry off the wood on the back and front of the door, while noting every creak and whisper of this enchanted haunted house.
“OK,” he said. “You can look.”
I opened my eyes. And then I opened them wider. The centerpiece of the front door was a stunning stained-glass window. It featured a coy peacock sitting on a branch, in gorgeous blue and turquoise colors, with little crystals inset into the tail feathers that spread out below. A golden trellis with gemlike green leaves and red flowers framed the peacock, with a cloud-dotted, translucent, light-blue sky as the backdrop.
“It’s—” I couldn’t find the words.
“Beautiful,” he said simply. “Just like you.”
“I love you,” I blurted out. I’d never said that before to a man. And Landon would be the only man I’d ever want to say it to.
He dropped his hammer, pulled me close and kissed me again. When he paused, he pushed back my hair and gave me a new smile, all light and heat and something else. It wasn’t the Fireworks. I needed a new name for it. Because it felt like home.
Maybe the Hearthfire?
“I love you, too, Kayla.”
Chapter 29
By Thanksgiving, I had a lot to be thankful for. A lotmoreto be thankful for.
Marla called to offer me the video job with the tourism office, and I took it. Maybe I had two jobs now, but they were both dream jobs. And one of them, I was doing with Landon — fixing up Milkweed Mansion.
Or maybe I had two jobs and a passion, because I’d also started writing a screenplay about the Fountain family and the house. If I could raise funds for the house, maybe I could raise money for an indie film, too.
My mom, who’d worked with a lot of nonprofits, hinted that she’d be a great event manager for the mansion. I couldn’t have agreed more. So she was already lining up events for the new year as we focused on getting key rooms ready.
And even though our master bedroom suite still needed a lot of work, we’d just made it habitable enough to move in. Mornings looking over the river from our balcony were wonderful … and second only to the nights.
Though I still had Flora’s diary, I’d presented the Fountain family ledgers to the historical society, and Ken Motebarkle had gone on his radio show and announced that he was pleased with how the renovation of Milkweed Mansion was going. I greeted this broadcast with hard eye-rolls. He would likely freak out when he found out the auction of the tool stash was in the works, but for now, at least, I had one less enemy.
Speaking of which, Max Junior had just written me a short note of apology for his attack on our Halloween wraith. He skipped Thanksgiving dinner, but at least we were on the right track.
Oh, yeah. Thanksgiving dinner.
