“Oh, they don’t even know what they’re doing in there,” he said.
Briar full-on laughed, and she reached over and took his hand in hers. “I think it’s great you got a little nap, baby. You work too hard sometimes.”
He looked over to her, surprised. “Do I?”
“I think so,” she said. “Especially now that spring is here and your house is coming along. Aren’t you going to put in the flooring yourself?”
“Yes,” he said.
“And Bobbie Jo told me that you took Tucker to the big hardware store to have him help you pick out paint. Are you doing that yourself too?”
“I’m not going to do all of the painting,” he said. “But I am going to do the flooring and the finishing work on the cabinets and shelving. I really like seeing those little details come together.”
“Yes, I can see that about you,” she said, and Tarr wondered what she really saw in her head when she thought of him.
They made the drive back to Deerfield quickly, and Tarr rumbled past her road and around the corner to the far end of the square where his house had come to life over the past couple of months.
All of the walls and roof stood proudly against the sky, and Tarr smiled as he pulled in and parked in front of the house. “Looks like they put the gutters on,” he said, eyeing the new rain gutters on the house.
“This barely counts as a cabin,” Briar said.
“Never once did I say I was building a cabin,” he told her for probably the fifth time. “It’s always been a house, Briar.”
He shook his head and got out. She joined him, and he led the way up what would become the front sidewalk to the house. He had a two-car garage and plenty of room for parking bigger vehicles—like his RV or a boat, four-wheelers, or anything else oversized that Tarr wanted—down the side and toward thebackyard, which he planned on fencing and replanting with some of the native trees that they’d had to take out to build the house.
“I do love this porch,” Briar said as she climbed the steps to it.
Tarr stopped and admired it as well. It extended across the full front of the house and wrapped around the far side, where it extended all the way to the back corner over there. The master bedroom took up that corner, and he’d have a sliding glass door which led out onto a private side porch. Tarr had admitted—only to himself—that he’d designed that for Briar, so she could take her coffee on the south side of the house, in that rocking chair she loved.
Tarr pushed open the door and walked into the house. “Oh, they’ve come a long way,” he said, as he could now see the kitchen laid out with spots for the appliances and the cabinets that had been brought this week.
The front door faced east and the back door west, and as he’d been spoiling Briar all day for her birthday, the sun had started its descent toward evening. Tarr moved in that direction, where a pair of French doors would let him out onto a back deck and into his backyard. He’d be able to see the arena from here, even if Bobbie Jo and Tucker grew big stalks of corn in the fields in between.
“It’s looking good,” he said, turning back to Briar.
“They’ve hung doors this way too, Tarr,” she said, peering down the hallway.
He joined her, drinking in all the new things that they’d done in the house since he’d been here last. He really tried not to come every day, because it simply fed his impatience.
“What do you think?” he asked, putting his arm around Briar.
“I think it’s amazing,” Briar said.
He swallowed, not wanting to ruin anything since they still had dinner to go for her birthday. But he couldn’t stop himself from asking, “What do you think, my thorny Briar? Do you think you could live here with me one day?”
Briar leaned further into him and looked down the hall as if someone had painted a gorgeous mural on the walls and only she could see it.
Irritation drove through him when she didn’t immediately say,Yeah, of course, Tarr, and he said, “Forget it. Don’t answer that, okay?”
“Tarr—” she said, but he had already turned to leave.
“Let’s get back to your place,” he said, making his voice as bright as he could. “I’ve got to put a three-course dinner on the table.”
She followed him, and when they were both in the truck and headed back down the lane, she said, “It’s not a hard question, Tarr.”
“Well, you didn’t answer it.”
“I don’t know if I’m ready to start talking about marriage,” she said. “And I know that’s not the answer that you want to hear, so I was trying to figure out how to say, ‘Yes, I’m thinking about living in that house with you,’ without it turning into a big conversation about marriage.”
