“I'm a preservation specialist. I preserve things. Including doors.”
“You're a terrible liar.”
“I'm an excellent liar. You just know me too well.”
His mouth twitches. “Six weeks, baby. Six weeks ofkeeping you out of that room. You can survive six more minutes.”
“Six WEEKS, Everett. Six weeks of mysterious construction noises. Six weeks of Roman coming and going at all hours. Six weeks of you and my brother whispering and shutting up every time I walk into a room.” I jab a finger at his chest. “You promised me you wouldn't touch that window seat.”
“I didn't touch the window seat.”
“Then why is the great room under construction?”
“Because the temporary wall needed to come down eventually.”
“That wall's been up for six months!”
“The repair was more involved than we thought.” He says it with a straight face, but his eyes are dancing. “Structural issues. Very complicated. Roman can explain the engineering if you want.”
“Roman's been dodging my calls for a week.”
“Has he?” Everett's tone is innocent. His expression is not. “Weird.”
I narrow my eyes. “Morgan.”
“Barrett.” He grins. “Soon to be Morgan.”
That shuts me up. Just for a second. Just long enough for the ring on my finger to catch the light and remind me that this impossible man is actually, legally, about to be my husband.
The wedding's in three weeks. Small ceremony. Just family and the Banger Sisters and a few lodge staff who've become family over the years. We're doing it in the great room.
Which I haven't been allowed to enter since April.
“If you ruined my wedding venue with some harebrained modernization scheme?—”
“I didn't ruin anything.” He pushes off the wall and cups my face in his hands. The way he always does. The way that still makes my breath catch every single time. “I made it better.”
“You can't make the great room better. It's already perfect.”
“It was missing something.”
“What could it possibly be missing?”
He kisses my forehead. “You'll see.”
Then he pulls a literal blindfold out of his back pocket.
“Absolutely not.”
“Absolutely yes.”
“Everett—”
“Sierra.” His voice drops, goes soft and serious. “Trust me.”
And damn him, I do. I've trusted him since I was fourteen years old and too young to know what that meant. I've trusted him through eleven years of silence and six months of chaos and every terrifying, wonderful moment in between.
So I close my eyes and let him tie the fabric around my head.
