“I asked her not to.”
That landed. He’d asked Mary to keep a secret from me, and Mary, who told me everything, who couldn’t keep a surprise birthday party quiet for more than forty-eight hours, had done it. That meant she believed in whatever he was doing enough to stay quiet about it.
“How long did this take?” I asked.
“A few months. I started after you left.”
I looked at him. “Why?”
He didn’t answer immediately, instead he leaned against the wall with his arms crossed. “You told me once that you wanted to adopt animals but you couldn’t. Your hours were too long, your place was too small, and you said if you adopted one they’d be lonely while you were at work. And you said you wouldn’t be able to stop at one anyway.” He shrugged. “This way you don’t have to choose. You can have as many as you want, there’s staff to help when you’re busy, and they’ll never be lonely because they have each other. After what happened, I guess I wanted to have a piece of you in me in some way, even when we’re apart.”
My throat tightened. He was right. I’d told Fin that, sitting on my porch one night after returning a foster to Bonalisa. I’d cried about it, about how unfair it was that loving animals meantknowing you couldn’t give them what they deserved unless you had more space, more time, more everything. And he’d sat beside me with his head on my lap and listened.
“So basically you built an elaborate trap,” I said, trying to keep my voice even. “Fill the place with animals I love so I can never leave.”
His mouth twitched. “That would be brilliant of me if it were true.”
“It’s not?”
“It’s not. But I’m writing it down for future reference.”
I shook my head but I was smiling and we both knew it.
Then he opened a door at the far end of the wing and I walked through and my throat closed.
A reading nook. Not a corner with a chair. A room. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, a deep window seat with cushions and a soft blanket folded at one end, warm lighting that made the whole space glow amber. The shelves were stocked with romance novels, dozens of them, organized by author, and on the middle shelf I could see a familiar set of spines.
There was space on the floor beside the window seat. Dog-sized space.
I touched the window seat cushion. Ran my fingers along the book spines. Picked up one of the novels, held it, put it back. My eyes were burning, my jaw tight. I was not going to cry in front ofhim again because I’d already done that at the ultrasound and a woman had to have limits.
“This is the most thoughtful thing anyone has ever done for me,” I said, and my voice cracked on the last word. So much for limits.
“It’s yours. All of it. The whole wing, no conditions. I hired the staff, I’ll fund everything. If you want to run it, it’s yours. If you just want to sit in here and read, that’s fine too.”
“No conditions,” I said.
“None.”
“Even if I never forgive you.”
“Even then.”
“You’d fund an entire rescue operation for a woman who might never take you back.”
“Yes.”
“That’s insane.”
“Probably.”
I looked at the room. At the window seat. At Buddy, who had followed us in and was sniffing the cushion like he was assessing the thread count. At the shelves full of books I loved, in a room built because I once told a dog on a porch that I wished I could help more animals.
He remembered that. A throwaway sentence I said to Fin years ago, sitting on my front steps after returning a foster animal,crying into his fur. He remembered it, held onto it, and turned it into this.
I walked to the window seat and sat down. The cushion was soft, deep enough to sink into, and the window looked out over the back garden. Buddy followed me and lay down on the floor beside me, resting his chin on his paws. The space was exactly the right size for him.
“You measured this for a dog,” I said.
