He parked beside Meryl’s car and got out, rehearsing the opening in his head.
Meryl, there’s something I need to tell you.
Too stiff.
Meryl, I need to show you something.
Better.
He reached the door and knocked, but there was no answer. He tried again, then pushed it open when no answer came.
“Meryl?” he called.
Her voice came from deeper inside the house. “In here.”
He followed the sound and stopped short in the doorway of the dining room.
Meryl sat at the table with her laptop open, headphones on, her notebook beside it, and loose sheets spread around her in a careful mess. One page held sketches that had nothing to do with Pine Cottage. Another had color notes, type treatments, and little thumbnail layouts. Her phone sat face up by her elbow, lighting every so often with new messages.
This was not Meryl making lists for the cottage.
This was Meryl at work.
She looked up, and her face changed at once when she saw him. Her mouth curved into a smile, and at once he remembered the taste of her lips and the quiet sound she had made when they kissed.
“Hey,” she said. “Sorry. I’m nearly done.”
He stayed where he was for a moment, taking in the screen full of design work and the coffee mug gone cold beside her hand.
Our mate is talented,his bear said with quiet satisfaction.
She was. But what hit Spencer harder was the reminder that she had another life outside of Pine Cottage and Bear Creek.
And him.
She had clients and deadlines. Commitments.
“Sorry,” Meryl said again, closing one window and opening another. “I thought I’d have the house further along before I had to refocus on work, but apparently my inbox had other plans. Thank goodness I plugged this thing in before it was too late.”
Yeah, thank goodness,Spencer’s bear grumbled.
Spencer stepped further into the room. “Bad morning?”
“Busy one.” She blew out a breath and pushed a hand through her hair. “A client moved a deadline, another one suddenly has opinions after weeks of silence, and now I’m trying to remember how to be a professional person while also living in a building site.”
Her tone was dry, but the strain under it was real.
And he did not want to add to that strain.
No.His bear shifted uneasily.Tell her anyway.
Spencer looked at her more closely. At the tightness in her shoulders. At the work spread across the table like a shield. At the way she had stepped out of his world and back into the life she understood.
He had come here, ready. Truly ready to tell her everything. To bare his soul.
But looking at her now, he understood with painful clarity that the truth would not land well if he told it today.
If he showed her now, she might panic. Worse, she might pull away before he’d helped her understand what it all meant.
