The car rolled through and followed a short gravel path, lit with pretty lights. Right up to a house. Not some grand mansion in glass and steel perched dramatically over the cliffs. Just a cottage with an incredible view. Stone walls warmed by lantern light. Flowering climbers growing up the sides of a wide porch that wrapped around the front with chairs and blankets scattered across it. Windows glowed gold in the night, and the land stretched around it in gentle slopes of grass that ran all the way to the cliff edge.
I’d never seen anywhere so beautiful.
Elijah parked and turned off the engine. “You like?”
“I love it. It’s as if someone painted this from my imagination. But who lives here?”
He unsuccessfully hid a grin and climbed out of the car, rounding to open my door. “Come find out.”
I took his hand and exited, my heels crunching on gravel.
The wind lifted my hair, and I turned in a slow circle, taking in the view. The warm light spilling from the windows.
He tugged my hand. “Trust me.”
I did, endlessly.
The porch creaked under our steps. The scent of wood smoke drifted through the air. Elijah lifted me into his arms and pushed open the front door, warmth and laughter spilling out.
“You’re here!”
Jessie launched herself across the room and hugged me right as my feet touched the floor. I blinked. The living room was full. Genie leaned on the kitchen island with a glass of wine, flirting with a tall guy I recognised as one of Elijah’s tech team. The man appeared equal parts charmed and terrified.
Jessie bounced beside me, grinning like she’d won the lottery, then skittered across the room to join Ethan Westwood near the fireplace. Mitch stood near the sofa with puppy eyes for Melinda, who had to be his date. She smiled and waved. Everyone did.
The room buzzed with easy laughter. Music played somewhere near the kitchen. My friends and his.
My brain tried to catch up. “Is this the party?”
“Yep.” Elijah handed me a glass of wine.
I didn’t take a sip.
I turned to him. “You planned this for me?”
Elijah gave a wolfish grin. “Indulge me a minute.”
He called out to everyone else that we’d be right back, then whisked me once again into his arms and strode through the kitchen, showing me a cosy living room, a sun room with more of those epic views, then upstairs to spacious bedrooms. The cottage was bigger on the inside than it seemed from outside.
And I wasn’t a fool as to why he was showing it to me. I kept my words in, my heart so full.
At the end of the hall, he paused at a door. “Close your eyes, honey.”
I did, earning a kiss on the cheek.
Elijah leaned, and a door clicked, then he set me down. “Open ’em.”
I blinked at the broad space, the two corner walls all glass which in the daylight would make it such a bright space. In the centre was a work table, a selection of items laid out in the centre.
My lingerie from the Crowley’s incident.
I darted to them and touched the satin and velvet I’d cut and stitched then spun around. Tears lined my eyes. All my hard work. The way I’d pined for them, dreaming up the time I’d be able to reconstruct what had been lost. My words came out so shaky. “You got them back.”
He shrugged one shoulder, leaning on the doorframe, but no faked calm could hide how he watched my every reaction as if he needed it to breathe. “As if I’d let any part of you get away.”
God, I loved that line.
I rushed back and kissed him.
