the Spa’s greatest assets, which is accurate, according to online reviews. Cornelia loves you like a daughter, granddaughter, whatever, and your buddy Kevin? He thinks you hung the moon. I see the ways you’ve helped Grace and Chris—and don’t tell me people here will think less of her for what happened in Santa Fe. They won’t blame her for that any more than you do. So no, Devon people won’t be fazed when they hear about the accident. They know how much you give of yourself. You put you into everything you do. They see that.”
When his eyes grew too intense, I looked back at the plans. Something still didn’t feel right.
Trying to figure out what it was, I said, “You want kids.”
“And if they come…” Voice trailing off, he brought the cursor to the last unexplained space in the master bedroom wing. It was a small room, with a closet and a new small bathroom.
A baby’s room. The breath caught in my throat. A baby’s room was real. I wasn’t ready for that.
“What if I can’t?” I whispered.
“Then we won’t.”
“You’d be happy with that?”
“No. But better no child than no you.”
And what could I say to that?
“Do you know,” he said, “that when a couple loses a child, up to eighty percent of those marriages end in divorce? I don’t want to be one of the eighty percent.”
“We already are.”
“Not here,” he said, tapping his heart. He looked into my eyes, looked deeply. “Do we love each other?”
I nodded.
“That’s what matters, Maggie. None of the other stuff is as important as us. Family matters. We matter.”
And so he knocked down that argument, too. I was running out of options, but something was still off.
Feeling vaguely frantic, I asked, “What about my pets?” If we were talking about the future, my pets played a role. “You don’t like cats.”
He surfed through the plans again. When a detail of the kitchen appeared, he enlarged a small insert.
I leaned in, then glanced back at him. “What is that?”
“A pet-feeding station.”
“Built in?”
“Better than tripping over food bowls. I told Jillian we had three pets. She has a setup like this in her own house.” When I stared at him in disbelief, he said, “It isn’t that I don’t like cats. I just don’t know them, but they’re yours. They matter. And then there’s your cabin.”
“I love my cabin.”
“Which is why we keep it. If you’d rather have your potting studio there, we can do that too.”
“But I like going to Kevin’s studio.”
“Then go there.”
“But I like doing makeup.”
“So do makeup.”
These were meaningful parts of the life I had built on my own. That life held its share of loneliness, but it also held independence and pride. And here was Edward, seeming to understand that, seeming willing to accept me on my terms, to take what I treasured and work it into a future.
I felt a stab of frustration. “How can you ask me to be happy with my best friend locked up?”
“I’m not—”
“You are. These things make me happy, Edward.”
“Good,” he said and gave a grin that stole my breath.
Suddenly, I needed space. From the start, back in that art gallery in Boston, Edward had been a force of nature in my life. It wasn’t that I couldn’t think straight when he was around, more that I simply wanted to go with his flow. Actually, no. It was more like his current was strong enough to carry my flow right along beside his.
That hadn’t changed. It would be all too easy to jump in now and be swept along. But that wasn’t what I had become. I needed a minute of separation to remember myself. Something still bothered me. I needed to figure out what it was. Edward’s presence was too strong here to allow that.
Pressing a kiss to a corner of his mouth, I slipped from his lap. On my way to the built-ins, I traced the long edge of the desk and, then, because its texture was too tempting to resist, the fluted edges of the bookshelves. The millwork was striking. It just needed a little love. Edward would give it that. He had the resources and the desire. It was a good mix. But something nagged.
I went out into the front hall, which was wallpapered and bare. Money would fix this, too. Same with the living room, whose wide oak planks needed polish, stain, shine, something. Same with the winding staircase, whose newel post was worn and whose iron balusters