room I can call mine.” Her voice cracked again, and this time she couldn’t fight the tear that spilled. “You can’t imagine how hard it is not having your own place.”
“Of course I can,” he said. “Look around. You think I want to work like this? But you’ll get there.”
“Will I? I’m working so hard to build a business and this resort. But that’s just a place for other people to have a vacation. Is that any kind of home? How will I raise Ashley there? How can I give her a—”
“Shhh.” He put a finger over her lips. “I bet I know how to make you stop crying and start smiling. Come with me.” He started walking toward the hallway, but Lacey stayed put.
“You can’t take this feeling away with sex, Clay.”
“Come on, Lace.” He tugged at her hand. “I want to show you something.”
“Oh, I know what you want to show me, and I’m telling you, that’s not the answer to everything when your heart is breaking. And I need to finish my cake.”
He turned, still holding her hand. “Please come in the bedroom with me.”
“No.”
He closed his eyes, almost fighting a smile. “Okay. Then wait here. This was going to be a surprise after the town council meeting, but I think this is a better time.”
He dropped her hand and walked away, leaving her to stare after him. Then, burning with curiosity, she followed, peeking into the bedroom to see him on his knees, reaching under the bed.
He pulled out a few tubes of paper, folded back a corner to read something, then selected one of the rolls, shoving the others back under the bed.
For a moment she thought he was getting her shelf liner, since the paper looked thick enough to use. But then he unrolled the rubber band and spread a large blueprint over the bed. “This is something I’ve been working on for you.”
The sketch of a building was similar in style to what he’d done for Casa Blanca, but this structure looked a little bigger than the villas yet still within the traditional Morocco-blended-with-old-Paris motif he’d captured for the resort.
But this was different, homey somehow. Intimate and inviting. This was like a…
“A house?”
“A home. For you and Ashley.”
“Oh. Clay.” She brought her hand to her mouth, as if she could contain the feeling welling up inside of her.
“You know that little corner, way at the end of the Tomlinson property line, just off the beach?” he asked. “I think we could build this right there, sort of at an angle facing southwest. You’d see Barefoot Bay and the resort, but be tucked away from the action of the business.”
This was perfect. Too much. Too perfect. “How could I afford this?”
“Some creative financing,” he said. “I’ve been talking to my sister about some mortgage options. In fact, that’s another thing she’s supposed to call me about today.”
She looked up at him, a new waterfall of feeling cascading over her. “You talked to your sister about my house?”
“Of course I did. I’m close to her. She’s the only family I have now.”
“You have—” Me. She stopped herself before the word was out. “You have really blown me away with this,” she finished, turning to the drawing, kneeling just to get closer to it. “This is just incredible.”
“That’s just the front elevation,” he said, coming right down next to her to turn to the next blueprint. “Here’s the back.”
“It’s even prettier. Is that a balcony?”
“I thought that would be Ashley’s room. I gave her the whole upstairs, for, you know, teen privacy. But we could do anything to the floor plan.” He flipped another page, and her heart went with it.
We could do anything. Yes, yes they could. Couldn’t they? Her eyes filled again, making her vision too blurry to make out the clean lines of a kitchen and family room, a dining room and laundry. It was too much. He was too much.
“I thought we could—”
She cut off the suggestion with a kiss, hard and hot and as forceful as she could make it.
Under her lips, he laughed softly. “I take it that means you like it.”
“I like it. I like it. I like you.”
He chuckled again, the words having become a secret message between them. “I thought you said no sex until you do something to that cake.”
“I need to do something to you first.” She pressed herself into him, her fingers already grasping for more of him, dragging down his chest, over the