He pats my knuckles with his warm, smooth hand. “Do you recall me confessing my secret passion in the garden?”
The garden where he almost kissed me.
Is he going to try to kiss me again?
“Of course I do.”
His blue eyes glitter with his blinding smile. “I want to show you what I’ve been building.”
We cut through a side street, emerging across from the treehouse I saw the day I first arrived. Lilacs tremble from bushes on either side of a wide staircase that climbs to a porch encircling the trunk. The door has been built into the bark, with the scrolled iron hinges painted black. Each of the thick upper limbs holds another level, the pitched roofs made not of slate or thatch, but of woven branches.
“That is the loveliest house I’ve ever seen.” When I was a little girl, there was an apple tree in one of our fields that I claimed as my own. In the years after my mother passed, I spent more time in that tree than on solid ground.
“The inside is even more remarkable.”
“Do you know the owner?” I’d love a chance to see it someday.
Ronan unlatches the gate. “Kerris, Iamthe owner.”
This place ishis? When he said he liked building things, I assumed he made toys or little wooden figures, not houses. “You builtthis?”
“No, but I designed it as a summer house.”
A summer house twice as big as the cottage I grew up in by the looks of it. The sanded oak banister slips beneath my fingers, glossy and smooth with fresh lacquer. Up the stairs we climb, my excitement doubling with each step toward the intricate facade.
The main door leads to a modest foyer that opens into a larger living room with a black stove and a kitchen boasting deep green cabinets. Every detail has been carefully thought out, even down to the brass knobs shaped like twigs.
“Ronan, this is… It’s remarkable.” One room flows into the next, with small staircases leading to bedrooms and a bathing room perched at the end of a branch all by itself, overlooking Rosehill.
Ronan watches me with a shoulder propped against the doorframe. “Do you really like it?”
Who wouldn’t? I trace my fingers along the carved headboard in the largest bedroom, marveling over each divot. “It’s unlike any home I’ve ever seen.”
He glances down, his cheeks flushing. “Do you really think so? My mother says it’s too whimsical.”
The queen couldn’t be more wrong. Even if this home isn’t her style or preference, there is no denying the talent it took to create something so beautiful. “It’s perfect.”
He pushes off the frame, stepping closer. “It could be yours, you know. If you were to marry me.”
A tempting offer, but a house—even one as fine as this—doesn’t make a marriage. It’s the people who live in it. As talented as Ronan may be, we only just met. Yes, he is handsome and rich, but he is also a stranger.
Who is he deep down? Is he caring? Giving? Does he understand that true beauty doesn’t live on the surface, but in a person’s heart? In their soul?
I sink onto the end of the bed and tuck my hands beneath my thighs to keep from fidgeting. “I hear that you’ve been fending off marriage proposals for years. Why are you so interested in matrimony now?”
He pauses, as if genuinely considering his answer. “I feel as if I’ve been waiting.”
I’ve been waiting.
I’ve been waiting.
I’ve been waiting.
When I speak, my voice is no more than a whisper. “Waiting for what?”
The legs of his trousers brush against the silk of my skirts. “For this house to be finished so that I have a place of my own.”
Disappointment sinks like a stone in my stomach. Not that I expected him to say, “For you,” considering we only just met. That would be madness.