“The loft.”
Now, she did look up. “What about it?”
“It’s not big enough. You take up wayyy too much space.”
Giggling, she set the brush down and turned to face me. “I warned you, mister.” She strode toward me, dusting her hands on her jeans. “Are you going to kick me out?”
“Hell, no. I’m doing the opposite. I want to build you an office. A proper one. Not just your laptop on the kitchen table with case files spread across every surface.”
She raised an eyebrow. “You want to build me an office?”
“Well, not just for you.” I grinned. “It’d be for both of us. You can have walls for your crime scene boards and fit in a proper desk. You’d have space to spread out and think.”
“Oh, Kayden, that would be perfect,” she said. “Can we also have a sofa?”
“What do you need a sofa for? We have our bed.”
“For when I’m working late, and you want to sit with me, but I’m not ready to stop for the night. A proper sofa, big enough for the two of us.”
“Fine. I’ll build an extension big enough for your sofa.”
She chewed on her bottom lip. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”
“Of course, you know me. Mr. Truthful. I’ve been mapping it out in my head. We extend off the back of the loft, over the tack room. Add a set of stairs.”
“Stairs! Like real stairs? No more climbing up the ladder?”
I gasped in mock hurt. “What’s wrong with the ladder?”
“Not a damn thing, but stairs ... Wow, I’m impressed.”
“Now, you’re just teasing.”
“Am not.” She was looking at me like she didn’t quite believe me.
“I’ll make the bathroom bigger while we’re at it, build a proper one, not just a quick add-on. It’ll take a few months,” I said. “I’ll do most of the work myself, but Mitch and Xavier have said they’ll help.”
Her eyes filled, and she pressed her lips together.
“What?” I asked.
“I just ...” She chewed on her lip. “Nobody’s ever built me anything before.”
I cupped her cheek. “Babe. I’m going to spend the rest of my life building you things.”
She let out a wet laugh and leaned into my palm.
“Plus,” I said, “now that Comet is fully trained, she and Eclipse need their own paddocks closer to the barn. So, we’ll do that, too. We’ll sort the southern fencing out while we’re at it.”
She laughed. “From offices to fencing in one breath.”
“That’s how it works on a station.” I kissed her forehead. “You ready to head back?”
“Almost.” She turned back to Eclipse and gave her one last pat. “She just needs her grain.”
I watched my woman feed her horse on my family’s ranch and felt something settle inside me that I hadn’t even known was unsteady.
This was the life I was building. Right here. Eclipse munching grain. Sapphire planning the office I’d build her so she could track down the bastards in the world.