Page 57

CHAPTER 57

Maarja drove her van up Gothic’s winding main street, the setting sun blaring in her rearview mirrors. After her announcement that she was pregnant, Saint Rees had tried to move her into the office—her worst nightmare—and when she resisted she’d been assigned jobs with little risk. Like the one she had just completed, moving a young woman’s complete Hummel collection from Eureka to Boston.

Who even knew Hummels were back in fashion?

The packing and inventory had taken two full days of fussiness and the travel and unpacking had been another five days. Every night she conferenced with Dante, but it wasn’t the same and right now she found herself as excited as a newlywed. Which she wasn’t really; three months ago they’d returned from their Italian honeymoon—which included a visit to Murano—and underneath her white coveralls, her baby bump was plainly showing. When she asked Mrs. Arundel whether Dante had kicked all the time, Raine replied, “No, dear, he was a placid infant, which worried Benoit, may I tell you. I imagine this little tyke takes after you.”

Maarja had no one to ask, but she didn’t allow that to bother her. She had so much more than she had ever imagined possible. For that, she was grateful.

Her anticipation heightened as she rounded the last curve toward her house…

Her house, which had been transformed by tearing off the front and framing a second story over the living room. A large flatbed truck was parked on the torn-up lawn while a small crane moved trusses off it and onto the studs. A dozen construction workers swarmed the yard, and Owen, her construction guy/brother-in-law, consulted a large roll of plans with Dante.

She braked and gawked like a tourist.

Behind her, Mr. Cummings honked, and Maarja hurriedly turned to drive up the alley to the back of her house. Her tiny rundown one-car garage was gone, replaced by a two-car garage. The open door revealed a vehicle she had no doubt was her husband’s. Who else would drive a Mercedes that cost more than Alex’s hospital stay? “Dante, you jerk,” she muttered.

No wonder he’d been so willing to move his fancy-ass body into her tiny old house. Under his auspices, it was becoming a…well, not a large house, but much more than the old-fashioned one bedroom, one bath she had so cherished.

Okay, fine, he’d had trouble fitting his office staff into the living room, but—he couldn’t have consulted with her?

Construction workers fled before her as she stomped in, glowering, and headed toward the front. The living room was in surprisingly good shape for a room that had a beam and plywood ceiling. Or was that the upstairs floor?

She stepped out on the front porch, which was still pretty much the same except the wood floor, railings, and posts were new and, by the smell, newly painted. She walked to the railing and looked down at Owen and Dante.

“Hi, Maarja, did you have a good trip?” Owen didn’t wait for an answer. He put his arm over his head and waved it in a big circle. “That’s a wrap for the day, folks. Secure it all and let’s leave these newlyweds to enjoy their reunion.” The coward headed for the pickup marked with his construction logo on the door.

The guys on the crew viewed Dante, who stood looking up at Maarja, and Maarja, who stood scowling down at Dante, and Maarja heard a few “Uh-ohs.”

The women on the crew pretended not to watch, but they wore the half grins women always wore when they witnessed a husband about to get his butt kicked.

“Hi, honey.” Dante made no move to climb the stairs. “What do you think of my surprise?”

“Your surprise? Is that what this is, your surprise? You take my house apart and make it bigger and better —” she used air quotes “—and you call it your surprise?”

“My surprise for you. And for our baby. I couldn’t see how I could stay home to take care of her—”

They hadn’t yet decided whether to find out the baby’s gender, but the whole family assumed it was a girl.

“—without a little more space for my office and her nursery.” As his enthusiasm and volume increased, he bounded up the stairs and took her hand. “Come on! Let me show you. The city let me expand another two feet on this one side—”

The living room/kitchen was bigger; she simply hadn’t noticed as she steamed through the first time.

“—so I could add a spiral staircase up to the second floor.” Which was already framed and in place. “I’m going to enclose it for storage and decorate it with your mother’s prints. She was thrilled when I asked!” He must have seen something in Maarja’s face that slowed him down, because he asked, “That is…if it’s okay with you?”

“I’m good with my mother’s prints.” She was, really she was, but since he’d already asked, it was a damned good thing.

“Great!” His enthusiasm rebounded. “You climb ahead of me.”

“So if my big clumsy body takes a tumble you can catch me?” Sarcasm fit her mood.

“So I can watch your butt.”

“That’s one right answer,” she mumbled, and climbed the stairs.

At the top, when she turned, he was definitely watching her butt. As soon as he set foot on the floorboards, though, he burst into more explanations, showing her the window seat and the skylights, framed but not finished, and where the second-story deck would go out the back wall over their bedroom. There they would sit for dinner and watch the sunset over the ocean while their baby slept in her crib. With great sweeps of his arms, he described where his desk would sit in relationship to the rocking chair and crib, how the microwave would heat his coffee and the baby’s bottle, how the wallpaper would be washable so his little girl could use her chalk, paint, and crayons like Grandma Octavia.

He was so animated, describing what had been created, envisioning what wasn’t yet there, Maarja’s irritation eased. She sat down on the floor and waited until he wound down.

When he realized she was watching and smiling, he sat beside her. “I’ve installed a lot of security, too. Oh! And I made apricot jam today. What do you think?”

“I think our baby is a very lucky person.” She leaned against him. “Like its mama.”

He put his arm around her.

She asked, “How did you manage to convince the city council and the neighbors and Angelica Lindholm to let you do this remodel?”

In a prosaic tone, he said, “The usual. Bribes, kissing up, paying for the library renovation, promising Mrs. Hannaford next door I’d take her to the beach once a month and let her sit with her feet in the sand.”

“She can’t climb the cliff. How are you going to do that?”

“Helicopter,” they both said at once.

Maarja laughed. “The most expensive remodel in the history of mankind.”

“You said it. Owen ain’t cheap, and he didn’t give me a friends-and-family discount. I called him a fucking bloodsucker and he called me a fucking pain in the ass because I designed this myself and I don’t know anything about structure, and I said I could take my business elsewhere and he said yeah, go, you’ll be on the receiving end of the biggest fucking of your life—”

She couldn’t stand it. “What is it with you guys and your potty mouths?”

“I haven’t seen you in a whole week, and at least I haven’t said I want to fuck you.” He used his most lascivious expression as he viewed her. “Which I do.”

Emphasizing each word as she spoke, she said, “You can’t use that language around a baby!”

“Okay, I won’t. Tell me, what would you call fucking?”

“Making love!”

Dante smiled a slow triumphant smile—and Maarja realized she’d been manipulated. “Yes.” He took her hand. “Let’s go make love.”

* * * * *