Page 66 of Match Made In Growl

"Good." She picked up her tea. "Now, what's the surprise? You've been twitchy since lunch and you smell like sawdust, which means you've been building something. You only get this particular brand of nervous when you're about to show me something you made."

"I'm not nervous."

"Criss."

"Fine. Come with me."

He drove them north on the road past Kieran's property, deeper into the woods where the old-growth pines gave way to a clearing he'd found eight months ago during a ward check and hadn't been able to stop thinking about since. The road turned to gravel, then to packed earth, and Steph watched the trees pass.

"Where are we going?"

"You'll see."

"I don't like surprises."

"You'll like this one."

The truck crested a low rise and the clearing opened up below them, ringed by oaks, a creek running along the eastern edge. And in the center, lit by the last amber light of evening, sat their house.

Steph went still.

It was a cabin, because this was Hollow Oak and anything else would have been wrong. Single story, wide porch, built from timber he'd sourced from the property with Kieran's help and milled at Luka's shop. Three bedrooms, because spring was coming and he believed her when she said soon. A stone chimney that he'd laid himself, crooked in one spot where he'd miscounted the mortar line, but solid. The porch faced west toward the sunset, and the windows were large, larger than standard, because he'd noticed that Steph gravitated toward light the way other people gravitated toward warmth.

"Criss." Her voice was quiet. "What is this?"

"Ours. If you want it."

She got out of the truck before he'd killed the engine. He followed her up the porch steps, through the front door he'd hung last week, into the main room where the woodstove sat against the far wall and the kitchen opened to the right, all of it smelling like fresh-cut pine and the linseed oil he'd used on the floors.

She moved through the rooms without speaking. The master bedroom with its view of the creek. The second bedroom, empty, waiting. The third, smaller, south-facing, warm. The bathroom with the oversized tub he'd installed because she took baths that lasted an hour and used all the hot water without apology.

Then she reached the kitchen, and she stopped.

The desk sat in the corner by the largest window, where the morning light would fall across the surface for six hours straight. He'd built it from reclaimed oak, sanded smooth, deep enough for her journals and her camera equipment and the magnetometer she kept within arm's reach even when she was eating breakfast. The chair was sturdy, cushioned, angled so she could look up from her work and see the forest stretching out below the ridge through glass that ran nearly floor to ceiling.

She pressed her fingers to the desk's surface. Ran them along the grain, the way she touched stone when she was reading what was underneath. Then she looked out the window at the view he'd chosen for her, the oaks and the creek and the ridge where the chamber sat protected and permanent, her life's work visible from the place where she'd do the rest of it.

She didn't say anything for a long time.

"You built me a desk," she said finally.

"I built you a house. The desk was the important part."

She turned to him. Her eyes were bright, the gold vivid in the evening light that poured through the window behind her. She was wearing his flannel and her field boots and her hair was a mess and she was crying, which she would deny later.

"It's perfect," she said. "All of it. The house, the windows, this." She pressed her palm on the desk. "How long have you been building this?"

"Since the week after the wedding. Kieran helped with the framing. Luka did the chimney consultation, though I laid every stone. Freya picked the window placements." He leaned against the kitchen counter. "I wanted it done before you finished the dig. So you'd have somewhere to write the book."

"What book?"

"The one you're going to write. About the site, the families, the history. The one that makes sure nobody ever buries that story again." He crossed to her and took her hand, the one with the emerald ring, and held it. "You need a place to do that. Not a cramped guest cabin. Not a desk at the inn. Your own space, with your own light, in a house that belongs to us."

She laced her fingers through his and looked around the kitchen, the main room, the porch visible through the front windows where the evening light was fading to violet. The house was quiet the way new houses are, still absorbing the presence of the people who'd live in it, the wood settling, the spaces waiting to be filled with the particular noise of a life built on purpose.

"Move in this weekend?" he asked.

"Tomorrow."