“Tree?” Kayla scoffed, then yawned again. “This place needs at least six.”
“That’s true. Maggie, you’d need one on each floor of the turret. Front porch, balcony, bedroom,” Niri decided.
“And a big one in the rotunda against the stairs,” Kayla volunteered. “Then another in the dining room and a family tree wherever the gifts will go.”
“I’ll make note of that for the future owners,” Maggie said dryly.
Kayla shook her head. “Willpower and self-deprivation.”
“I sure hope whatever’s next is worth walking away from this,” Nirina mused.
As she stood on her front porch and waved off her new friends, Maggie hoped so, too.
Dayana: Any summer vacation plans this year?
23
Saturday morning, Silas rapped his knuckles on the wood trim of Maggie’s office doorway. She glanced up from whatever she was studying on her laptop, and he caught the way her eyes brightened when she saw it was him.
“Mornin’， darlin’，” he said, wandering into the room.
“This is a surprise. Don’t you have teenage mowers of lawns to harass?” she asked. She had her hair pulled back in a low ponytail. Her feet were bare, but the sneakers and socks she was planning on wearing for the day sat on the corner of her desk. Her shorts were of the yoga variety. Very short and very fitted. Her T-shirt had BUILDING DREAMS emblazoned across the chest.
He approved. The tomboy next door. Just exactly his type.
“Niri and Kayla sent me. I’ve got the beds you ordered in my truck, and Elton’s got the mattresses,” he said.
“Oh, that’s handy,” she said. “Cody showed up with his ‘stuff’ at eight this morning. All his possessions fit in a backpack and a duffel bag. I know I travel light, but that’s by choice. His isn’t, and it broke my heart for him.”
That news gave Silas a bit of an ache in his chest. He’d be nothing without his family. Without the homes he’d grown up in. The support network four loving adults had worked so hard to build. “Hopefully this will cheer you up,” he said, producing the surprise he’d brought her from behind his back.
“Is that for me?” she asked, perking up.
He put the potted plant down on her desk, mostly so he could get his hands on her. “It is. Thought it would look good on that side table you picked up at the shop Thursday.”
Maggie leaned in to admire its glossy green leaves in the white ceramic pot. She looked delighted. “It’s beautiful. What is it?”
“It’s a dwarf citrus,” he explained. “Indirect sun is best. You should get yourself a nice little crop of lemons off it.”
When she bit her lip, he guessed she was working out the perfect placement in her head. “You didn’t have to,” she told him. “But thank you.”
He nudged her chin up to look at him. And since he felt like it, he slid his hands down her arms to hold her wrists. “I wanted to. And it made you smile. After we put the beds together, I thought maybe we could—”
But his lunch invitation was interrupted by the new resident of the Old Campbell Place, Cody, bursting through the back door. “You guys have to see what Kevin found!” he announced in the doorway before disappearing again.
“Think it’s the treasure?” she asked.
“More likely a giant mud pit,” Silas guessed. Before she could head for the door, he stopped her and pressed a hard kiss to her mouth. “Morning, Maggie.”
Her smile spread like the sun across her face. “Morning, Silas.”
“Don’t forget your shoes, darlin’，” he said, handing them over.
They found Cody in the backyard with the rest of the landscaping crew and Dean huddled around the foundation of the old shed.
“Hell. Please don’t be a body,” Maggie murmured.
“Would Dean be filming if it was?” Silas pointed out.
“Never know with him,” she said.
“Kevin’s a daddy,” Dean said from behind the digital camera.
Silas knelt down to get a closer look. His big, burly pit bull was curled in a hole at the base of the foundation around two fluffy gray kittens.
“Aw,” Maggie crooned. Kevin’s tail wagged at the appreciation of his fatherly instincts. “How old are they?”
Silas reached in and gently pulled one of the kittens out. It had thick fur that clumped like a mane around its head. “Probably about six weeks,” he guessed, cradling the fur ball to his chest.