Page 5 of Oakheart

“I will tell him concrete is needed,” I promised. “The wood, though”—I paused and looked around—“this wood will be fine. Leo and I will cut trees. Make wood for you to build Mama’s house.”

His eyes went round in shock, but he nodded, and his gaze slid down my body in a familiar way. For the first time in my life, though, that look didn’t make me feel dirty, like Grant was about to tell me I needed to do something I didn’t wish to. This time, it made every part of me warm, and I met his eye when the perusal came back up to meet mine, his cheeks flushed a beautiful pink.

Then I gave him my best assholish grin, the only thing I’d learned from my father in the few years I’d known him as a child, and motioned to the trees. “Which trees to cut down?”

This was going to be fun, and we didn’t have enough of that in the Wildwood pack.

For a moment, I thought of Viktor, and had a twinge of guilt.

What was I doing, thinking of fun, when my brother was still missing, nearly six years running?

But as much as it still felt like it should, life could not stop because Viktor was missing. We were still looking, and that was all we could do. Life must continue in the meantime.

CHAPTER 3

Cash

Once we’d walkedthe clearing, we had to go back and get supplies. There was the matter of gathering materials. While I was sure Grant didn’t think I could build an entire house without spending any money, I knew the budget for this was going to be tight.

We’d have to make do with what we had.

I explained the kinds of trees that would work for our purposes, and the sizes and shapes they needed to be. We needed tall pines with straight trunks, all about the same diameter.

While I left the guys to finding them and marking the ones that worked off with bright orange tape, I sat down with Miss Katie on a nearby fallen log.

I flipped to a clean sheet on the little yellow legal pad I’d grabbed from Pa’s place before coming back.

“So let’s talk about what you’d imagine your dream home to look like,” I said with a smile.

She returned it, and that—that was the first time I realized who she was.

She’d smiled at me like that when I was just a little boy, sneaking over to the big house because she’d made tea cakes and I knew that she’d give me one. She wasn’t “Miss Katie” at all, but Katya.

That was what she’d told me to call her back then.

My breath rushed out of me and the side of my hand fell hard against the paper, pencil gripped loose in my fingers. “Hi.”

She laughed. “Hello, lapochka. It has been a while, yes?”

That was an understatement. I’d never seen Reeve mad like he’d been when Katya had taken their child and fled. I’d been scared to come out of Pa’s cabin for a week, and I’d... I’d missed her.

There weren’t many in the pack who were kind like she was. We didn’t have the luxury or—or the ferocity required to be kind no matter what.

She’d had that. It was why she couldn’t stay, but seeing her now...

“I’m sorry,” I stammered, “I didn’t realize?—”

She shook her head before I could finish. “You have been away, and the last time I saw you, you were still very young.”

“Twelve.” And her son had been even smaller. “Your son... Aleks?” I glanced in the direction they left.

“Yes, and Leo. He is ours.”

“Right.” Okay, good. I could handle that. I’d rather think about the number of bedrooms than the fact that she’d come back here.

Whywas she back here?

At least Reeve was dead. And Grant wanted me to build her a place of her own.