Page 78 of Guarded by My Gargoyle

“Now.” Ruggiero drummed his rings once. “The ridge. I hold a purchase option on it that runs another ninety days. If I let it lapse I forfeit the deposit and I look like a man who came into a small county, kicked up a fuss over some flower, and walked away sore.” He grimaced. “I may want to build here again, and I don’t want that kind of reputation.” He shrugged, and it was the shrug of a man solving a problem, not doing a kindness, which was exactly why Garrick believed it. “So. I’ll assign the purchase option. At cost. It’s no use to me and I’d rather not read about myself in the paper.”

Aidan straightened off the wall so fast his boots squeaked.

“Assign it to who?” the ranger said.

“I don’t care. Whoever wants a ridge with a weed on it. That’s your problem, not mine.” Ruggiero was already gathering his coat. “Have your people send mine the assignment. I’ll sign the Riverstone letter of intent tomorrow. Stonehaven builds it.” He offered Garrick a hand, his grip firm despite the softness. “You lost my confidence for about forty minutes and then you gave it back with interest. Don’t do that to me again.”

“I’ll try not to.”

“You won’t succeed. You’re the type.” Ruggiero nodded to Aidan, ignored the flower one final time on principle, and let himself out.

The moment the front door boomed shut, Aidan spun around grinning from ear to ear.

“He’ll assign the option—” He was already pulling his phone out of his pocket. “I’ve been talking to the Blue Ridge Land Trust all week, on the off chance. They said if the option ever came loose they’d take the assignment, close on the purchase, and have a conservation easement recorded on the deed before the ink was dry. Permanent.” He was grinning like a male who’d just been handed Christmas. “It’s not fenced-off-for-now safe. It’s forever safe. Nobody builds a thing up there ever again. Not Ruggiero, not the next Ruggiero, not anybody.” He reached whoever he was calling and turned towards the window, talking fast and low.

Forever safe.

He’d started this as a business proposal. Somewhere between a seep in the woods and a lily nobody had asked him to care about, it had become the work he was proudest of.

He found Maris in the conservatory an hour later, after Aidan had gone whooping off to sign papers with a land trust and the great house was quiet again. She was on her knees at the long planting bed she’d been rebuilding, wrist-deep in the black soil, her hair coming loose, a smudge of dirt along her jaw. She’d taken to working here while he was under. He’d learned that. He’d learned it the only way a gargoyle could.

“It’s done,” he said from the doorway. “Ruggiero’s off the ridge. Building at Riverstone. And Aidan’s land trust is buying the ridge outright.” He watched her hands go still in the soil. “It’s protected. Permanently. Your lilies aren’t going anywhere. Ever.”

She sat back on her heels. Her face was full of relief and pride and something she hadn’t told him directly yet.

“You did that,” she said.

“You did. You dragged me up there and made me stand in the wet until I saw it.”

“Aidan said—” She hesitated, and he watched the pink rise over her cheekbones. “Aidan said you put your own money behind moving it. Your name on the loss. That the board wouldn’t back you so you backed it yourself.” She pushed a strand of hair off her face and left a fresh streak of dirt. “You didn’t tell me.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

He crossed the tile floor and lowered himself down beside her, folding seven feet of gargoyle into a sitting position at the edge of her planting bed. His wings settled against his back. He was quiet for a moment, choosing the three words he needed out of all the ones he didn’t.

“I heard you,” he said, and she went very still.

“This morning.” He didn’t look at the bed, or the glass, or anywhere but her. “When I was under. In the conservatory. I heard every word.”

She looked at him for a long moment with her eyes bright and swimming, and then she laughed—a soft, helpless sound—and dropped her forehead against his shoulder.

“Of course you did,” she said into his shirt. “But you couldn’t say anything, which was why I could say it⁠—”

“I didn’t ask you to say it.” His hand came up, and he brushed the loose strand of hair back off her cheek with one carefully retracted claw. “You don’t have to say it again.”

She lifted her head and looked at him. Then she set her jaw the way she did before she dug in.

“The money frightened me,” she said. “I need you to know why, so you don’t think it was you.” Her hand closed over his where it rested against her face. “For six years, money meant Cornelia. It meant a garden I built for three years getting paved over the summer after I left. It meant being told, very politely and very kindly, that I wasn’t quite good enough for a family I never asked to join. Money was how people decided things about my life without me in the room. So when you sent that Bobcat—” She shook her head. “I saw Cornelia. I looked at the best male I’ve ever known and I saw my mother-in-law. I was wrong.”

“Maris—”

“Let me finish, or I won’t get through it.” She took a breath. “You’re not them. You put your name against a loss to save a flower nobody but Aidan and I care about, and then you didn’t tell me, because you didn’t save something I love to be thanked. You just did it because it mattered to me.” Her thumb moved over the back of his hand. “That’s not Cornelia. That’s the opposite of Cornelia. And I love you. I’ve loved you since the wall with the ferns, I think, when you were so concerned about safety and I misread it as you not liking the way it looked. I love you, Garrick, and I said it to a rock this morning because I was too much of a coward to say it to your face, and now your face is right here.” She lifted her chin. “I’m saying it to your face. On purpose.”

His eyes went gold. He felt them go and saw her smile when she saw them.

“Say it again,” he said quietly.