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“Not much?” Rage threatened tostranglehim.
“Let’s not talk about that now,” she said. “Could you just… could you just hold me forawhile?”
I can hold you for the rest of your life. I can hold youforever.
He nodded and scooted back on the bed, pulling her with him until she was nestled in the crook of his arm. She sighed against him, her head falling against hischest.
“Tell me something good,” she said. “Something that doesn’t have anything to do with allofthis.”
He hesitated. There were few good things in his life, and she was at the top of the very short list. He still read the monthly reports from the shelter, but he’d avoided his offices in Tribeca, conducting most of his work from the estate inWestchester.
“I’ve been working on my family’s estate in New York while we made plans to come get you,”hesaid.
“What have you been doing?” sheasked.
“Well, before I met you, I was restoring the molding in the front living room and the banister on the main staircase,”hesaid.
“Andnow?”
“I’ve been working on the greenhouse.” He saw her again the way he had in his imagination the past two months; her smile, her hands in the soil, life blooming all around her just the way she liked it. “I’ve been replacing the broken panes of glass, fixing the broken pipes in the irrigation system so you can waterproperly.”
“Hmmmm… That sounds nice,” she said against hischest.
They’d never talked about her coming to live — or even stay — with him. They hadn’t gotten that far before Anastos had taken her from him. He tried not to be encouraged by the fact that she didn’t object. It was possible she was still too shaken by everything that had happened to know what she wassaying.
He didn’t care. He would take his fairytales where he couldfindthem.
“It will be,” he murmured. “You can garden year round there. It smells like summer even when there’s snow on the ground in every direction beyond the glass. You can grow anything you like even in the dead ofwinter.”
“Anything?”
“Anything.”
She grew quiet, her breathing more regular. He thought she’d fallen asleep when she murmured once more. “I knew youwould come.”
