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“Soft touch,” Elias muttered under his breath.
“Please, by all means, dole out the punishment yourself.”
Callie’s small hands pushed against his chest. Huffing out a breath, she glared up at him. “Why don’t we all agree that punishment is an aggressive and unjust response to unsubstantiated accusations?”
“Are you telling me Elias is fibbing, little girl?”
Her bottom lip poked out. “No.”
“Good.” He bopped the tip of her nose. “Accusations substantiated. Punishment to be dealt with later. Now we’ve got that sorted,” he told her as she spluttered, turning her firmly toward the spectacular view, “welcome to Serenity.”
The tension seeped from her back once the landscape snagged her attention fully. As she sagged back against him, his arms wrapped around her waist. “Holy cow. This is like something out of a movie.”
“Wait until it snows.”
“We won’t have to wait too long.” Elias stood beside them, his face lifted to the sky. Taking a deep breath, he shook his head. “We should head back to the city within the hour if we don’t want to get stranded here.”
“Are you a weather vane now?”
“A blind idiot can see how the clouds are forming. The air pressure is changing, and everything will begin to go quiet.” Elias lifted his hand, letting light glint off the screen of his phone. “I also happen to have a weather app. This area is forecast eight to twelve inches.”
Barely—barely—Evander managed to refrain from making a crass joke. Callie knew what he was in possession of, but if she knew just how well-matched he and Elias were in that department, her interest in menage sex might have a heart attack and keel over.
“In that case, we’ll cover what we can.” Capturing her hand in his, Evander tugged Callie toward the main building. Elias fell right into step with them. “If you have any ideas, I’d like to hear them. I have several already, but before I sign on the dotted line, your thoughts are important to me.”
“This is the one you really have your sights set on?” she asked.
“It is, but that’s inconsequential. If I buy it, a great deal of my work hours are going to be tied up here, which means some of yours will be too. Not to mention we’ll be playing here regularly once we open. I need to know you’ll be happy, that it doesn’t give you any weird vibes or make the hairs stand up on the back of your neck.”
“Oh my God. Is it haunted?”
“No, sweetness. Well, not that I’ve been told, anyway.”
“Huh. That would be kinda cool.” Craning her neck to study everything at once, she almost tripped over her feet—both Evander and Elias steadied her, sharing a look above her head. “There are a lot of buildings.”
“Hmm. That long one over there,” Evander said, pointing with his free hand to a barn that stretched almost eighty feet, “I think would make an excellent day care and play area for Littles. That square one over there,” he continued as her head swiveled to follow his finger, “I’d like to rebuild into a photography studio.”
“Photography?”
“Erotic photography. Private shoots of intimate moments.”
Callie stopped dead. “Intimate as in all the naked bits on display?”
Elias’s chuckle was quiet.
“Allthe naked bits,” Evander emphasized.
God, she was so fucking innocent, it made his heart hurt even as it swelled with love.
Chapter Four
Callie
She’d tumbled down a rabbit hole into wonderland.
For a city girl who’d rarely been allowed to go to the local park with her friends, the sheer expanse of openness was both thrilling and a little scary. The cage of apartment blocks and office buildings was behind her, the door swinging wide open to…this.
She could see why Evander wanted it; while she couldn’t quite envision how he was going to pull it off, she didn’t doubt he’d bring life back to the fading wood and crumbling stone.
