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“Why?”
With a shrug he moved down the hall to the last bedroom. “I guess because I want to feel I’ve really accomplished something. Not,” he added with a twinkle in his eye as he opened the door, “that I don’t entertain the thought of help when every muscle aches and I’m living on ibuprofen. Oak flooring is a bear to install.”
The other bedrooms needed a lot of work. When she stepped inside this one, she gasped.
This was Nathan’s bedroom, and in here everything was complete. And whatever she might have guessed about his taste, this proved her wrong.
This wasn’t the cold, formal study of whites and neutral tones she’d seen in his parents’ home, a precise artistic display. This was a masculine room, yet beautifully done.
Here the walls were painted palest yellow. The burnished gleam of oak flooring and massive oak furnishings were a perfect foil for the bright patchwork quilt on the bed. A huge, lush fern hung in front of a bay window facing the lake. And instead of a cold, massive flatscreen television on the wall, the open doors of a towering , vintage armoire revealed a television and state-of-the-art audio equipment.
She stepped into the room to take a closer look at the framed stained glass hanging on brass chains in one of the side windows.
A good two feet square, the superbly wrought design depicted a lake and pine trees that echoed the view of Lake Ryan outside the window. In unimaginably small bits of glass, the figure of a winsome young woman sat on a bench with an infant in her arms.
“I saw it in a little shop in Stillwater,” he said, coming up behind her. “They said it was over a hundred years old. That might not be true, but I couldn’t pass it up. Look here.” He touched the lower left-hand corner.
She bent closer to read aloud the intricate script etched in the glass. “‘In memory of my dear wife Hattie—whom I’ll love forever and beyond.’ Isn’t that sweet?”
“They must be together again, by now. I imagine they had quite a reunion in heaven.”
His surprising words warmed her heart. “He must have loved her dearly. This is an incredible piece of art.” She glanced at the stained-glass lamp on top of a rolltop desk in the corner opposite the bed. Two others were placed on the bedside tables. “Antiques?”
“Projects of mine.”
“You made them?” Incredulous, she moved to the one closest to the door. “May I?”
When he nodded, she turned on the lamp, then reached back to turn off the main light switch on the wall. Rich, deep colors of every possible hue bathed the room in rosy, subdued light.
“All those tiny pieces of glass are mesmerizing,” she whispered. “How on earth did you do it?”
“I took some classes in stained glass while I was an undergrad at the university.”
His voice seemed lower, far more intimate. Closer than she’d thought. Had he moved to her—or had she drifted nearer to him?
She’d known that everything would change when she came into his house. With every layer revealed, this complex man became so much more than the man she’d first imagined him to be.
And with every layer she discovered, she fell in love with him a little more.
“You amaze me,” she murmured.
“No more than you amaze me.”
The resonant baritone of his voice wrapped around her, calling to the deepest part of her heart, where logic and common sense didn’t exist. But until she could be completely honest with him, she had no business letting this relationship go any further.
She forced a laugh and turned toward him. But there wasn’t any answering humor in his eyes.
Feeling as if she’d waited a lifetime for this man and this moment, she stepped into his arms. And when his mouth touched hers, she knew.
This wasn’t about casual emotion.
It was about Nathan. Finding love for the first time. And knowing that this moment, this week, or even a lifetime would never be enough.
“You are so incredibly beautiful.” He brushed her hair away from her face, then stepped back. A small muscle jerked along his jaw. “But I’d better take you home. It’s getting late.”
Transfixed by the fine lines of tension at his mouth and the determination in his voice, she knew she’d been foolish to imagine things that could never be. “Thanks for the tour.”
“I enjoyed showing it to someone who could appreciate it. My family thinks this house was a huge mistake.”
