Page 76 of Untroubled Heart

She drapes an arm around my shoulders, pressing into my side. “You are very tempting, Heartthrob.”

“So give in already.” I smile against her lips as I steal another kiss.

“Okay,” she says, then announces she’s going to shower. I follow behind her, sitting on the closed lid of the toilet in her bathroom, still holding a sleeping Navie against my chest, so I can keep talking to her—keep existing in her orbit.

Navie wakes up when Callie’s midway through getting ready, and we all move together as one until we’re ready to leave. Callie follows behind me in her car, back to my place, so I can quickly shower and change since I don’t have a car seat for Navie. When we get to a restaurant along the waterfront, a five-minute walk from my penthouse, I rectify that problem and order a top-of-the-line seat. It should be delivered tomorrow.

Reluctantly, I let them say goodbye so Navie can get home for her afternoon nap and I can get ready for the usual Sunday dinner with my family. I use the hours in between to start researching the letters we found at the house. With Carmen’s help, we managed to track down the name of the owner that fits the dates the letters were written. Otto Hill was a town mayor from 1891 to 1894 and again from 1896 to 1898. He lived in the house with his wife, Eugenie, and their three daughters, Lydia, Odette, and Florence.

I couldn’t find anything on Florence Hill or Greyson by the time I had to leave for Grams’s, but at least I had more to go on. I saved everything to tell Callie when I see her at the house tomorrow.

I was reading about one love story while writing my own.

Chapter twenty-six

“Give it one more.”

Callie hits the trigger on the nail gun, securing the last piece of timber in place. My hands rest on her hips to keep her steady. That’s the excuse I gave her, and she gave me one look that said she knew I just wanted my hands on her.

We move a few paces back to admire our work. All the external frames for the new lounge room and primary suite are now finished. It’ll be our last day at the house for a few weeks, so the next team can come in and fit the roof extension, then the subfloor to extend the upstairs bedrooms, plus the external cladding and insulation.

“This is so exciting, seeing it all come together.” Callie grins. “It was just lines on a page, and now it’s real.”

I wrap an arm around her waist as we move through the house to the front porch. Yeah, it’s really fucking real.

The weekend was amazing. I’m counting down the minutes until I can have her alone again, but being in this house only serves to remind me of what happened here last week. If there weren’t a full crew here with us now, I’d be actively pursuing a repeat.

“You won’t recognise it when we come back.” I press a kiss to her temple, and she sucks in a breath, looking around. “We’ll be lining the walls, ready to paint, then all the new boards and tiles go down. You’ll be able to see all your selections come together.”

“Should we be doing that here?”

“Doing what?”

She clamps her hands together, her fingers fidgeting as she stands rooted to the spot. “Being all touchy-feely. I’m still your assistant.”

I hook my fingers into the belt loops on either side of her shorts and pull her into me. “I refuse to hide you like some secret I’m ashamed of.” I press a kiss to the tip of her nose.

She releases a breath, then lays her head against my chest. “I don’t want anyone thinking badly of me, or that I’m using you, or something. I’m your assistant.” Callie peers around us, but all the guys here today are working out of sight right now. “I slept with the boss.” She tells me this as if I’m not the boss she is, in fact, sleeping with.

“Lucky boss.” I bob my eyebrows at her, earning a playful slap to my chest. Catching her hand, I press a kiss to her wrist, then hold it against my heart.

“No one here’s going to judge you. With all the time we spend together, I don’t think anyone would be surprised we fell for each other.”

Callie props her chin on my chest, her arms circling my waist, so I wrap mine behind her back, content to stay in this bubble forever.

“You falling for me, Heartthrob?”

“Since the moment I saw you.”

Her cheeks turn pink, and I love it. I reach down, sweeping an arm behind her knees to cradle her against my chest like a princess and carry her to the table and chairs we have set up on the deck.

I settle her on my lap, content to study her features again, even though I have her memorised at this point. The freckle on her lip and the three gathered under her eye. Her dark blue eyes, with the almost grey ring around the pupil. The subtle streaks of gold woven through her brown hair. I love when she wears her hair loose, allowing my fingers to tangle in the soft strands, but I also love when she wears her little braids, decorating them with her star clips, like my very own dream conjured from the heavens.

She smiles, but I can still sense a shred of doubt lingering close to the surface.

“What?” I ask, gently, coaxing the answer forward.

“I’m happy with everything that’s happening between us,” she says, fiddling with the buttons on my shirt. “I just hope we’re not moving too fast. I don’t have a lot of good experiences with relationships, and I don’t want to mess it up.”