Page 19 of Oops I Fell For The Billionaire Next Door

"Couldn't leave if I wanted to."

My phone buzzes on the nightstand.

Margot:

Well?????

Me:

He was planting groundcover at 6am. Wrong spacing.

Margot:

that's the most romantic thing I've ever heard

Did you fix his spacing?

Me:

Gonna take a while. He's a slow learner.

Margot:

Sure he is. Love you, cousin.

Me:

Love you too.

Setting the phone down, I curl back against Beck's chest. His breathing has gone slow and even. Asleep. In my bed, in the middle of the morning, covered in garden dirt.

The roof still leaks. The stove still clicks three times. The hot water still quits at eleven minutes.

Everything is exactly right.

EPILOGUE

BECKETT

SIX MONTHS LATER

The house is finished.

Greta flew in from Vancouver yesterday to do the final walkthrough. Stood in the great room with the afternoon light pouring through the south-facing windows, looked at the mountain view, looked at the creeping thyme blooming purple between the flagstones on the front walkway, looked at the stone garden wall Desi built along the east border that matches the one she built on her own property, and said "This doesn't look like anything I designed."

She's right. The bones are hers. The cantilever, the window placement, the roofline. But everything that makes it a home came from Desi. The native plantings along the driveway that she selected for each microclimate zone. The herb garden outside the kitchen window so I can reach rosemary without putting on shoes. The reading nook she insisted on under the south windows where afternoon sun hits the cushions for exactly two hours. The mudroom she redesigned from Greta's original plans because "nobody who lives on a mountain needs a foyer, Beck. They need a place to put dirty boots."

The mudroom has two boot trays. Two hooks. Two sets of everything, because she's been sleeping here more nights than at her cabin for the past three months and pretending she hasn't technically moved in.

Her cabin is still hers. Still has her name on the deed, her landscape plans spread across the kitchen table, her French press and her mason jar. She goes there to work, to sketch, to meet clients on the porch where she's added two Adirondack chairs she built herself. But at night she walks the path through the trees to my house, kicks off her boots in the mudroom, drops her bag on the bench, and finds me in whatever room I've ended up in. Usually the kitchen. Learning to cook from YouTube videos because she refuses to let me order delivery up a mountain road.

The cooking is going terribly. Last week I set off the smoke alarm making grilled cheese. Desi ate it anyway, said it had character, then quietly made eggs while I stood at the counter pretending my feelings weren't hurt.

"Your grilled cheese was fine." She'd kissed my shoulder on her way past. "The eggs are for me."

Six months. My therapist says I've made more progress in six months than in the previous three years of sessions. I told him it's because I finally have someone who tells me the truth without charging by the hour. He laughed, then charged me for the full hour anyway.

The business runs itself from up here. My security consulting team operates out of Vancouver, reporting in on weekly calls I take from the office Desi helped me set up in the guest bedroom. She picked the desk. Reclaimed fir from a mill in Nelson, a woodworker she knows through the Ridge Brothers timber operation in Crimson Hollow. The desk is beautiful. My first piece of furniture I didn't buy through an assistant or a catalog.