Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
JULIET
My morning walks haven’t changed since I’ve been staying at Brooks’s house. I need the jaunt through town to start my day with my head on straight, no matter what the weather is. It’s my mental health time.
Thankfully, the rain has moved out, and the fall air is crisp and perfect. I’m in a red hoodie that I stole from Brooks this morning, and feel quite smug about it. He saw me in it before I left the house, and he smirked, fisted the collar, and pulled me in for a hot, deep kiss.
The kind of kiss that only Brooks can deliver.
The kind that makes my toes curl and my ovaries do the cha-cha.
God bless him.
I snort and walk down to the sidewalk, staring ahead at the big house across the street.
God, I love that red roof. Those black shutters.
And that deep front porch is perfect for a porch swing.
It’s so crazy that Brooks lives right here, where we daydreamed so many times about that big house on the corner, how we’d fill it with kids and make it our forever home.
Shaking away the melancholy—because frankly, I have nothing to complain about right now because I have my man back, and he’s everything—I set off for my usual walk through town.
The sun is rising later and later as we firmly move into fall, and I kind of love it.
The mornings are quiet, with not many people out and about, and I can soak in Bitterroot Valley.
I walk through downtown and notice that Jackie’s already in her kitchen, so I knock on the window and give her a wave.
She smiles widely and waves back, and then I continue down to my own restaurant.
I don’t go inside, but peering through the glass, I can see that Anderson has accomplished a lot over the past couple of days. The walls are up and painted, and it looks like the flooring has arrived, and the boxes are sitting in the middle of the room to acclimate.
According to my contractor, I should be able to open my doors in two weeks, and I hope he’s right because I miss being in there, feeding people.
I took Connor’s advice because it had been playing in my head over and over again since that day he offered to help me.
Money isn’t personal.
The money didn’t treat me like shit. Justin did that all on his own.
And because I endured years of being married to that prick, I inherited the fortune from my late husband.
It’s mine to do with as I please. Every cent is in my name.
Except for the money he left to her, but that’s not relevant to anything else.
I have millions in my name, and I’ve been stubborn about using it.
I’m not going to be stubborn anymore.
My staff have been off work for two weeks, and I need them to come back to me when I reopen.
If I couldn’t pay them, they’d have to get new jobs, and I’d be stuck.
So I’ve been paying them their regular salaries while they’ve been off.
Every single one of them has offered to help me in any way that I might need, which made me feel good.
Christy, Tandy, and Erica check in with me almost every day.
So, I’ve used the money to pay my staff, and rather than accept Connor’s financial help, I’ve paid for the repairs myself.
I am, however, accepting his help when it comes to the construction crew and any other business advice he might want to send my way.
Who am I to say no to a ridiculously successful billionaire?
People pay a lot of money for that kind of advice.
I quickly go around to the back of the building and climb the metal stairs to the apartment above.
Pushing inside, I take a quick look around.
It’s empty now. Anything I could salvage—which wasn’t much—was taken to Brooks’s house, and the rest was hauled away in the massive dumpster.
It’s dried out, and Anderson treated all of the raw, exposed wood with something to prevent mold.
And now that I take a good look around, I realize that I was so freaking bullheaded to think that I could live up here without remodeling it and making it a true apartment. Once the restaurant is finished, Anderson will get started up here, and I guess I’ll be moving in after it’s finished.
The thought of that is horrible. I love living with Brooks in his little house, which offers a view of my dream home and the mountains.
I love sleeping beside him at night, wrapped up in his strong arms. It’s where I was supposed to be all along, but we haven’t discussed the future or what will happen when the renovations are complete.
With a sigh, I shut and lock the door behind me, check it three times, and then get back to my usual route.
The sky is starting to cloud up, hiding the sun away and making the air cooler.
When I approach Brooks’s house, he’s waiting for me on the porch, with two mugs of steaming coffee in his hands.
“How did you know I’d be back now and ready for coffee?”
He smirks as he holds a mug out for me, then leans in to kiss me.
“You’re nothing if not a creature of habit, Wildfire.” He sits on the top step of the porch, and I join him, quietly sipping our morning coffee.
His garage is closed today, and we’ve been spending Sundays together lately. It’s quickly becoming my favorite day of the week.
“Darby came to book club last night,” I tell him, filling the silence. “She sure has changed a lot since high school.”
“She’s changed a lot since she went to Colorado for vet school,” he rumbles, watching as a delivery truck drives by. “She seems lighter. Happier. Quicker to smile.”
“I agree. She was laughing with Ava and me last night and having a blast. I’m glad she’s moving back to town when she’s finished with school. She also said that she’s going to start joining us for book club via FaceTime.”
I grin and wave at a woman who walks past with her golden retriever.
“What are you reading next?” he asks me, reaching over to hook my hair behind my ear and then brushing his thumb down my cheek.
“It’s an A.L. Jackson book. At the Edge of Surrender. Romantic suspense. It should be good. I love her books.”
My man nods, and I nibble my lip as I continue to stare at the house across the street.
“This is going to sound crazy.”
He glances down at me and lifts an eyebrow. “I doubt it.”
“I kind of want to march over there and ask the owners if I can have a look around. It’s killing me, Brooks. I so want to see the inside. Do you think they’d have me arrested for being a creep?”
He searches my gaze, not even cracking half of a smile at my creepy comment, and then the next thing I know, he stands, sets our mugs aside, and offers me his hand.
Sliding my palm against his, I’m confused as hell as he leads me down the sidewalk, across the street, and up the walk to the big front porch.
“Uh, I mean, we don’t have to do this now …”
Brooks pulls some keys out of his pocket, unlocks the front door, and pushes it open, then steps back.
“You want to have a look? Go have a look, Juliet.”
My mouth goes slack as I frown, and my feet are rooted to this spot as I stare up at this amazing man I’m already so in love with, it makes my chest ache.
“What?” My voice is nothing but a whisper. He lifts his free hand and brushes his thumb over my lower lip.
“Go ahead, baby.”
I glance inside and then back up at him.
“Brooks, why do you have a key to this house?”
He doesn’t answer. He just pulls me by the hand over the threshold, closes the door behind us, and starts turning on the lights.
The air is a little musty, like no one has lived here in a long time, but it’s clean. The original hardwood floors need to be sanded and refinished. There’s a gorgeous staircase straight ahead that leads up to the second floor.
Brooks guides me past what looks like a little study, then a living room—these old houses weren’t open floor plans—and then into a kitchen that has my eyes bugging out.
Not because it’s gorgeous and new.
No, this kitchen has avocado-green appliances from the 1970s and faded orange wallpaper. I can see the outline of where pictures hung on the walls. The cabinets are dark brown. The floor is yellow laminate.
It needs to be gutted.
“Brooks—”
“It’s my house. Our house, really,” he says, his voice soft but still echoing a bit in the empty room. “It came on the market a few years ago, and I couldn’t stand the thought of someone else buying it. You always loved it.”
Holy fucking shit.
My heartbeat speeds up, my breaths quicken.
Holy.
Fucking.
Shit.
“Brooks—”
“I’ve thought about selling it,” he admits with a shrug as he looks around. “Buying a hundred-year-old house is a lot. And I’m not just talking financially. It needs a lot of work, so before you and I … well, I thought about selling it.”
The tears roll unchecked down my cheeks.
“You bought me a whole house.”
“Two of them.” He turns and looks me in the eyes now and leans back against the old Formica countertop, his hands on the counter at his hips.
“What do you mean?”
He glances toward the front of the house and lifts his chin, gesturing to his home across the street.
“You asked me how long I’ve lived over there.” He clears his throat, pushes his hand through his hair, and I can see that he’s nervous.
Brooks is never nervous.
So I cross to him and take his hand in mine, lift it to my lips.
“I’ve lived there for fifteen years,” he says quietly, and my gaze whips up to his. “Every house I’ve ever bought was done with you in mind.”
I wrinkle my forehead, doing the math. “But fifteen years—”
“Yeah, baby. That last day, when the asshole manipulated you into going back to Seattle?”
I can’t force any words over the huge lump that’s formed in my throat, so I just nod. That was the worst day of my life.
“I was going to propose to you that day.”
The world shifts beneath my feet, and I start to shake my head as pure anguish fills me. The pain is unlike anything I’ve ever felt before.