Page 68 of The Bear's Fixer-Upper Mate

“You were drawing them one night while we were talking.” He stepped into the room then, his boots quiet on the floorboards. “You probably didn’t even realize you were doing it.”

“No,” she said softly. “I didn’t. But I remember them.”

He came to stand beside her, close enough that the warmth of him reached her before he touched her. “I wanted it to feel like yours,” he said. “Like it belonged to you.”

Meryl looked at him, and for a moment she could not speak.

Because it wasn’t only the window seat. It wasn’t even only that he had made it. It was that he had paid attention tosomething small and private and instinctive in her, and turned it into something lasting. Something she would see every day.

“When did you do this?” she asked at last.

“A bit at a time.” His mouth curved. “In the workshop. Then I brought it over while you were in town.”

She laughed softly through the emotion rising in her throat. “So this was why you were very keen for me not to rush back.”

“That was part of it.”

Meryl ran her hand once more along the seat before lowering herself onto it. The cushion gave just enough beneath her, and the height was perfect. Through the glass, she could see the garden, the path, the mountains beyond.

Home.

The word came as naturally now as breathing.

She looked up at Spencer. “Sit with me.”

And as Spencer sat beside her, Pine Cottage no longer felt like a place she had inherited, but a home she had chosen. And had chosen her right back.