He and Johnny did work on those minor repairs in the evenings and on weekends. And not just to give her a sense they were moving in the direction she wanted to go. When she decided to tackle the storage building contents, it gave him a reason to be on the property.

  He was glad she asked his mother to help her, for additional moral support. Most of what was in that building were things that belonged to her father, so he wasn’t surprised when she had a local thrift store charity cart off most of it. She found a couple small things that had belonged to her mother—a vase and a small music box—and kept those, but that was about it.

  He knew she felt guilty about it, wanting them to carry away pots and pans and other things that were functional, but the first time she expressed guilt over it, he’d put an end to that, pulling her down on his lap and cupping her chin so she could see exactly how he felt about it.

  “Anything in that shed that has a bad memory for you goes. I don’t care if it’s a teaspoon or a mahogany dining room set. Nothing comes into the Moss Wilder house that isn’t something you want in there.”

  “Not even that vintage Winchester rifle I found?”

  He did a double take, then saw the smile quivering around her lips. She was up and away with a shriek and a laugh as he grabbed at her, but that was okay. He paid her back for her teasing when he cornered her in their bedroom, after dinner that same night.

  But later, when she was lying in his arms, he revisited the subject, because he knew the potential waste was bothering her. “The money from selling the stuff will help the charity,” he pointed out. “And people buying it get something useful at an affordable price. They can create good, new memories with it.”

  Once the storage shed was empty, she and Amanda began making regular shopping trips to find secondhand furniture pieces that could be stored in the building until it was time to move them into the house. Sometimes he went with her, but since he wasn’t as much into the shopping end of things, she often sent him pictures on her phone, to see if he liked her choices.

  No surprise, she considered both their tastes when she was looking, so he had no problems with anything she picked out. But mostly he liked seeing how happy it was making her. If she wanted it, he’d have said yes to a faux fur hot pink sofa that made his eyeballs bleed.

  However, as he and Johnny completed each repair, and space in the storage shed diminished, he was running out of reasons to avoid explaining why he wasn’t ready to move into the house. From his mother, he knew Daralyn had put out feelers to make sure Elaine wasn’t upset about Rory moving out. Just the opposite. His mom was near ecstatic about their plans. She was already helping Daralyn divide some of the plants at her cottage, as well as offering some of her own, to get the landscaping and future vegetable and flower garden started on the property. So Daralyn knew Elaine wasn’t the hold up for him.

  A couple days later Rory ran out of maneuvering room. He had just poured himself a late morning coffee and was talking to Johnny up front while Daralyn was in the back of the store. She was checking on a shipment for Betsy Dorsey, who’d called about it just after lunch.

  “So after we get those cracks spackled today, the house should be occupant-ready,” Johnny said cheerfully. “If you can get—”

  He stopped at the look on Rory’s face. He didn’t realize what Rory did—that Daralyn had the hearing of a bat, and stayed pretty attuned to everything going on within a hundred yards of her.

  As Daralyn emerged from the back, an expectant smile on her face, Johnny realized his mistake. He shot Rory an apologetic look—before escaping toward the back of the store.

  “That’s wonderful,” she said, sliding a manufacturer’s pricing notebook back on the shelf behind the counter. “So we can start to move in the furniture we’ve bought for the house this weekend, right?”

  He shrugged. “Yeah, possibly. Can we talk about it after lunch? I need to run an errand.”

  And there came the little wrinkle in her brow. He really was going to have to come clean on this, because he was concerned he was starting to send the wrong message. He reached out, touched her hand, gave her a half smile that he knew didn’t reach his eyes, but there was a coil in his lower stomach he couldn’t explain to her. Not right now, like this.

  “Okay,” she said. He thought she might have said more, but fortunately several customers arrived, letting him off the hook. He was able to slip out a few minutes later while she and Johnny were involved with them, putting off further conversation about it.

  Until he returned.

  She was standing behind the counter, a conflicted look on her face that had him immediately concerned.

  He lifted a brow. “Something up?”

  “I don’t know. Yes. Maybe.” She folded her hands in front of her and looked directly at him. “I want to drive out to our house, please.”

  She still had an odd formality to her when she stated a desire so directly, as if she had to frame a support for it in her mind before she spoke the words.

  “Right now?” He glanced toward Johnny and saw the no clue, dude look. Though his friend threw in an expression of male solidarity he probably considered helpful, a general commiseration on the mystifying nature of women.

  “Yes, now,” Daralyn said. There was unusual emphasis to the one syllable. Almost…impatience?

  When Rory raised a brow and turned his gaze upon her, she lowered hers and added, “Please.”

  Which she charmingly never seemed to realize made it almost impossible for him to tell her no. “Okay,” he said.

  She headed out to the parking lot. When he glanced at Johnny, Johnny shrugged. “Call me after she cuts your legs out from under you. Metaphorically. That’s one of her new words this week.”

  “I am so hitting you with a shovel later,” Rory promised.

  He backed the chair, turned and followed Daralyn out to the parking lot. She was already waiting by the van, but when he opened the door for her, she merely thanked him and got in, waiting in silence until he took the driver’s side.

  He thought about several topics of conversation, but whatever this was about, she was inside her head on it and he wouldn’t disrupt that process. Not until he had more cues about what she needed from him.

  Though he could guess what that was. His gut tightened around a wad of nerves, but he’d reached the fork in the road, hadn’t he? Time to fish or cut bait.

  When they reached the house, he circled around, opened her door. Since it was drizzling, he told her she didn’t need to wait on him to go up to the porch. One of the planned changes was a paved driveway and walkway, but right now, it was a mix of grass and old gravel. It took him time to maneuver over the places they hadn’t laid down plywood for a temporary fix.

  She sat down on the top step. As he moved toward her, he saw she had her arms crossed over her body and her expression was pensive. On closer inspection he realized it was deeper than that. The strain he saw in her features told him she’d been far tenser at the store than she’d revealed in front of Johnny.

  His intention to take the ramp they’d added on the side of the porch vanished. He went straight to her, bumping his caster against the bottom step. He gripped the rickety stair rail, leaned forward to touch her knee. “What’s going on?” he asked.

  She took a breath and stared at his feet. “You remember the day you went to class with me?”

  “Yeah, I remember it.”

  “It gave me courage.” Her gaze lifted to his. “You’ve asked me to trust you a lot. How do I ask you to trust me?”

  “Just like that. But I already do.” Something was hurting her heart, and if it was the belief that he didn’t trust her, he could fix that. He hoped. “Tell me what you’re trying to say to me. Don’t dress it up.”

  “I know my own heart,” she said. “You helped me with that, but not just you. Thomas, Les, your mother, Marcus, everyone, but most especially myself.”

  She stared at him, and the words came out in a rush. “I love this life. I love standing out in a field, hearing the silence, the wind, the crows. People think you have to get in a spaceship to see the universe, but it’s here, inside us, and orbiting around us, every day. Though I might like to go to Scotland sometime.”

  Rory blinked at the abrupt segue. “All those Scottish romances and men in kilts.”

  His comment gave her a faint smile. “Well, that, and this.” The smile disappeared as she closed her eyes, obviously to recall the words she spoke next. “‘But in high hills, and moorlands waste and lonely, The vast enchantment of her presence dwells. Wide sky, and sky-wide waste of thyme and heather, Perpetual sleepy hum of golden bees-- If you and I were only there together.’”

  “Wow. That’s beautiful.”

  Her eyes opened. “‘The Moors,’ by Edith Nesbit. I like that word, moor.”

  “Unmoored,” he remembered.

  “With you, I feel moored, in the best of ways.” She took a breath. “But that’s the way my soul is. It’s quiet there, but there’s also a wildness…like a hawk.”

  Her gaze searched his. There was a nervousness there he didn’t understand, but he linked his hand with hers and she looked at it, placing her smaller hand on top of it. Then she closed her eyes once more. The drizzle had stopped, the sun starting to re-emerge from the cloud cover.

  This time she spoke in a quieter voice. “I swoop and glide, in perfect stillness. Always under the quiet eyes of my Master. When he lifts the gauntlet, I will fly to him in joy. He will give me a place of rest, happiness, until the wildness rises again. Then he will let me be free, and I will embrace life fully, while being loved fully. My peace and wildness will come together in my breast, my beating heart, where freedom and love live as one.”

  He blinked. “Who wrote that?”

  “I did,” she said shyly, opening her eyes. “In my creative writing class. We were supposed to write something inspired by Edith’s poem. It’s not as beautiful as hers, but I wrote it for you. And for me.”

  The way she tilted her head reminded him of a small, smooth-feathered goshawk in truth. “There are times…I can tell you’re still worrying that you’re holding me back. There are plenty of men in my classes. Nice men. Handsome men.”

  Another segue, and a more directed one, accompanied by an intriguing set to her jaw. “You try to get a rise out of me that way, you may not like where you end up,” he said mildly.

  The Master side of him could make her shiver, and it reassured him, seeing that jolt through her, but she still firmed her chin, nodded. “Me saying something like that gets you worked up, because in your heart and soul, you feel like I'm yours.”

  “Yeah. But I don’t think I own you. Not like…”

  “No, not like them,” she said fiercely. “Never. And I never want you to worry about that. You’re nothing like them. You’re a strong man, a loving one.”

  Now her hands gripped his tightly. “One who loves me enough to shatter his heart worse than his legs, if the best thing for me is to let me go. That’s what I didn’t realize, until I came back that night and saw you by your bed.”

  He still felt bad about that, but before the inadvertent knife twist could make him say anything about it, she’d taken a breath and pushed onward. “You know things about me I have a hard time saying about myself. You’ve told me you can read my heart, that I don’t have to work as hard to express my desires, and that…your caring for me, it never ends. It means everything. So for both of us, I need to say something.”

  The raw emotion in her voice told him what it was costing her to pull the words from her heart and soul, put them out into the air between them. It made his own heart ache for her, but he answered her in a steady tone. “Then I’m listening.”

  “I’m getting better at saying what I want. But there’s a difference between want and choice. That was the real problem, wasn’t it? They made me think I didn't have any choices. You, your family, you all taught me otherwise. There's a line…and past that line no one, not even you, gets to make those choices for me.”

  She’d kept her eyes on his chest as she said it, and he could see the quiver in her rigid shoulders. He leaned forward enough to put a thumb on her jaw, tip her face up. “Say it again,” he said. “While looking right at me.”

  When she did, her eyes were bright, almost feral. “No one gets to make those choices for me.”

  She swallowed, and her fingers had that coldness to them, but he held them, warmed them, as he deliberately let his lips curve. “You bet your ass.”

  She stared at him. “You say that, but do you trust my choice? Will you let yourself believe I want you as much as you want me?”

  The light dawned. Well, hellfire. That was why she thought he’d been hedging about moving in. He noted she’d added a little tilt to her chin at the end that made him smile, a painful thing. He withdrew his hand, but only to back up his chair. "Come stand in front of me, rebellious woman."

  She gave him a curious look, but when she rose and complied, he looked up at her. It was as close as he could get to kneeling.

  “I’m marrying you,” he said. “So you'll know I believe you."

  She jerked, her eyes widening. “I thought…I wasn’t sure if you meant it that night, when I overheard you.”

  “So you didn’t bring it up again. Waiting on me.” He smiled again, easier this time. “And I didn’t mention it again, because I didn’t want to hold you to it. But I changed my mind. With one very important condition.”

  “What?” She looked off balance now, but in a very lovely way.

  "You’re going to promise me that whatever you want to do with your life, no matter how it changes, you’ll always tell me. Travel, design a rocket, learn to be a surgeon. Whatever you want to be or do, I'm going to back you."

  Her eyes sparkled, then softened as she sank to her knees and put her hand on his leg. "As long as you’ll trust me when I tell you my favorite thing is just lying in a hammock with you, watching the sun set over the fields, hearing the breeze and the beating of our hearts. Oh…” Her eyes brightened even further. “We need to put a hammock out between those two maple trees in back. I forgot to add that to the plans.”

  He chuckled. “I have a million reasons for wanting to marry you. But here’s the really important one. This can’t be returned.”

  He fished out the ring. He’d grabbed it out of its box, wrapped it in tissue paper and shoved it in his pocket before he’d followed her out to the van. Hence Johnny’s amused look, who’d known all along why Rory had been putting off the move.

  Now he unwrapped the sparkling band and offered it to her. Since she was at his feet, he leaned forward enough to tunnel a hand under her hair to clasp her nape in a warm hand, rub his thumb there, that gesture that reassured her and pleased them both. He watched her eyes widen to saucers as she gazed at the ring.

  The platinum band was what the jeweler had called a “bypass shank,” a decidedly unromantic name for something that reminded him of the heart bracelet he’d bought her, the way the band swirled in a delicate curl around the solitaire diamond, holding it into place.

  “They finished sizing it and called me to pick it up. That’s where I went on my errand. It’s what I’ve been waiting on, why I’ve held out on a date to move in together. I was trying to let it be a surprise, but if they’d needed one more day, I would have had to tell you. I never meant to get you upset like this.”

  As she raised dazed eyes to him, he saw the question in them. He lifted a shoulder. “If we’re waiting for spring for the wedding, but moving in together now, I wanted something that said we’re committed to one another. That we’re not just shacking up. It might sound kind of old fashioned, but…”

  He stopped as her tears spilled out. In the next heartbeat he had her up in his lap, holding her close. She’d clasped both hands over his, holding the ring, and had the knot of their interlaced fingers under her breast, her body curled over it as he held her in his arms.

  “I feel silly,” she said. “I thought…you were holding back on moving in together because of…what I just said.”

  He freed his hands from hers to take possession of her left one. As she watched, he slid the ring onto her finger, over her knuckle, held tight when her fingers curled over his.

  “I want you,” he said. “Today, tomorrow, forever.”

  More tears, but there was a smile in there, too. She would forever be a mix of strengths and fragility. A bewildered angel, but an angel nonetheless, with all the strength of Heaven behind her.

  He slid both arms around her again, pressed his mouth to her cheek. Then her lips, when she tilted her head back and he could take that deep, lingering draught of her that made the world steady and wild at once. Like her poem.

  As they eased back from one another, he met her gaze. “You weren’t wrong. Your happiness is the most important thing to me. And so much is new to you. I can’t help but consider that when I make decisions. If I hold back, it’s because I don’t want to stand in the way of your dreams, Daralyn.”

  “You’re a part of those dreams,” she said, sniffling. “Unless you mean you don't want to take that journey with me. When I imagine my dreams coming true, big and small, I imagine you sharing them with me. And what makes me feel even more wonderful is imagining being at your side when yours come true, too.”

  She looked at him with her big soft eyes, and he couldn’t imagine his life without her. She wasn't settling for someone as broken as him, or him for her. It was believing he deserved someone as amazing as her, someone who had taken his broken pieces, same as he’d taken hers, and they’d formed a stained-glass window out of it.

  His favorite part of church had been looking at those colored pieces of glass, the way the light was always different through them, at morning, high noon, or the full moon at midnight mass. Hell, the streetlight in the parking lot shining through it on a cloudy night.