Page 49 of Daddy By Design

My face would never be in that pillow.

There was an army of decorative pillows stacked beside her bed as if she did, in fact, make her bed up daily. Was she restless for a reason?

My restless night was partly due to this capricious woman, but I’d also taken a trip into the city to speak to Donovan Lewis and had left without my sculpture again. He would not be swayed from me buying it back, even when I offered him five million for it.

I wouldn’t tell Maeve that—she’d lose her damn mind.

But I wanted it. Wanted a piece of that man I used to be.

“Nolan?”

I turned to Dahlia, and my breath backed up in my lungs at the wall of drawings and photos. Every angle of my house was on display. Some sketches, some photos, some old schematics from what seemed to match photos from the damn 1800s. Swatches of fabric, paint samples, and glossy pictures of furniture were pinned beside more sketches.

All of it embraced the darker tones and the emerald green of the original paint of the building.

But the windows had been replaced with a mix of stained glass and leaded glass. All of it to lean into the Gothic.

She even had notes for 3D printed pieces to replace the old stone. I stepped over and snatched those off the board.

She gasped. “Hey!”

“No 3D printed shit on my house.”

“It was only to recreate the stone.”

“A stone mason will.”

“I planned on using a man?—”

“No, I have an artist friend who will be doing it.” Where I was all metal and the occasional melted glass, one of my few friends in this world could create any damn thing in stone. I’d been a blowtorch to his chisel.

At least that had been us once upon a time.

“I’m fine with that.” She took the drawing away from me and set it on the desk under the vision board wall she’d created.

I pushed aside the sketchpads and library books she had on the desk and found a coiled notebook. I picked up a pen and made a quick drawing of the balcony and porch that had crumbled. I wanted it close to what had been but better.

More stone and wrought iron mixed with the ornate Victorian gables to give it that ornate flavor I’d fallen in love with.

She peered over my shoulder, and I growled.

“So testy.” She laid a hand on my shoulder as if I hadn’t just given her a warning. “I just want to see.”

I ripped the page off the notebook and shoved it at her, stepping away from her.

She tilted her head as she looked at it, then she tacked it up with the rest of her drawings.

Where her lines were finely detailed and architecturally perfect, mine were jagged and dark.

“I see where you’re going.” She grabbed the sketchpad and went to her bed to sit cross legged as she started sketching.

I shoved my hands into my pockets and turned back to the wall. Seeing her in the middle of a wrecked bed was not good for me at the moment. Too little sleep and annoyance at her lack of personal safety left me raw.

The cat leaped onto the desk and stared at me unblinkingly. He lifted a paw toward me with a chirping sound.

I frowned at him. “What does he want?”

“That’s his happy chirp.”

---