Page 67 of Architect's Christmas Nanny

Jillian watched worriedly as his mother smiled brightly and began digging under packages.

“You’re going to love it,” Josie whispered to her.

“No spoiling,” Brad teased his daughter, waggling his eyebrows, which only made her laugh.

Little Zeke laughed too, which made Jillian smile.

“Here you are,” Annabelle said, handing Brad a funny-looking package wrapped in poinsettia paper.

He passed it on to Jillian, the usual assuredness in his eyes replaced with a look of worry.

“I hope you like it,” he told her.

“It’s from you,” she said, suddenly feeling less nervousherself. “I know I’ll love it. Besides, this is already my favorite Christmas ever.”

He smiled down at her, his dark eyes filled with love.

She tore her eyes away before her chest filled with tingles and she had to fight the urge to kiss him.

“Open it carefully,” Josie suggested.

“Josie,” Brad said.

“What?” Josie asked. “I’m not spoiling it. I’m just saying.”

“I’m definitely opening it carefully,” Jillian said, trying not to laugh as she slid her finger under the tape to lift one side of the paper up.

Inside was a cardboard roll, the kind that might have a poster inside.

“Artwork,” she said to herself, uncapping one end.

“Kind of,” Josie whispered.

She quickly slid the paper from inside before Josie could get reprimanded again, and realized it wasn’t a poster. The paper was too thin.

Lifting her arm to unroll it, she saw that it was a blueprint of some kind.

“Jillian’s writing room,”she read aloud. “Oh. Oh, wow.”

She gazed at it raptly, looking at a space that was much too large to be in the cottage where Brad lived now. It had skylights too.

“This is the attic room,” Brad told her. “We have to repair it anyway, and I was thinking it would make a really cool space for you to use for writing. If you like the idea, we can dormer the roof out and put in skylights and built-ins, and whatever else you want.”

“Oh, Brad,” she murmured, her eyes drinking in the incredible space.

“And this is your other present,” he told her, pressing something into her hand.

She looked down to see a pretty red pen.

“If there’s anything you don’t like, or anything you want to add,” Brad said with a smile, “I want you totell me. And mark it on the blueprint. Almost perfect isn’t good enough.”

She didn’t miss his double-meaning. Maybe if she had spoken up sooner about what was missing from her almost-perfect life, things would be different now. And the same went for Brad. She could hardly believe that life had been almost-but-not-really perfect for him too, all these years.

But things were pretty great now. And there was no reason to worry about the path not taken, because no matter how they got here, where they had wound up wasall-perfect.

“Do you love it?” Josie asked, leaping up and scrambling onto Jillian’s lap like she used to when she was really little.

“I love it,” Jillian told her. “And I love you and your dad even more.”

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