Don't Speak (A Modern Fairytale, #5)(37)

And Erik had seen it all.

Since his childhood, he’d seen too much.

Too much excess. Too much self-centeredness. Too much hypocrisy. Too much disloyalty.

But this time, as he passed through the gates of the sunlit gardens, Laire Cornish’s fingers were threaded through his, the softness of her palm pressed flush against his. Unhappy memories were no match for the bloom of love within him, and he squeezed her hand, looking down at her smiling, upturned face and feeling the full bounty of his fortune in meeting her—someone real, someone genuine, someone modest.

“It’s so beautiful here. I feel like I should whisper,” she said, her sea-green eyes wide and sparkling.

He leaned down and kissed the tip of her nose. “You don’t have to whisper.”

“I wish I’d brought a sketchbook,” she said with a sigh, stepping forward onto the carefully manicured brick path.

“I didn’t know you sketched,” he said.

“Mm-hm.” She nodded, stopping to admire a massive light blue hydrangea. “This blue is . . . unbelievable.”

With his free hand, Erik took his phone from his hip pocket. “Want a photo?”

“I’d love one!”

“Well, stand next to it.”

She did and he took a quick picture. “You want to hold the camera? Then you can take all the pictures you want. Just press the black circle on the bottom.”

Shyly, she took the phone from him and dropped his hand, squatting down beside the puffy blooms to take several more pictures. “I have no idea if it’ll capture the color right, but I can try.”

In the distance, Erik heard the low rumble of thunder and grimaced. Flash summer storms rolling off the Atlantic weren’t unusual.

“Sounds like a squall,” noted Laire, straightening up to grin at him.

“You don’t mind?”

“A little rain?” She giggled, shaking her head. “I’m not sugar.”

She offered him her hand, and he took it, joining her down a wide path with flowers and shrubs on both sides.

“Lilies. Hibiscus. Ahhh. Roses,” she hummed.

Dropping his hand again, she leaned closer and took several more pictures, and Erik watched her, his heart swelling with tenderness for her—for the care she took in observing everything around her, for the way she lived totally in the moment.

“What do you sketch?” he asked. “Flowers?”

“No,” she answered, sidestepping up the path a bit to get a close-up of an especially vibrant pink rose. “Um, clothes. Blouses, mostly, but dresses too. Skirts, pants. Ladies’ things.” She turned and looked up at him. “Dark cloud up there. We’re in for it.”

Before he could ask her more about her interest in fashion, his attention was stolen by a young couple with two children hustling along the path toward them. The mother pushed a stroller single-mindedly toward the exit, and the father was a little ways behind, trying to grab the hand of an escaping toddler.

“Ava! Ava Grace, you need to hold my hand!”

The stroller whooshed by, shadowed by the toddler, in a rainbow dress, who screamed, “I wanna walk with Maaa-maaaa!”

As she reached Erik and Laire, she looked up at them and lost her balance, stumbling onto the brick path in a colorful heap. Laire rushed forward before he could totally register the spill, falling to her knees beside the child and gathering her into her arms. By the time the father caught up, the little girl was bellowing her misery into Laire’s neck, but Laire sat nonplussed on the path, looking up at the men.

“Sorry I didn’t catch her in time,” said Laire with an apologetic wince.

“My fault, not yours. She darted away.” He shrugged, looking tired. “She’s going through a phase. Only wants her mama, but the baby’s getting over a cold, and Cindy didn’t want him in the rain.”

Erik looked over his shoulder, but the mother and stroller were no longer in sight. They’d taken cover in the gatehouse that led to the parking lot. Good thing too, he thought, as the sun slipped behind a storm cloud.

“Ava Grace,” said Laire in her soft brogue. “That’s a real pretty name.”

In response, Ava Grace raised her head and sniffled loudly, her sobs subsiding.

“You ready to go with your daddy now?”

“My knee is huuuurted!” she cried, her lips tilted downward in a perfect upside-down U.

“But I bet your daddy can take you to the bathroom and patch you right up, one-two-three.”

“One-two-three?” repeated Ava Grace, unconvinced.

“Mamas are good for so many things,” said Laire, gently detaching the clingy child and setting her on her feet. “But Daddy’s are good for fixing things.”

“Like what?”

“Oh,” said Laire, kneeling back on her heels as she chatted with Ava Grace, “like toys, and bicycle chains, and bloody knees.”

“My daddy never fixed my knee afore.”

“Tsk,” said Laire. “You ever given him a chance?”

The toddler shook her head, a impish smile suddenly making her lips tilt up. “You look like a princess.”

“I do, huh?” asked Laire.

“Uh-huh,” said Ava Grace, reaching out to touch Laire’s strawberry blonde hair. “You’re pretty like a princess.”