He’d done it. It was perfect—well, as perfect as it was going to get as far as practicality went. The question was, would the mayor like it?
No, Xander corrected himself with something that sounded like a laugh. Would Calliope like it?
Xander shook his head. When had the sanctuary design become all about impressing Calliope? Fulfilling her wishes and ideas. But as he’d sketched and measured, and filled out the details, he’d kept asking himself what Calliope would think, what she would say.
How it would make her feel?
The second the questions came to mind, he caught the flickering of light beyond the gate. Her butterfly. Her messenger. He smiled. No. More than one. Five, six...he lost count. She was on her way. To him.
As it was an unseasonably warm day, he hurried inside and flung open the windows, scrambled to clean up and take a quick shower, change and wash off the unending hours of eye-burning determination. He hadn’t slept in he didn’t know how long and yet he felt invigorated. He felt alive. As alive as he did whenever he kissed Calliope Jones.
By the time he returned to the porch, she was walking through the gate, the familiar sound of her thin-soled sandals echoing against the paving stones. Her dress was one of phoenix colors—orange, red and a brilliant fuchsia. Colors that melded and complemented her hair, which once again tinkled with the tiny bells she’d threaded into her braids.
He’d never seen a more beautiful or welcome sight in his life.
She stopped when she saw him, as if surprised to find him there. “Hello.”
“Let me guess. Alethea sent you.”
“She might have stopped by to voice some concerns.” She slowed in her approach, peering around him inside the cottage. “You seem...okay.”
“More than.” He felt like a kid on Christmas morning. “I did it. Well, I think I did it. The idea, it just came to me in this flash, like my brain just exploded and...”
She kissed him.
Xander gasped and smiled against her lips as he held her and did what he’d been wanting to do since that day at the inn. “Is that your way of telling me to shut up?” he murmured against her mouth as he took inordinate pride in the glazed look in her eyes.
“That’s my way of telling you to show me.” She kissed him again, briefly, then pressed her fingers to his lips. “Show me.”
Never had two words exhilarated and terrified him more. He slipped his hand into hers, drew her inside the cottage and let her take the final steps to the table on her own. He stood back, at the window, as he listened to her riffle through the diagrams and sketches, wondering if her sharp intakes of breath were of approval or horror.
“Xander.”
He closed his eyes. And smiled. Every doubt, every question in his mind went silent. “You like them.”
“How could I not? It’s exquisite. What made you think to build the sanctuary and education center around and through the trees?”
“Poker chips.” He grinned and joined her at the table. “Long story. But I couldn’t get what you said out of my mind. That we couldn’t destroy part of the habitat that they need to survive. So we survey, and we find the best way to cut around them and build around the places that the butterflies have already claimed as their own.”
“It’s going to cost,” Calliope said. “It won’t be cheap.”
“And that will no doubt be the deciding factor now that Gil is accepting other bids on the project.”
“He’s what?” Calliope’s face clouded. “Since when?”
Xander was too hyped up to worry about it. “I think he was just trying to make sure I was still interested. And I’m sorry, but yes, we will have to cut some of those trees down, but I’ll recommend a survey first, have an arborist come in and evaluate. We can recycle whatever we remove and use them in the structure itself. The flooring, the framework. Benches for an observation area. Sky’s the limit. We can literally make the sanctuary out of the butterflies’ natural habitat.”
She hugged his drawings against her chest and turned glistening, tear-filled eyes to him. “And here I was convinced you were the wrong man for the job.” She laughed through the tears that sparkled in her eyes. “I’ve never been so happy to be wrong.”