Break the Sky (Spiral of Bliss Spin Off) by Nina Lane Page A

was. Dean wouldn’t buy anything less than great.
    Liv shifted the baby to her other arm. “I told Dean that Nicholas and I would stop by around three today. Would you like to come with us?”
    I didn’t know if I would
like
to since Dean was there, but I nodded. “Sure.”
    “Good.” Liv looked pleased. “Just give us a few minutes to get ready.”
    Twenty minutes later, we went down to Liv’s car and drove through town. Liv turned onto a gravel driveway toward a house that looked like it belonged in a fairy tale—multi-storied with a gabled front porch, bay windows, decorative awnings, and even a tower rising from one corner.
    I lowered my head to peer through the windshield. “Wow.”
    “It was built in the late 1800s,” Liv explained. “The man who built it was a naturalist with a specialization in butterflies. He did all kinds of traveling looking for new species, and apparently had a big collection of live butterflies he kept in a greenhouse.”
    “How big is the property?” I asked, getting out of the car. The house was perched on a hill, with a view of the lake and downtown spreading out in the distance.
    “A few acres.” Liv unbuckled Nicholas from his car seat. “Dean’s going to fence off the boundaries just for safety reasons.”
    She glanced toward the house.
    “Oh, hi.” Her voice warmed suddenly.
    I turned to see Dean approaching. Wearing an old T-shirt, jeans, and work boots, he looked like a regular guy today rather than a professor. He stopped beside Liv and brushed his lips across her cheek.
    “Hey, beauty.”
    Liv smiled. Dean took the baby from her, and she went to get a stroller from the trunk.
    I looked at my brother. I knew he was wary about the fact that I’d obviously been spending time with his wife and son. My defenses locked together.
    “Liv saw me outside the apartment,” I told him. “Invited me in.”
    “I know.” He crouched to buckle Nicholas into the stroller. “She texted me. Come on, I’ll show you the house.”
    After Nicholas was settled, Liv pushed the stroller around to the garden. I followed Dean into the house. I had a flashback of a beat-up, clapboard bungalow that could have fit in the Butterfly House’s front room. The house I never got to start, let alone finish.
    By contrast, the Butterfly House had multiple rooms, a big spiral staircase, and three stories including the tower, which Dean told me was going to be his home office. They had taken down walls to increase the size of a few rooms and put in picture windows facing the garden and lake.
    After Dean gave me the full tour, we went back outside to the garden. Nicholas was sitting in his stroller, playing with a stuffed elephant. Dean bent to squeeze the elephant’s nose. The toy let out a trumpeting noise. Nicholas gurgled.
    “So what do you think?” Liv asked me.
    “It’s beautiful. I like that you’re making modern renovations to make it a really livable family home, but you’re keeping the integrity of the original house.”
    “I’m glad you like it,” Liv said. “Did you see the blueprints for the kitchen? That’s the next big project.”
    “I’ll show them to you.” Dean gestured for me to follow him to a trailer at the edge of the property.
    It was a typical, basic trailer with a kitchenette, pullout bed, and a table littered with papers. Dean unrolled the blueprints and explained the plans for tearing down walls to create an open-plan kitchen and dining area. The whole house would be
Architectural Digest
quality when it was finished.
    “It’s really nice,” I said, as Dean put the blueprints away. “The whole place.”
    “Thanks. We’ve been working hard on it.”
    “You sleep here sometimes?” I asked, indicating the trailer as we left.
    “No. We just use it as an office, a place to keep food and drinks for the construction crew, when we have one.” He glanced at me. “Where are you staying?”
    “Room at a hostel.”
    I hoped he wouldn’t offer to put me up in