buildings had come from a trip her family had taken when she was a child. They had driven from Copper Ridge into Portland, Oregon, and she had been struck by the beauty that surrounded the city.
But in the part of the city where they’d stayed, everything was blocky and made of concrete. Of course, there were parts of the city that were lovely, with architecture that was ornate and classic, but there were parts where the buildings had been stacked in light gray rectangles, and it had nearly wounded her to see the mountains obscured by such unimaginative, dull shapes.
When she had gotten back to their hotel room, she had begun to draw, trying to find a way to blend function and form with the natural beauty that already existed.
It had become an obsession.
It was tough to be an obsessed person. Someone who lived in their own head, in their dreams and fantasies.
It made it difficult to relate to people.
Fortunately, she had found a good friend, Mia, who had been completely understanding of Faith and her particular idiosyncrasies.
Now Mia was her sister-in-law, because she had married Faith’s oldest brother, something Faith really hadn’t seen coming.
Devlin was just...so much older. There was more than ten years between him and Faith, and she’d had no idea her friend felt that way about him.
She was happy for both of them, of course.
But their bond sometimes made her feel isolated. The fact that her friend now had this thing that Faith herself never had. And that this thing was with Faith’s brother. Of all people.
Even Joshua and Isaiah had fallen in love and gotten married.
Joshua had wed a woman he had met while trying to get revenge on their father for attempting to force him into marriage, while Isaiah married his personal assistant.
Maybe it was her family that had driven Faith to the top of the mountain today.
Maybe her dissatisfaction with her own personal life was why it felt so interesting and new to do something with Levi Tucker.
Everything she had accomplished, she had done with the permission and help of other people.
If she was going to be a visionary, she wanted—just this once—for it to be on her terms.
To not be seen as a child prodigy—which was ridiculous, because she was twenty-five, not a child at all—but to be seen as someone who was really great at what she did. To leave her age out of it, to leave her older brothers—who often felt more like babysitters—out of it.
She let out a long, slow breath as she rounded the final curve on the mountain driveway, the vacant lot coming into view. But it wasn’t the lot, or the scenery surrounding it, that stood out in her vision first and foremost. No, it was the man standing there, his hands shoved into the pockets of his battered jeans, worn cowboy boots on his feet. He had on a black T-shirt, in spite of the morning chill, and a black cowboy hat was pressed firmly onto his head.
Both of his arms were completely filled with ink, the dark lines of the tattoos painting pictures on his skin she couldn’t quite see from where she was.
But in a strange way, they reminded her of architecture. The tattoos seemed to enhance the muscle there, to draw focus to the skin beneath the lines, even while they covered it.
She parked the car and sat for a moment, completely struck dumb by the sight of him.
She had researched him, obviously. She knew what he looked like, but she supposed she hadn’t had a sense of...the scale of him.
Strange, because she was usually pretty good at picking up on those kinds of things in photographs. She had a mathematical eye, one that blended with her artistic sensibility in a way that felt natural to her.
And yet, she had not been able to accurately form a picture of the man in her mind. And when she got out of the car, she was struck by the way he seemed to fill this vast empty space.
That also didn’t make any sense.
He was big. Over six feet and with broad shoulders, but he didn’t fill this space. Not literally.
But she could feel his presence like a touch as soon as the cold air wrapped itself around her body upon exiting the car.
And when his ice-blue eyes connected with hers, she drew in a breath. She was certain he filled her lungs, too.
Because that air no longer felt cold. It felt hot. Impossibly so.
Because those blue eyes burned with something.
Rage. Anger.
Not at her—in fact, his expression seemed almost friendly.
But there was something simmering beneath the surface, and it had touched her already.
Wouldn’t let go of her.
“Ms. Grayson,” he said, his voice rolling over her with that same kind of heat. “Good to meet you.”
He stuck out his hand and she hurriedly closed the distance between them, flinching before their skin touched, because she knew it was going to burn.
It did.
“Mr. Tucker,” she responded, careful to keep her voice neutral, careful when she released her hold on him, not to flex her fingers or wipe her palm against the side of her skirt like she wanted to.
“This is the site,” he said. “I hope you think it’s workable.”
“I do,” she said, blinking. She needed to look around them. At the view. At the way the house would be situated. This lot was more than usable. It was inspirational. “What do you have in mind? I find it best to begin with customer expectations,” she said, quick to turn the topic where it needed to go. Because what she didn’t want to do was ponder the man any longer.
The man didn’t matter.
The house mattered.
“I want it to be everything prison isn’t,” he said, his tone hard and decisive.
She couldn’t imagine this man, as vast and wild as the deep green trees and ridged blue mountains around them, contained in a cell. Isolated. Cut off.
In darkness.
And suddenly she felt compelled to be the answer to that darkness. To make sure that the walls she built for him didn’t feel like walls at all.
“Windows,” she said. That was the easiest and most obvious thing. A sense of openness and freedom. She began to plot the ways in which she could construct a house so that it didn’t have doors. So that things were concealed by angles and curves. “No doors?”
“I live alone,” he said simply. “There’s no reason for doors.”
“And you don’t plan on living with someone anytime soon?”
“Never,” he responded. “It may
