Chapter 16: Morning Vows
Morning crept into the studio not as a sudden blaze, but as a slow, gentle dilution of dark into a dusty gold. Ellie felt it before she saw it—a warmth spreading across her bare shoulders, a pale light glowing behind her closed eyelids. Then came the sensation: the brush of lips, soft and unhurried, tracing the ladder of her spine.
She sighed into the cushion, the sound muffled and content. The kisses continued, each one a slow, deliberate brand against her skin. A calloused hand slid from her hip, over the dip of her waist, coming to rest just below her breast, his thumb stroking the sensitive underside. He mapped her like he was memorizing her silhouette all over again.
“You’re awake,” she murmured, the words thick with sleep.
“Have been for an hour,” his voice was a low rumble, kissed with sleep himself. “Just watching you breathe.”
He shifted, his body a solid line of heat along her back. His mouth found the sensitive spot where her neck met her shoulder, and she shivered. His hands continued their exploration, rediscovering the swell of her hip, the curve of her backside, the subtle strength in her thigh. It wasn’t a demand. It was a reaffirmation. His touch said, you are here, and you are mine, and this is real.
She rolled onto her back to face him. Morning Jace was a study in softness and shadow. His hair was tousled, his jaw dark with stubble, and his gray eyes were clear, the storm from weeks ago completely passed, leaving a calm, deep ocean. He propped himself up on an elbow, his gaze drinking her in with a naked wonder that still made her pulse flutter.
He leaned down and kissed her, a slow, deep communion that tasted of sleep and promise. When he pulled back, just an inch, his forehead rested against hers. “I want to see you in our bed every morning,” he whispered, the words breathed into the space between their mouths. They weren’t light or playful. They carried the weight of granite, of a foundation being laid.
Our bed. The words sang in her blood. The battered studio sofa, wedged between easels, was the most sacred place she’d ever known.
“This is our bed,” she said, her fingers threading into his hair.
He smiled, but his eyes were serious. “It is. And I love it. But I mean a real one. One without turpentine fumes as a wake-up call. With a view. A place for your easel by a bigger window.” He kissed her again, swallowing her gentle protest. “I’m not rushing. I’m just… telling you what I see.”
For a month, they’d existed in this beautiful, self-contained bubble. The world outside—Richard’s spiteful legal delays, the ominous silence from Jace’s family, the unfinished merger—had felt like a distant rumor. They’d lived on picnic blankets in the park, shared bad pizza on the fire escape, and talked for hours under the weeping willow of her mural, which now arched fully across the wall, a testament to her healed spirit. They’d taken things slow, rebuilding trust not with words, but with quiet mornings like this.
But our bed was a door swinging open on a future. It was thrilling and terrifying.
The moment was broken by the tinny, aggressive buzz of Jace’s phone, vibrating insistently on the floor where it had fallen from his pants pocket last night. He flinched, his eyes squeezing shut for a brief second of frustration.
“Ignore it,” Ellie whispered, tracing the line of his tense jaw.
“Can’t.” The word was clipped. He kissed her brow, a quick apology, and swung his long legs off the sofa, snatching the phone up. He glanced at the screen, and his entire posture changed. The soft lover was gone, replaced by the executive. His voice, when he answered, was cool and detached. “Thornton.”
He stood, naked and magnificent in the stream of sunlight, listening. He ran a hand through his hair. “No, the environmental assessment is still pending. I told Davis I need the full report, not the summary.” A pause. His back muscles tightened. “Mother, that timeline isn’t realistic if we want to do this without a dozen lawsuits.”
Ellie sat up, pulling the worn quilt around her shoulders. Mother. The word hung in the air like a cold draft. She watched the conversation unfold in the set of his shoulders, the occasional sharp nod. This was the other Jace.Jasper Thornton IV. He was good at it. The authority in his voice was innate, effortless, and utterly alien to the man who’d just whispered vows into her skin.
He ended the call with a terse, “I’ll handle it.” He stood for a moment, phone in hand, staring at the vibrant green of her mural as if it were a foreign landscape.
“Trouble?” Ellie asked quietly.
He turned, and the mask fell away, leaving only weary annoyance. “Just the usual corporate battlefield. My mother thinks ‘handling it’ means bulldozing over local concerns. My father thinks I’m here on a permanent vacation because the quarterly reports are late.” He managed a ghost of his old grin. “They’re not wrong about that last part.”
He came back to the sofa, sitting on the edge beside her. He took her hand, his thumb rubbing circles on her palm. “That merger I came for… the one that brought me to you. It’s stalled. A big chunk of the downtown acquisition is tied up in a historic trust. It’s messy. I’ve been… distracted.”
“I’d say sorry, but I’m not,” she said, a small smile playing on her lips.
He laughed, a real one this time. “Don’t you dare be.” He looked at their joined hands, then back at her face, his expression turning serious again. “Come with me today.”
“Where?”
“My office. It’s a Saturday, it’ll be empty. I have to go sign some things and dig through these trust documents. You can bring a sketchpad. There’s a huge, stupidly comfortable chair by the window. You can ignore me completely.” He raised her hand to his lips. “I just want you there. I want to stop having to leave this,” he gestured to the cocoon of the studio, “to go back to that. I want them to exist in the same room.”
The invitation was a threshold. Her studio was her kingdom. His corporate space was his other life, the one he’d hidden from her for so long. To enter it felt like stepping into the story of his other name.
She took a breath. “Will there be coffee?”
“The terrifyingly expensive kind from that machine that sounds like a rocket taking off.”
“Okay,” she said. “But I’m wearing jeans.”
His office wasn’t in the sleek, glass-and-steel building on the edge of town she’d assumed. It was a surprisingly elegant suite on the top floor of the old Millrise Trust building, all dark wood, high ceilings, and inherited Persian rugs. It smelled of lemon polish, aged paper, and, faintly, of him.
“You rented this?” she whispered, standing in the middle of the vast room, her gaze sweeping over the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, the massive oak desk, the sitting area with leather chairs.
“Leased,” he corrected, walking over to the intimidating coffee machine. “Temporarily. It suits the… image.”
The image.Right. Jasper Thornton IV needed a certain stage. She wandered while the machine grumbled. Her fingers trailed over the spines of legal tomes and bound economic reports. On the desk, next to a sleek computer, was a single, framed photograph. It was of them, taken spontaneously by a street vendor a few weeks ago. They were sharing an ice cream cone, laughing, with her willow tree mural visible as a blurred green backdrop in the distance. The ordinariness of it, displayed in this temple of business, made her throat tighten.
He handed her a steaming mug. “See? Not so scary.”
“It’s a little scary,” she admitted, sinking into the promised chair by the window. It faced the town square, a postcard view of Millrise’s quiet life.
He took his place at the desk, the sheer size of it making him look, for the first time, not like an imposter, but like he belonged there. The morning stretched. He made calls, his voice switching between its easy Southern cadence and that clipped, corporate tone. He scrolled through dense documents on his screen, frowning.
Ellie opened her sketchpad. The scene outside was quaint, but her charcoal kept drifting. She found herself drawing the line of his concentration-creased brow, the way his hand moved as he took notes, the confident sprawl of his posture in the big leather chair. She was sketching the other Jace, and in doing so, she was taming him. Making him hers, too.
After a particularly tense call where his voice never rose above a deadly calm monotone, he slammed his pen down. “Bureaucratic ossification,” he muttered to the empty room.She looked up. “You sound like a textbook.”
He glanced over, his irritation melting when he saw her smile. “It’s a perfect description. The whole thing is fossilized. And my mother’s solution is to just throw more money at the fossils until they move.” He leaned back, rubbing his eyes. “The trust that owns the key block of storefronts is administered by a little old lady named Geraldine Hinkle. She’s ninety-two, lives out on Route 7, and believes the merger will turn Main Street into a ‘circus of neon.’ She’s not entirely wrong.”
“Have you met her?” Ellie asked, setting her sketchpad aside.
“My lawyers have. She threatened one of them with her watering can.”
A surprised laugh bubbled out of Ellie. “So send someone she won’t want to water.”
Jace just looked at her, waiting.
“Oh, no,” she said, holding up her hands. “I’m not a corporate emissary. I’m the distraction, remember?”
“You’re also a local artist,” he said slowly, ideas visibly clicking into place behind his eyes. “You care about the town’s character. You’re not wearing a suit. And you look like you’d help a little old lady carry her groceries.”
“That’s manipulative,” she said, but she was intrigued.
“It’s strategic,” he corrected, a real grin spreading. “And it’s true. Come with me. Let’s go charm Geraldine Hinkle.”
“Right now?”
“Why not? It’s Saturday. She’s probably terrorizing her rose bushes. We’ll bring pie.”
“We don’t have any pie.”
He was already up, grabbing his jacket off a hook. “We’ll stop at Margie’s Diner. Everyone likes Margie’s peach pie.” He came around the desk, his energy transformed, the frustration replaced by a boyish enthusiasm. “Please? Be my secret weapon.”
He held out his hand. Ellie looked from his face, alight with possibility, to her sketch of the serious executive. This was the man who bridged both worlds. She took his hand.
“Okay,” she said. “But if she uses that watering can, I’m ducking behind you.”
His laughter echoed in the quiet office as he pulled her to her feet. “Deal.”
As they drove out of town, the sun high and warm, the pie box warming her lap, Ellie realized this wasn’t just about a merger. It was an invitation into the fight. He wasn’t just showing her his life; he was asking her to join it. To stand with him, not just in the quiet sanctuary of her studio, but in the messy, complicated world where he had to be Jasper Thornton. She rested her head against the passenger window, watching the countryside blur by, and felt a new, quiet kind of courage take root. Our bed had been a promise. This, today, was the first step toward building it.
Jace's hand, resting warmly on her knee, gave a gentle squeeze as they turned onto an overgrown gravel lane marked by a dented mailbox. HINKLE, it announced in faded, stubborn letters. "Geronimo," he said, his tone a mix of amusement and genuine apprehension.
"The pie feels insufficient," Ellie murmured, eyeing the formidable two-story farmhouse at the lane's end. It wasn't dilapidated, but proudly worn, with a wraparound porch guarded by a battalion of mismatched potted plants and a gleaming copper watering can placed strategically by the front steps.
"That's why we have you," he said, cutting the engine. The sudden quiet was profound, broken only by the buzz of bees in a nearby lilac hedge. He turned to her."No scripts. If it feels wrong, we leave. This is more important."
His words dissolved her last sliver of nervousness. She nodded, lifting the pie box. "Lead with the sugar."
They had barely set foot on the porch's creaking first board when the front door swung open with a surprising lack of creak. Geraldine Hinkle did not look ninety-two. She looked timelessly formidable, a small woman with a plume of white hair and eyes the sharp, clear blue of a winter sky. She held a trowel, not the watering can.
"Thornton," she stated, her voice dry as the gravel behind them. She didn't ask a question.
"Yes, ma'am. And this is Eleanor Davies." Jace's Southern charm was dialed to a genuine, respectful frequency.
"We brought pie," Ellie added, hefting the box slightly with a smile that felt less forced than she'd expected. "Margie's peach."
Geraldine’s gaze, hawk-like, shifted from Jace's expensive watch to Ellie's paint-stained fingernails, then to the simple cotton of her shirt. The scrutiny lasted three heartbeats. "Margie uses too much cinnamon," she declared. But she stepped back, holding the door wider. "Come in. Wipe your feet."
The interior was a museum of Millrise's past, meticulously preserved. Doilies sat under porcelain shepherdesses. The air smelled of lemon oil, old books, and something herbal steeping in the kitchen. Jace, his frame suddenly too large for the delicate room, moved with an unconscious care Ellie found deeply endearing.
"You're the artist," Geraldine said, not looking at Ellie as she led them to a sitting room. "The one with the tree on the wall. Lucy from the post office showed me a picture on her telephone. Said it moved her to tears." She sat in a high-backed armchair, a queen on her throne.
"Um.Yes. The willow," Ellie managed, thrown. She sat on the edge of a floral sofa. Jace remained standing, a respectful distance away.
"It's good," Geraldine pronounced."It has grief. And resilience. Most things these days just have flash." She turned her blue laser eyes on Jace. "Your proposal has flash. And a remarkable lack of substance regarding our groundwater."
The meeting had begun not at the table, but here, amidst the doilies. Jace didn't reach for a business card. He leaned slightly against the mantelpiece, making himself smaller. "The environmental report is my primary concern too, Mrs. Hinkle. That's why it's delayed. My team isn't satisfied with the preliminary data."
"Your team." She sniffed. "A pack of suits from the city. They wouldn't know an aquifer from an acquittal."
Ellie saw his jaw tighten, not in anger but in recognition of a fair point. He gave a slow, conceding nod. "You're right. Which is why I'm here. Without the suits."
Geraldine studied him. "Your father sent polite letters for a year. Then he sent lawyers. Now he sends you… and a painter with a pie. Why the change in tactic?"
"Because I live here now," Jace said, the truth simple and stark in the quiet room. "I've tasted Margie's excessive cinnamon. I know which coonhound at the park howls at exactly six-fifteen. My interests have become… localized."
A faint, almost imperceptible crack appeared in Geraldine's armor. Her gaze flickered to the window, toward her vibrant, chaotic garden. "Localized interests often conflict with corporate ones, young man."
"They do," he agreed, not denying it. He pushed off the mantel and took a single step forward. "But what if they didn't have to? The proposal you saw was my father's. It's generic. I want to draft a new one. With a binding community oversight panel for the build. With a real, funded plan to preserve the historic facades you care about, not just a token gesture. A guarantee on the water table, written into the property deeds, enforceable by the town."
"And why would you do that?" Her question was a challenge. "It cuts your profit margin. It’s messy."
"Because it's right," he said, and then his voice softened, just for a word. "And because it's permanent."
Ellie felt the weight of that word in her chest. Permanent. It wasn't just about bricks and mortar.
Geraldine was silent for a long time. The only sound was the slow, deliberate tick of a grandfather clock in the hall. She looked at Ellie. "You trust him?"
The question, so direct, was like a splash of cold water. It wasn't about the merger. It was about everything. Ellie held the old woman's piercing gaze. "I do," she said, and her voice didn't waver. "Even when it’s messy."A slow nod. Geraldine placed her trowel on a side table with a definitive click."The pie. We'll have it in the kitchen. The plates in there don't have gold rims. Less pretentious." She stood, a hint of a smile touching her thin lips. "You can explain this oversight panel, Thornton. I have questions. Many questions."
An hour later, they left with the empty pie plate, a sealed jar of blackberry preserves, and the fragile, monumental agreement that Geraldine Hinkle would look at a new proposal. The sun was lower, the light honeyed and long.
"You were magnificent," Jace said, his hand finding hers as they walked back to the car. His relief was a palpable energy radiating from him. "The way you said 'I do.' It wasn't about the deal."
"I know," she said, swinging their joined hands slightly.
He stopped her before she could open the passenger door, turning her to face him in the dappled lane. The buzzing of the bees was softer now, drowsy. "What I said in there, about it being permanent…" He took a breath, the bravado from the office and the careful diplomacy from Geraldine’s sitting room gone, leaving just him. Raw. "I meant for us, Ellie. I'm not doing this halfway. I'm building a life here. With you. I need you to know that’s the only deal that really matters to me."
The world narrowed to his face, earnest and open in the fading light. There were no more secrets, no more separate worlds. There was only this lane, this man, and the terrifying, beautiful permanence he was offering.
Instead of answering with words, she rose on her toes and kissed him. It was a seal. A promise. An acceptance of the foundation they were laying, brick by complicated brick. When she pulled back, she smiled against his lips. "So," she whispered, "does this mean I'm on the payroll?"
He laughed, the sound rich and free in the quiet country air, and kissed her again. "You're the cornerstone," he murmured.
Later, back in her studio, the scent of Geraldine Hinkle's blackberry preserves cutting through the familiar smell of turpentine, Ellie stood before her finished willow mural. Jace was on the phone in the corner, his voice a low, confident hum as he directed his team to re-draft everything. It was a sound of creation, not destruction.
She picked up a fine brush, dipped it not in paint but in clear water, and traced a single, new leaf at the very edge of a drooping branch. It was a small addition, almost invisible. A sign of new growth on the weathered tree. He was building a life for them in the boardrooms and on the porches of Millrise.
And here, in this sacred, paint-splattered space, she was doing the same. The story of their future was no longer a desperate, hidden hope. It was a document being drafted, a painting being layered, a garden being tended. It was theirs to shape. The soft scratch of her brush on the wall was the only sound as she added one more tiny, hopeful detail to the story.