Page 44 of The Wisteria Tree Cottage

‘Are you working on your story?’

Bear looked at the laptop. ‘Yes, I always like to write in the mornings.’

‘Did you tell Heather about your book?’

God, she did sound jealous and she hated that.

‘No, of course not.’

‘I’m sorry, I’m sounding like such a cow, I want you to be happy, I really do. I just thought… last night—’

‘Alex has seen the wolf too,’ Star said excitedly as she arrived at the table with her breakfast. ‘Round the back of the kitchen. Only Alex thinks it might just be a dog. She gave it some leftovers and it ate them and then ran off when she tried to get close.’

Bear stared at Meadow for a second before turning his attention to Star. ‘I’ve had an email to say the webcams are arriving today, so we’ll hopefully capture some footage of this thing tonight and see for ourselves.’

‘I’m so excited. The Wolf of Wishing Wood and we’ll finally get to see him,’ Star said. ‘I’ve been reading all about wolves and they are such amazing animals. Very clever and they live in packs of brothers, sisters, mums, dads, aunts and uncles, just like we do. We live in a pack too.’

Meadow smiled at that idea.

‘Sometimes members of the pack mate for life, that’s like getting married but never getting a divorce,’ Star said.

‘Those wolves must love each other a lot,’ Meadow said.

‘Yes.’ Star ate a grape. ‘Mummy, do you think you will get married one day and mate for life?’

‘Oh,’ Meadow glanced at Bear. ‘It would need to be someone really special to want to be with them for the rest of my life.’

‘Like a best friend,’ Star said innocently.

Meadow watched Bear smirk at her obvious matchmaking tactics.

‘I think being really good friends with someone is an excellent start to any relationship, just like Charlie and Leah. Now, what tattoo are you going to get today at Dwelling?’ Meadow said.

Star had seen the henna tattoos and was desperate to get one.

‘A wolf,’ Star said.

Meadow smiled. Of course she was.

CHAPTERTWENTY-EIGHT

Meadow walked into the wedding chapel treehouse with Bear and Indigo. Bear had asked them to come and have a look at it and listen to some proposed ideas he had for changes to the plan. River and Heath were already in there working away.

‘Wow, this place looks great,’ Meadow said, looking around. There were large arched windows down the sides letting in a ton of natural light and the whole place had a simple, rustic feel that would look so elegant when dressed with white flowers and candles or fairy lights.

‘Well, it’s not finished yet,’ River said. ‘But Bear had some ideas.’

‘I wondered how you felt about leaving the roof as it is,’ Bear said. ‘Put up a glass ceiling in that section to protect the guests from the rain but not have the closed-in roof that you’d originally planned. It lets in all that wonderful light and River suggested we could put up white blinds we could pull across to mute the light if it was a really sunny day.’

Meadow looked up. The way the sunlight was pouring through the roof was beautiful, little motes of dust sparkled in the air and the emerald green of the treetops made it look like an enchanted glade.

‘I think that could totally work,’ Indigo said.

‘I do too. It’s lovely right now, we’d lose a lot of this light if we were to finish the roof as planned,’ Meadow said.

‘Tell them about the stained-glass window,’ Heath said.

‘We can’t change that,’ Meadow said. ‘We have the most beautiful design picked out.’

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