He stopped with his back to me.
“Thank you.”
He stayed there a moment, one hand on the doorframe.
Then he said, without looking at me, “Cora was asleep.”
I blinked.
“You made it?”
“Yes.”
The door clicked shut behind him.
I stared at the mug until the steam blurred.
No one had ever taught me what to do when tenderness arrived from the hands of a man I was supposed to fear.
The next week should have broken whatever fragile thing was forming between us.
Instead it made it undeniable.
He started bringing work to the garden.
At first, he sat on a stone table near the entrance with his laptop and endless documents, pretending he was there because the signal was better or the air was cooler or the light suited him.
By the third afternoon, I had begun leaving space for him without thinking.
We did not always talk.
Sometimes I read while he worked.
Sometimes he watched the fountain too long without opening the file in front of him.
Sometimes Nico wandered through just to grin at us like a man attending a private play.
One evening, while the light turned everything honey-gold and the roses smelled strong in the heat, I held up the botany book and pointed toward a vine in the east corner.
“See the leaf pattern? That’s trumpet creeper, not honeysuckle.”
Roman stepped closer to look.
