The Vale Group charity gala was at a hotel in the city.

Sebastian had explained it three days in advance: two hundred people, the company's annual fundraiser, the first public appearance where we would need to be convincing. He'd said *convincing* in the tone of someone briefing a contractor on a deliverable.

I'd bought a dress. Dark blue, the kind that made a decision when you put it on.

He came to get me from my room at seven.

He knocked. I opened the door.

He looked at me the way he looked at the garden — like he was trying to understand what he was seeing before he decided what to say about it.

"Ready?" he said.

"Yes," I said.

We went downstairs.

In the car he told me the relevant names: the CFO's wife who would want to talk about art (let her), the board member who was a known antagonist (stay cordial), and his cousin Marcus, who would be there and who I would meet.

"What should I know about Marcus?" I said.

"He's charming," Sebastian said. "He's also the person who inherits the Vale Group if I fail to meet the terms of my grandfather's succession clause."

I looked at him.

"There's a succession clause," I said.

"My grandfather believes the company should be led by someone with a stake in the future," he said. "The clause requires that I be married and building a family within eighteen months of his death, or the company reverts to the next line." He said this with the same flat precision. "Marcus is the next line."

I sat with that.

"That's why the wife," I said.

"That's why the wife," he confirmed.

"The lawyer said it was about your grandfather wanting to see you settled before he died."

"That's also true. Both things are true."

I looked at the city going by outside.

"Sebastian."

"Yes."

"That information changes the nature of the contract."

"Does it?"

"It means this isn't just about your grandfather's peace of mind. It's about the company."

"Yes."

"You should have told me that at signing."

He was quiet for a moment.

"Yes," he said. "I should have." He looked at me. "I apologize."

It was a real apology. No conditions on it.

I filed it and went back to looking at the city.

---

The gala was exactly what galas are: high ceilings, expensive flowers, people who had dressed to be looked at. Sebastian moved through it with the ease of someone who'd been doing it since childhood, and I moved beside him with the ease of someone who had spent ten years going to gallery openings, which was not so different.

We were credible.

More than credible — we were easy together, in a way that wasn't performed. We'd had enough real conversations in the garden that the texture of our dynamic was visible, and visible things read as real.

At some point he put his hand at the small of my back to steer me through a crowd.

It should have been nothing. A contract gesture.

It wasn't nothing.

I catalogued that too.

Marcus Vale found us at nine.

He was, as advertised, charming — the kind that's assembled with precision, every element in the right place. He looked at me with the specific attention of someone assessing a variable.

"So you're the artist," he said.

"Nora Cassidy," I said.

"Sebastian's been very private about you." He smiled at Sebastian. "We were all wondering."

"There wasn't much to announce," Sebastian said. "We like being quiet."

"I see that." Marcus looked at me. "What do you paint?"

"Gardens, mostly," I said. "I'm working on a series of your grandfather's estate right now, actually."

Something shifted in Marcus's expression. Too fast for most people to catch.

I caught it.

"August's garden," he said.

"It's extraordinary," I said. "Forty years of the same hand."

Marcus looked at Sebastian.

Sebastian was looking at me.

Not at Marcus. At me, with the expression he brought to things he found worth studying.

We said our goodbyes to Marcus and moved on.

At the edge of the room, in a quiet corner while the speeches started, Sebastian turned to me and said, very low:

"You just told Marcus that you know about the roses."

"Yes," I said.

"He knows now that you've talked with August. That August trusts you."

"I know," I said.

"You did that on purpose."

I looked at him.

"Marcus is worried about the clause," I said. "He needed to know that your grandfather isn't just seeing a convenient arrangement. He needed to know I know your grandfather."

Sebastian was quiet.

"That changes his calculation," he said.

"Yes," I said.

A pause.

"Nora," he said.

"Yes."

He looked at me with the expression — the one that wasn't a briefing look, wasn't a performance look, the specific quality of attention he reserved for things in the garden and things in conversations that surprised him.

"I didn't hire you to protect this," he said.

"I know."

"That wasn't in the contract."

"No," I said. "It wasn't."

He held my gaze.

"Thank you," he said.

Not the thank you of an employer. The other kind.

I looked at the room, so I didn't have to look at him saying it.

"Don't," I said quietly. "Don't be grateful. It makes it complicated."

He was quiet.

"Nora," he said.

"Yes."

"It's already complicated."

I looked at him.

He looked back at me, with those grey eyes that had decided to be honest, and I thought: *you're right. You're exactly right. It's been complicated since the first conversation in the garden, and I don't know what to do with that, and you're standing here in a gala telling me you know.*

"Yes," I said. "It is."

We stood in the quiet corner while the speeches went on.

Neither of us moved away.