Chapter Four
Gareth
I wanted to kill him.
My study was a sanctuary, a place of discipline and productivity, but this morning I was furious. Standing before the floor-to-ceiling windows that showcased the entire east rose garden. I’d designed them that way, so I could have a calming view, one part of my life that’s not stressful.
I stood at the window, watching Leo Martin flirt with Eden in the middle of the goddamn rose garden.
It started innocuous. I’d seen Eden leave the house with a clipboard, her stride brisk, focused.
She wore navy slacks and a pale blouse that did nothing to hide the way her body moved when she walked.
Even at this distance, I could read the tension in her posture; shoulders high, jaw set, like she was prepping for a trial instead of a landscape walkthrough.
She stopped to jot a note, then tucked the pen behind her ear with a flick that made my chest go tight.
It was such a small, practiced gesture, but I felt it anyway.
Leo was supposed to be working, but instead he appeared at her elbow, rolling up his sleeves. His hands were already dirt-stained, the backs of them as tan as the rest of his body, and I hated the way he leaned in; casual, conspiratorial, like he was letting her in on a secret.
Through the triple-glazed glass, I couldn’t hear their words, but I didn’t need to. Leo’s approach was always the same; compliment the new hire on her work ethic, segue to a nerdy plant fact, then switch to more personal talk until she either laughed or fled.
Eden, being Eden, did neither. She just watched him, lips pressed into a line, until eventually she let out a single, clipped laugh. Her face told me it was polite, but not delighted. If I knew anything about her, and I did, I knew she was already planning her escape route.
My pulse thumped at my temple, slow and steady, but I could feel my blood pressure climbing.
The edge of the desk was hard under my palms as I leaned against it, and I dug my fingers into the grain until it hurt.
I told myself it was just about efficiency.
Leo was off-task, Eden was being distracted, and the schedule for the event would slip if I didn’t intervene.
But that was bullshit, and I knew it. What pissed me off wasn’t the threat to productivity. It was the way Leo looked at her. The way his eyes tracked the movement of her mouth, the dip at her throat. The way he shifted his stance to close the distance when she took a half-step away.
If he touches her, I thought, I’ll fire him on the spot. But then the rational part of me flinched. That wasn’t standard practice, and I hated the idea that a single new hire could scramble over a decade of discipline in less than a week.
Leo grinned, broad and easy, and pointed out something in the shrubbery. Eden followed his gesture, squinting, and then said something that made Leo laugh. It was too much, patronizing even. I clenched my jaw, rolling the muscle until it clicked, and forced myself to breathe.
He’d done this before. Not with me watching, but with every new female staffer who crossed the property line.
It was never predatory, never actionable, but it was persistent, and always, always left someone a little off-balance.
Until now, I’d let it slide. The girls either ignored him or, in one memorable case, threatened to reassign him to the compost heap if he didn’t knock it off.
But Eden was new, and the last thing she needed was another predator at her heels.
Why do I care? I asked myself. What made her different? Was it the way she looked at me? Was it the fact that she’d already managed to affect me in ways I never expected? Or was it simply the way she smelled; clean hair, rain, and some faint sweetness that lingered after she walked by?
I didn’t have an answer, and I hated that even more.
In the garden, Eden finally managed a polite disengage, turning to consult her clipboard.
The sunlight hit her hair, and for a second it lit up like a flare.
Leo, ever persistent, shifted to keep her in the shade of his body, so close now that his shadow merged with hers.
My breath hitched, just for a second, and my fingers went numb from the pressure on the chair.
Get a grip. She’s an employee. She’s not yours. And she’s definitely not Leo’s.
But the urge to go down there, to step between them and lay out in no uncertain terms how this was going to play out, was almost overwhelming.
I imagined it: the sharp crack of my voice, the way Leo’s smugness would evaporate, the way Eden’s eyes might widen, just for a moment, with something like gratitude, or maybe just surprise.
She doesn’t need you to save her, I told myself.
She’ll handle it. Still, I kept watching.
Leo was talking now, gesturing with both hands, probably explaining the root structure of the new apple trees or some other trivial fact.
Eden took another step back, and this time the motion was obvious; a clear, deliberate move to reclaim her space. My mouth twitched, almost a smile.
That’s my girl, I thought, and then froze. Where the hell had that come from?
Leo didn’t get the hint, or pretended not to. He followed, narrowing the gap, and leaned in to murmur something low. The smile on Eden’s face evaporated, and for a split second her eyes darted, not at Leo, but up, toward the house, toward my window.
She couldn’t possibly see me, not with the glare. But I felt the connection anyway, like a jolt of static through my ribcage.
Enough. I pushed off the desk, trying to talk myself out of charging into battle. That would make people suspicious. It would probably insult Eden. So I watched as Eden pulled the clipboard close to her chest and turned toward the house.
I willed her to know that I was watching. That I had her back. That if Leo ever tried something he shouldn’t, he’d be out of a job instantly.
By the time I returned to my desk, my palms were sweaty and my heart was hammering harder than it should. I tried to focus on the contract in front of me, but every line blurred into the shape of Eden’s silhouette, the outline of her body against the backdrop of my gardens, like she belonged.
The next time Leo tried anything, I’d be there.
And if that meant being the asshole boss, so be it.
I could live with that.
I could live with anything…
Except the idea of someone else having her.
The walk from my study to the library was exactly seventy-four paces, provided you didn’t stop to check the sight lines or fix a crooked frame along the way.
I’d measured it myself, years ago, during a particularly dry spell in the markets when the only thing that kept me from chewing glass was cataloguing the estate’s dimensions down to the last millimeter.
Today I took the route by reflex, letting my feet take me there on autopilot while my mind replayed the scene in the garden. I tried to file it away; employee relations, minor HR issue, soon to be resolved. But the irritation lingered, raw and insistent, like a hangnail you can’t stop messing with.
I was three doors from the library when I heard the voices. They came from the service corridor: low, quick, the way people talk when they think no one’s listening. I could have kept walking. I should have kept walking. Instead, I stopped just out of sight and listened.
“Two-to-one odds he snaps before Monday,” said a woman. I didn’t recognize the voice. Probably one of the weekend staff, brought in to polish the silver and mop the endless floors.
A second voice, male, nasal, bored. “Snaps how? You think he’ll fire Leo over a girl?”
The woman laughed, sharp as broken glass. “Not just any girl. The new one. You see how he looks at her? It’s like…”
I heard the whisper of cloth, a tray being set down. “Like he wants to eat her alive,” she said.
There was a long, appreciative silence.
“Heard Leo’s gunning for her, too,” said the man. “Did you see the way he cornered her by the roses?”
“I saw,” the woman replied. “But I’ll bet you five bucks if Leo doesn’t back off, Wolfe puts him in a trashcan. The locking kind.”
That got them both laughing. The sound was jarring, but it fizzed through me with a weird, electric thrill. I pictured Leo, limbs folded, contorted, shoved into one of those industrial dumpsters out back. The idea shouldn’t have made me smile, but it did.
I gave it another moment, then stepped into view. The staff froze, faces draining to white. The woman dropped into a curtsy that was three centuries out of date.
“Get back to work,” I said, quiet but lethal. They scattered.
I kept walking, but the words clung to me like static. “Wants to eat her alive.” Was that really how it looked? Did I give myself away so easily, or was it just the estate rumor mill doing what it did best?
The library was empty, as it should be. Light slanted in through the high windows, catching on the dust motes and turning them to gold.
I took the comfortable leather armchair, the one closest to the fireplace, and reached for the first book within arm’s length.
I tried to read, but the words wouldn’t stick.
My mind kept rerouting back to Eden, the color of her hair, the way she moved through the space, the offhand precision with which she’d corrected a dish maid on the difference between a soufflé and a frittata at breakfast while Maribel was out of the room.
It was infuriating, the way she took up space in my head. I’d built a life on compartmentalization, on the absolute discipline of keeping things sorted and never giving up control.
Eden didn’t fit in any of my compartments. She’d crawled in under the walls, burrowed her way through the foundation, and now sat at the center of everything, an unignorable presence even when she wasn’t in the room.
I flipped a page, didn’t register a word, and slammed the book shut with a dry thud.
Maybe the staff were right. Maybe I was on the verge of snapping.