CHAPTER 4
JULIAN
Her building is a walk-up in Silver Lake. Third floor. No doorman.
I stand on the sidewalk for thirty seconds longer than necessary, studying the bougainvillea climbing the stucco, the succulent garden someone’s planted by the entrance, the way the evening light turns the Spanish tile roof golden.
Marcus waits in the car behind me, patient as always.
He’s been my head of security for over fifty years, though his official title is “Driver” for situations exactly like this—when I need protection without the appearance of it.
Tonight, I almost brought someone else from the team.
Someone whose presence wouldn’t require explanation if Poppy noticed the same face too often.
But Marcus insisted. He wants to assess her himself.
I haven’t been nervous in decades. Possibly longer. Nerves require uncertainty, and I’ve spent two centuries eliminating uncertainty from my life.
And yet.
I check my watch. Six fifty-three. I told her seven. Early is eager. Late is rude. On time is—
I’m stalling.
The buzzer panel is old, the kind with handwritten names slipped behind plastic. Hers says “P. Gable” in neat block letters. Practical. No flourishes.
I press the button.
Static. Then: “Hello?”
Her voice sounds different through the speaker. Smaller. More uncertain.
“It’s Julian.”
A pause. “You’re early.”
“I can wait in the car if you prefer.”
“No, no—come up. Third floor. Fair warning, the stairs are a nightmare.”
The door buzzes. I push through into a tiled courtyard with a dry fountain and stairs winding up the side of the building.
The steps are terracotta, worn smooth in the centers.
I take them slowly, not because I need to, but because I’m cataloging everything.
The potted lemon tree on the landing. The wind chimes outside someone’s door.
The muffled sound of music through a window—something acoustic, melancholy.
This is where she lives. This is her world.
By the time I reach the third floor, I’ve learned more about Poppy Gable than her Spellbound profile told me. She lives modestly despite her income—the building is clean but not luxurious. She chose character over convenience. She doesn’t need to impress anyone with her address.
I find this more interesting than I should.
Her door is already open. She stands in the frame, and I stop.
The photo didn’t capture her. Couldn’t have. Because the photo was static, and Poppy Gable is anything but.
She’s wearing a linen jumpsuit the color of sand. Her hair falls in waves that look effortless but probably took an hour. She’s holding a laminated card in one hand and her phone in the other, and her expression cycles through surprise, panic, and forced calm in the space of two seconds.
“You’re wearing a suit,” she says.
“Yes.”
“To pick me up. From my apartment.”
“Should I not have?”
“No, it’s fine, it’s just—” She gestures at herself, at me, at the general situation. “You look like—like you’re going to a board meeting or something. And I look like I’m going to brunch.”
“You look lovely.”
The words slip out before I can think about what I’m saying. She blinks. Color rises to her cheeks.
“That’s—thank you. That’s very fake-boyfriend of you.”
“I meant it.”
“Right.” She clears her throat. “Do you want to come in? I just need to grab my bag. And maybe change. Should I change? You’re in a suit.”
“You don’t need to change.”
“But—”
“Poppy.” I hold her gaze. “You look perfect. Trust me.”
She stares at me for a moment. Then steps back, waving me inside.
The apartment is small. Studio, technically, though she’s used furniture to create the illusion of separate spaces—a living area with a velvet couch the color of moss, a sleeping nook hidden behind a bookshelf, a kitchen with herbs growing on the windowsill.
Every surface holds something: candles, books, framed photos, small ceramic animals that serve no purpose except to exist.
It should feel cluttered, yet it doesn’t. Instead, it feels lived in. Warm in a way I forgot spaces could be.
I haven’t had a home like this in a very long time.
“Sorry about the mess,” she says, though there isn’t one. “I stress-cleaned this morning and then stress-messed it up again.”
“It’s charming.”
“Charming is a nice word for tiny.”
“I meant what I said.” I pause by her bookshelf.
The titles are eclectic—romance novels beside business guides beside a thick biography of Marie Antoinette.
A photo catches my eye: Poppy with a woman who shares her coloring but not her energy.
The sister. Violet. Beside it, a smaller frame holds a picture of an older woman in a garden.
Grandmother, I suspect. Kept close. Loved.
“That’s my Nana,” Poppy says, appearing at my elbow. “She passed three years ago. She would’ve hated Preston, by the way. Called it from the start.”
“She sounds wise.”
“She was. She also would’ve had questions about you.”
“What kind of questions?”
Poppy tilts her head, studying me. “Why a man who looks like that—” she gestures at my face, my suit, all of me “—is single. What you’re really after. Whether you’re secretly a serial killer.”
“I’m not a serial killer.”
“That’s exactly what a serial killer would say.”
I almost smile. Catch myself. “Fair point. What would convince you?”
“Serial killers don’t usually submit to background checks. Spellbound does those, right?”
“Extensively.”
“Then I’ll take my chances.” She grabs a bag from the couch—small, structured, probably expensive but not ostentatiously so. “Ready?”
“Almost.” I nod toward the laminated card she’s still clutching. “May I?”
She looks down at it. Grimaces. “Oh. Right. I made a—it’s stupid. It’s a cheat sheet. For pretending to know rich guy things. But you’re actually a rich guy, so it’s useless, and I should probably throw it away.”
“May I see it?”
“You really want to see my disaster of a cheat sheet?”
“Very much.”
She hands it over. I study the neat handwriting, the bullet points, the color-coded sections. She made this at two in the morning, I realize. Probably wine-drunk and anxious.
“‘Ask about his yacht,’” I read aloud. “‘Nod thoughtfully at wine opinions. Laugh at unfunny golf stories.’” I look up. “You think I golf?”
“Rich guys golf. It’s statistically proven.”
“I don’t golf.”
“Do you have a yacht?”
“No.”
“Wine opinions?”
“Several. But I promise they’re not tedious.”
“See, you say that—” She gestures at me again, a motion I’m starting to recognize as her way of encompassing everything she finds overwhelming. “But you’re clearly wealthy and successful, and I hired you thinking you’d need the money, so why are you here?”
The question is sharper than she probably intends.
I consider the truth. That I’m bored. That I’ve been bored for decades. That her request was the first thing in years that made me feel something other than the slow erosion of time. That she was honest in a way people never are with me, and I wanted to understand why.
“Curiosity,” I say. “Your request was refreshing. You asked for exactly what you needed without pretense.”
“Refreshing is a nice word for pathetic.”
“I disagree. Pathetic would be pretending you don’t need help. You asked for what you wanted. That takes courage.”
Something shifts in her expression. The defensive edge softens.
She takes a breath. “Look, I can’t afford you. Not at whatever your actual rate is. So if you want to back out—”
“I don’t.”
“But—”
“Poppy.” I hand back the cheat sheet. “I accepted because I wanted to. The compensation is irrelevant.”
“Money is never irrelevant.”
“It is when you have enough of it.” Weariness bleeds into my voice. “After a while, it becomes scenery.”
She’s watching me with those sharp eyes. Cataloging. I’m pretty sure I can almost see her filing away my phrasing for later examination.
“Okay,” she says finally. “Then let’s go be fake in love at an expensive restaurant.”
The drive to Santa Monica takes forty minutes. Marcus navigates Interstate 10 while Poppy sits beside me in the back seat, maintaining a careful distance.
“Tell me about Preston,” I say.
She tenses up. “Uh, what about him?”
“He obviously messed up, so what did he do that I should avoid? What did he do that I should do better?”
She’s quiet for a moment. Streetlights slide across her face as we cross the bridge.
“Well, first off, he cheated on me.”
“I would never do that to you.” It came out before I could stop myself.
“That would be hard to do since we’re not really together.”
“Yes, but I know I would not do that.”
“But it was more than that,” she says. “I just didn’t realize it until after it was over, you know?”
I nod my head in acknowledgment, and she continues.
“He was distracted. Always half-present. Like he was waiting for something better to come along.”
“I’m never distracted.”
“He forgot details. Important ones.”
“I remember everything.” This is not an exaggeration. The curse of an endless memory—every moment preserved, every hurt archived.
“He made me feel like I was too much.” Her voice goes flat. “Too loud. Too online. Too me.”
My jaw tightens. “Then he was a fool.”
She looks at me. In the dim light of the car, her eyes are searching.
“You’re good at this,” she says. “The compliments. You sound like you mean them.”
“I do mean them.”
“But it’s not real.”
“No,” I agree. “It’s not real.”
The words taste like ash.
The restaurant is quiet and intimate. White tablecloths. Candles. The kind of place where waiters appear exactly when needed and vanish exactly when they are not.
Poppy orders the salmon. I order the steak, rare. I won’t eat much of it, but appearances matter.
“We need a story,” she says, once the sommelier has poured our wine and retreated. “How did we meet?”
“Art gallery,” I say. The idea forms as I speak. “Three months ago. You were there for work—an influencer event. I was there because I collect.”
“You collect art?”