The toast went well, all things considered. Sophia set down her champagne glass and surveyed the room, cataloging details the way she cataloged fabric swatches and color palettes. The inn’s great room was warm and crowded and nothing like the spaces she usually inhabited. Mismatched furniture that somehow worked together. Hand-sewn curtains. A fire crackling in the stone hearth, throwing dancing shadows across walls hung with local artwork.
It should have felt provincial. Instead, it felt like something she’d been missing without knowing it.
“Impressive speech.”
James Roberts appeared beside her, coffee cup in hand—always coffee with him, never champagne. He wore what passed for formal in his world. A clean flannel shirt, dark jeans, boots that had been polished sometime this decade.
“I kept it short,” Sophia said. “Americans have limited attention spans.”
“We’re efficient. There’s a difference.”
“Is there?”
The corner of his mouth twitched. Not quite a smile, but she was learning to read the gradations. Over the past month, she’d spent more time in James Roberts’s orbit than she’d intended—coffee at the inn, accidental encounters on the lake path, one memorable afternoon when she’d helped him repair a fence post and ruined yet another pair of shoes.
Her assistant in Milan thought she’d lost her mind. Maybe she had.
“Come with me,” James said. “I want to show you something.”
She followed him through the great room, past the cluster of teenagers who’d taken over the parlor with cards and dice, past the elderly woman telling stories near the fireplace, past Tara orchestrating the food service. They stepped onto the back porch and down the steps to the edge of Patty’s Garden.
The afternoon light had gone golden and slanted, catching the bronze chrysanthemums, the silver-green rosemary, the little bench where a guest sat reading. The bronze plaque gleamed. In memory of Patty—who taught us that friendship is chosen family.
“It’s beautiful,” Sophia said. “I’ve seen it before.”
“But have you really looked at it?”
She frowned, trying to understand what he was asking. The garden was lovely—well-designed, thoughtfully planted. But James was watching her as if he expected some revelation.
“I don’t understand.”
“Neither did I, at first.” He moved to the bench, sat down, and after a moment, Sophia sat beside him. The wood was warm from the sun. “Tara built this for her best friend. A woman who, after finding out she had early dementia, took her own life. Tara dug the beds herself, chose every plant for meaning, and comes out here to talk to her sometimes.”
“That’s... sad and sweet.”
“It’s vulnerable.” James’s gray eyes met hers. “She built something beautiful out of grief, and she lets strangers see it. Lets them sit here and feel whatever they need to feel. There’s no armor in this garden. Just love and loss and the willingness to be seen.”
Sophia’s throat tightened. She thought about her own armor—the designer clothes, the sharp tongue, the walls she’d built after Luca’s betrayal.
“I’m tired,” she said quietly.
“Of what?”
“Of pretending.” The words came slowly, pulled from somewhere she usually kept locked. “I pretend I’m fine. Pretend the divorce didn’t nearly destroy me. Pretend I know exactly what I’m doing, all the time, with complete confidence.” She looked down at her hands, at the perfect manicure that suddenly felt like another layer of facade. “I’m exhausted by the perfection. By the armor.”
James was quiet for a long moment. A breeze stirred the rosemary, releasing its sharp fragrance into the air.
“I was engaged once,” he said. “Victoria. She was a literary critic, brilliant, the first person who made me feel seen in years.” His voice was flat, controlled. “She was writing a book about me the entire time. Using our conversations, our private moments, everything I’d trusted her with. Published it without telling me.”
Sophia’s breath caught. “James?—”
“I came here to hide. Built my cabin, wrote my books, convinced myself that isolation was the same as peace.” He turned to look at her, and something in his expression had shifted—still guarded, but cracked open, just slightly. “It’s not. It’s just a different kind of exhaustion.”
“So what’s the alternative?”
“I’m still figuring that out.” He reached over, took her hand. His palm was rough, callused from work, so different from the soft hands of men she’d known in Milan. “But I think it might involve taking off the armor. Letting someone see the real person underneath.”
Sophia looked at their joined hands, at the contrast between his weathered skin and her polished nails. She thought about all the men who’d wanted the Castellano name, the connections and status. None of them had wanted to know about the nights she cried in her apartment, or the fear that she’d never be good enough, or the secret dreams she’d buried under duty.
