"Nash." A beat too careful. "We're just finishing up."
He turns. Files me undernot relevantin half a second, extends his hand anyway because his manners are impeccable. "Troy Alderman."
I shake it. "Nash Brennan."
Troy. The name lands somewhere specific.
She said it once, two days ago, on the phone with someone — I heard it through the library door and let it go. I'm not letting it go now. I can see it in the set of her shoulders, the particular quality of her neutral, the way she's standing in her own doorway like she's been bracing for this longer than today.
"Nash handles the plumbing work," she says. "The house has kept him busy."
"I can imagine." Troy looks up at the original ceiling mouldings with the expression of someone running numbers. "Incredible bones. Exactly the kind of property the group is interested in — the heritage value alone would anchor the whole portfolio narrative." He turns back to Maple and the smile he gives her is different from the one he gave me. Older. More practiced. Built for her specifically. "Which is why the offer stands where it does. We're not lowballing you. We want this to be easy."
We.Too familiar for a business offer.
"I'll think about it," she says.
"Don't think too long." He says it warmly, which makes it worse. "Timeline is end of month. After that the group moves to the Vernon property." He glances around the entrance hall — the restored staircase, the chandelier she rewired herself, theoriginal tile she's been refinishing on her hands and knees — and there's something proprietary in the look that pulls tight across the back of my neck. "It'd be a shame to do all this work and not see it through."
I go to the library.
I crouch over the manifold I already finished and I stay there while his voice carries through the plaster — all that reasonable warmth, all thatwe want this to be easy for you— and I understand exactly what kind of man he is. The kind who never had to take anything. Just kept the offer on the table, kept himself available, and let time and money do the work he should have been doing himself.
He knew she'd run out eventually. He came here because she's close.
The front door closes. I wait five minutes.
She's at the counter with her hands around a mug, not drinking from it. Looking at the window. Her shoulders are held in that particular way — not fine, planning to say she is.
"All balanced," I say. "Shouldn't get cold spots in the library anymore."
"Good." She doesn't turn around. "Thank you, Nash."
I pick up my bag.
Every professional instinct I have says go. The job is done. She didn't ask for anything else. I already kissed her, and she stepped back, and I have no business adding myself to whatever that man just put on her shoulders.
I pick up the bag.
"Nash."
I stop.
She still hasn't turned around. "I'm not selling," she says. "I need you to know that."
I look at the back of her head. At the set of her shoulders. At the mug she's holding with both hands like it's the only solid thing in the room.
"Okay," I say.
A beat. Two.
"He knew you," I say. "Before."
She goes still.
"The way he looked at you," I say. "That wasn't a business call."
The kitchen is very quiet. Outside, the wind is picking up off the mountain.
