Ava's POV
Three days into living at the manor and I had developed a system.
Wake up before seven, beat Damian to the kitchen, pour my coffee, and position myself at the far end of the counter with my phone before he came downstairs. That way we could exist in the same space without the particular awkwardness of arriving together, which somehow felt more intimate than it had any right to for two people who were essentially roommates with paperwork.
It was a good system. I was proud of it.
On day four it completely fell apart because I overslept.
I came downstairs at seven twelve with my hair still damp from a rushed shower and my shirt on inside out, realized the shirt situation halfway down the staircase, fixed it on the landing while hoping none of the invisible staff were watching, and walked into the kitchen to find Damian already at the table with his coffee and his phone and what I was almost certain was the ghost of amusement on his face.
"You're late," he said.
"I'm aware." I went straight for the coffee pot. "Not a word."
"I didn't say anything."
"You were thinking loudly."
He looked down at his phone. The almost smile was definitely there this time, brief and quickly controlled, but there. I filed it away and poured my coffee.
Claire had called yesterday to confirm the stylist appointment. Today at noon, which meant I had the morning shift at Petals and then approximately forty five minutes to get across town without looking like someone who had spent the morning arguing with carnations.
I told Jamie about the stylist appointment while we were restocking the back cooler and she reacted the way Jamie reacted to most things, with complete enthusiasm and a list of opinions nobody asked for.
"Tell her you need something with a neckline," Jamie said, handing me a bundle of white roses. "You have excellent collarbones and nobody ever sees them."
"I'm going to a board dinner, not a nightclub."
"Those aren't mutually exclusive." She passed me another bundle. "Also tell her no beige. You wore beige to the Henderson wedding and you looked like a wall."
"I looked professional."
"You looked like a wall that was trying its best." She pointed at me with a stem. "Deep colors. Something that makes him look twice."
"I don't want him to look twice."
"Ava." She gave me the patient expression she reserved for moments when she thought I was being deliberately obtuse. "You live with the man. You are legally his wife. He is by all available photographic evidence extremely attractive. It is okay to want him to look twice."
"It is not that kind of arrangement."
"Yet," Jamie said cheerfully, and disappeared into the cooler before I could respond.
The stylist's name was Renée and she operated out of a studio in the kind of building that had a doorman and smelled like expensive candles and quiet money. She was tall, French, and she looked at my current outfit the way a surgeon looks at a particularly interesting case, with clinical interest and zero judgment but absolutely clear ideas about what needed to happen next.
"Sit," she said, gesturing to a chair in front of a mirror that was aggressively well lit. "Let me look at you."
I sat. She walked around me twice with her hands clasped behind her back, studying me from every angle. I felt like a flower arrangement being assessed before a competition.
"You have good bones," she said finally.
"Thank you. I grew them myself."
She looked at me in the mirror with an expression that suggested she was deciding whether I was funny or difficult. She seemed to land somewhere in the middle and accept it. "Mr. Hawthorne said formal events, yes? Board dinner, charity function, possible press appearance."
"That's the list."
"And your personal preference?"
"Comfortable. Nothing that requires me to stop breathing to zip up."
"Breathable and elegant. This is not a contradiction." She moved to a rack along the wall and began pulling things with the focused efficiency of someone who did not waste time on options she had already ruled out. "He also said you have final approval."
I blinked. "He told you that?"
"He was very specific about it." She glanced at me over her shoulder. "He said, and I am quoting directly, that you are not to be dressed like an accessory."
I sat with that for a moment. Something about it landed differently than I expected, not like a contractual instruction but like something that actually mattered to him. Which was a strange thing to think about a man who communicated primarily through printed schedules and closed doors.
I shook it off.
Renée spent the next hour putting me in things and standing back to look at them with her arms crossed and her head tilted. She rejected four dresses before I even had an opinion. The fifth one made her stop and nod once, decisively, the way someone nods when they find the thing they were looking for.
It was deep green, almost black in certain light, with a neckline that was elegant rather than dramatic and a cut that was fitted without being uncomfortable. I stood in front of the mirror and did not immediately recognize myself.
"Jamie is going to lose her mind," I said.
"Your friend has good taste," Renée said, which told me she had done her research.
We found two more after that, a deep burgundy for the charity function and a tailored ivory set for the press appearance that felt powerful in a way I had never associated with anything I owned before. By the time we finished I was tired and slightly overwhelmed and carrying the particular strange feeling of looking like a version of yourself you didn't know existed.
I was in the car on the way back to the manor when my phone buzzed.
Jamie: How did it go
Me: I look like a person with a personal stylist
Jamie: AMAZING. Did she do the collarbones
Me: There may have been a neckline involved
Jamie: I KNEW IT. Does he know yet
Me: Know what
Jamie: That you're about to walk into his house looking like that
Me: Jamie I swear to God
Jamie: I'm just saying. Wolves can smell things.
Me: What does that even mean
Jamie: I don't know I've been watching a lot of documentaries. Just report back.
I locked my phone and looked out the window at the city passing by and tried not to think about what Jamie meant by that, which was difficult because once Jamie planted a thought it had a tendency to root.
Damian was in the hallway when I arrived back at the manor, jacket on, clearly heading out. He stopped when he saw me carrying the garment bags.
His eyes moved over me once, quick and assessing, the way they always did. Then they did something different. They stayed.
Not long. Two seconds at most. But I noticed.
"The appointment went well," he said. Not a question.
"Renée is terrifying and I mean that as a compliment." I shifted the garment bags. "She told me you said not to dress me like an accessory."
Something crossed his face. "She wasn't supposed to repeat that."
"Well she did." I looked at him. "Thank you. For saying it."
He held my gaze for a moment, that careful controlled expression doing something slightly different at the edges, like a door that was closed but not locked. Then he nodded once, reached past me to open the front door, and left.
I stood in the hallway listening to his car pull away and felt that warmth again, spreading slow and uninvited up from the base of my spine like it had at dinner on the first night. Stronger this time. Warmer.
I pressed my hand against the wall and took a slow breath.
It was nothing. It was the winter heating. It was the stress of the last week catching up to my nervous system in ways that manifested as random physical sensations that meant absolutely nothing at all.
I picked up my garment bags and went upstairs.
In my room I hung the dresses carefully and sat on the edge of the bed and looked at my mother's photograph on the nightstand.
"Something weird is happening," I told her quietly. "And I don't mean the billionaire husband situation, although that is also very weird. I mean something else. Something I don't have words for yet."
She smiled at something off camera, unbothered and bright.
"Yeah," I said. "I figured you wouldn't have answers either."
I lay back on the bed and stared at the ceiling and waited for the warmth to fade.
It took longer than it should have.