Then he looked at my face.
I looked back. Didn't smile. Didn't look away.
The door behind me opened and Marlena came out with our drinks. She set them down without looking at the street, and then she straightened up and she did look, and something moved across her face that had sixty years of history in it—not fear, long past fear, something quieter and more permanent than that. She looked at Arlo the way you look at a scar. Just acknowledging it was there.
Arlo's eyes moved to Marlena.
Whatever he'd been calculating shifted. The pleasant mask stayed but something underneath it changed, reconfigured, and for just a second I saw what Gage had been dealing with hiswhole life—a man who kept score of everything and had never once come out ahead and still couldn't stop playing.
Then he crossed the street.
Haven went still beside me.
He came up the porch steps like he'd been invited, pulled out the empty chair at our table without asking, and sat down. Up close he looked like an older, harder version of Adam—same jaw, same stillness, none of the care.
"Millie," he said. Pleasant as anything. "Didn't know you were a regular here."
"I am now," I said.
He looked at Haven. "Haven. How's your mama."
"Fine," Haven said. Flat.
He nodded like she'd said something warm. His eyes moved back to me—to my stomach, briefly, then back to my face. "You're showing."
"Eighteen weeks."
"Mm." He leaned back in the chair, unhurried. "Talked to my lawyer this week. Interesting conversation."
I waited.
"Turns out there's some specific language in the deed I hadn't looked at closely enough." He said it like he was sharing something helpful. Like he was doing me a favor. "Natural heir, produced within the claimant's primary household." A pause. "Produced within alegitimatehousehold is how Hargrove's reading it. Means the child has to be born in wedlock." He spread his hands. "Bastard can't inherit. That's just the law."
The word hit the table the same way it had at dinner. I felt Haven go rigid beside me.
I looked at him. Kept my face even. "Is that right."
"I'm just letting you know where things stand." Still pleasant. Still reasonable. "Gage is a good man. I've got nothing againsthim personally. But the deed is the deed, and if that baby's born out of wedlock?—"
"We're engaged," I said.
He smiled. "Engaged isn't married."
"No," I agreed. "It's not."
He held my gaze for a moment, looking for something—doubt, maybe, or fear, or the particular wobble of a woman who wasn't sure she was staying. I didn't give him any of it. I'd spent eighteen weeks becoming someone who knew exactly where she was and why.
He stood. Settled his hat. "You have a good afternoon."
He went down the porch steps and kept walking, back the way he'd come.
Haven waited until he'd crossed the street. "That's not actually true," she said. "Is it? The bastard thing?"
"I have no idea." I was already reaching for my phone.
Gage picked up on the second ring.
"We need to get married," I said. "Soon. Arlo just?—"
