I had not really let myself think too hard about Pietro’s situation before. Hawthorne in particular had no shortage of students who looked as though they had stepped out of a magazine spread about generational wealth and emotional repression.
But now, sitting in the back of the car with Nora’s words still fresh in my mind, I found myself replaying the details more carefully.
He was out of my league.
Not just financially. In every way that mattered. Too striking. Too intense. Too self-possessed. The kind of man who belonged in rooms where people made decisions that altered other people’s lives.
And I was me.
A PhD student with a teaching assistant stipend, a wardrobe made up mostly of sale rack selections and desperation, and enough emotional baggage to qualify as excess luggage on an international flight.
“Great,” I muttered under my breath. “That’s exactly the mindset I needed.”
The driver glanced at me briefly in the mirror, clearly deciding whether I was speaking to him, then wisely thought better of it.
By the time the car pulled to a stop outside the restaurant, I was wound tight enough that getting out felt less like arriving for dinner and more like stepping onto a stage.
I barely had time to smooth my dress before the door opened from the outside. A man in black with a deep red waistcoat offered me a polite smile and his hand.
“Miss Hart?”
I blinked. “Yes?”
“This way.”
The warmth hit me first as I stepped inside, followed by soft amber light and the low murmur of voices softened by distance, velvet, and money. The whole place smelled faintly of wood polish, wine, and something buttery and expensive I probably couldn’t pronounce. It was beautiful in a way that felt effortless, all rich dark tones and hidden corners, elegant without tipping into obvious showiness.
I became abruptly, painfully aware of myself. My dress. My shoes. The fact that I had nearly cancelled this less than an hour ago and was now standing in a restaurant that probably charged extra for breathing.
The host led me deeper into the room, past the busier front section and toward a quieter corner tucked away behind a carved wooden screen and a wall of greenery lit from below. The table there was small and intimate, secluded enough to feel privatewithout being hidden, and for one ridiculous second I thought, of course he would choose somewhere like this. Somewhere that felt protected.
Pietro rose the moment he saw me.
He was wearing black tailored jacket, open collar, dark hair combed back. For half a second all the words in my head vanished, leaving nothing but the simple, deeply inconvenient fact that he was unfairly beautiful.
And then I noticed the flowers.
Not a bouquet.
A small arrangement waiting at the table, gathered in a low glass vase. Roses, lilies, ranunculus, freesia, a few pale stems I didn’t know the name of, all artfully arranged as though someone had given up halfway through choosing and decided the safest answer was yes.
Pietro followed my gaze and, for the first time since I had met him, looked almost faintly uncomfortable.
“I wasn’t sure which flowers you’d like,” he said. “So I told them to send one of everything that looked respectable.”
I stared at him.
He cleared his throat, as if perhaps that had not come out as smoothly as he intended. “It may have been excessive.”
Something warm and helpless unfurled in my chest.
“A little,” I said, and hated how soft my voice sounded.
His mouth shifted, not quite a smile but close enough to change his whole face. “I can have some removed, if you find it threatening.”
A laugh escaped me before I could stop it. “Please don’t declare war on the flowers.”
“That wasn’t my first choice,” he said, reaching for the back of my chair. “But I’m adaptable.”
