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“Yeah, it’s nice having a break from the media. I know it was my idea, and I want to be out. I don’t even mind the attention, but..”
“It’s nice to be anonymous,” Nick said.
“Yeah.”
He didn’t have to keep up pretense here, but he wanted to slip her hand in his, and she put her cookie in her purse.
“If your parents weren’t tech giants, what would you have done?”
“I did what I thought I wanted by enlisting,” Nick shrugged. “What I really want to do is rescue dogs.”
“Dogs?” Mulberry stopped walking.
“Yeah, you know they have fur and tails.”
“Nobody would think you were a dog person.”
Nick bit his tongue really hard because he wanted to make a joke in French about the kind of cat person he was, but he refrained, coughing.
“Okay, but I am, and you know it after meeting Meera and Noodle.”
Mulberry bit her bottom lip. She was teasing him, and dammit, she looked adorable.
“Yeah.”
“So that’s what I would do if I didn’t work for my father.”
“I mean, you could do that,” Mulberry said.
“No, I can’t.”
Mulberry glanced at him, then ran her hand along the hedge. They walked in silence. Nick loved how her hips moved and how she reached out to touch everything. He wanted to run his hands through her wavy hair.
He wanted to breathe in her scent like she was breathing in her cup of tea.
“Oh! Look,” Mulberry giggled in delight and surprise.
Nick smiled. He had seen Daisy’s garden before, but it looked different but still specular this late in the season because bare branches twisted over the rock sculptures.
“So peaceful here.”
“Yeah.”
“Your mom seemed unsettled yesterday.”
Mulberry blew on her tea before taking a sip. “You really don’t miss much. I think she wants to be done with this project. She had a thing with Sheldon. They’ve been on and off for years, he’s kind of like a father figure to me, but now she’s with Patrick, so….”
“Tension?”
“Yeah, my mom doesn’t like conflict,” Mulberry smiled. “Your parents seem to handle it fine.”
“It’s a sport in my family.”
She smiled. “I think my mom feels guilty, too, because Sheldon has done a lot for us. After the incident, he was with my mom, and I every day, and he put forth her name for this TV drama, but things didn’t work out between them romantically, so…” Mulberry shrugged.
“I get how that makes a tense working relationship. Is that why you didn’t want to go to dinner with them?”
“Yeah. I feel like I am sandwiched between them. I like Patrick too. And when Sheldon is here, his assistant/bodyguard person is there, and I don’t always like him.”
