The morning sun, slanting through the mullioned windows of the breakfast room, felt different. Softer.
After the hushed intimacy of the library the night before, the air between Alistair and Chloe had changed. The rigid, contractual space that had separated them had grown porous, allowing something warm and unquantifiable to seep in.
Alistair found himself noticing the way Chloe’s smile crinkled the corners of her eyes when his great-aunt Muriel recounted a story about her prize-winning hydrangeas. He was cataloging new data, but for the first time, it felt less like research and more like… observation.
Genuine, unguarded observation.
Chloe, for her part, felt the shift as a low, steady hum of awareness. She saw the man behind the meticulously constructed façade—the one who spoke of ancient manuscripts with a fire that eclipsed the dimmest library stacks.
Last night, he wasn’t a client. He was just Alistair, a man with a dream so large it terrified him.
And that man was far more dangerous to her carefully constructed professional boundaries than the stuffy academic she’d first met.
Their fragile truce was shattered by the clink of a silver spoon against a porcelain teacup.
“Splendid day for a spot of sport, wouldn’t you say?” Caleb announced, dabbing his lips with a linen napkin.
He surveyed the table, his gaze lingering on Alistair with predatory cheerfulness. “I was thinking a family game of croquet.
A time-honored Finch tradition.”
Alistair froze, his toast halfway to his mouth. Of all the aristocratic pastimes his family enjoyed, croquet was his personal nemesis.
It required a harmony of hand-eye coordination and spatial reasoning that his body simply did not possess. To Alistair, a croquet mallet was a scepter of humiliation, a tool designed specifically to highlight his physical ineptitude.
“Oh, what a lovely idea, darling,” his mother chirped, oblivious to the sudden tension radiating from her son.
Matilda Finch, however, missed nothing. Her sharp eyes flickered from Caleb’s smug expression to Alistair’s pale face.
A flicker of something—amusement, perhaps, or assessment—crossed her features before she turned to Chloe.
“And you, my dear? Do you play?”
Chloe felt a jolt of alarm. She saw the trap as clearly as if it were a steel-jawed contraption laid out on the Persian rug.
This wasn’t a game; it was an ambush. Caleb had found Alistair’s weak spot.
She met Caleb’s gaze and gave him a smile so sweet it could cause cavities. “I’ve dabbled,” she said brightly.
“But I’m sure Alistair is a secret pro. He’s so precise with everything he does.”
Alistair shot her a look of pure, unadulterated panic. It was a look that said, *You have just sealed my doom.
An hour later, they stood on the impossibly green lawn, the scent of cut grass and blooming roses hanging in the air. Caleb, dressed in crisp white linens, looked like he’d been born with a mallet in his hand.
Alistair looked like a man being led to his execution. He held the wooden club as if it were a venomous snake, his knuckles white.
“Right then,” Caleb said, clapping his hands together.
“Let’s make it interesting. Me and Aunt Muriel against our lovebirds.”
It was a masterful stroke of cruelty. Aunt Muriel, despite her age, was a croquet shark.
This left Alistair, the human equivalent of a tangled garden hose, partnered with Chloe. The stage was set for his utter mortification.
The first few rounds were a symphony of disaster. Alistair’s attempts to strike the ball resulted in either a complete miss that sent him spinning in a clumsy pirouette or a violent thwack that sent his ball careening into Matilda’s prize-winning rose bushes.
Caleb would offer condolences dripping with insincerity. “Hard luck, old boy.
It’s all in the wrist. Or so I’m told.”
Alistair’s face was a mask of grim concentration and mounting despair. He could feel the family’s pity, Caleb’s triumph, and worst of all, Chloe’s professional reputation crumbling with every flubbed shot.
He was failing the contract. He was failing her.
Chloe watched him, her heart aching with a strange, fierce protectiveness. This wasn’t about the contract anymore.
She couldn’t stand to see the quiet confidence he’d shown in the library last night be so thoroughly dismantled.
“Alright, my turn to get my partner in shape,” she announced, her voice ringing with playful authority. She walked over to Alistair, who was staring at his ball as if willing it to spontaneously combust.
She stood behind him, her presence warm and grounding. “Okay, professor,” she murmured, her voice for his ears only.
“Forget everything you think you know about physics. This is about feel.”
She placed her hands over his on the mallet, her fingers lacing through his. A jolt, small but potent, shot through him.
“Loosen your grip. You’re holding it like it personally offended your favorite dead philosopher.”
He let out a shaky breath. Her proximity was both a torment and a lifeline.
She smelled of sunshine and jasmine.
“Now, bend your knees slightly,” she instructed, pressing gently on his shoulders. From a distance, to the rest of the family watching from their lawn chairs, it looked like an intimate, loving gesture.
A girlfriend helping her slightly clumsy boyfriend. Caleb’s smile tightened at the edges.
“Don’t look at the ball,” Chloe whispered, her chin nearly resting on his shoulder. “Look at the wicket.
Picture the path. See it going through.”
“I see it hitting the cherub fountain and shattering a centuries-old artifact,” he muttered back, his voice tight.
“Hush, you,” she chuckled, the sound a warm vibration against his back. “Just swing.
Smooth and easy. Like you’re turning a page in a very old book.”
He didn’t know if it was the absurd analogy or the simple, steady pressure of her hands on his, but something clicked. He swung.
The mallet connected with a satisfying thunk. The ball rolled, straight and true, gliding perfectly through the next wicket.
A surprised ripple of applause went through the onlookers. Alistair stared, dumbfounded, as if he’d just witnessed an act of God.
Chloe squeezed his hands before letting go.
“See? You’re a natural,” she beamed, loud enough for everyone to hear.
The game transformed. It was no longer a trial; it was a performance, and Chloe was the director.
She turned Alistair’s awkwardness into a running gag, a charming piece of their coupledom. When he nearly tripped over his own feet, she caught his arm, laughing.
“Careful, darling! You save all your grace for the dance floor, don’t you?”
When his next shot went wild, she framed it as a strategic masterstroke.
“Oh, brilliant! You’ve put us in a perfect position to block Caleb’s next move. So clever!”
The family ate it up. They weren’t seeing an uncoordinated academic being humiliated; they were seeing a man so besotted with his brilliant, vivacious girlfriend that his athletic prowess was a charming afterthought.
They were seeing a team.
Alistair, caught in her orbit, began to relax. He started to play along, a small, genuine smile touching his lips.
He was still terrible, but now it was a shared joke, a piece of their manufactured narrative that felt startlingly real. He was relying on her completely, surrendering his rigid control, and the world hadn’t ended.
In fact, it had become brighter.
The final shot came down to him. They were one point behind.
Caleb had set up a difficult play, blocking their path with his own ball. It was an impossible angle.
“No pressure, old boy,” Caleb called out, unable to hide the glee in his voice. This was it.
The final, inevitable failure.
Chloe walked up to Alistair and gave him a quick, conspiratorial kiss on the cheek. “Forget the wicket,” she whispered.
“Hit his ball. Hard. Right into the azaleas.”
He looked at her, his eyes wide. “Is that… legal?”
“Who cares? It’s fun.”
Something in her defiant grin gave him courage. He took his stance, ignored the impossible target of the wicket, and focused on Caleb’s smugly positioned blue ball.
He swung with the abandon Chloe had taught him, a smooth, fluid motion that felt utterly foreign and exhilarating.
Crack.
His ball struck Caleb’s, sending it flying off the lawn and into the thicket of bushes Aunt Muriel was so proud of. The impact sent his own ball ricocheting off the side of a wicket in a bizarre, lucky bounce.
It rolled, almost in slow motion, across the green and gently tapped the finishing peg.
They had won.
Silence, then a burst of laughter and applause from the family. Aunt Muriel patted Caleb on the back.
“Better luck next time, dear.”
Caleb’s face was a thunderous mask of civility. He had engineered the perfect humiliation, and somehow, this woman—this stranger—had spun it into a triumph.
Later, as the family drifted back toward the house for afternoon tea, Alistair and Chloe lingered by the lawn’s edge. The adrenaline of the game was fading, leaving behind a quiet, humming energy.
“I don’t know how you did that,” Alistair said, his voice soft with awe. He looked down at his hands, which still tingled from the memory of her touch.
“You were… magnificent.”
“It’s my job, remember?” Chloe said, though the words felt flimsy, inadequate.
She hadn’t been thinking about her job. She’d been thinking about the hunted look in his eyes and the visceral need to make it go away.
She’d seen his vulnerability, not as a weakness to be exploited or managed, but as a part of him that was fragile and real. A part she wanted to protect.
“No,” he said, meeting her gaze. His eyes were clear and serious.
“It was more than that. I was drowning, and you… you taught me how to swim.”
The admission hung in the air between them, heavy and true. He, Dr. Alistair Finch, the self-sufficient intellectual who needed nothing and no one, was admitting his reliance on her.
He was vulnerable, and he was letting her see it. The realization was terrifying, but it was also a profound relief, like setting down a weight he hadn’t known he was carrying.
For Chloe, his words landed with the force of a confession. She saw the man stripped of his academic armor, of his contractual clauses.
All that was left was the raw, undeniable truth: they were in this together, and the lines they had so carefully drawn were dissolving like chalk in the rain.