After No

"Yes," Damian said. "Your job is still yours."

Tessa did not lower her bag.

"Even if I don't take the other position?"

"Even then."

"And nobody goes through my locker again."

His first instinct was to tell her she could not dictate security procedures in his home.

He heard how that would sound before he said it.

"If there is a concern about your work, Mrs. Alvarez will discuss it with you. Nobody will search your things behind your back again."

Her fingers loosened around the strap.

"I need to finish the linen room."

She walked past him.

Damian stood in the sitting room until Leah came out carrying a glass.

"Your mother is awake," she said. "She asked whether the handsome man was coming back."

He looked at her.

"I assumed she meant you. There haven't been many candidates today."

For a moment he could not decide whether everyone in the house had become insolent or he had simply begun listening.

He went to his mother.

She wanted the window open. It was too cold to leave it that way for long, so he opened it a little and sat where she could feel the sea air without the curtain brushing her face.

"Who was that girl?" she asked.

"Tessa."

"She's cross with you."

"Yes."

"Did you deserve it?"

He rubbed his thumb along the chair arm.

"Apparently."

His mother closed her eyes.

"You sound like your father when you say that."

He stayed until she slept.

The next morning, Mrs. Alvarez arrived in his office with a notebook and the brisk air of a woman who had run his household long enough to know when he was making her work harder.

"You offered Miss Miller a new role."

"I discussed one."

"Without discussing it with me."

"I'm discussing it now."

She opened the notebook.

"Companionship during the hours approved by Leah. No medication, no lifting, no overnight responsibility. She can help with light household tasks when your mother is resting. Proper breaks. A written job description."

"Fine."

"And a rate attached to the work, rather than whatever figure you think will make her stop arguing."

Damian leaned back.

Mrs. Alvarez looked over her glasses.

"I've employed people longer than you've frightened them, Damian. Let me do it properly."

He gave her permission. She appeared unimpressed by having needed it.

At eleven, Tessa came to the office with Mrs. Alvarez. She had a list of questions on the back of an envelope.

She asked about hours, days off, whether she would lose the job if his mother stopped recognizing her, and what happened when she needed to call in sick.

That last question should not have surprised him. It did.

He had imagined buying her time. She was deciding how to live it.

"We review the arrangement in six weeks," Mrs. Alvarez said. "If it doesn't suit either of us, you can return to housekeeping at the revised rate we've discussed."

Tessa read the page again.

"Can I take it home before I sign?"

"Of course," Mrs. Alvarez said.

Damian said nothing.

Tessa looked at him anyway.

He inclined his head.

She left with the agreement folded into her bag.

At the doorway, she thanked Mrs. Alvarez by name.

Damian went back to his desk.

He lasted until four before asking Paul whether the cameras in his mother's bedroom recorded audio continuously.

"When the feed is open. Why?"

"Leah needs the monitoring for safety. Restrict access to the care team unless there's an emergency."

Paul's eyebrows rose.

"And you?"

"I can walk upstairs."

Paul looked as if a comment had physically hurt him to swallow.

"Understood."

Damian worked late that evening. At six thirty he heard voices outside the office and recognized Tessa's among them.

He opened the door.

She was speaking to Anthony at the staff entrance, holding a blue umbrella that belonged to the house.

"I'll bring it back tomorrow."

"Mrs. Alvarez said to keep it. We've got a cupboard full."

"Tell her thank you."

She turned and saw Damian.

For a moment neither spoke.

He could have asked about the agreement. He could have told Anthony to bring a car around. A dozen useful things occurred to him, all of them ways to prolong the moment without risking anything.

"Good night, Tessa."

She hesitated.

Then she nodded and walked out beneath the umbrella.

There was no good night in return.

He watched the door close. The rejection was small, almost absurd beside the things men had done to him, and it occupied him for the rest of the evening.

The next day she signed the agreement.

She kept her Saturday diner shift. Damian learned that because she told Mrs. Alvarez in front of him, not because he asked Paul.

On Monday, he found her helping his mother choose between two cardigans.

"The blue one," Beatrice said.

Tessa held it up. "This blue one, or the other blue one?"

"Don't be difficult."

"I'm trying very hard."

Damian stopped in the doorway.

His mother saw him and frowned at his tie.

"You look like a funeral director."

Tessa lowered her head. Her shoulders moved once.

He looked at her.

"Something funny?"

"No, Mr. Costa."

His mother pointed at the chair.

"Sit down before you make the whole room miserable."

He took off the tie.

Tessa's eyes flicked to his open collar, then back to the cardigan. He would not have noticed if he had not spent so much time learning where she looked.

He sat.

For the next half hour, his mother complained about a gardener who had retired eleven years earlier. Tessa listened with grave attention. Damian supplied the man's name when she asked and was rewarded with his mother's approval.

When Tessa left to collect the lunch tray, she put his discarded tie over the back of his chair.

"She's right," she said quietly.

"About the gardener?"

"About the tie."

She walked away before he could answer.

Damian looked down at the dark silk.

For the first time in days, he smiled.