Three

Marielle made it downstairs in under four minutes, hair shoved into whatever bun she could manage, and found Grayson wearing a track in the kitchen floor like the marble had personally wronged him.

"Eleven hours," he said before she'd even cleared the doorway. "No warning. Just a call to say expect them at six."

"Is that bad?"

"It's bad if this house looks like a hotel and my nephew looks like he's raised by a payroll." He shoved a hand through his hair. For the first time since she'd met him, he looked less like a man who ran a shipping empire and more like someone standing three feet from a cliff edge. "She wants routine. Stability. Not staff scrambling at midnight."

"Then we build routine tonight." Marielle grabbed a legal pad off the counter, the kind he probably used for cargo manifests, and started a list without waiting for permission. "Theo's room needs to look lived in, not staged. Toys everywhere, not lined up like a store display. You eat breakfast at that table, not in your study. And you need to actually know what he likes to eat, because if she asks and you draw a blank, that tells her everything."

He stared at her the way you'd stare at someone suddenly speaking a language you half remembered from school. "You've done this before."

"I raised two little brothers on a waitress's tips while my mother worked nights. I know exactly what a tired inspector looks for, because I used to be the kid a school counselor came to check on." She didn't look up from the list. Saying it out loud still cost more than she liked. "Eggs, not cereal. Sit with him and actually eat. Phone stays in another room. And smile at him before she walks through the door, not after you remember to."

Something in his face eased, just slightly, closer to respect than anything he'd shown her yet. "Eggs," he repeated, like he was filing it away.

They worked past midnight, Grayson trailing her through Theo's room while she scattered toys into believable disorder, both of them keeping their voices low enough not to wake the boy down the hall. At one point they both reached for the same stuffed dinosaur, hands landing together, and neither one pulled back right away.

"You're good at this," he said. Closer than the conversation strictly required.

"Practice."

"I don't mean the room." His eyes held on her face longer than felt casual. "I mean him. This morning's the first time he's reacted to anyone in six weeks. Me included."

She set the dinosaur down and put a foot of space between them, deliberately, because it seemed like the harder thing to manage right then. "He's not broken, Mr. Cole. He's grieving. Those aren't the same thing."

"Grayson." A pause. "If you're rearranging my nephew's bedroom at one in the morning, you've earned the first name."

"Fine. Grayson."

Her own name, coming back at her in his voice earlier that day, had sounded different than it should have. She didn't poke at why.

Patricia Alvarez showed up at exactly six, clipboard in hand, eyes that had clearly clocked a hundred families performing normal for an hour before. She watched Grayson flip pancakes badly enough that Theo laughed out loud at the crooked shapes, took notes Marielle couldn't read upside down no matter how she angled her neck, and asked more questions than Marielle expected.

"He talks to you," Patricia said afterward, out on the porch while Grayson kept Theo busy inside. "That matters. Selective mutism this severe usually holds for months without intervention."

"He's not mute. He's careful about who gets his voice."

Patricia's pen stopped. "How long have you been with the family?"

Marielle did the math and hated saying it out loud. "Two days."

The woman's face didn't move much, but something behind it shifted, not suspicion exactly, close enough to make Marielle's stomach drop. "And your relationship to Mr. Cole is strictly professional."

"Strictly." Too fast. She watched Patricia write something down that didn't feel like a compliment.

Patricia left an hour later with a promise to file her report by week's end, and Grayson walked her to the car with a version of charm Marielle hadn't seen out of him once in two days. The gate had barely closed behind Patricia's sedan before his shoulders dropped a full two inches.

"Too close," he muttered, mostly to himself.

"You did fine."

"I dropped a pancake on the floor and my nephew laughed at me for it. Fine feels generous." He looked at her properly then, and she was suddenly aware of exactly how little sleep sat behind her eyes. "Come to my study. We need to talk before her report goes anywhere near a judge."

The study looked exactly like she'd have guessed: dark wood, a wall of framed shipping routes, a desk clean enough to eat off of. He didn't sit. He stood with his back to the window, and whatever was coming, his shoulders told her it wasn't small.

"My lawyer called during the visit," he said. "Whitfields filed again this morning. New petition, arguing a single man with hired help isn't stable, regardless of what today looked like."

"They can do that? She just watched you flip pancakes."

"They can afford to do a lot of things." He turned around, and the flat control from that hotel bathroom was back on his face like it had never left. "My lawyer thinks there's one thing a judge can't argue with on paper."

"Which is?"

"Marriage."

The word dropped into the room and just sat there.