Work Text:
Yet marked I where the bolt of Cupid fell.
It fell upon a little western flower,
Before milk-white, now purple with love’s wound.
And maidens call it “love-in-idleness.”
Fetch me that flower. The herb I showed thee once.
The juice of it on sleeping eyelids laid
Will make or man or woman madly dote
Upon the next live creature that it sees.
Fetch me this herb, and be thou here again
Ere the leviathan can swim a league.
——
It began when Ginny Weasley, who had inexplicably turned out to be as brilliantly creative as she was athletic, fell twenty feet out of the air. Pansy gazed at the note and allowed herself a little sigh.
Pans! I’m laid up today- broken ankle because my very worst brother caught me with a bludger when I was executing a perfect Hoss-Heingold maneuver- here there was a little sketch of Ginny jumping off of a broom in midair, catching an empty broom one handed as it whizzed by, and swinging her body up and over it just in time to get knocked straight off- anyway I can’t get in to bring the files and you know owls hate them, so would you mind stopping by to grab them???
So Pansy stopped by, because she really needed those files to meet their timeline for this campaign, and because- as she was the first to admit- she liked to poke her nose into other people’s houses.
The front door had a bright yellow button where a knocker might be, inscribed with a cheerful red “Push Me!” She was debating whether to comply and risk being made ridiculous in some Weasley prank, or to let herself in and risk being made ridiculous by some prankish Weasley wards, when the door very obligingly swung open on its own.
Pansy stepped in as someone else stepped out, and their bodies came within an inch of colliding front-to-front. Her vision was full of broad chest, and she looked up past truly noteworthy shoulders to lock eyes with someone who was, indisputably, Neville Longbottom.
“Oh!” she managed. She was supposed to say more, surely there was something else to say, something bright and charming and slightly aloof. But he said “Oh!” too, and they stood there for too long looking at each other, and she was not going to be swept away on the tides of lust by this man in a cardigan, so she really had to say something, just anything at all.
So she took half a step backward and began to fall down the stairs, and he reached out and caught her in both arms, one hand against the small of her back another between her shoulder blades, and tugged her towards him and said “I’ve got you,” and she laughed a little hysterically and he looked a little confused and then, blessedly, Ginny’s voice called out like a bell,
“Is that you, Pans? Come through, I’m in the back!”
and Neville set her safely back on the top step, mumbled something about tea, and took off down the block.
___
A week later she was at The Dove and Diamond with Millicent, who had come down from the Hebrides for the day to accept her third Golden Dram distiller’s award. In true Millicent fashion she had arrived in canvas and tweed, shaken the bare minimum of hands, and blown out of the reception early for a pub dinner. They were tucking in in companionable silence when the door swung open and a laughing group stomped in, unwinding scarves and heading for an empty table near the entrance. She recognized Dean Thomas, and Seamus Finnegan, and, terribly, Neville Longbottom.
His cheeks were red from cold, his hair was wind tousled, and he was grinning at something Dean was saying. Shaking his head ruefully. Then finally sitting, stretching his legs out—surely they had never been that long—and then, worst of all, stretching his arms overhead. The whole long line of him there, in the glow of pub light.
He turned in his chair, looking towards the drink list above the bar, and their eyes met. She could feel the shift in him, the laughter fading into focus, his body stilling, and she forgot to breathe. It was long enough that Mils noticed.
“Pansy! What are you—" she started to turn in her own seat, following Pansy’s gaze, and Pansy snapped her attention back.
“Don’t look, Millicent, Merlin — we’ve been working on that for twenty years now!” She kept her face calm, as if she were returning to an engaging conversation on topics of great sophistication, but stomped down hard on Millie’s boot under the table. It was a petulant action solely for her own relief—Mils barely quirked a brow.
“You want to tell me?”
She considered for a moment—Millicent never judged, or talked, and lived so conveniently far away that there wouldn’t even be a risk of knowing looks—but what was there to say? Absolutely nothing. Nothing had happened, nothing was happening, nothing was going to happen, and that was that. She was very happy with her life, and he didn’t fit. The whole idea was ridiculous. So she smiled and shook her head and said, “Tell me again what you’re doing with the cottage? I didn’t quite catch it,” and let the swirl of the pub wrap back around her.
___
Neville was at Blaise Zabini’s new hotel, installing hothouse flowers in the glassed-in courtyard spa. With the climate charms activated it felt like August, though the sky above was the powdery gray of December.
He was soothing a night-blooming cereus and thinking about Pansy Parkinson’s clavicle— specifically, how she would react if he traced it very slowly with one finger, and then his mouth—when a tap against the glass had him jumping as if he’d been caught graffitiing the Ministry.
He turned and there she was, standing next to Ginny and Blaise and looking at him. He raised one hand and wiped the back across his brow, realizing as he did it that he was damp with sweat and likely streaking dirt across his face. Brilliant. She ripped her gaze away, and he watched her chest rise and fall quickly before finally focusing on the others. Ginny was looking more cheerful than anyone who knew her could be comfortable with. Blaise was waving him over.
He made sure his cereus was happily settled and grabbed his cardigan from a stool, heading towards the door to the hotel lobby. He stepped out to join them, pulling it on as the sweat cooled on his skin. Pansy and Blaise were talking—something about target audience and market—and Ginny slid over to his side and waggled her eyebrows. He shook his head at her.
“Neville!” Blaise said, turning to include him. “Pansy’s going to get the word out about our little project here, with Ginny’s artistic assistance, and as we were talking it over I realized they needed to see the heart of the place. Our oasis!” He flung one arm theatrically towards the courtyard, and everyone obligingly looked with him.
Pansy broke the silence. “It’s striking. Might we see inside?” And he had to watch as she slid her jacket off and her cream silk blouse clung to her body, and then he had to walk with her through his plants and manage semi-articulate answers to her questions. He stretched nervously halfway through, and then followed her eyes to the narrow stretch of skin on his abdomen where his shirt had ridden up. He lowered his arms slowly, feeling his shirt inch back down and her gaze with it, and then Ginny snorted from somewhere behind a rubber plant.
___
Three days passed after The Oasis Encounter before Ginny strode into Pansy’s lovely office, swung a chair around and plopped down. Pansy opened her mouth to make a polite observation on how well her ankle seemed to have healed, but Ginny jumped in first.
“So!”
Pansy let that hang in the air, arching one eyebrow, before reminding herself that she was gracious and professional. “So, here’s the brief for the latest—a cologne, decent budget, moody—”
Ginny took the sheet, glanced at it, and pocketed it. “So!” she began again. “You and Neville!”
Pansy’s brain froze as her heart began to race, that utterly disloyal excuse for an organ. “What on earth are you talking about?”
“You know exactly what I’m talking about, and I’m asking what you’re going to do about it. You’ll really need to be the one to make the first move, you know. He’d never presume, or risk putting you in a position he’s not 100% sure you want to be in. Or… I could engineer some more accidental meetings! I would do that for you, because I respect you.”
“Why would I do any of those things? Wait—are you talking about Neville Longbottom ? Your roommate?” She gave his name all the icy incredulity she could muster, which was quite sufficient for everyone except one G. Weasley. For good measure she added, “Are you sure you didn’t hit your head when you fell, darling? I know it was weeks ago, but perhaps a checkup with a healer?”
“Oh no, Parkinson, no you don’t.” Ginny leaned forward, ponytail swinging jauntily— jauntily! —and announced, “You blew it, babe. I’ve had your frequency dialed in since the Ludo campaign.” She looked earnest. It was awful.
Pansy took a breath, placed both hands flat on her desk, and used the most eviscerating tone in her repertoire. “I will say this to you, once, because I respect you. I am not interested in Neville Longbottom. I am not interested in engineered meetings. I am not interested in discussing my dating life any further.”
Ginny didn’t even have the grace to look rebuked, but blessedly conceded. “Okay then—I must have misjudged. I’ll say no more about it.” She bounced out of her seat, winked and left, then ducked her head back through the doorway, waved the folded brief, and said cheerfully, “I’ll have some ideas to you in a few days!”
—-
The meeting with Ginny had left her unsettled, like she was waiting for a jelly-legs jinx to hit her from behind. For the first time she could remember, her apartment felt unsatisfying, her bookshelves tedious, her music tinny and hollow. The latest letter from her mother sat unanswered on the mantle, reminding her that she was overdue in her reply.
She swapped her sheath dress for satin lined palazzo pants and a soft sweater, put on a comfortable pair of flats and a cropped wool cape, and took herself for a walk.
Moving helped, and breathing in the crisp evening air, and seeing people bustling about their evening errands. She walked until her hands got cold, and then she ducked into Flourish and Blotts. It was warm and bright, and the books were all displayed for holiday shoppers, and she felt more of the tension leave her as she ran her fingers over the embossed covers and smooth wooden shelves.
Without letting herself think too much about it, she paid for a beautifully illustrated copy of Essential Botany for the Modern Age by J.M.F. Swann and carried it back to the quiet bar on her corner. She slid into a cozy corner booth, ordered a cherry brandy, and began to read. It was research, for Blaise’s project. She’d expense it to his account.
When she finished the brandy she went home, climbed into bed, and continued reading by the soft glow of a lumos charm.
__
The next morning Pansy was confident she’d beaten whatever funk had plagued her. She was feeling, in the immortal words of Draco’s novelty shirt, Large and In Charge. She had just wrapped up a meeting and was looking forward to a quiet moment reviewing her to-do list when she stepped into her office and found Ginny Weasley kneeling beside a curly black and white mop of a creature.
“Why are you in my office? And what is that?” she asked, stepping past them both to sit behind her desk.
“Boots is a very excellent dog . They’re a common pet in muggle households—have you ever met one?”
“I am familiar with dogs,” she began, because honestly—but Ginny was scooping up the beast, cradling it like a baby and wagging one little paw. She danced closer and closer with it while Pansy watched warily, and then deposited it in her lap and took two giant steps back. Boots looked up from under his curly little fringe and stuck a tiny pink tongue out to Pansy’s hand.
“Absolutely not.”
“You have to be kind to Boots, Pans. He’s a rescue. Nev found him halfway buried in a snowbank—the snow had really settled and it was so firmly packed, and he was worried that a spell would spook the poor thing so he had to dig him out by hand, kneeling and bending and twisting. He strained his shoulder, did you notice? And it takes a lot for Neville to strain anything—”
“WHY—why are you telling me something I don’t care about!”
Ginny put on the best expression of wounded innocence Pansy had ever seen, no doubt perfected in her childhood campaign of terror over all those older Weasley brothers. “I was just popping by, and I could hardly leave Boots home alone. Neville is out collecting in the mountains today, very strenuous, very vertical, lots of stamina required, just a bit beyond his pal Boots here. ANYWHO I actually have a meeting with Lewis about the score—”
“Lewis,” Pansy bit out, “is allergic. To dogs.”
“Oh IS he? Look Pans, would you mind terribly? I’ll be back in an hour.” She was out the door already, ducking her head back around the corner to wink. “I owe you one!”
Pansy slowly lowered her face to her desk, careful not to crush the warm bundle of dog on her lap or to think about anyone’s stamina or heroism. She detested heroism, specifically how she herself felt in the presence of such.
Instead, she reminded herself that Ginny was the best designer she had ever worked with, that the Oberon contract was highly lucrative, and that she needed to get Blaise booked for another feature in Mage .
—-
“Nev. Nev. Nevillllllllle. I need a favor.”
He slowly stepped away from the Antagonistic Fire Flower, which really was exactly what it said on the label if you weren’t very careful, and turned to look at Ginny. She was making her beseeching face.
“What kind of favor?”
“Okay—let me finish before you respond, alright? So I’ve got a new contract for work, and it’s a big one. I want a moody gardener feel, and I don’t know ANY other moody gardeners—no, I know you’re not actually moody, it’s the vibe, just trust me on that part—so what I need, my best and most reliable friend, is to take some pictures of you working with your plants, to use in these ads. Lots of people will see the pictures, but I can leave your face out if you want!”
He reached across himself and rubbed the front of his shoulder. “I can’t model for you, Ginny, that’s not my thing—" her mouth sprang open to retort so he kept going “—but if you want to take pictures while I work, anonymous pictures without my face in them, that’s fine. Just don’t be weird about it.”
She tossed an arm over his shoulders. “I knew you’d come through. Thank you. Believe me, you won’t regret it.”
She was still definitely weird about it, cackling to herself whenever she thought she could get away with it. Still, friends didn’t begrudge each other a bit of creepy plotting.
__
Pansy had a tedious dinner engagement with a journalist who was spectacularly bad at his job. Instead of asking questions about the chalet rental agency he was supposedly covering, he spent thirty minutes talking at her about mountain climbing. Mountain walking? Mountain bathing? Some kind of mountain activity. So now that she was finally alone in her apartment, her disloyal mind was fixating on the thighs someone might have if that someone regularly tromped up mountainsides looking for tiny plants. She poured a very generous glass of Millicent’s firewhisky, giving the little medal emblazoned on its label an affectionate tap, and took a deep breath.
Work! Work had the benefit of being an excellent distraction from irritating thoughts. She summoned the file she’d brought home and sat on her couch, sinking slightly into the forest green velvet. Holding her glass in one hand, she flipped open the folder with the other. Her eyes focused on the image and a song began to play, a woman’s voice sultry and husky. In the cool of the evening, when everything is getting kinda groovy.. . Foliage parted, revealing a workbench in a lush greenhouse. A man’s back, curved, focused, leaning over his work. The angle shifting slightly to show forearms dusted with hair, sleeves rolled up to reveal muscles flexing as he — she looked up to collect herself — yes, as he stroked a fucking petal — and then the foliage closed back in and golden script appeared, gleaming against the greenery. Oberon: Pour Homme.
Fucking FUCK!
Pansy took a deep breath, firmly closed the file and then found her briefcase and firmly placed the file in and very firmly closed the lid and snapped the little brass closures shut.
She pulled out her to-do list, put a decisive tick next to “OPH file review 1” and, at a loss for alternatives, summoned the botany book.
—
Neville was in the kitchen, re-reading an owl from Luna and steeping a cup of tea, when he heard the doorbell ring. He left it for Ginny to answer out of habit—she was keeping a tally—before realizing that she wasn’t running down the stairs because she wasn’t home.
So he was already a bit flustered when he opened the door to Millicent Bulstrode. She looked him over, nodded, and handed him what must have been her hat—now, intriguingly, sprouting fronds of skunk cabbage. He didn’t think Ginny had logged that one yet.
“Thank you,” he said, “can I help you with um—anything? Ginny’s out, but if you’d like to come in—"
“I would,” she said, and stepped inside.
Boots rushed over and began sniffing her calves in a paroxysm of delight, so overcome that he could barely keep his legs beneath him. “There’s a good boy,” she said, and Boots offered his belly. She dropped to one knee and gave him a brisk scratch.
Neville tried desperately to think whether he had any connection with Millicent Bulstrode that would bring her by, but it must be a Ginny thing, surely.
“Can I get you something to drink?” he offered, because that was polite, and it was a good idea to be polite to everyone.
“What have you got?” she asked, rising up to stand and look around.
So he led her to the kitchen, offered tea and beer, and showed her the labels of both. She nodded approvingly and took a heather ale. He took one too, to be polite. They stood there, politely drinking their beers in polite silence, until she drained the last of hers. She set the empty bottle on the counter, nodded at him again, and said “Not too bad. Well, I’ve seen what I needed to.” She gave him a hearty clap on the shoulder and saw herself out, leaving him wondering what on earth he had missed this time.
—
Lunch with Blaise, ostensibly to debrief his last interview about the hotel and blasted garden, in actuality a chance for him to get a good gossip in. He set his fork down and shifted forward. “Now—how’s Draco, truly? He’s been a little shifty, wouldn’t you say?”
“You could ask him yourself, Blaise,” she said, for form’s sake, and for the pleasure of watching him recoil in horror.
“A direct strike? My, you are ruthless. It’s much more civilized for a group of friends to quietly take an interest, surely.” He settled himself, smoothing his jacket back to settle perfectly across his frame, and continued, “It’s something about that Potter boy again, isn’t it?”
“Oh Merlin,” Pansy replied—“is that the time? Thanks for lunch, darling, a pleasure as always. I’ll have Marius get something on your calendar for next month.” He glared at her as she slipped her share of the check on the table, but that just meant a trickier interrogation for next time.
As she strode back to the office, she sent Draco a message on her Whizzer—the most brilliant invention in an age, honestly— I have just endured a graceless exit on your behalf. Expect invoice shortly. At least Blaise had distracted himself from his blasted flowers. If she never heard another word about jasmine tendrils she’d count herself goddess-blessed.
Another folder was waiting for her when she arrived. Pansy closed her office door before crossing to her desk. She sat, crossed her legs, crossed them the other way, planted both her feet on the ground, then flicked it open as viciously as she could manage.
The music again, and the greenery, but this time as it parted there was just a floor, worn wooden boards, low light like it was dusk, and then the gleam of a candle revealing—a cardigan. A wooly cardigan strewn carelessly to the floor, a cardigan that clearly belonged to a tall someone with broad shoulders and calloused hands, and she KNEW that sweater, she had TOUCHED that sweater—and then the camera panned back out and the familiar gold lettering appeared.
—
Ginny and Blaise were in his greenhouse, presumably consulting on some materials for the hotel. As far as Neville could tell, they had done nothing but swap increasingly salacious details about their mutual acquaintances and flirt. He was entirely superfluous, so he busied himself mixing a fresh meal for the mandrakes. He had mostly stopped listening when Blaise’s tenor cut through his focus. “Pansy’s parents, of course- well, they’re full of ideas for her future.” Neville stilled, wand submerged in the steaming potion.
“Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that,” Ginny answered. “Pansy has plenty of ideas of her own.” His hand contracted on the grip of his wand and the pale green potion turned an alarming shade of puce.
—
She walked into her office. Saw another folder on her desk. Walked back out and down the hall, heels clicking so furiously that Diego pressed himself back against the wall of the hallway to stay out of her way. Realized what she was doing and spent the next ten strides coming up with an excuse plausible enough to fool herself, cut around the corner with a pivot that could drill through stone, and rapped on Lewis’ door.
Twenty seconds later she had his hastily scrawled scrap of paper with the name of the Muggle artist and song—it was a nice transgressive touch, going Muggle, just edgy enough, but what was she even going to do with this paper?—and had no option but to go back in and face the folder. Momentum—momentum would work. She’d be through it before any inconvenient responses could happen, just the clear-headed judgment she was known for.
She strode purposefully back into her office, swung the door decisively shut behind her, and summoned the file across the room and into her hand.
Firmly printed letters, curved just slightly enough to suggest a body leaning forward, shining gold against the green. A man who appreciates dangerous beauty. The foliage morphed into nightshade. Pansy had not signed off on copy. The letters shifted again. A man who knows his way around thorns. She hissed as the nightshade became a rose, dark and velvety. A man with care in his touch. The rose changed to pansies the color of wine, and Pansy braced her hand against the cool edge of her desk as his hand finally appeared, wrist flexing as he ran his hand across their… quivering … what was that part even called!!! In an absolutely unnecessary bit of helpfulness, her brain remembered “stamen.”
She threw the folder across the room and let out a scream of frustration.
Her quill didn’t tear the paper, because she knew how a witch of breeding conducted herself, but it was as near as she’d come in years.
Those flower choices are positively basic, Ginevra. If I wanted a cottage garden I would go to your mother.
If you’re going to show me something as overblown and exhausted as roses you might as well swap the soundtrack for Celestina WARBECK!
Change them.
___
He hadn’t seen Pansy in three weeks, they’d barely spoken in the first place, and yet here he was, revisiting the experience of her voice very politely and professionally asking him about his garden while her eyes kept drifting across his body. She had made a very, very quiet sound when he talked about the garden unfolding at night.
She didn’t make sounds so often. She was always so neat, so controlled, except for the year when she was neatly disheveled as a fashion statement. He tucked back a vine of creeping tarnatus, winding it around the stake so it had enough support to grow.
She had looked at him like she wanted him, and she had looked angry and scared. He had realized years ago that people wanted him now. He wasn’t used to it, really, but he could admit it. The rest of her reaction, though, he was utterly unprepared for. He’d been—in Ginny’s most cringe-worthy words— saving himself for something real. Someone who saw him and wouldn’t be disappointed. He had somehow failed to consider that she would see him and recoil in horror. He moved on to the thistles.
Ginny’s camera snapped. “Tell me about what you’re doing,” she said. It was better than moping or hunting down a specific cardigan just to watch her toss it to the floor, so he shook himself and answered.
“What I need to do today is deadheading—removing dead or wilted blossoms so the plants—what are you laughing about now?”
“I’m sorry, I’m so so sorry, I’m just—I have to say it. You know who you should ask over for any—I’m so sorry— deflowering projects?”
“Gin. Gin. Please do not use dead flowers as an analogy for my sex life. Scratch that—please avoid ALL analogies to my sex life, forever and ever.”
She finished her laugh on a sigh. “Fine. BUT. I need you to show me some plants. The vibe I’m going for here, very seriously, is Pansy Parkinson, okay? I’ll buy you a beer after.”
If only Ginny knew, he thought, how absolutely little incentive he needed to think about Pansy Parkinson.
___
Today’s folder had a jaunty little note spellotaped to the front, on a piece of hot pink paper shaped like a cauldron. Great points, Pans!! I consulted an expert and swapped in his suggestions, take another look! XxGW
Aconite. The hooded petals shifting as the plant shivered, hinting at secrets about to be given up.
Then thistle. His hand wove between the sharp leaves and stems, and he pressed the ball of his thumb gently over the downy purple head. Tiny petals yielded under the pressure before springing back unharmed. She put her own thumb in her mouth and bit down. Hard.
The final frame. Pansies again, but wild ones—love-in-idleness—a purple like midnight, a pool of gold, like the door of her heart thrown wide open in carelessness.
—
The final editorial meeting. Ginny sat four seats down across the table, looking artistic and intimidating for the sake of it. Pansy sat and projected calm confidence as each ad played. If her thighs clutched together a time or two, no one noticed. The final scene closed, and the room took a collective moment to recover.
Jean-Luc spoke first, leaning forward and looking down the table. “Astonishing, the tension in that moment—the sense conveyed by just your model’s back! There’s something—poised? Attentive?”
Ginny flicked her eyes across the table and met hers. It was deliberate. Pansy braced herself for the blow. “Mmm, yes. Due to his physical restraint, I believe. My model dedicates himself to everything he does, focuses his entire attention—remarkable, really, but never casual. I think it gives a kind of anticipatory energy — the calm before the storm, if you will. ” She cast an elegant aguamenti to fill her glass, then sat back to drink it while everyone digested that.
Pansy glanced down at her notes, and Ginny’s handwriting began to scrawl across the bottom. She glared across the table—Weasley was doing it with her wand in her pocket, the sneak—and then back at the page.
More like the calm before the the DICK STORM!! And then, just to make it worse, a little drawing of her hands making finger guns.
Pansy put her own hand in her lap, slipped her wand out, vanished the page, and sent the subtlest stinging hex she could manage to the sole of Ginny’s left foot.
They decided to review the ads thoroughly. It took another three excruciating views, though it was clear that there were no objections.
—
She knew, as Ginny suggested it, that it was a brilliant idea, one that was perfectly suited to the launch. An idea she should have come up with— would have come up with, if she weren’t so inconvenienced —and that she would need to say yes. Ginny knew it too. A launch at Blaise’s oasis in the city, with Neville on hand to give an exclusive little tour and speak about the plants he’d chosen—it was the type of experience the society pages loved, and her clients’ audience loved the society pages.
So here she was, arriving at Neville’s greenhouse an hour before the start of the launch party to collect him. Why Ginny couldn’t have just brought him herself—but she wasn’t, and Pansy was, so she needed to get on with it. Also, why was he in the greenhouse at this hour? Ridiculous. But Ginny had said that was non-negotiable, that getting him away from these plants this evening at all was hard enough.
Pansy had donned her armor—her most intimidating cocktail dress that just so happened to leave her full back on display, a smudge of color across her lips, and heels high enough for her to make eye contact without having to tilt her chin. Her bob was freshly trimmed, leaving her neck bare.
Light pooled out from the entrance; shadows of leaves shifted across the flagstone courtyard as she stepped up to the door.
She stopped in the entrance, feeling impossibly shy as she looked at him down by the other end. He stood, head bowed, hands braced behind him on the counter. Merlin, he was gorgeous. Had she missed that all this time? And he raised his head and saw her and froze.
There was nothing for it but to cross the space between them, dodging a tarnatus vine, until she was there in front of him. He opened his mouth. Closed it. Looked aside, ran his hand through his hair, and then, still not looking at her — oh god, he was going to say something awful, he was seeing someone, he was engaged, he in fact had a lovely wife and children tucked away somewhere — finally managed to say,
“I’m terrible at these types of things. Society things. I’ll be a disaster.”
Her knees went a bit weak and she smiled at him before she could stop herself. “Is that all?”
And there, he was looking at her again. “Is that all?” His voice was desperate, so really there was nothing else to do. She stepped closer and poked him in the chest.
“Neville. Would you ever put a plant in the wrong habitat? Would you feed it inferior food? Would you play the wrong music for it or give it too much sun? You would never. You study your plants and you think about their needs and you design everything around them, and you would never even consider doing less.” His eyes fixed on her as she spoke, focusing in that way that made her breath catch. But she wasn’t done. “I would never sign off on an idea that wasn’t good enough for my clients. I have followed you around that courtyard and listened to you talk and you were absolutely devastating, and you will be tonight. They won’t want small talk and formal etiquette. They will want you, telling them anything you want to share about the plants in front of them. Do you understand?”
“I do,” he said, looking at her with something like wonder, and she reached up to smooth the collar of his cardigan and he put one hand on her waist and his fingers grazed her skin.