“Hey.”

I looked up and into Miles’ blue eyes. Lord have mercy, they were so pretty. “Hi.”

“Sorry. I didn’t want to bother you, but, well.” He motioned to the laptop. “You look like you need a break.”

“Am I that obvious?” I fought back a smile. “You can sit down, if you want.”

Why was this so awkward?

“Thanks.” He looked at my setup. “Change of scenery?”

“Mm. My tutor was slow sending emails and only sent grades this morning.”

“On a Sunday?”

“Yep. Mind you, it’s taken him more than a week, so it serves him right.” I dabbed at the corners of my mouth with a napkin and set it on my plate. “Also, there are about twelve people more than normal in my house, and I really need to fix this grade.”

His eyebrows shot up. “There’s no way you got a bad one.”

I sighed and told him.

“That’s not a crap grade. It’s only for that part of the course, right?”

“Only that specific part of the coursework,” I explained. “But I’m pretty sure the designing side of horticulture is where I want to work, not the actual planting and stuff. There’s a course for that I can go into after this, but it’s competitive, and I really need to get a near-perfect grade on this second half of it.”

He tilted his head to the side. “Bringing it to life?”

“Yes. Unfortunately we have a curriculum-mandated budget which is a lot smaller than my father would usually allocate for a project, and my pergola idea just became a lot more work than I’d assumed.”

Miles’ lips twitched. “You looked up local builders, didn’t you?”

I pouted. “Is it that obvious?”

“I know how much they cost.”

“A heads up would have been nice.”

He allowed his lips to pull into a real smile.

I wasn’t sure I’d ever get used to that.

I hoped I did.

“Sorry,” he said after a moment. “But you can buy them in and they’re nowhere near as expensive to build it yourself.”

“Do I look like I build pergolas in my spare time?”

He ran his eyes over me. “No. It looks like you adjust flower arrangements, walk gaily through meadows of green, green grass, and dream of house plants.”

“Eh.” I sagged back. “That’s sadly accurate.”

Laughing, he leaned forwards. “I can help you. I’m pretty sure your father isn’t expecting you to put all this stuff together yourself. There are more than enough of us who can spare a day or two to help you with construction.”

“You’d help me?”

“I said I would, didn’t I?”

I blushed, glancing down. He had, and that was before… well. “Thank you. Does that mean you can help me now?”

He opened his mouth, pausing only to motion to Julia that he was sitting over here.

“You done with that, Gabi?” She motioned to my plate.

“Yes, thank you. Can I have a cup of tea, please?”

“Sure can, dear.” She bundled up all my dishes, clearing the table. “Would you like a pot?”