“She’s very diligent. It’s her royal blood.”

“But on a Saturday evening?”

Ford looked at Lila with a note of such appeal in his eyes that she found herself nodding along. She’d always thought she was impervious to that kind of pleading—puppies were notoriously good at it, the wretches—but something about it coming from a fully grown man knocked her sideways.

“I’m afraid so,” she said. And since the lies seemed to be stacking up around her, she decided to add a bit of truthfulness. With a self-conscious pat on Jeeves’s head, she added, “I’m kind of a stickler about things like that. About everything, really.”

Ford’s grip on her relaxed. “And you know how obedient I am, Helen.” He winked. “Especially when the commands come from a woman like this one.”

Lila wasn’t sure she cared to hear what he meant by that—if it was her stern demeanor or her apparent inability to work with children that made her so intimidating—but she should have known better than to trust a word out of his mouth.

Helen certainly didn’t. “Oh, please. Getting you to do anything you don’t want to is like trying to take one of my kids to the dentist.” She beamed at Lila. “From the way they carry on, you’d think I was dragging them to their deaths. Well, either that or the hairdresser.”

“They’re not wrong about the hairdresser,” Ford interjected. “I still remember that unfortunate episode you had with the bowl cuts.”

A laugh escaped Lila before she could prevent it. Nothing about the conversation was in any way out of the ordinary—at least, not considering who Lila was having this conversation with. It didn’t seem to matter to either Helen or Ford that they were discussing haircuts while Lila had a cockapoo held in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other—or that it was below freezing while they did it.

But at the sound of Lila’s laughter, the other woman glanced back and forth between them, her lips parted in a sudden smile. “Oh, I see,” she said with a knowing nod.

“See what?” Lila asked with a quick look over her shoulder.

When she turned back, it was to find Helen pointing at first Ford and then Lila, her smile spreading. “You should have mentioned something earlier,” she said. “I wouldn’t have barged in on you like this if I’d known.”

Known what? Lila assumed Ford was just as mystified as she was, but his expression had relaxed into a devastating grin—a grin that was pointed directly at her. She was still reeling from it when he spoke again.

“Am I that obvious?” Ford asked, shaking his head with a mock sigh. “I was hoping to keep the news quiet for a little longer, but it’s impossible now. You found me out.”