Gabriel’s knuckles tightened on the steering wheel as he turned up the drive to Millbrook. The idea that she admired his work enough to buy it was oddly thrilling. He hadn’t had any plans at all for those two pieces, so it wasn’t as though he regretted parting with them. But he’d meant what he’d said when he had made it clear in no uncertain terms he would not fall into the trap his grandfather and father had. Yet somehow Lia had turned his own words back on themselves and presented an argument that seemed unbeatable.

“Do you have an event here this weekend?” Lia asked, twisting back in her seat and yanking him out of his ruminations.

“A wedding,” he replied, glancing at the staff who were setting up a gauzy white arbour and rows of white folding chairs near the center of the gardens. “And a movie shoot this week.”

She rubbed her hands over her bare knees. “You must be booked solid over the summer.”

“Elaine tells me we are.” He guided the car past a florist’s lorry and toward a small lane guarded by a sign stating that only employees were allowed past this point. “Elaine is our events coordinator,” he explained. “She lives on the property in a converted cottage, and she is very good at what she does. My mother hired her almost fifteen years ago when she expanded the business from a small bed-and-breakfast. We now have the capacity to host much larger occasions like weddings, and we’ve opened the house up to the film industry.” He followed the narrow road around the back of the house, bringing the car to a stop in a small lot where four other cars sat gleaming in the sunshine. “Elaine has systems and org charts and processes that only her assistants dare mess with, and even then, I’m not so sure there aren’t bodies of assistants who messed just a little too much buried somewhere in the gardens.”

Lia laughed. “What does your grandfather think of all this?”

“My grandfather doesn’t have anything to do with the business, of course, and he lives entirely in the suite of rooms on the west corner of the manor. But I think he likes having people around. I think he enjoys knowing that the house is loved and utilized. It was my grandmother who first opened the house to weekend guests. Both she and my mother were of the same mind that a house of this size needed to work for our family if it was ever going to be sustainable.” He paused, pulling up on the parking brake with far more force than was necessary. “That, and the fact that their respective husbands were chasing an unsustainable, entirely futile career path.”