Sterling smiled. The wide smile, the one that never reached his eyes. “I brought in a top firm from the city. Cost me a fortune, but you can see the result.”
“It’s masterful. Truly. The eastern section alone—the way the light hits those rose beds at this hour—that’s not accidental. Someone understood this land.”
“Well, you know me.” Sterling raised his glass. “I have an eye for these things.”
From behind the hedge, Andrew heard every word. His hand tightened around the shears. Three years. Every curve, every stone, every calculation of light and shadow, and Sterling had just erased him with a smile and a lie. Then Eleanor noticed him. “Who’s that?”
Sterling glanced over. His smile didn’t waver. “Oh, that’s just the yard boy. Pulls weeds, trims the hedges. You know—the basics.”
Eleanor tilted her head. “He seems to know his way around the beds quite well.”
“Sure. The way a janitor knows his way around a mop.” Sterling took a long sip of his mimosa. “Between us, Eleanor, I keep him around because the agency I used to hire is three times the cost. He’s cheap labor, that’s all.”
A man in a linen shirt nearby chuckled. “Every estate needs one.”
“Exactly.” Sterling winked. “Every estate needs someone to do the dirty work. And some people—well, that’s all they were born to do.”
Yard boy. Cheap labor. Born to do the dirty work. Andrew felt each word land like a separate blow. He was thirty-two years old. He had been growing this garden since before Sterling even knew what a David Austin rose looked like. He had read more books on landscape architecture than anyone at that party had read in their entire lives. And he was the yard boy. His hand was shaking around the shears. He should have left right then. Should have walked straight through the service gate and never looked back. Instead, he did something else.
Andrew stepped out from behind the hedge and walked across the sunlit lawn. Fifty guests turned. A Black man in worn boots and a faded flannel walking straight toward the billionaire’s circle. He reached Sterling and Eleanor. His voice was calm. “Excuse me, Mr. Whitmore. I don’t mean to interrupt.” He pulled the notebook from his back pocket and opened it to a page he’d worked on for months. “I’ve been developing a redesign for the eastern garden. I thought you might want to see it.”
The page was beautiful—hand-drawn, detailed, a complete landscape plan, elevations, plant species, drainage, a seasonal bloom calendar. The kind of work that takes formal training to even read, let alone create. Eleanor leaned in. Her eyes widened. “May I?”
