She’s exhausting to be around. Is this what I get to look forward to with her?
Karina is quick to follow me out of the bedroom. She’s practically on my heel as I accompany her downstairs. I give her a brief tour, revealing the rooms she needs to be familiar with, like the kitchen and dining room.
“What about the garden?” she asks as we breeze past the office.
I lead her down the opposite direction and around the building for the double doors inside that lead to the garden.
“I would never have pegged you men for the garden type,” Karina says.
“Where do you think we procure poisons from?”
She doesn’t smile or laugh. Karina probably isn’t sure whether I’m joking or not with her.
I offer her a grin. “Don’t worry, most of it is safe, and everything in the vegetable garden is edible.”
Opening the glass doors, I let her outside into the garden. “You are free to visit here whenever you’d like,” I say. “But if you want to leave the grounds and go outside beyond these four walls, you will need to take Francesco, myself, or another guard with you at all times.”
“Why?” Karina slips off her heels and steps barefoot onto the lush green grass.
“We have a lot of enemies,” I say. That’s the only explanation that she’s getting. “Do you like it out here?” I attempt to steer the conversation back to her.
She strolls farther into the garden, through the opening of the small border fence and across the steppingstones. Inside there’s a wooden swing, and she takes a seat on the bench, pushing her feet against the grass, letting the bench glide through the air.
I don’t have to ask if she likes it. The faint smile across her features lights up her face.
“Do you come out here often?” Karina asks.
I’ve never known anyone quite so curious who wasn’t a rat in our business. She doesn’t strike me as the betrayal type, but I haven’t known her for very long.
One day.
“Hardly ever,” I confess. “It’s too quiet.”
“You don’t strike me as the meditative type.”
She isn’t wrong.
“Come sit with me,” she says. “The view from here is beautiful. You might like it.”
There’s a waterfall behind the shrubbery. I can hear the stream of water, but from the path, I can’t see much except for her.
“Please,” she says with the sweetest voice that makes my heart melt.
“Fine.”
I stomp through the grass and cross over the stones.
Karina slows the swing to a halt, and I plop down beside her, the swing wobbling for a brief second. She gets the momentum going again, and my back rests against the wooden slats of the bench, finding it slightly relaxing.
Not that I admit it to her.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” she says, staring at the mermaid fountain.
I have no clue who picked out the décor or designed the garden. It’s rare anyone ever uses the courtyard except to woo a lady on occasion.
“It’s something,” I mutter under my breath.
“You’re grumpy,” she muses, casting a wayward glance at me.