Page 16 of Oops I Fell For The Billionaire Next Door

I'm quiet for a long time.

"He cancelled it, Margot. Both things. Before I even asked. He just cancelled them."

"Because he heard you."

"He heard me."

"So now the question is whether you heard him."

She hangs up without saying goodbye because Margot considers goodbyes a waste of perfectly good silence. My phone sits on the counter. The screen goes dark.

What did Beck actually say? In between the apology, the acknowledgment that he was wrong. The thing underneath.

I'm thirty-seven years old and I couldn't name a single person outside my company who'd notice if I disappeared.

A man who's never been valued for anything except what he can provide. Who's never been wanted for something money can't buy. Who showed up at my door in the rain because I was the closest light.

He didn't call a roofer because he thinks my house isn't good enough. He called a roofer because solving problems is the only language anyone's ever taught him for love. And I punished him for speaking the only language he knows.

Was I right that he overstepped? Yes. Was he right to cancel everything the second I told him? Yes. Did he hear me? Yes.

Did I hear him?

Friday morning I wake up at five thirty. Old habit. My feet hit the cold floor. The cabin ticks with its familiar sounds, the stove pilot clicking, the pipes humming, the roof settling. My roof. With its leaks. With its damaged shingles. With its imperfections that I chose.

By six I'm dressed. Work boots on. Hair wrapped. Standing in my garden looking at the stone wall where he kissed me.

My mother called yesterday too. Didn't mention Beck because she doesn't know about Beck yet, but she talked about the restaurant the way she sometimes does when the catering business has a slow week. Not sad. Just remembering.

"Your father never fixed anything I didn't ask him to fix," she said. "But he was always in the room when I fixed it myself. Holding the flashlight. Handing me the wrench. Eating my cooking while I worked."

"Is that the secret, Maman?"

"The secret is finding someone who understands that being present is more useful than being helpful. Those are two different jobs."

I think about that now. Standing in my garden at six a.m. with dew on the stone wall, staring through the trees toward Beck's property. Present versus helpful. Showing up versus solving.

Tuesday he dug my trench with bare hands until his palms bled. Didn't hire a crew. Didn't suggest a machine. Picked up a shovel and dug wrong until I taught him to dig right. Wednesday he pushed my grocery cart while I argued about squash, listened to every word, ate three bowls of my soup. Thursday he held still while I put my freezing feet on his legs at dawn and didn't complain because my comfort mattered more than his.

That's presence. That's showing up. And the second I left town on Friday, he reverted to the old tool because the new one still feels unfamiliar in his hands.

He's learning. Slowly. Badly. The way he digs trenches and plants groundcover. But he's learning.

The mortar between two of the lower stones in my wall needs repointing. A small crack. Nothing structural. Just time and weather doing what they do.

Everything worth keeping requires maintenance. Even walls. Even people.

Especially people.

By seven I'm walking next door. His driveway crunches under my boots. The construction crew isn't here yet. The house is further along than the last time I saw it up close, the framing filled in with walls now, windows installed on the south face. It looks less like a monument and more like somewhere a person might actually live.

He's on his knees in the dirt.

My brain stalls. Beckett Rhodes, billionaire, is kneeling in the garden bed along his unfinished front walkway. Jeans dirty. Grey T-shirt streaked with soil. He's got a flat of seedlings beside him. Small ones. Groundcover. My fingers recognize the variety before my head catches up. Creeping thyme. Hardy to this elevation, drought tolerant once established, will spread between flagstones and bloom purple in summer.

He's planting them wrong. The spacing is too close, the holes too shallow. He's holding a trowel in a way that suggests he Googled "how to plant groundcover" at two a.m. and the YouTube video let him down.

"Your spacing's off."