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My heart rate spikes. I stand straighter. I open my mouth to deliver the opening line I rehearsed—

“Ruby, isn’t it?” Caroline extends her hand. Her grip is firm, her eye contact direct. “Natalie’s cousin. You run the bakery on Maple, don’t you? Hart’s?”

“Hi. Yes—yes, that’s me. Hart’s Bakery.” I’m smiling too hard. I can feel it. Dial it back. “I’m actually—I’ve been hoping to connect with you about the festival. I’ve applied the last two years and—”

“I know.” She sips her wine. “Your application was strong. Your product quality is excellent—I’ve tried your cinnamon rolls, actually. Natalie brought some to a brunch last spring.”

“She did?”

“They were remarkable. But I had concerns about your capacity. The festival runs three days, and you’re a small operation. I wasn’t confident you could scale.”

My prepared response evaporates. Because she’s right. I am a small operation. I’m one person with one part-time employee and an oven that keeps breaking and—

“Ruby’s production capacity is approximately two hundred and forty units per day across her primary product lines,” Aiden says.

I turn to look at him. So does Caroline.

He continues with the calm, measured tone of a man reading a quarterly report. “Her ingredient sourcing is ninety percent local within a thirty-mile radius. Her customer retention rate, based on repeat transaction data from the past six months, is approximately sixty-eight percent, which is well above the industry average of fifty-two. She’s managed a fourteen percent increase in revenue quarter over quarter despite operating with a reduced staff.”

He pauses. Looks at Caroline. “She could scale for your festival. The constraint isn’t capability. It’s that she hasn’t had the opportunity to demonstrate it.”

The patio is suddenly very quiet around us. Or maybe it’s just quiet inside my head, because the man standing next to me just rattled off every meaningful metric about my bakery—numbers I didn’t know he knew, numbers I barely know—like he’d been studying my business as thoroughly as he studies everything else about me.

Caroline looks at Aiden. Then at me. Then back at Aiden. “And you are?”

“Aiden. Ruby’s boyfriend.”

Caroline’s mouth curves slightly. “You know her business well.”

“I know Ruby well. Her business is part of that.”

Caroline studies me for a long moment, and I can see her recalculating—not just the festival logistics, but me. Reassessing. The woman with the boyfriend who knows her numbers, who runs a bakery with a sixty-eight percent retention rate, who might be more serious than the application suggested.

“Let’s talk Monday,” Caroline says. “Call my office. I’ll have my assistant put you through.”

She squeezes my hand, nods at Aiden, and walks back toward the groom’s mother.

I stand there.

“Ruby?” Aiden says. “Your hands are shaking.”

“I know.”

“Was that—did that go well?”

I turn to him. This man. This impossible, shouldn’t-exist man who has been quietly memorizing every detail of my business for weeks without being asked, without telling me, without any motive other than the fact that my life matters to him and therefore every part of it matters to him.

“How did you know all that?” My voice comes out raw. “The retention rate? The revenue numbers? I didn’t even—”

“I pay attention to things that matter to you.”

I have to look away. I’m not sure someone has ever said that to me and meant it as sincerely as Aiden does. Out at the vineyard, at the rows of vines running parallel under the late afternoon sun. I blink hard and press my fingers against my eyes and take a breath.

“Thank you,” I say.

“You don’t have to thank me.”

“I know. I’m thanking you anyway.”