"Santos," she says. "There's something I need to tell you."
"Yes," I say, too quickly, because I am so relieved we have cleared this first hurdle that my brain has stopped operating at full capacity.
"It's warm in here," she says.
She said those same words in the dining room. Something is wrong. The same something as before.
Matteo straightens in the armchair.
I set the tiramisu down on the coffee table.
"Jennifer," I say, gently.
“Stop fussing,” she says, and the rose in her scent says otherwise in the specific way her rose says otherwise about things she is not ready to acknowledge, thorns entirely absent, just warmth and warmth and more warmth, flooding the room.
"Your scent," I say.
"I know what my scent is doing," she says. "It's doing it without my permission."
"As always," I say.
The corner of her mouth moves.
"This is not," she says, "how I expected this afternoon to go."
"No," I say.
She looks at me. Then at Tomas, who has his hand very close to hers on the sofa cushion, not touching, close. Then at Matteo, who has leaned forward in the armchair with his pale eyes steady on her face and his sandalwood sitting dark and warm in the air.
She closes her eyes for one moment.
I stand up.
I hold my hand out.
She looks at it. Then she puts her hand in mine and I close my fingers around hers and pull her to her feet and she comes up slowly, the warm weight of her, and she is close, strawberry and rose and the warmth of the afternoon and the tiramisu on the coffee table behind us that will absolutely keep.
"My room," I say. "It's the biggest."
Droplets of sweat have started at her temples. She is going into heat.
"Of course it is," she says.
"Get the doctor," I say to Matteo quietly. "I want to make sure the baby is okay."
He is already on his phone.
"Take me there," she says. "I want you to knot me while I'm in heat."
My room is the biggest and the view is the best and the mattress is excellent and none of that is why I brought her here.
I brought her here because this is mine and I want her here, in the specific place that belongs to me, and I want my saffron in the air around her and her strawberry in mine and the afternoon light doing what it does through these particular windows onto this particular bed where I have been lying awake for six weeks thinking about exactly this.
She stands at the window for a moment.
The island is gold and blue and September out there, the water catching the last of the afternoon, and she looks at it the way she always looks at beautiful things, directly and without pretense, letting it land.
I come to stand behind her.