A Matter of Discretion

At twenty-two, Lily Baker has enough to worry about between university, conservation research, and evening shifts at one of London's most discreet restaurants. Mr. Mycroft Holmes is simply one of her regulars: wealthy, painfully intelligent, fond of privacy, and employed in some mysterious corner of government she has learned not to ask about.

She leaves him alone when he wants silence, argues with him when he doesn't, slips him dessert when he's had a terrible day, and occasionally gives him research papers to massacre with a fountain pen.

Mycroft tells himself he returns for the privacy.

Then he starts arranging his visits around Lily's shifts, sending a car when she works late, and confronting the rather inconvenient fact that he is forty-one years old and developing feelings for a twenty-two-year-old waitress.

Sherlock, naturally, notices.

Now Sherlock wants to know what could possibly be so interesting about the perfectly ordinary Lily Baker.

The answer is considerably simpler than he expects.