Page 3 of The Matchmaker's Cottage

She shook her head to clear the unwanted memory just as the sharpness of almost-burning butter filled her nostrils. She quickly took the pot off the burner and swirled the butter around, coating the bottom of the copper pan, before placing it back on the heat, slightly lower now, and stirring it efficiently with the wooden spoon as the rest melted down.

A few more minutes and countless stirs and it was done, the rich, nutty smell of it filling her nostrils as she put the pot aside to let cool.

Fitting the bowl to her stand mixer, she did a quick stir of the milk and yeast, sprinkling a bit of flour in there to let it bloom before adding the rest of the ingredients.

I really need your help.

There they were again, those five words that Julia couldn’t get out of her head. The ones that tightened her chest and narrowed her vision and caused her breath to shorten.

No, she thought, closing her eyes and taking long, measured inhales and smooth, lengthy exhales.Not now.

The feeling dissipated slowly, and the knee-weakening reliefshe felt helped to dissolve it further. She continued to breathe deeply until she felt her heart rate go back to normal.

Picking up the pot with the cooling butter, she swirled it around a bit more and then poured about a third of a cup into her bowl with the yeast, milk, and flour before switching her stand mixer on to a slow rotation. As it turned, she added two eggs, a pinch of salt, and about half a cup of sugar.

Julia had a knack for determining the amounts of ingredients—partly due to experience, but also because she had just always been good at seeing something and knowing what it could hold. Nowadays, she rarely measured anything, and she hadn’t had a problem yet—or at least no complaints—so she continued with the method that worked.

And baking worked for her. All the pieces put together, then made into a whole. The tangible result of hard work, perseverance, and a bit of intuition. As long as a person didn’t stray too far from the plan, things usually turned out when it came to baking. Julia liked that, the predictability of it.

Baking rarely disappointed.

I really need your help.

Julia’s breath caught again and she swore fiercely. Was this going to keep happening? Every time that godforsaken text—those fucking words—came up in her mind?

Maybe…She bit her lip. Maybe she should just reply? See what he wanted, so she could move on—for the second time.

When the thought of responding eased the tightness in her chest a little, she bit back a groan.

Traitor, she thought, fuming at the way her body betrayed her. She turned back to the swirling mixture slowly churning in the bowl, waiting for it to bring her the calmness that it usually did.

Instead, she felt the heaviness of the phone in her back pocket still, its presence unwavering.

With a bone-deep sigh, she pulled the phone out, heart pounding, but this time without the miserable panic that usually accompanied it.

She opened Ethan’s text once more, cursing at the way her fingers shook slightly. Before she lost her nerve, she typed out a quick response and clicked Send. Then she put the phone back in her pocket, took a deep breath, and returned to her mixer, trying not to think of the words she’d just sent and what they might mean for her going forward. What they might mean for both of them.

What do you need?

2

Ethan Duchamp helddown the side button on his phone, waiting with a patience he didn’t feel, until the screen went completely blank.

Then he sighed.

Turning off his phone, completely and intentionally, was something he hadn’t done in as long as he could remember—certainly at no point in the last three years—and knowing it was off, even now, gave him an uncomfortable, itching sensation. Like a phantom limb, as though the phone had once been a physical part of his body.

Sometimes he felt as though that wasn’t too far off from the truth.

He’d always been resistant to turning off his phone because of the belief that he’d miss out on something. There was always some important news that he needed to be attuned to, some information coming in that he had to make sure he received. Because of that, it was hard to shake the feeling that he’d just made a mistake.

But a mistake had been made regardless, hadn’t it? He’d bet on the wrong horse, so to speak. And that was what had landed him in this mess to begin with, culminating in a phone that needed to be shut down, not just out of necessity but for the sake of his sanity. So he could take a break from all the things he’d been bombarded with in the last two hours: texts from the consultants, calls from the social media team, and repeated attempts to get some sort of quote or further controversy out of him from the countless media outlets that now knew of his existence and wanted a piece of him.

It was too much. He wanted nothing to do with his phone at all.

The truth was, for the first time, he wanted nothing to do with any of it.

Ethan had mostly prided himself on not being a quitter or a runner, barring one unfortunate incident that he still tried not to think about. If anything, that incident had been the catalyst for the Ethan of today—the one who didn’t stop to feel, but instead justacted. The one who relied on instinct rather than wasting time on pesky emotions. It had served him well in his time with Fordham PR, as he’d moved up in the ranks at the firm until he’d reached his current position.