Page 7 of The Man in the Cottage

Love you too.

I put the phone face-down and turn back to my laptop. The cursor blinks at me, patient and relentless. I have a document open with eight thousand words of notes and exactly two thousand words of actual prose, and every single one of those words feels wrong.

Maybe I should make more coffee. Coffee would help.

I'm halfway to the counter when I hear it—a thunk from somewhere beneath my feet, followed by a low gurgling sound that doesn't inspire confidence.

Then the kitchen faucet starts dripping.

Not dripping. Pouring. Water streams out of the base where it meets the sink, pooling on the counter and dripping onto the floor in a steady patter.

"No no no no no—"

I lunge for the faucet, twisting the handles, but it doesn't help. The water keeps coming, leaking from somewhere inside the fixture itself. I crouch down and yank open the cabinet under the sink, looking for a shutoff valve, but all I see are pipes and cleaning supplies and a mouse trap that I really hope is empty.

I don't know how to fix this. I don't know how to fix anything. In New York, I called the super when things broke, and he showed up eventually and made it someone else's problem. Here there's no super. There's just me and a suitcase full of clothes and a laptop full of words that don't work.

And there's Travis.

I grab my phone and head for the back door, not even bothering to put on shoes. The grass is cold and wet under my feet as I cross the yard, and I'm halfway to the cottage when the door opens and he steps out, already frowning.

"Something's wrong with the sink," I say, slightly out of breath. "Water's going everywhere."

He doesn't ask questions. Just nods once and walks past me toward the house, his long legs covering the distance twice as fast as mine. By the time I catch up, he's already under the sink, doing something with the pipes that makes the water stop.

"Shutoff valve," he says, his voice muffled. "Needed to be replaced. I told your grandmother a few months back but she said it was fine."

"Of course she did." Grandma's approach to home repair was to ignore problems until they became emergencies. A leaky valve would've been way too theoretical for her to care about.

Travis slides out from under the sink and sits up, wiping his hands on his jeans. He's wearing a gray t-shirt today, no flannel, and I can see the shape of his arms and shoulders in a way I couldn't before. He's built like someone who uses his body for a living—not bulky, but solid. Strong.

I look away before he catches me staring.

"I can fix it," he says, getting to his feet. "I'll need to run to the hardware store, but it shouldn't take long."

"You don't have to do that."

"I know."

"I can call a plumber—"

"Kelly." He says my name like a period at the end of a sentence. Final. "It's a twenty-dollar part and thirty minutes of work. Let me fix it."

I don't know why I want to argue. Maybe because I don't like feeling useless in my own house. Maybe because accepting help from a man I barely know feels like admitting I can't handle this on my own.

But the floor is wet and my feet are cold and he's already pulling his keys out of his pocket like the matter is settled.

"Fine," I say. "Thank you."

He nods and heads for the door. I expect him to leave, but he pauses with his hand on the frame and looks back at me.

"You're working on something. On your laptop."

It's not quite a question. I wonder how he knows—if he saw me through the window, or if he just guessed.

"I'm trying to write a book," I say. "A thriller."

"Yeah?" Something shifts in his face, not quite interest but close. "What's it about?"