Page 62 of The Matchmaker's Cottage

She nodded back somewhat grimly and entered the house.

For her own self-preservation, she didn’t look back to see if Ethan was following her.

* * *

Dinner—or latelunch—was an awkward and depressing affair.

Emily, blissfully, had decided to take a nap after her “full day of travel” to get to “this remote destination.” That meant that the original guests of the week were not required to deal with her in the interim, and Maggie had some time to rearrange the menu, yet again, to something that was vegetarianandgluten and dairy free for their evening meal. Luckily, it didn’t take many extra ingredients to make that happen, so she was able to work with what she already had.

The end result was essentially a vegetarian chili, which Maggie still served with bread on the side—there was only so much gluten free she could handle—but it turned out the effort had been for naught, since Emily simply moved her spoon around a few times before abandoning the meal entirely. She gave some pretense at first, smiling charmingly and taking a few wan tastes before dunking her spoon back into the bowl and refusing to touch it again.

The conversation during the meal was stilted, the trio of celebrities trying to uphold it mostly, with Noah and Katy valiantly carrying most of the weight.

Julia, for her part, simply resisted the urge to crawl into bed and not come out until next week. Her head and ankle throbbed in equal measure. And now, as the cherry on top, she couldn’t stop thinking about the relationship between Emily and Ethan and what it all meant.

He didn’t even appear to have done anything about this unexpected presence at her bed-and-breakfast. As far as she had seen and heard, he hadn’t made any phone calls or followed up with how and why this new person had arrived. If it had been her, she would be curious—and frustrated—enough to get to the bottom of the situation. Ethan appeared to have other plans.

Granted, he seemed to be grimly ignoring Emily as best he could despite her attempts to engage him, but Julia had seen that side of Ethan before, too—not wanting to deal with something uncomfortable or awkward and just shutting down instead of tackling it head-on. It was yet another one of his flaws, this avoidance of all things unpleasant. Ethan preferred to stay in the sunshine, even if it meant ignoring the rain.

“So, why did you say you came?” Katy asked before putting a generous spoonful of chili into her mouth. She mumbled a full-mouthed approval to Maggie, who beamed with pride.

“Well, I’d heard from my agent that this was the place to be. Apparently you two are making quite the buzz on social media, and someone tracked down the location based on your little Main Street jaunt.” She shrugged, affecting flippancy. “And since the whole thing reeked of Fordham PR, it didn’t take much to find your exact location.” Her smile, once again, conveyed the utmost insincerity. “I’ll be honest.” Her voice lowered and she made a show of hiding her face from Ethan, who was sitting across the large round table to her right, as she spoke. “I was a little worried about you two getting caught up in the same mistakes I made. As much as I wanted to see what all the fuss was about with this place, I also wanted to give you advice. You know, as a more seasoned professional in this business.”

“You don’t need to worry about my clients, Emily.” Ethanspoke up loudly, his spoon clattering on the side of his bowl. “I’m perfectly capable of handling them myself.”

“Oh, the way you…handledme, you mean?” The innuendo was unmistakable, and Julia’s gaze whipped over to Ethan in time to see the storm clouds that crossed over his expression.

“Emily, you know as well as I do that—”

“Came for some grub.” A new voice interrupted the brewing catastrophe, and everyone at the table turned to see Norman entering the dining room.

“This place issoquaint,” Emily spoke up, hands clasping together loosely under her chin as she pointedly regarded Maggie, Julia, and Norman. “If I had known that the employees were invited to dine with the guests, I would have told my assistant to join us as well.”

Regardless of whether or not Emily had a point—or the fact that it certainly wasn’t common practice for Julia, Maggie, and Norman to all be sitting and eating during dining hours—Julia felt something inside her snap.

“While we do value our employees with the same respect and appreciation as our guests,” she said, hearing the chill in her own voice but being totally unable to mitigate it, “I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily common practice for us to all dine together.”

“Well, that’s what I’m saying—”

“But,” Julia continued, refusing to allow herself to be interrupted again by this snooty, over-Botoxed wannabe, “considering these are uncommon circumstances, and our mealtime was not planned for this hour, nor were the number of guests we would need to be accommodating, we do our best to ensure that all the people at Donwell are taken care of, regardless of theirstatus.”

“Hear, hear,” Noah said, holding up his glass. “You all havebeen nothing but generous and lovely to us, and we’re happy to take a meal with you at any time.”

Julia smiled at him briefly while Emily glowered at her.

“I’m going to speak to Jennifer to see what our plans are for the rest of the week,” she said after a few moments of awkward silence, pushing her chair back loudly from the table. It took Julia a second to realize she must have been referring to the young assistant she had brought along with her and hadn’t yet bothered to introduce to anyone or to even invite downstairs for a meal. “I’ll keep everyone posted.”

“Can’t wait,” Noah muttered before she was even out of earshot. Whether she heard him or not, she kept walking.

“I think I’m going to go, too,” Julia said, scraping her chair back as well. “It’s been a long day, and I think we all just need to decompress a bit.”

“Won’t you stay?” Katy asked, turning to Julia. “Now that things have…quieted and it’s just us again?” At the wordus, her hand brushed Maggie’s accidentally, almost imperceptibly, and Maggie’s spoon clattered lightly against the side of her bowl before she took another mouthful of the warm meal.

“No, I really should go,” Julia insisted, though she smiled to let them all know there was no malice or discontent behind her words. “I haven’t done a proper breakfast in the entire time you’ve been here, and we’re out of bread, muffins, scones, and all the yummy things I like to put out. Plus, I need to plan ahead for the next week, when you’re all—” Her voice caught on the words, the idea of a new week feeling overwhelming and borderline unattainable. “I’ll see everyone later, or maybe in the morning.”

She left quickly, glancing at the stairs only briefly to see if she could catch a glimpse of Emily or perhaps hear her complaints,but it was quiet on the second floor. Turning the corner, she caught sight of the stairs at the end of the hall when a voice stopped her.

“Julia.”