Page 10 of The Matchmaker's Cottage

He was clutching the handle of an expensive-looking suitcase in one hand, a gray blazer thrown over his opposite shoulder. The sleeves of his dress shirt were rolled up halfway, exposing tan forearms that she knew were dusted with light brown hair even if she couldn’t see them from her vantage point.

He looked the same, basically. Perhaps his shoulders were a bit broader, looking like he’d filled out more across the chest and torso, his hair a little longer, now brushed back from his forehead in neatly curated waves. The most telling difference was the beard. Julia had only ever known Ethan to be clean-shaven, even in middle school when all the boys were growing out bad mustaches or in those early college years when goatees had unfortunately been a thing. Ethan had always defied the facial hair trends, claiming nobody wanted to see his poor excuse for a beard anyway.

It wasn’t a poor excuse, though, Julia noted, trying to stay as dispassionate as possible. It was certainly not sparse or inadequate in any way, nor was it unruly or overlong. Instead, it gave the appearance of a man who took care of himself. Perhaps he had some sort of kit that he maintained it with. Certainly a brush of some sort. Maybe even an oil.

She almost laughed at the ludicrous direction of her thoughts. Here she was, confronted with this man she’d known almost all her life, minus the last decade, and all she could think of was the presumed maintenance of his facial hair.

It was sick. Deranged.

Were there hints of auburn in there?

Stop.

“Hi, Gem.”

Ah. There it was.

She’d noticed how he’d avoided using the nickname over the phone, although at the time she’d thought maybe he hadalmostsaid it right at the beginning of their conversation, theJsound of her name lingering a bit too long before ending in-ulia. It had been a small blessing, honestly, a reminder that they were no longerEthan and Gembut instead were now strangers. And how it needed to stay that way, if only for her sanity and all the work she had done to forget how much he had meant to her once upon a time.

Exceptnow—

Now the bastard had shown up, interrupted her from getting the pillowcases off the clothesline in a timely manner, made the goddamn wind stop itself dead, and then, to top it all off,he’d called her Gem.

Don’t call me that!she wanted to scream.

Instead, she responded: “Hi, Ethan.”

Coward.

He took a few steps closer to her, his expensive-looking shoes sinking into her overlong grass, clay-colored trousers touching the tips of it, the cuffs fashionably hemmed in a way that Julia had always felt was a bit too short to look classically good. He shifted his blazer to his other hand, resting it on top of his luggage handle as he regarded her carefully, as though doing the same assessment of her that she’d done of him—minus the inner beard monologue, she could only hope.

His perusal made her overly conscious of her sweaty, bedraggled state. She’d thought for sure she would have time to get ready for his arrival, to look atleastas put together as he did. She knew it was a four- or five-hour drive from Manhattan proper to get to where she was. What had he done, left right after breakfast like some sort of sociopath? Why the hell was he that eager to get here?

His job, you idiot,a little voice in her brain reminded her.He wants to make sure things are ready to go and you haven’t intentionally sabotaged him as part of your grand master plan to lure him here under the pretense of being helpful.

“How have you been?”

He’d asked her that on the phone, too, of course. Diplomatic as ever. She’d skirted around it at the time—Fine. She was fine—but now there seemed to be more to it than just pleasantries. Like it wasn’t this stranger asking her how she was and expecting politeness theater, but instead it was actuallyEthan, her best friend in the world, who wanted to know.

I’m shit,she wanted to wail.My business is failing; I feel like I’m drowning; sometimes I can’t breathe, and I don’t know what that means about my mental or physical state; and to top it all off, I have no one to talk to about it except the people I pay to be here.

“Fine,” she responded pleasantly enough. She turned back around to take the last few pillowcases down and drop them into the laundry basket, chucking the clothespins into the bucket with a little too much force. “You?”

“Yeah, I’m—” He rubbed his hand on the back of his neck. “I’m good. You know. Notgreat,” he added with a self-deprecating laugh. “Just trying to figure all this out.”

She nodded, lifting the laundry basket and making to brush past him. “Yeah, absolutely. Why don’t you come in, I’ll show you where to put your stuff?”

“That would be—”

“Front door is around the corner.”

He’d started to follow her to those stone steps, where he would wind up in the kitchen with her, but she’d be damned if she let him enter her business, her home, in a familiar way from a familiar entrance. Despite its history, he had ultimately lost the right to do that, and she sure as hell wasn’t going to feel bad about it. Not anymore.

“Right.” He stepped back slightly, then turned toward the front. “I’ll just—”

She didn’t wait for him to finish what he was saying but instead made her way down the steps to the double doors at the bottom and went inside, closing both doors decisively behind her.

“Maggie!” she hissed as she zoomed past her. “Bedrooms! Now!”