The morning in Cavendish arrived with a clarity that felt like a personal insult to Jessica's pounding headache. The birds in the heavy oak trees surrounding the Miller cottage were singing. Jessica groaned, pulling a thin, scratchy wool blanket over her head, her body still aching from the chill of the previous night.
She had just managed to drift into a shallow sleep when the sound of a high-performance engine tore through the rural silence. It wasn't the low, steady rumble of a tractor or the practical hum of a local pickup. This was the aggressive, sophisticated growl of a European sports car.
Jessica sat up, her hair a chaotic halo of dark tangles. "You have got to be kidding me," she whispered to the empty, drafty room.
She scrambled to the window, pulling back the lace curtain just in time to see a sun-bright yellow convertible drift onto the gravel shoulder between her cottage and the Lawson estate. The dust kicked up in a celebratory cloud, coating the wildflowers she had spent five minutes admiring the day before.
Out stepped Marcus. He looked like he had been air-dropped from a fashion shoot in Milan. His linen shirt was unbuttoned just enough to be suggestive, his sunglasses were worth more than the cottage's entire furniture set, and he carried a bouquet of hothouse lilies that looked utterly ridiculous against the backdrop of wild clover and cow dung.
He headed straight for her porch.
Jessica didn't wait for him to knock. She flung the door open, still dressed in her silk pajama set—now wrinkled and smelling faintly of mothballs—and stood on the threshold like a weary, vengeful spirit.
"Marcus," she barked, her voice raspy. "Unless that car is an ambulance or you've come to personally apologize for every word you said in Ottawa, turn around. Now."
Marcus stopped at the bottom of the porch steps, flashing a smile that had probably worked on a thousand women in the city but was currently hitting Jessica like a bucket of cold water. "Jessica! I heard you'd fled the concrete jungle for some fresh air. I figured a woman like you shouldn't have to face the 'great outdoors' without at least one friendly face."
"Friendly?" Jessica stepped out onto the porch, her bare feet hitting the cold, weathered wood. "We aren't friends, Marcus. We were a disastrous dinner date that ended in a lecture about my domestic deficiencies. What are you doing here? How did you even find me?"
"I'm a man of resources, Jessica," Marcus said, his tone breezy as he climbed the first step. "And I'm staying with Johnson. He's my oldest friend. Small world, right?"
"It's a claustrophobic world," Jessica snapped.
High on the hill, the front door of the Lawson estate creaked open. Johnson Lawson stepped out onto his porch, a cup of black coffee in his hand. He simply stood there, leaning against a white pillar, his silhouette tall and imposing. He watched the scene below with the detached, clinical interest of a scientist observing a particularly volatile chemical reaction.
Jessica caught sight of him out of the corner of her eye. The silent judgment radiating from the hill only fueled her fire.
"Is this a game to you two?" Jessica demanded, gesturing wildly toward the estate and then back to Marcus. "Did you come here to watch the city girl struggle? Did you come to see if I'd finally figured out how to use a toaster without an instruction manual?"
"Whoa, calm down," Marcus said, holding up his hands in a mock gesture of surrender, though the lilies remained firmly in his grasp. "I'm not here to scold you, Jessica. In fact, I came to apologize. I think we got off on the wrong foot. I was... maybe a bit too 'firm' about my expectations. I realized after you left that a woman as beautiful as you deserves a bit of a grace period to learn the ropes."
"A grace period?" Jessica's voice hit a pitch that made a nearby crow take flight. "To learn the ropes? Marcus, listen to yourself! You talk about me like I'm a golden retriever you're trying to house-train! I don't need a 'grace period' because I'm not applying for the position of your servant!"
"It's not about being a servant," Marcus countered, his own frustration finally bubbling to the surface. He took another step up, invading her personal space. "It's about being a partner! Every 'good' man wants a home that feels like a home. Is it really such a crime to ask that the woman I'm with knows how to distinguish a slow cooker from a blender? You act like being 'capable' is an insult to your feminism, but really, it's just laziness, Jessica!"
"Laziness?" Jessica took a step toward him, her finger poking into the air between them. "I run a company! I make decisions that affect hundreds of lives! I don't have time to 'distinguish' your kitchen appliances because I'm too busy paying for them! You want a woman who can iron your shirts until they have a razor-edge? Hire a professional! You want a woman who can hand-wash your delicates? Go to a laundry! But don't you dare stand on my porch and tell me that my value as a human being is measured by how much bleach I use!"
"You're making a scene, Jessica," Marcus hissed, glancing up toward Johnson's estate.
"Good! I want a scene!" Jessica yelled, her face flushed with a mix of anger and the morning chill. "I want the whole town to hear! I want the cows to know! I am sick of men like you and your friend up there weighing women on a domestic scale. You don't want a wife; you want a customized appliance that looks good in a cocktail dress!"
Marcus sighed, a sound of profound, weary disappointment. "Look, Jessica. I didn't come here to fight. I have no bad intentions. I genuinely just wanted to know you more. I thought... away from the city lights, away from the 'CEO' persona, I might find the 'real' you. The woman who actually wants to be taken care of."
Jessica's eyes went cold. The anger sharpened into a blade.
"The 'real' me is the CEO, Marcus. The 'real' me doesn't want to be 'taken care of' by a man who views my independence as a character flaw. I'm not interested in some man who thinks a woman's worth is tied to how well she can cook, iron, or scrub a floor until her hands bleed."
She stepped back into the doorway, her hand gripping the brass knob.
"I'm here for a vacation from the city, Marcus. But mostly, I'm here for a vacation from people like you. Stay on your side of the fence."
"Jessica, wait—" Marcus started, reaching out a hand.
"Don't," she warned. "And take your lilies with you. They're as fake as your 'good intentions.'"
She stepped inside and, with a force that rattled the windows of the cottage and echoed across the valley, slammed the door in his face. The thud was final, a punctuation mark at the end of a very loud sentence.
Marcus stood on the porch for a long, awkward moment, the bright yellow lilies drooping in the morning air. He looked up at the hill.
Johnson Lawson was still there. He hadn't moved an inch. He slowly raised his coffee cup in a silent, mocking toast to Marcus's failure, his expression unreadable but his aura radiating a smug, quiet satisfaction. He had watched the "disaster" unfold exactly as he had predicted.
Marcus turned, trudging back to his yellow convertible with his tail between his legs.
Inside the cottage, Jessica leaned her back against the door, her heart hammering a frantic rhythm against her ribs. She was shaking from the sheer adrenaline of the confrontation. She looked at her small, messy kitchen, at the loaf of bread and the jar of honey on the counter, and she let out a shaky, defiant breath.
"I'll learn to cook," she whispered to the empty room, her eyes flashing. "But I'll do it for me. And I'll do it poorly just to spite them."