10. Cat
CAT
I call Michel because I can't sleep and because the time difference means it's only nine in London and because I'm going out of my bloody mind.
"Tell me what's happening," he says instead of hello, because Michel has known me for fifteen years and can always tell when I'm spiraling.
"Nothing's happening."
"Cat."
"Fine. Something's happening. Maybe. I don't know."
"Is this about the inheritance? The house? The mysterious blood relative you're supposed to share it with?"
"Her name is Iris." The words come out before I can stop them. "She's not mysterious. She's just—" I stop, trying to find the right word.
"Just what?"
"Complicated."
"Complicated how?"
I'm lying on my bed, staring at the ceiling where the moonlight makes patterns through the shutters.
The house is quiet. Iris is probably sleeping, oblivious to the fact that I've been lying here thinking about the way she laughed at the goat story and the way her hair catches the light and the way my heart did something stupid when she didn't pull away from my touch in the garden.
"I think I might be attracted to her," I say.
The silence on the other end of the line is deafening.
"Michel?"
"I'm processing." Another beat. "The American? The uptight event planner? The woman you described as 'insufferably perfect' in your last message?"
"That was two weeks ago. Things have... developed."
"I'm trying to understand how you went from 'she's ruining my life' to 'I want to kiss her' in fourteen days."
"I didn't say I wanted to kiss her."
"You didn't have to. I know your voice."
I groan and cover my face with my free hand. "This is a disaster. She's straight, Michel. She's probably never even thought about a woman that way. And even if she had, we're basically roommates with a legal agreement, and getting involved would be—"
"Complicated?"
"Catastrophic."
"Or," Michel says thoughtfully, "it could be exactly what you both need."
"That's not helpful."
"I'm not trying to be helpful. I'm trying to point out that you've been alone for a year, you're living in a romantic farmhouse in France with a beautiful woman, and you're doing that thing where you convince yourself it's impossible before you've even tried."
"It is impossible."
"Why?"
"Because—" I stop. "Because she's Grand-mère's real grandchild. Because this is complicated enough without adding feelings to it. Because I don't even know if I'm staying here after the ninety days are up."
"Are you?"
The question catches me off guard. I haven't thought about it—haven't let myself think about it. The ninety days have felt like a bubble, a suspended reality where the future doesn't exist.
"I don't know," I admit.
"Then maybe you should figure that out," Michel says gently. "Before you decide anything else is impossible."
The next morning, I'm barely functional. Too little sleep, too much wine, too many feelings I don't know what to do with.
Iris is already in the kitchen when I emerge—of course she is—making coffee with that focused intensity she brings to everything. She's wearing running clothes, her hair pulled back, and she glances up when I enter.
"You look terrible."
"Thanks."
"Didn't sleep?"
"Not much."
She pours a second cup of coffee and slides it across the counter to me. It's a small gesture, automatic almost, and it does something uncomfortable to my chest.
"Jacques is coming by later," she says. "The irrigation."
"Right. Okay."
"You sure you're all right?"
I look up and find her watching me with an expression I can't quite read. There's concern there, but something else too—a wariness, like she's not sure how close she wants to get.
"I'm fine," I say. "Just tired."
"You've been working hard. We both have." She hesitates. "Maybe we should take a day off. Go into the village, have lunch somewhere."
The suggestion catches me off guard. "You want to take a day off? You, the woman who made a spreadsheet for everything?"
"I've been told I need more chaos in my life."
She says it with a hint of a smile, and I feel something shift in my chest. Is she flirting? She can't be flirting. She's straight and polished and completely not interested in me like that.
"Lunch sounds good," I manage.
"Great. I'll go for my run, and then we can—"
The sound of an engine cuts her off. Through the kitchen window, I see a car coming up the drive—not Jacques's familiar truck, but something sleek and expensive and completely out of place on the dirt road.
Iris's face goes tight.
"Who is that?" I ask.
Before she can answer, the car pulls up to the house and a man gets out. He's sixtysomething, dressed in a linen suit despite the morning heat, and he surveys the property with the expression of someone calculating value.
"Jean-Pierre Beaumont," Iris says flatly. "My grandmother's younger brother. Ma?tre Duval warned me he'd turn up eventually."
"Her brother?" I've spent whole summers here and never once heard him mentioned. "I didn't know she had one."
"Neither did I, until Duval walked me through the family. He's the only Beaumont of her generation still living." Her mouth twists. "And the reason he'll never let this go quietly. The farm was supposed to be his."
"What do you mean?"
"It passes through the women. Always has—Grand-mère inherited it from her aunt, not from her parents.
Jean-Pierre was the eldest, the son, the one who assumed the land was his by right.
And it went to his sister instead." She watches him pick his way across the gravel like it personally offends him.
"He's spent forty years waiting for it to come back around to him. Now it's skipped him a second time."
"The one who wants to contest the will," I say.
"The very one."
Jean-Pierre is, in a word, insufferable.
He sweeps into the farmhouse like he owns the place—which he doesn't, much to his obvious displeasure—and begins talking before either of us can get a word in.
"Ladies. I've come to discuss the situation." His French is rapid, upper-class, dripping with condescension. "I've consulted with my lawyer, and we believe there are grounds to challenge Marguerite's will."
"On what basis?" Iris asks coolly.
"Undue influence. Emotional manipulation. My sister was clearly not in her right mind at the end—leaving her estate to two women with no experience running a lavender farm, one of whom isn't even family—"
"I am family," I say, and my voice comes out sharper than I intended.
Jean-Pierre turns to me, his eyebrows raised in theatrical surprise. "You? The British girl Vivian brought around? You're not a Beaumont, child. You never were."
The words land like a slap. I see Iris stiffen beside me.
"Grand-mère considered me her granddaughter," I say. "Her will makes that clear."
"Her will makes nothing clear. That's rather the point.
" Jean-Pierre pulls a folded document from his jacket pocket.
"I intend to file a formal contest. This has been Beaumont land for four generations.
It should have come to me the moment Marguerite was in the ground—not been carved up between a stranger and a granddaughter she never once bothered to meet—"
"Get out."
Iris's voice cuts through his bluster like a knife. She's standing very straight, her jaw set, and there's something in her eyes I've never seen before—a cold fury that makes even Jean-Pierre take a step back.
"I beg your pardon?"
"Get out of our house. Right now."
"This is hardly your house, young lady. The ownership is still under dispute—"
"The ownership is settled. The will was legally executed by a certified notaire. Your lawyer can contest all he wants, but until a court says otherwise, this property belongs to Cat and me." She steps closer to him, and I see him actually flinch. "So get out. Before I call the police."
For a long moment, nobody moves. Then Jean-Pierre makes a sound of disgust and turns toward the door.
"You'll hear from my lawyer," he says.
"I'm sure we will. Make sure he knocks next time."
The door slams behind him. The car engine starts, and the expensive sedan disappears down the drive in a cloud of dust.
Iris is still standing with her back to me, her shoulders heaving slightly.
"That was—" I start.
"I'm sorry." She turns, and her face is pale. "I shouldn't have—"
"That was incredible."
She blinks. "What?"
"You just... you told him off. With like, actual murder in your eyes." I'm grinning despite myself. "It was the hottest thing I've ever seen."
The words are out before I can stop them. I see Iris's eyes widen, see the color rise in her cheeks.
"I mean—" I scramble to recover. "It was impressive. You were very—bossy."
"Bossy."
"In charge. In a good way. Intense." Every word is making it worse. "Fired up. Scary-hot."
"Cat." She's looking at me with an expression I can't read. "Did you just call me scary-hot?"
The ground should open up and swallow me. That would be the merciful option.
"As a compliment," I say weakly. "A totally normal compliment."
"Is there a totally normal compliment that involves calling someone scary-hot?"
"Look, I'm sorry, I'm tired and I say stupid things when I'm tired, and—"
"It's fine." She holds up a hand. "Let's just... forget about it."
"Right. Forgotten. Never happened."
We stand in the kitchen, not looking at each other, both of us pretending the air isn't humming.
Neither of us mentions the village. The day off, the long lunch somewhere that isn't here—it evaporates without a word, like we both already know we'd never survive two hours across a table from each other right now.
"I'm going to run," Iris says finally. "Jacques will be by after. For the irrigation."
"Right. Irrigation."
She nods and escapes out the back door, and I stand alone in the kitchen wondering how I managed to make everything so much worse.
So there's no trip into town. No lunch, no day off.
Jacques turns up midafternoon to sort out the irrigation, and I've never been so grateful for something to do with my hands.
We work our way down the lines with him, checking the drip valves and clearing the blocked emitters while he explains which sections are running dry before the harvest. Iris works the far end of the row.
We speak only when necessary, both of us pretending the morning didn't happen.
But something has changed.
I feel it in the way Iris looks at me and then quickly looks away. In the way she keeps finding reasons not to be in the same row with me.
By evening, I can't take it anymore.
"We should talk about this," I say.
She's on the terrace, watching the sunset, and she doesn't turn around when I speak.
"Talk about what?"
"About what I said this morning. About—" I run a hand through my hair. "About whatever is happening between us."
"Nothing is happening between us."
"Iris."
She turns, finally, and her face is a mask of careful control. But her eyes give her away—there's something there, something scared and wanting, that matches what I'm feeling.
"I shouldn't have said what I said," I tell her. "It was regrettable and bumbling and—"
"Was it true?"
The question stops me cold.
"What?"
"Was it true?" She steps closer, and I can see the pulse jumping in her throat. "Do you actually find me—" She can't seem to finish the sentence.
"Yes." It comes out before I can dress it up. "Yes. I do."
"Cat—"
"And I know it's a mess. I know you didn't come here for this. So if you want me to shut up and never say it again, I will. We can just—"
"Cat. Stop."
She's right in front of me now, close enough that I can see the pulse going in her throat. Her hands are curled into fists at her sides, like she doesn't quite trust them.
"I don't—" She stops. Starts over. "I don't do this. I don't lie awake thinking about somebody. I don't lose my place halfway through a sentence because they walked into the room."
"But you have been," I say. It isn't a question.
"Yes." Barely a word. Her eyes are too bright. "I keep telling myself it's the jet lag. Or the wine. Or the—the everything. That it isn't real."
"And?"
"And it's not working." She says it like it costs her something. "It's not nothing. Is it."
"No." My throat's gone tight. "It's something."
Neither of us moves. The sun's dropping behind her, turning the fields an absurd, unreasonable gold, and I think if I breathe wrong the whole thing might shatter.
"So what do we do?" she asks.
"I honestly have no idea," I admit.
And that gets me something that's almost a laugh—wet and startled and real. Then her hand finds mine, her fingers not quite steady, and I thread mine through them and hold on.
For a long moment neither of us moves. Then Iris lets out a breath, squeezes my hand once—like she's memorizing the shape of it—and steps back.
"I need to think," she says. It isn't a no. It's a not-yet. "I don't know how to do this halfway."
"I'm not asking you to do anything," I say. "Just stop pretending it isn't there."
Something in her face eases. "That much I can do."
She slips inside, the screen door clapping shut behind her, and I hear her footsteps move through the house—unhurried, careful, the sound of a woman who suddenly has a great deal to think about.
I stay on the terrace, my hand still warm where hers was, and watch the first stars prick through over the fields.
I should be terrified.
Instead, for the first time since she arrived, I feel something dangerously close to hope.