Chapter 3
CLAIRE
Atrill sound cuts across the backyard.
Low, musical, the sound a bird would make. I glance up from my laptop, half expecting to find Brody leaning over the fence, but it’s just sun-bleached wood and the tops of his hedges swaying in the breeze.
Then I see him. Not Brody. Damien, from all the baking videos where he’s always observing or knocking things over.
The cat is crossing my lawn with the slow, purposeful stride of a creature who knows they are in charge.
His fur ripples in the breeze, impossibly white, so thick and layered that he looks upholstered.
He trills again, golden eyes fixed on me, and I’m grinning crazily because I’ve watched so many videos of this cat in the past week and he’s even more magnificent in person.
I stay very still on my sun lounger. Laptop on my thighs, iced water sweating on the side table, bowl of grapes warming in the afternoon sun. My shorts are mini and my tank top is cropped. I didn’t dress for a celebrity encounter, yet here we are.
Damien reaches the lounger. Sniffs the metal frame. Evaluates it, then springs up onto the foot of the chair, and the whole thing rocks under his weight.
“Oh. Hello.”
He’s huge. On camera, he’s a fluffy white blur darting across Brody’s kitchen, but up close he’s a wall of silk and muscle.
He steps onto my shins, and the pressure is immediate, warm paws kneading once, twice, before he moves higher.
His fur brushes against my bare legs, and it’s absurdly soft, the texture of cashmere if it had a heartbeat and a five-million-follower website.
@DamienKnocks. Merch line, fan-art page, a paw-print rating system for every recipe Brody bakes. The cat outperforms me on every metric that exists, and I’ve decided to respect it rather than spiral about it.
He reaches the side table and stretches his neck toward the grape bowl, whiskers twitching, nostrils flaring. One white paw stretches out and bats a grape. It rolls. He watches it with the intensity of a predator assessing prey, then lifts his head and turns away with a full-body pivot of disgust.
“Sorry. No fancy cream here.” I scratch under his chin, and he pushes into my hand, purring instantly, a mechanical rumble I feel through my fingertips and into my wrist. “But if this is going to be a regular thing, I can get you some treats—”
“Oh, please don’t,” says a deep voice from across the fence, warm and threaded with amusement.
My heart slams into my throat. I glance up to find Brody leaning over the wooden fence that reaches his chest, muscular arms folded on the top rail, chin resting on his forearms. The breeze catches his dark hair, pushing it across his forehead, and he’s wearing a shirt today, a navy Henley with the sleeves shoved up past his elbows, which feels almost modest compared to what I’ve been watching on his channel.
He’s staring at me with blue eyes that are brighter in daylight and a grin that starts slowly and spreads until it takes over his entire face.
“He’s on a diet,” Brody says. “Vet’s orders. And Damien is furious about it.”
As if understanding every word, Damien releases a squeak. High-pitched, indignant, and so absurdly small coming from a cat this size that I almost choke on my own breath.
“Did he just—”
“He does that. Nineteen pounds of cat, one gram of sound.”
Damien squeaks again, louder this time, and then turns, climbs up my torso, and drops his full weight directly onto my chest. My lungs compress.
My laptop slides sideways. I grab it with one hand while the other instinctively goes to Damien’s back, and he settles himself with his face inches from mine, gold eyes boring into me, one massive paw resting on my collarbone.
“Oh,” I wheeze. “He’s, um. He’s very…”
“Heavy?”
“I was going to say affectionate.”
“That’s generous, considering he’s sitting on your lungs and admiring you.”
Damien purrs. The vibration travels through my entire rib cage, and I can feel it in my teeth.
“Is he always this forward with strangers?” I ask, stroking behind his ears. He tilts his head into my hand, and the purr intensifies to a decibel level that suggests mechanical failure.
Brody watches this with his chin still on his arms, and his expression shifts to amused disbelief.
“He hates strangers. He once ignored my delivery guy for six months. Wouldn’t look at him, wouldn’t acknowledge that he existed.
The man brought treats every single time, and Damien acted as if he were a piece of furniture that had learned to speak. ”
“So I’m special.”
“Apparently.”
I glance over at Brody, who’s studying me, then Damien places his paw directly on my lips.
I make a muffled sound against the paw pad, and Brody bursts out laughing, the full-body version I’ve heard through the window, loud and real and contagious.
Damien keeps his paw exactly where it is, staring at me with the steady concentration of a creature who has decided I was talking too much and has taken corrective action.
“It means you’ve been given an audience and he’s decided it’s his turn to speak.”
I gently move the paw. Damien puts it back.
“Okay,” I say into his fur. “I hear you. You have the floor.”
Damien chirps, removes his paw, and immediately headbutts my chin. The force of it pushes my glasses up my forehead, and I catch them with one hand, trying not to die of the fact that Brody is ten feet away, watching me get dominated by his cat, while wearing the shortest shorts I own.
“Careful,” Brody says, and his voice dips lower. “He’s easy to fall in love with.”
My stomach flips. “Oh, I can see that. He’s a real charmer.”
“Runs in the household.”
“Does it?”
“Mm-hmm.”
I’m blushing, heat climbing up my neck, which is mortifying, and Damien is still on my chest, meaning I can’t exactly flee the scene with any dignity.
Brody doesn’t look away either. He stares with an ease that tells me he’s done this before, locked onto someone and let the silence do the work, and I’m not equipped for it.
I’m made for panicking behind blinds. This is an entirely different sport.
“So,” I say, desperate for a subject change that doesn’t involve falling in love with anyone or anything. “Welcome to the neighborhood. I realize that’s about two weeks late.”
“I was starting to wonder if you existed.”
“I exist. I’m just… indoors a lot.”
“I’ve noticed.”
“I was going to bring you a welcome cake, but then I realized you’ve already got more than enough baked goods.”
He stares at me, then the grin sharpens, and I’m practically swooning. What’s wrong with me?
“You’ve been watching me work on my videos.”
“I might have noticed you doing one or two. Briefly. For research. I’m a chef, after all, so it’s a professional interest.”
He nods, all faux seriousness. “Is that also why you’ve been watching me through your curtain?”
I half choke on nothing. “That doesn’t sound like me.”
“The blinds, then. I’m not picky about terminology.”
“I think you’re mistaken.”
He just laughs because we both know the truth.
“So, why here?” I ask, steering us toward safer ground. “A big famous food blogger moves to Mistberry Cove. That’s not exactly the expected trajectory.”
He shifts his weight against the fence, tilts his head.
“I grew up loud. Nashville, big city, cameras, content schedule, never a quiet moment. Then I relocated to Austin for a long time, another big, loud place. But I wanted a spot where I could hear myself think.” He glances out past my yard toward the cliff edge, where the ocean is doing its silver shimmer.
“You can see the water from the upstairs window. First morning I woke up here and just… heard nothing. Gulls. Wind. That was it.”
“That’s what kept me here,” I say and mean it.
“Plus, the kitchen has two ovens.”
“Now you’re speaking my language.”
He grins, and the breeze pushes his hair again.
For a second, he’s not a man with millions of followers and a brand and a shirtless baking empire.
He’s just a person standing at a fence, talking to his neighbor about kitchens, and I wish my pulse would calm down because this is getting embarrassing.
Brody makes a short, clicking chirp from the back of his tongue, fast, twice, and Damien’s head snaps toward him.
The cat springs off my chest, crosses the grass in enormous bounds, and launches himself at the fence.
Brody catches him in midair. Scoops him up one-armed, tucks him against his chest. Damien burrows into his neck, and Brody scratches behind his ear without looking.
“Oh, and if you’re curious about the filming,” Brody adds, those blue eyes back on me, “you’re welcome to come over anytime. Watch in person. Much better resolution than through blinds.”
“I’m fine, thanks. I have a book to write.”
“Ah, that’s right. The cookbook.” He nods, adjusting Damien against his shoulder. “Speaking of which, I made one of your recipes the other day, actually. Just uploaded it.”
I straighten up. I can’t help it. “Which one?”
He buries his grin into Damien’s fur. “You’ll have to find out.”
“That’s not fair.”
“Isn’t it?”
“You can’t just tell someone you cooked their recipe and then not say which one.”
“I can, though. I just did.” He’s already backing away from the fence, Damien draped over his shoulder, eyes locked on mine, and that smirk is nuclear. “See you around, neighbor.”
He disappears through his back door, and I sit there on the lounger. Then I count to five and grab my phone from my pocket.
My fingers are clumsy. I fumble the passcode twice, open ManBaker, and there it is.
Posted twenty minutes ago. Already at a hundred and forty thousand views, which is a number that makes my brain short-circuit because my book has sold sixty thousand copies total, and his cat video from last week got triple that in an hour.
I hit Play.