Chapter 21 #2
One glance at Ethan’s face told her that her worries were not unfounded.
He looked downright grim, lips drawn and face sallow beneath his late-summer tan and overgrown beard.
There was something even worse for him about Emily being there.
Perhaps it had to do with that phone call she’d alluded to.
Or their need to “talk.” The obvious assumption was that he’d slept with her—even after all this time, the idea of Ethan with another woman left Julia with a pit in her stomach, sick and insidious and entirely inappropriate—but even that seemed too simple, too cut-and-dried.
“Well, that was pleasant,” Katy commented.
“She’s something,” Noah agreed, his tone indicating that whatever that something was, it wasn’t positive.
“Why the hell would she just show up here? Who would—?” Ethan grunted, running a hand through his hair in frustration. “I’m going to get to the bottom of this.”
“This affects all of us,” Katy said quietly, looking around the group ruefully. “All the subtlety we were aiming for will fly out the window if word gets out that Emily Sattler is here. And if it gets out that you’re here, too, Ethan—”
“There won’t be any question of what’s going on,” Noah finished grimly.
Before anyone could say anything else, a voice echoed through the house all the way back to them outside.
“My luggage, please!”
The please felt offhand and not polite in the slightest. As perfunctory as the punctuation that followed it. The voice was demanding and used to having its orders followed.
Julia turned to Norman to tell him that she would have to be the one who brought it in since she laid the largest claim to the establishment where it belonged, when he spoke up.
“I’ll take that,” he said, lifting it with ease. “Reminds me of the one the McArthurs had. Boy, were they a hoity-toity bunch…”
Truth be told, Julia was relieved and thankful for his support, especially when he gave her a quick, reassuring wink before entering the house, still telling his story for whoever was around to listen—even if it was just himself.
The rest of them stood in silence for a moment, processing what had just happened. Katy was the first to speak.
“I wouldn’t mind going in, either,” she said. “It’s getting a bit chilly, and I’d like to grab a bite to eat before we figure out what to do next.”
“Yeah, let’s go,” Noah said, giving Julia a brief look before guiding Katy with a gentle hand on her back toward the front door and into the house.
Once they were alone on the porch, Ethan and Julia stared at each other for a beat.
Now what?
It felt like so much had transpired in the last twenty-four hours, she didn’t know what to address first. Was it the episode last night? The arrival of Emily? The visit to the lake? The kiss?
Ethan appeared to be mulling over the same questions in his head, chewing on his lip, unsure where to begin.
“Let’s go inside,” she said instead, deciding against addressing any of the things that were roiling through her mind and instead taking the safe approach. “We can get changed and eat something as well. And then we’ll talk later.” She leveled a hard stare at him. “About everything.”
He opened his mouth to say something—to agree or argue, she’d never know—and then quickly snapped it shut. Instead of speaking, he just nodded.
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 late lunch—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 vegetarian and gluten 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.” Ethan spoke up loudly, his spoon clattering on the side of his bowl. “I’m perfectly capable of handling them myself.”
“Oh, the way you…handled me, 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 is so quaint,” 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 their status.”
“Hear, hear,” Noah said, holding up his glass. “You all have been 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.