17. Cat
— ? —
Cat
The morning light through the farmhouse window is soft and gold, and I’ve written twelve pages before I realize I haven’t looked up once.
The words are pouring out of me in a way they haven’t in months, maybe because for the first time since I ran, I’m not looking over my shoulder. The farm is quiet. Safe. And my heroine is finally, finally getting the confrontation scene she deserves.
I stretch my neck, roll my shoulders, and glance out the window.
Then I stop breathing.
Max is in the east paddock, shirtless, guiding a fence post upright beside one of Enzo’s men.
His back is to me, muscles shifting under sun-warmed skin as he works, and there’s mud streaked up his forearms, across his chest, caked into the denim of his jeans.
He looks like he belongs here, like he was built for this kind of labor, not boardrooms and blood.
I watch him steady the post while the other man lowers it into the hole. A clean dressing shows along his ribs. For once, he seems to be letting someone else do the heaviest part.
It’s infuriating. It’s also…
Stop it.
I close my laptop harder than necessary and push back from the table.
I’m not going to sit here like some romance-novel heroine, pining through a window at my estranged husband’s sweaty shoulders.
I have dignity. I have self-respect. I have approximately five months of pregnancy hormones that are apparently trying to destroy both of those things.
The screen door bangs behind me as I step onto the porch.
“You’re up early,” I call across the yard.
He turns, wiping his forehead with the back of his hand, and there’s something almost boyish about the way he squints into the morning sun. “Been up since before four-thirty. Heard the barn latch rattling, thought something was wrong with the goats.”
“The goats.”
“They’re very demanding.” He gestures toward the pasture, where a small herd of brown-and-white goats is clustered at the fence, watching him with what I can only describe as adoration. “See? They’ve been following me all morning.”
“Following you.”
“Like a tiny, judgmental army.” He catches the top of the next post as his helper lifts it. “I think they respect my leadership style.”
“Your leadership style.”
“You’re repeating everything I say.”
“I’m processing. Give me a minute.” I cross the yard toward him, stepping carefully around the worst of the mud. “You’re telling me you’ve been doing farm chores since five in the morning.”
“Someone has to. The animals don’t feed themselves.”
“And you know how to do all this because…?”
“YouTube, mostly.” He grins at my expression. “Also, my grandmother had a farm outside Napoli. I spent summers there as a kid.”
“You spent summers on a farm.”
“You’re doing it again.”
“I’m sorry, I just-” I stop at the fence, watching one of the goats press its head against his thigh. “This is not what I expected when I woke up this morning.”
“What did you expect?”
“I don’t know. You pacing the porch with a phone glued to your ear, maybe. Barking orders at subordinates. Plotting world domination from the kitchen table.”
“I don’t plot world domination. I delegate it.” He scratches the goat behind its ears, and it makes a sound that’s embarrassingly close to a purr. “Besides, I told you. This is your space. I’m just here to help with the heavy lifting.”
“By heavy lifting, you mean fence posts.”
“And water lines. And feed schedules. And the barn gutter that came loose in last night’s wind.”
“You fixed the gutter?”
“From a ladder. No heroics. Your brother’s caretaker held it and insulted my technique.”
I stare at him. The don of the Moretti family, covered in mud and goat hair, talking about barn roofs like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
“You’re enjoying this,” I say slowly. “You’re actually enjoying manual labor.”
“Is that so hard to believe?”
“Yes. Extremely.”
“I like working with my hands.” He sets the fence post into position, checking it for level. “It’s simple. Clear. You do the work, you see the result. No politics, no power plays, no one trying to stab you in the back while smiling to your face.”
“That sounds like a criticism of your job.”
“Consider it an employee complaint. Very senior employee.”
“Uh-huh.”
“You don’t believe me.”
“I believe you believe it.” I lean against the fence, watching him work. “I also believe you’d go crazy inside a week if you actually had to give up the power plays.”
“Maybe.” He holds the level against the post while the other man takes up the mallet. “Or maybe I’d discover I like goats better than capos.”
“The goats don’t try to overthrow you.”
“Exactly. Very refreshing.”
“They also don’t follow orders. Or contribute to the family business. Or do anything except eat and produce milk.”
“All valid points. But they also don’t lie to me about their intentions. When a goat wants something, it tries to eat it. Very straightforward. No hidden agendas.”
He checks the post and lets the other man drive it home, and delivers his goat philosophy like a man presenting quarterly numbers.
“You’re comparing your leadership team to farm animals.”
“I’m comparing their communication styles. The goats are winning.”
“That says more about your leadership team than it does about the goats.”
“Probably.” He moves to the next post hole, wiping sweat from his forehead. “You know what else I like about this? The tiredness. Good tiredness, I mean. The kind that comes from actually doing something instead of just… deciding things.”
“You decide things that affect thousands of people.”
“I decide things that affect thousands of people and then I sit in a room and wait to find out if my decisions were right or wrong. There’s no immediate feedback. No way to know if I made the right call until it’s too late to change it.”
“And with fence posts?”
“With fence posts, I know immediately. Is it straight? Good decision. Is it crooked? Bad decision, fix it, try again.” He checks the next post before signaling to his helper. “The feedback loop is immediate and clear and completely under my control. It’s… peaceful.”
“The fence posts bring you peace.”
“The fence posts bring me clarity. The peace is a side effect.”
“You’re stranger than I thought you were.”
“I’m exactly as strange as I’ve always been. You’re just paying attention now.”
The smallest goat, a white one with brown patches and absolutely no sense of personal space, has worked its way between us and is now attempting to eat the hem of my shirt.
“Hey,” I say, gently pushing its head away. “That’s not food.”
“That’s Mozzarella.”
“I’m sorry?”
“The goat. Her name is Mozzarella.”
“You named the goats,” I say slowly.
“The dairy farmer I bought them from named them. I’m just respecting his choices.”
He recites the whole dairy aisle of goat names completely straight-faced, this terrifying man, and I have to bite my cheek not to laugh.
“And the others?”
“Ricotta, Parmesan, and the big one in the back is Gorgonzola.”
“Of course she is.”
“He. Gorgonzola is a he. Very proud. Don’t let the gentle eyes fool you.”
I look at Gorgonzola, who is currently trying to eat a fence post. He does not look proud. He looks like he has approximately two brain cells, and they’re both focused on fiber consumption.
“Your assessment of livestock intelligence is questionable.”
“Your assessment of my assessment is noted and ignored.” Max finishes with the fence post and moves to the next hole. “How’s the writing going?”
The question catches me off guard. “What?”
“The writing. You were at the table for three hours. I could see you through the window, muttering to yourself and making faces.”
“I don’t make faces.”
“You make incredible faces. There was one about an hour ago where you looked like you wanted to strangle someone. Very expressive.”
“I was revising a dialogue scene.”
I lift my hand from the fence, caught. I hadn’t realized he’d been watching that long, or that closely.
“Was the dialogue winning?”
“The dialogue was being stubborn and unrealistic.”
“Dialogue can be unrealistic?”
“Dialogue can be lots of things. Clunky, on-the-nose, melodramatic-” I catch myself. “Why am I explaining this to you?”
“Because I asked. Because I’m interested.” He doesn’t look up from his work. “Because you’re the most talented writer I’ve ever met, and I like hearing how your brain works.”
Something in my chest tightens. “You’ve never read anything I’ve written.”
“Haven’t I?”
“Max-”
“The scene. The stubborn dialogue. What made it unrealistic?”
I hesitate, but he’s not pushing, not demanding, just asking, with that calm patience that still throws me off balance.
“The characters were talking around the actual issue,” I finally say. “Saying everything except what they meant. And I couldn’t figure out if it was authentic avoidance or just bad writing.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Sometimes silence tells you something about a person. Sometimes I’ve just made them dodge a question they would actually answer.”
“How do you tell which is which?”
“That’s the million-dollar question.” I watch Mozzarella abandon my shirt in favor of Max’s shoelaces. “Usually I read it out loud. Then I ask whether they’re afraid, or whether I am. Sometimes the conversation needs to go somewhere I didn’t plan.”
“What about when real people are being real idiots in real life? How do you tell the difference then?”
I look at him, really look, past the mud and the muscles and the easy farmer’s posture.
“I don’t know,” I admit. “I’m still figuring that out.”
He holds my gaze for a moment, and there’s something in his expression that makes my stomach flip. Then Mozzarella gets a good grip on his shoelace and yanks, and the moment breaks.
“Okay,” he says, gently extracting his foot. “That’s enough fiber for you.”
“She’s persistent.”
“She’s a menace. All the cheese goats are menaces.” He sets her aside and turns toward the chicken coop. “Speaking of menaces, I need to feed the birds. Want to watch me get mobbed?”
“Is that likely?”
“Extremely. The chickens here are… enthusiastic.”
“Enthusiastic.”
“You’ll see.”