“Good night.”
Once his footsteps faded up the stairs, a third involuntary Dan-induced smile spread across my face.
My duffel bag was missing when I went to retrieve it from the living room. I was pretty sure I’d brought it in from the car, but I decided to check just in case. When I retrieved my keys from the foyer table where I’d dropped them, I noticed that the door to my grandfather’s study was open.
On the chessboard, the black pawn was still face-to-face with the white one I’d moved my first night at the farm. Unlike before, I was ready to make my next move. My smile grew wider, and I barely deliberated before moving my next piece. As I stared at the chessboard, fully confident that I could beat Dan in twelve moves, another curious thought occurred to me. I left the study and wentupstairs to my room. My duffel bag, my laptop bag, and my purse were sitting on the bed. It felt like a warm hug.
“What the fuck?!” I bolted upright in my bed and snatched off my sleep mask. I remembered that the farmhouse didn’t have blackout curtains, but had completely forgotten about the goddamn rooster that screamed its head off first thing in the morning. I flopped backward onto the mattress and pulled the quilts over my face.
“What the hell am I doing here?” The question that had been rattling around my head nonstop since I pulled off the highway last night was the same one I screamed into the otherwise empty bedroom.
I grabbed my phone off the bedside table to see that my alarm was due to go off in forty-five minutes, and that I’d missed three calls from Max, six from my mother, and none from Teddy but two from his mother. I rolled my eyes.
I had no job and no boyfriend, though I wasn’t as sad about the latter as I was about the former. The one thing I had was this farm. If I could be successful at this, maybe it would mean that I wasn’t a complete failure. Maybe losing my job at the firm and my breakup with Teddy were leading me somewhere else. Generations of women in my family kept this farm going. George and Harriet King must have known something I didn’t when they left it to me. I owed it to them and to myself to try.
After dismissing all the alerts on my phone without reading them, I decided that if I was going to give this farm life a shot, I was going to do it right.
After getting tired of waiting for the water to heat up, I took a lukewarm shower, wet my hair enough to slick it back into a ponytail, and dressed in the most comfortable clothes I’d packed—black yoga pants, a white T-shirt, and a pair of tennis shoes.
I gave myself one of my famous pep talks—usually reserved for my clients before a press conference—in the bathroom mirror while I brushed my teeth before skipping down the stairs toward the kitchen, ready to conquer the day, after I conquered a cup of coffee. First, I made a quick stop in my grandfather’s study, where I conquered one of Dan’s bishops.
“Good morning?” I nearly jumped when I entered the kitchen to see Dan fully dressed, wide awake, and sipping from a steaming mug. He looked like he’d been awake for hours.
“Morning. Tea?”
“I was actually hoping for some coffee.” I shot him a quick smile before I started rifling through the cupboard.
“Do you need a hand?” Despite our rapport last night, I knew that Dan thought of me as a walking disaster. If I was going to prove that I could cut it on the farm, I would start by making my own coffee without help. How hard could it be? Alicia did it every morning.
“No, I’m fine. I can manage.” I didn’t even bother to turn around when I answered him, continuing to search the kitchen. I hoped to find one of those coffee machines that uses pods, but I was clearly reaching for the stars with that one. I opened another cabinet while feeling Dan’s eyes on me.
“Aha, coffee!” I held the small burlap sack labeled COFFEE triumphantly over my head, raising an eyebrow at him before setting itdown. “Okay… filters, filters, filters,” I murmured and began opening drawers.
“They’re in the—” he started, but I cut him off before he could finish. I was determined to do this myself.
“Dan, I’m fine. I don’t want to get in the way of whatever you normally do here.” I turned back to the silverware drawer, slammed it shut, and opened the one underneath it, coming up empty again. “Just pretend I’m not here.” A small part of me hoped that he would leave because my anxiety was increasing, along with the feeling of being put under a microscope. How could I manage a farm if I couldn’t make a cup of coffee?
Focus, Emma.
I glanced over my shoulder. Dan was still in the same exact spot, leaning on the countertop, one leg crossed over the other, watching me flutter around the unfamiliar kitchen like a confused hummingbird.
“Do you have something else you need to do?” I asked, hoping to mask my frustration as I shut a drawer full of pot holders.
“Yeah, I was on my way to the greenhouse,” he said with an amused smile and took another sip of his tea, which was no longer steaming. “But it can wait a few minutes…”
I turned around and glared at him, clearly enjoying himself.
“… while I finish my tea.” He held up the mug for emphasis. I resumed my search.
“Filters.” I finally dug them out and carefully loaded one into the machine. I hadn’t used an old-school coffee maker since I was an intern, but I remembered the gist. I grabbed the bag of coffee and carefully tipped it up to load the coffee machine. I was preparedto shoot Dan another triumphant smirk when a small avalanche of whole, unground coffee beans filled the filter, overflowed, and spilled onto the countertop; a few bounced off the toe of my shoe and landed at my feet. “What the hell?”
“Emma, please, I don’t mind—” Dan stepped forward and I gave him a look that could melt steel. He resumed his perch on the counter, using his mug to stifle a laugh. This was the time to ask for help. I knew it and he knew it. Unfortunately, Emma Walters doesn’t ask for help, and when someone tells me that I can’t do something, I’m overcome by this primal urge to prove them wrong. It’s served me well in the past, and today would be no different. I was going to make the best fucking cup of coffee that Dan Pednekar had ever seen and wipe the smug smile off his face.
The next order of business was finding a coffee grinder. It was in the cabinet next to the sack of beans, and I managed to grind a decent amount while only covering a quarter of the kitchen in coffee grounds in the process. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough for a decent cup of coffee, which was obvious from the pale color of the brown liquid dripping into the coffeepot. I got the sense that Dan knew it, too, but was smart enough not to comment on it. I poured myself a cup of coffee, added milk and sugar, and took a sip.
Holy shit, that was terrible.
I grimaced then added more sugar.
