The morning after the marathon bake, the kitchen—now professionally spotless again—felt strangely hollow. Caleb was gone, having slipped out before Eliza even woke up, leaving behind only a perfectly itemized receipt for the courier service that delivered the thirteen starters.
Eliza, however, couldn't focus on the spreadsheets or the successful revenue event. She sat at her laptop, staring at the latest draft of The Duke and the Decibel. The hero, the stoic Duke Alistair, had suddenly become alarmingly well-organized and prone to using corporate jargon during emotional declarations.
The Duke took a calibrated step closer, his gaze steady. "Lady Eloise," he murmured, his voice a low, disciplined hum. "Your erratic emotional output represents an unacceptable risk factor to the stability of my internal portfolio. I require an immediate, high-commitment merger of our lives to mitigate future volatility."
Eliza slammed her laptop shut. This wasn't romantic; it was a hostile takeover. Caleb Vance was contaminating her creative process.
The problem, she realized, was that Caleb—the real, breathing, metric-obsessed man—was infinitely more interesting than the fictional Duke. She needed to understand why his unexpected moment of vulnerability at 2:00 AM had hit her so hard. She needed to research him.
"You're an author, Eliza," she muttered to herself. "You study behavior. You analyze the anatomy of a romantic hero. Caleb Vance is simply a data set you haven't completed compiling yet."
For the rest of the day, Eliza dedicated herself to covertly cataloging Caleb's habits under the pretense of "inventory management."
Eliza's Unofficial Field Notes: Caleb Vance (CV)
Metric
Observation (Source: Kitchen)
Interpretation (The Romantic Subtext)
Punctuality
Arrives 7:00:00 AM. Leaves 5:30:00 PM. Never a minute late or early.
He is reliable. A rock. Someone who will always show up, precisely on time, forever. (Extremely swoon-worthy, but needs more chaos.)
Desk Organization
Three pens, precisely spaced. Monitor angle: 90 degrees vertical. Coffee mug label facing outward.
Unshakeable discipline. But where does he hide his deepest, darkest secrets? Probably in a password-protected folder labeled 'Vulnerability.zip.'
Lunch Protocol
Turkey sandwich on artisanal rye (not theirs) cut into perfect 3x3 inch squares. Eats exactly half, packages the rest for 12:30 PM tomorrow.
Zero deviation. Does he even like the sandwich, or is it merely nutritionally optimal? Needs a strong, irrational craving. (Must test with a smuggled doughnut.)
Flinch Response
High. Triggered by loud noises, physical contact, and anything outside his color-coded systems.
Deeply repressed. Must be slowly and gently broken down via constant, low-grade exposure to affection and glitter.
Eliza watched him now as he prepared his afternoon coffee. Caleb was measuring the grounds with a tiny silver spoon he brought from his apartment—a tool that looked like it belonged in a jewelry case.
He caught her staring. His eyebrows rose slightly—a low-level alert he deployed when his personal space was violated, or when the cost of spelt flour increased by 0.2%.
Eliza panicked. "I'm measuring!" she blurted out, pointing vaguely at the sourdough racks. "I'm compiling data on the existential burden of 'The Tragic Rye.' I need to observe your general… energy profile to see if it's compatible with the starter's overall emotional state."
Caleb set down the tiny silver spoon, folding his arms. "My energy profile is currently operating at 88% capacity. It is highly efficient and emotionally neutral. It is, therefore, perfectly compatible with any product line. You are distracting the subject, Eliza."
"But that's the problem!" Eliza countered, abandoning her cover story in a rush of authorial frustration. "Your profile is too neutral! My Duke needs an irrational obsession! He needs a flaw that makes him human. I keep trying to write him a dark, mysterious past, but all he ever wants to do is calculate compound interest on his inherited estate!"
Caleb blinked, genuinely perplexed. "Why would you assign a negative trait when the current profile delivers optimal results?"
"Because that's not romance, Caleb! That's a CPA review! The tension comes from the struggle between the measured world and the heart's chaos! I need to know your fatal flaw. Your weakness. What's the one thing you can't control?"
Caleb stared at her. His expression softened, and he actually managed a faint, almost imperceptible smile.
"My greatest weakness, Eliza, is that I find the lack of a clear answer to a solvable problem highly distressing," he confessed, his voice dropping slightly. "And right now, you are a solvable problem that I have not yet managed to categorize."
Before she could process that—he thinks I'm a problem to be solved!—Caleb turned and walked back to his desk.
Eliza watched him go. He was all straight lines, crisp fabric, and precise movements. A perfect fortress of a man.
Then, she noticed it. Hanging slightly out of the back pocket of his perfectly tailored trousers was a small, vibrant blue thread. It wasn't the color of his suit, his shirts, or anything in the kitchen.
Curiosity overriding caution, Eliza approached him slowly, leaning close, pretending to examine Larry, who was burbling away innocently.
With a practiced thief's movement, she plucked the thread free.
It was a piece of yarn, about three inches long, the unmistakable color of bright, childlike crayon blue. It was too soft and too fuzzy to have come from a commercial fabric. It was domestic. It was random. It was, in a word, unoptimized.
Caleb suddenly stiffened. He didn't turn, but Eliza could feel the intensity of his concentration shift from his screen to her.
"Eliza. What are you holding?" he asked, his voice low and devoid of his usual corporate cadence. It was a purely personal question.
Eliza's heart hammered. She held up the tiny blue yarn. "I found a breach in your protocol, Vance. This thread… it has a high chaos index. Where did it come from?"
Caleb let out a slow, controlled breath. He kept his eyes fixed on his monitor, but the silence was deafening.
"That," he said, his voice flat, "is confidential personal data, Eliza. It has zero bearing on the profitable operation of Vance & Copley."
But Eliza knew better. She looked at the tiny, soft piece of blue yarn—the one thing he couldn't control, the one piece of qualitative chaos he carried with him. The perfect, unexpected flaw for her Duke.
"Duly noted," Eliza whispered, tucking the blue thread into her own pocket. "Research complete."
That was a good find! The little blue thread hints at a soft, personal side of Caleb that Eliza can now use to needle him—and to inspire her writing.