The Gossip and the Grump (Three BFFs and a Wedding #2)
Pippa Grant
INTRODUCTION
The Gossip and the Grump
A one night stand with the boss enemies-to-lovers fish out of water / quirky small-town romantic comedy
See that guy over there? The insanely tall, broad-shouldered, dark-haired, scowling, “I don’t drink coffee” suit?
Surprise! He’s the new owner of my family’s mountain café.
The café that has been my life purpose since I was born in the kitchen there almost thirty years ago.
The café that he’s planning to completely gut and renovate for revenge against one of my family members.
He’s also the funny, charming, irresistible guy I spilled all of my secrets to last week.
During the hottest one-night stand of my life.
As my dog would say, woof me.
Secrets and gossip keep getting me in trouble, and I swore I was done with both, but now my family’s café is on the line.
It’s time to use every last trick I know to uncover every secret this man is hiding.
I don’t care how much I liked him our first night together, or how much I keep seeing glimpses of that man beneath his gruff exterior.
One of us has to go.
It won’t be me.
The Gossip & The Grump is a one night stand to enemies to lovers romcom featuring a woman desperately trying to unlearn everything she knows about everyone, a grumpy misfit hiding a secret heart of gold, an unfortunate incident with powdered cheese, and the world’s biggest lap puppy. It stands alone, but you wouldn’t go wrong to read The Worst Wedding Date first.
This book is dedicated to Schrodinger’s Boob. You know what you did.
This book is also dedicated to anyone struggling with life throwing you a curve ball when you’re already at the very end of your rope. I hope Sabrina, Grey, and Jitter give you a few hours of escape.
1
Greyson Cartwright, aka a guy who should’ve picked a different bar…
It would’ve been nice if today could’ve told me it didn’t intend to go as planned.
Rude, today. Very rude.
But not as rude as the woman currently sitting next to me.
Correction.
Pretending to sit next to me while actually attempting to crawl into my lap and take my kombucha.
“Ooh, is that the lime mojito flavor?” she asks, poking at a glass in my sample flight. The outdoor beach bar is lit mostly with tiki torches and the music is drowning out the sound of the ocean waves. But it’s not drowning out the woman. “They ran out before I got any. Is it good?”
Should’ve picked a different seat.
In a different bar.
Considering how much of a failure every bit of today has been, I didn’t even need to come to this state.
My phone buzzes on the bar. I lift it, see that both my sister and my former business partner are sending me walls of texts, grimace, and flip the device back over without reading it.
Much.
The main points are hard to miss.
Selfish asshole.
You agreed to this.
If you were really over it, you’d send her a birthday gift.
Quit being a dick and get the lights turned back on.
Both of them mad at me for vastly different things.
Both of them telling stories vastly different from the truth in order to—oddly enough— try to get back on my good side.
I should change my number. Maybe my name too. And if I don’t quit gripping this glass so hard, I’ll have to change my shirt as well.
I make myself put it down as I realize how badly my hand is shaking.
“Can you think of anything sadder than leaving Hawaii without trying lime mojito kombucha?” The woman leans even closer, her hair brushing my arm.
I landed in Hawaii four hours late because of a maintenance issue with the plane. Then I was assigned a rental car with a flat tire and waited an extra hour before the company could find another car. And once I arrived at the resort where I was supposed to attend—okay, wreck—a wedding, everything was crickets.
The whole reason I flew across the Pacific was canceled. No destination wedding. No reception. No chance to watch Chandler Sullivan’s face when I announced to his family, friends, and new bride that he was a failure who had to sell his family’s Colorado mountain café to me because of online gambling problems.
A jilting, apparently. At a resort with so few staff, I gave up on finding someone to check me in and found a different hotel a few miles up the road.
And while Chandler Sullivan deserves every shit thing that’s ever happened to him, I’m irritated that I didn’t get to play a part.
Not that I’m normally a dick. Current circumstances happen to be extenuating.
I enjoy the hell out of justice being served, and the opportunity presented itself at the exact moment when I needed something to land on the right side of karma but couldn’t get justice anywhere else.
And now I’m debating if I want to finish my flight with this woman next to me, or if I want to give up on trying to figure out the mystery flavor in this lemon ginger kombucha and find a better place to attempt to enjoy my limited time in Hawaii.
Plenty of places to choose from.
Can’t beat paradise, even if I didn’t get to enjoy my long-coming revenge.
Yet.
I still own Chandler Sullivan’s café. Signed the papers this morning before boarding the flight that was supposed to get me here just in time to destroy his life the same way he once destroyed mine.
Not the exact same.
But close enough.
And I still get to watch everyone in his hometown realize what he’s done and what will ultimately happen to his family’s business.
Just not at his wedding.
“Not that I’m asking you to share.” The woman giggles a high-pitched giggle that threatens to split my eardrums while she tries to lean even closer. “That would be too much, wouldn’t it? Or would it? Wow. Your hands are really big. Look at your thumb. That’s…a really big thumb.”
I suck in a breath through my nose, twist on my stool to block her with my body, and pretend I can hear the ocean surf over the sound of this woman’s chatter and the ’80s music playing on the bar’s speaker system.
“Really big thumb,” the woman repeats.
I take another swig of my lemon ginger kombucha and close my eyes while I swirl it around my mouth.
What is that aftertaste?
It’s different. Reminds me of the holidays, but fir tree isn’t right, and also doesn’t make any sense.
I love a good puzzle, especially after a long day of not much going right.
“Are your…feet…as big?” the woman next to me asks.
And this kombucha is a mystery I won’t be solving.
Today’s a wash.
I start to move, leaving most of my flight still intact in front of me, when a whirlwind arrives on my other side. “Hi, honey,” a short redhead says. To me. “Sorry I’m late. Parking the car took forever. Did you order dinner yet?”
Is she—is she talking to me?
She subtly moves her green eyes to the woman on the other side of me, then adds an equally subtle eye roll.
“Honey?” she repeats.
My brain kicks in, and so does my mouth right as my phone vibrates on the bar again. “No.”
“Silly. You’re so good at ordering for me. You didn’t have to wait. I know you were starving after…” She winks.
It’s a massive, exaggerated wink that’s so unexpected and legitimately goofy that it startles a small laugh out of me.
That hasn’t happened in weeks. Months?
Laughing at a stranger is uncomfortable enough that I almost reach for my phone to see what half-truth message my sister or my former business partner has sent now.
Instead, I make myself nod at the woman. “I was hungrier than a whale,” I agree.
“And so mellow you forgot to save me a seat.” She laughs and pats my hand like touching me is the most natural thing in the world, her fingertips soft and light as a butterfly’s wings, then pulls away before I can process that she invaded my personal space.
A wave of goosebumps spreads up my wrist and forearm.
Do I know her?