Page 18 of Falling for a Grumpy Hero

“It turned out that she’d been emailing with the woman for days,” Jared was telling the others now. “I think she knows the wife of that client better than the husband does now.”

As the guys laughed, I cut my gaze toward him and frowned. “You’ve brought her up so many times tonight, you should probably just ask her out if you’re that interested in her.”

There was an unexpected bite in my voice, but Jared laughed and shook his head. “I have a feeling that would be the end of our friendship, dude. You’ve been staring at her all night.”

My insides clenched and iced over. I hadn’t realized anyone had noticed that, but clearly, I’d been more obvious about it than I’d thought. “It’s not that. She’s just strange to me, is all.”

“She’s not strange, Ford. She’s just a sunny person and you, my friend, haven’t seen the sun for years,” he joked. “It must be quite a shock.”

I frowned, but I didn’t feel the need to respond. Even if I had wanted to, Lila was suddenly floating over to us. Weirdly, she came right up to me, smiling almost apologetically as she gave me a little wave.

“I just wanted to come and say goodbye. I’m leaving, but I’ll see you on Monday.”

Uncertain why she’d felt the need to come and tell me that, I just shrugged. Jared stepped forward and grinned at her. “Bye, Lila. It was good to see you out in the wild. Are you going to be okay getting home?”

“I’ll be fine,” she assured him but glanced back at me.

My insides were still ice cold, and all I could do was stare back at her, but I did feel a tiny pang of regret when I saw the light in her eyes fading slightly at my lack of reaction. I swallowed hard, forcing myself to murmur, “Yeah, goodbye, Lila.”

Her brow furrowed, but she sighed and waved again before she spun around and walked away, joining Taylor and Addy at the door. The three of them disappeared together, and part of me was relieved to know that Taylor would probably be driving her home. At least I knew he would get her there safely and she wouldn’t be out walking by herself.

Jared sighed once they were gone, turning to me and arching both his eyebrows. “Was that really necessary?”

“Was what really necessary?” I shook my head, deciding that I was done with people for tonight. “You know what? I should head home too. I’ll see you at the office.”

Without waiting for him to respond or for any of the others to say a word, I marched through the loosely packed crowd and strode out to the parking lot. There was no sign of Lila, Taylor, or Addy though, so I assumed they’d already left.

Not that I was trying to catch up to her or anything.

On my drive home, it occurred to me that going to see her in a social situation hadn’t helped fix my problem at all. In fact, it seemed to have made it worse. I’d ended up giving myself more to think about after all, and it was as annoying as shit that my brain refused to leave well enough alone.

Early the next morning, after a night spent in an even more terrible place than my thoughts had been before I’d fallen asleep, I woke up exhausted but rolled out of bed. Rook was already up and I could hear his nails clicking against the tiles at my door.

He let out a quiet bark when he saw me and I grimaced. “Yeah, yeah, buddy. I know. I’m opening it now.”

Still half-asleep, I stumbled through the house, the faint sounds of those rotors thumping still echoing through my mind. I reached for the front door and unlocked it, and as soon as I opened it, Rook shot through the crack. I sighed, watching him bound happily into the yard. I followed him out, not nearly as happy about feeling the early morning sunshine on my face or the grass under my feet as he seemed to be.

When I opened my mailbox, the day got even worse. An envelope slid into my hand from a couple in Florida and I froze, a familiar darkness instantly taking hold. I knew exactly what this was, but I wished I didn’t. More than anything, though, I wished the whole thing this letter was about hadn’t been necessary in the first place.

9

LILA

Monday morning rolled around, and I’d been ultra excited ever since I’d gone to bed last night. Ford had asked me to bring my sketches to the office today and I’d gotten them all ready to show him.

Nerves fluttered in my stomach about having someone like him look at them, but he’d seemed interested enough and I was hoping that he would see something he liked. Maybe if he did, he’d let me take a shot at helping with the Heritage House project for real.

Feeling anxiously optimistic, I went to work, but Ford wasn’t there yet by the time I arrived. Usually, he was an early bird, but I sat down behind my desk and began responding to the emails that had come in over the weekend.

I kept my eyes peeled, ready to jump into action the moment he arrived. Strangely though, he didn’t arrive. The morning came and went, and no one seemed to know where he was. He didn’t call and he hadn’t left word about anything that might’ve taken him out of town for the morning.

With my hopes a little dashed, I tried to make the most of the time I had available to get caught up on everything that wasn’t Heritage House. If I could get all this done before he arrived, that meant perhaps we would have time to go over my sketches together and then I could explain to him what I’d had in mind for the project.

My computer dinged with a new email and I opened it, seeing a list of queries from a client I’d never heard of before. As I read through them, I realized that Ford had started working on a restoration for them before I’d been around, and while it seemed everything had been progressing smoothly, they were eager for an update.

Has he received feedback from the historical society about any limitations on using the original building materials? Did he find any evidence of termites? Does he know if the structure will support an additional bedroom on the east wing?

On and on it went. All of these were questions I’d need either Ford or the file to answer, and since he was nowhere to be found, I wheeled my chair back and stood up. As a safety measure, I knocked before twisting the knob on his office door, but he didn’t answer and I pushed it open slowly, peeking around it first to make sure he wasn’t sleeping in there or something.