Page 8 of Stuck With the Billionaire Grump

I tug my phone out of my back pocket as I push open the door, eager to see if Gigi Lee, owner of the local catering company, is available for me to stop by now. It’d be ideal if I could finish all of these errands by noon so that I can spend the rest of the day putting the final touches on the favors for the guests. The wedding has a fairly large guest list—about two hundred people—which means that I need to tie about two hundred white ribbons around two hundred tiny pots of local organic honey.

And then, of course, I have to adorn two hundred sachets of lavender teaandtwo hundred individually wrapped lemon cookies with personalizedJ&Estickers. Josie and Elijah thought it would be nice to have edible favors for the guests. All of the items are made here in Mermaid Shores, but it’s moments like these when I wish practically half the town didn’t RSVP to the wedding.

Of course, Elijah will be stopping by for a couple of hours to help me while Josie’s mother drags her away to a spa in Chatham. Still, I’ve learned that Elijah isn’t very good at tying ribbons, so I’ll still be doing most of the work.

I sigh to myself, eyes glued to the screen of my phone as the little bell on Shoreside Flower Shop’s door tinkles merrily to signal my exit.

In my peripheral vision, the sidewalk seems clear enough for me to step confidently without looking up from my phone, but I’m immediately proved wrong when I smack directly into a firm, broad chest covered in starched white cotton.

The collision is so hard and direct that I bounce back slightly, nearly losing my footing on the brick walkway. A group of twenty-something-year-old girls in bikini tops and cut-offs giggle amongst themselves as they sidestep me.

“Sorry!” I exclaim to the impressively solid chest as I struggle to regain my balance. “I’m so sorry. I wasn’t looking where I was going, and I wish I could say that’s totally unlike me, but—”

The rest of my sentence is chopped off the moment my eyes drift all the way up—he’sreallytall—to the stranger’s face.

I blink in surprise. In the span of a few heartbeats, my brain scrambles and then reorders itself around a sudden flow of unexpected memories.

It’s not such a strange thing for me to recognize the person I’ve stumbled into outside a shop on Main Street. Mermaid Shores is a small town, after all, and there are plenty of familiar faces all around even during the height of tourist season. Furthermore, this hidden gem of a summer getaway plays host to a bizarrely huge proportion of celebrities and VIPs, which is yet another avenue for possible recognition.

The problem is that I don’t recognize this man because he’s a local or because he’s a model or an actor or the son of an old-money American tycoon.

I recognize him because… well, because he’s Theo Danvers.

And unfortunately, even after all this time, I’d recognize Theo Danvers anywhere. Not because he’s so absurdly and uniquely gorgeous that he’d never be mistaken for anyone else, although I do remember thinking about twelve years ago that he wasstupidly handsome.

No, I recognize him simply because he’s very hard to miss. He’s so tall—even taller now that he’s not a lanky seventeen-year-old with bad posture—that I bet he gets asked all the time if he’s a professional basketball player. I’m guessing he’s six-four. Maybe six-five. I’m tall for a woman, but even my five-nine stature is nothing compared to him.

Other than the height, he’s got many other admittedly attractive features going for him. Green eyes. Sandy-blond hair naturally streaked with dark gold and the slightest hint of chestnut. Nice jawline. Good eyebrows.

Totally acceptable, really.

If you can get past the fact that he’s Theo Danvers, that is.

I open my mouth to say something,anything, but nothing comes out. I haven’t seen this man in over a decade, and I honestly never imagined that I’d ever see him again. What is he doing here? Shouldn’t he be in California? Or literally anywhere other than a random town that barely anybody knows about in Cape Cod?

Say something!my brain screams at my mouth.

Before my mouth can obey, however, the corners of Theo’s lips curve upwards in a polite, forced smile that doesn’t reach his eyes.

“It’s my fault,” he insists. “Excuse me.”

Then, without another word, he steps past me and carries on walking.

Dumbfounded, I stand there in front of the flower shop for a long moment, staring at his retreating form as he heads away from the main hub of activity and toward a narrow lane of private beach cottages. He doesn’t glance back at me; not even once. As if I’m just some random, unimportant woman he’s never seen before.

As if he doesn’t recognize me.

That can’t be true. I haven’t changed that much since I was sixteen. I mean, yeah, I finally coaxed some curves out of my previously stick-thin and flat-chested body. Also, I definitely take better care of my hair now, so it’s not as frizzy as it used to be, but it’s still the same color as always. The same caramelbrown waves that I inherited from my mother. And my eyes are still the same color, obviously—a brown so dark that it’s nearly the same color as my iris. Just like Josie’s eyes, and our fathers’ eyes, too.Montgomery eyes: black as the night, they used to joke.

It’s not like I shaved my head or dyed my hair blue or started using color contacts. Or like I got a bunch of tattoos and piercings.

I shouldn’t be unrecognizable. Not tohim, at least.

Or maybe the fact of the matter is that he never paid nearly as much attention to me as I paid to him. Which is tragically pathetic of me.

I sigh heavily and look down at my phone again, only to have my attention dragged away from it yet again by a voice calling to me from the opposite direction of where Theo had just disappeared.

“Lucy? It’s Lucy, right? Oh my goodness, it’s you! I swore I recognized you, but I wasn’t sure and didn’t want to make a total fool of myself.”

---