Page 9 of The Single Dad Grump Next Door

The second I blast right past them with my head down, they fall quiet. I ignore them, rushing up the stairs to the room I claimed for myself just yesterday afternoon.

Nothing about this makes sense. This is a tiny seaside town. There’s only so much room here during tourist season. What are the chances that my least favorite human being and I would cross paths here, of all places? Whynow, after all these years?

It doesn’t matter. I need to get out of here. I’m not going to spend the entire summer cozied up in the same house as Gabe Sterling. If he ever finds out why I’m here instead of Chicago…

No. It can’t happen.

In the bedroom, my suitcase is still mostly packed. I haven’t yet had the chance unpack anything, too eager to spend some time out in the sun with a copy of the latest biography about Yehudi Menuhin, one of the greatest violinists of all time.

Instead, I was confronted by a demon.

My skin is crawling with the thought of howclosehe is. How easy it would be for him to deduce that I’m not going to beonstage tonight performing during the first week of the CSO’s summer season.

I’m sure he’d be thrilled to learn the truth. It’d probably feel like some long-awaited revenge finally coming to fruition.

I refuse to give him the satisfaction.

I toss the few things I’ve removed from my suitcase back inside and slam the lid shut.

“What’s going on?”

I whirl around to find Karina hovering in the doorway, eyebrows raised as I yank the zipper of my luggage closed.

“I’m going back to Chicago.”

“What? Why? What happened?”

I exhale slowly, trying not to cringe at the way my hand throbs from the way I just jerked my bag closed.

Rising to my feet, I know that the only way to get through this next part is to be honest.

“I just ran into your neighbor for the summer.”

Karina cocks her head to the side. “Oh? I think I saw them arrive yesterday, but I didn’t get a chance to say hello. Why do you have that look on your face? Are they weird? Were they rude to you?”

For some reason, that makes me snort. “It’s not—Karina, your neighbor is Gabriel Sterling.”

She furrows her brow. “Who?”

“Gabe Sterling? Doesn’t that ring a bell at all?”

Realization dawns on her. Her expression shifts from confusion to shock. She would have heard all about him for the entire four years I spent at Juilliard. In fact, she became so invested in the rivalry from afar that, for all intents and purposes, Gabe washerenemy, too.

“No way,” she breathes. “Wait, seriously? I thought he was living in California nowadays.”

I gape at her. “What? Why would you think that?”

“Uh, because he got a Grammy nomination last year? He composed the score forThe Bone Whisperer.”

“The bone what?”

“Gosh, Alina, you really do live under a rock. It was that insane action movie that came out last summer? The budget was, like, over a hundred million dollars or something like that. It won a couple of Oscars and got that Grammy nom…”

She trails off when she sees the look on my face.

“No,” I murmur, shaking my head slowly. “Gabe Sterling is in the Boston Symphony Orchestra.”

His second choice, after the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

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