Page 15 of The Grumpy Actor

“You want me to aimlessly walk around this town alone?” Liam retorts.

“Obviously not. You get a guide.” Julian glances at me. “I’m sure you wouldn’t mind showing him around town, Sophie. Since this is your hometown, I can’t imagine anyone better to help him get familiar with it.”

“Me?” I yelp, shaking my head rapidly. “I thought I’d have the rest of the day off since he’s not working.”

“And you do. You’ll be having fun exploring the town. That’s still a day off,” Julian says.

“You can’t call it a day off if I still have to see his face,” I retort sharply.

Liam throws me a glare. “She’s right, Julian. I doubt I’ll be able to learn anything useful from her. Just hire a tour guide.”

“Why should I? You already have a personal assistant who’s a local resident of the town. Trust me, it would be a waste of our resources.” Julian chuckles and adjusts his leather jacket. “You guys run along now. I’ll be taking the car, so you two can walk and explore.”

“Julian!” Liam warns between gritted teeth.

“I have a business meeting with the other producers. Bye.” Julian strides off, leaving me with Liam and my dashed hopes for a restful day.

I groan, glaring at Liam. Liam’s unwavering gaze settles on me, and there isn’t a bit of remorse. If anything, he looks annoyed.

“Pack up here. I’ll go change in my trailer,” Liam says, and leaves before I can form a reply.

I fight the urge to stomp my feet and instead focus on clearing Liam’s things off the tables.

I make it back to the trailer and wait outside for Liam to finish getting dressed. Almost ten minutes later, he comes out of the trailer in the same black pants and blue silk shirt he’d worn while leaving the resort this morning.

And just like this morning, I can’t stop thinking about how much the blue shirt matches his eyes.

He’s so effortlessly handsome, and I hate that so much. If he was even a little bit ugly, I bet I wouldn’t have such a hard time being around him.

“Alright, tour guide, move it,” Liam says as he waltzes past me. I follow him. “Where are we going first?”

“The beach.”

“Why? I see the beach every day from my room. In case you’ve forgotten, I stay at the Royal Crest Resort.”

“Yeah, but you’ve only seen a minuscule part of it,” I explain, my anger naturally diminishing as I talk about my favorite place in town. “Surfside Haven is first and foremost a beach community, and what you see from your room is like looking at a postcard. It doesn’t capture what it’s really like at all.”

“What more could there be to a beach?”

I raise my eyebrows at him, accepting the challenge he just threw in the air.

“You’ll see.” I smile despite myself.

I walk down the familiar street, but today it seems different. Everywhere we go, people stop to stare at Liam. A few wave at him while the teenagers take pictures without a care in the world.

While I squirm under all of the attention, Liam doesn’t even blink. I’m used to being able to say hi to everyone I walk past in town because I’ve lived here all my life, but today, no one seems to care that I’m also walking down this street.

All eyes are on Liam freaking Ryder.

Luckily, when we make it to the beach it isn’t too crowded. The view of the resort is majestic from here, but what really catches my attention is everyone else on the beach.

Families lounge on the sand, laughing and relaxed in their own rhythms. Farther out near the reef, a stretch of weathered wooden houses sits peacefully above the water.

Liam gasps. “I had no idea people actually lived on the water.”

“The first settlers who discovered this place primarily lived on the water because the land was mostly forest,” I say proudly, the lore of Surfside Haven exciting me just like it did when I was a kid. I walk down the beach with Liam following beside me. “Eventually, they expanded across the land, but several of them still lived on the water. Those are the ones who made their living fishing. And they still do.”

Liam quickens his pace, looking around him as though he can’t believe his eyes.

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