Page 19 of Stuck with Doctor Grump

“You changed the vendor spreadsheet,” he said flatly.

“I reorganized it,” I replied. “It needed more… sparkle.”

“It didn’t need sparkle. It needed accuracy.”

“Well, now it has both.”

A long pause.

His jaw ticked, but he didn’t argue.

Across the room, Eleanor James raised a brow as she slowly unwrapped a lemon poppyseed muffin.

“You two okay?” she asked, voice casual—but not really. “I was hoping for fireworks at the gala, not ice storms.”

Damien didn’t flinch. I smiled—too quickly, too fake.

“We’re fine,” I chirped. “Totally fine.”

Eleanor’s gaze lingered. Her expression said she didn’t believe me for a second, but she moved on anyway, diving into a lengthy explanation about table arrangements and the logistics of chair sashes.

I nodded at all the right times, took notes I wouldn’t read later, and tried not to let my eyes drift toward the man across the table who had kissed me like I was the only soft place in the world—and then disappeared like none of it mattered.

He hadn’t followed up. No call. No text. Not even a “Hey, remember when we emotionally undressed each other by a fireplace? LOL.”

And now we were here, pretending to be professionals while the truth buzzed between us like a wasp in a bottle.

I focused on my color swatches instead, trying to find peace in blush tones and muted sage.

Beside me, Marge leaned over with a whisper. “He looks tense. Did you try offering him a cinnamon roll?”

“I’d rather throw one at him.”

She chuckled. “Ah. So, things are going well.”

The meeting dragged on.

Every second felt like a decade.

By the time Eleanor wrapped things up with a cheery, “Let’s make this the most romantic gala Cedar Springs has ever seen,” I was already halfway out the door.

I didn’t look back.

Because looking at Damien meant remembering the heat of his hand on mine, the softness of his voice when he let his walls down, and the way I’d actually believed, for one stupid night, that we’d found something real in the middle of the storm.

But whatever that something was… it was gone now.

And I wasn’t going to be the one to dig through silence trying to find it again.

I unlocked the shop door just after six, still clutching my thermos like it was a lifeline. The air outside was crisp with early morning fog, the kind that settled over Cedar Springs like a blanket soaked in nostalgia.

InsideRuby Bloom, I expected the usual. The soft scent of eucalyptus, the faint hum of the cooler, the creak of the floorboard by the hydrangeas.

Instead, I got mold.

Not the romantic, woodsy kind of earthy scent either—but something damp, sharp, and wrong.

I froze in the doorway, blinking through the murky half-light. Something dripped—steady, rhythmic. The shop was dark except for a faint pool of glow from the emergency light by the register.

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