Page 8 of My Grumpy Sweetheart
I opened my truck door and threw the backpack on the passenger seat before getting in. I didn’t care that I was leaving my tent, my sleeping bag, and my other gear behind. I just wanted to get away from this shitshow. Just wanted to forget this whole thing was happening. Wanted to forget that my friends thought it was okay to sell me off just like… like… I still couldn’t come up with a fitting comparison because it was just plain wrong. No ifs, ands, or buts about it.
“Dakota…” Liam came running towards my truck.
I shook my head, turning the key in the ignition.
What a great fucking weekend it was.
CHAPTERTHREE
BAILEY
“Yeah, I set the post to go live at 11am,” I said, my phone trapped between shoulder and ear while I hopped through my apartment trying to get this incredibly cute but fucking annoying shoe… ooo… done! One down — one to go. “And I don’t want to be rude or anything, but technically, I’m on vacation and I really have to get going. If you have any questions, just go and ask Jacsyn. He’s responsible for the Social Media campaign running this weekend.”
I heard her gasping for air. Shit. I knew she was one of those old-schoolinterns are my personal coffee slavespeople, so I definitely knew better than mentioning her precious Social Media campaign was run by an intern — that was until after the fact it’d run successfully and without a hitch because our twenty year-old intern was very, very familiar with Social Media. Stephanie, my mid-fifties worrywart who’d, up until now, never run a Social Media campaign for any book she’d edited? Yeah… not so much. “Jacsyn? But he’s…”
“A digital-native. Exactly.” I smiled brightly, hoping to hell that it showed in my voice. “Honestly, he’s the perfect candidate, I promise. And you know that I would never do you dirty, right? You’re one of my favorite editors to work with.”
I was laying it on thick, but technically, it wasn’t a lie. Her having no idea about Social Media meant that she’d basically let me and my team do whatever we wanted. The hard part wasn’t selling her the campaign, the hard part was explaining to her what exactly we wanted to do and babysitting her afterward because she was worried everything was going to hell.
Grabbing my second show, I leaned against the wall in my hallway, carefully trying to get it on without falling against the suitcases I’d packed for my weekend-long date next to me.
Yes, suitcases.
Plural.
I liked to be prepared, and I had no idea what kind of things we’d do in an apple orchard, so sue me.
She was giggling — thank fuck! “You’re always so sweet, Bailey,” she practically purred into my ear. “You know, usually, I wouldn’t trust some intern, but… I trust your judgment.”
“And you won’t regret it,” I told her. She wouldn’t. This was an easy thing. Jacsyn was ready to spend his weekend replying to all comments to keep post engagement levels high, and I… would be visiting some kind of apple orchard with my axe murderer.
Speaking of whom… I needed to get going. Like… five minutes ago. Thankfully, I’d already picked up our rental — because for some reason the travel agency couldn’t reimburse me for gas, but they could rent us a car for the weekend — and only needed to pick up my date.
My pulse sped up.
Three months was a long time to wait for a date, but it’d be worth it. I didn’t know how I knew, but I did. My gut feeling told me this was going to be an amazing weekend with an amazing man at an amazing location. I was a hundred percent certain of that.
* * *
Okay, axe murderer definitely is the right name,I thought as I drove the car along winding roads, right into the middle of nowhere. Don’t get me wrong, the scenery was absolutely beautiful: dark rich greens, deep browns, and the first hints of the gorgeous fall colors that were to come once the leaves started falling. Everything looked like someone had cranked the saturation up to max, and I was living for it.
But also… the guy posing with a fucking axe on his profile pic living in the middle of nowhere? It sounded like the beginning of a bad horror movie.
Fortunately, it could also be the start of a romance novel, and I decided to go with that because my axe murderer devouring me in a bed in some cozy bed and breakfast sounded a lot better than him devouring me after hacking me into pieces in his garden shed.
My pulse was kicking up a notch as the navigation app on my phone told me to take a turn to the left.
The forest was getting lighter and lighter, and it didn’t take too long until the first houses came into view. It wasn’t like a town or anything, but every minute or two there was a house visible through the trees.
Another left turn, a bumpy dirt road, and there, at the cul-de-sac — if it could even be called that — was the house I was looking for. My axe murderer’s house. I should probably start calling him by his name, but… I didn’t know it yet. Somehow, it hadn’t come up in our sparse conversations via Carousel’s messenger function.
First thing on my to-do list: get his name.
His house was cute, though. I’d half expected a wooden cabin, but it wasn’t. It was a real house with a stone base, a cute, starkly slanted roof, and dark green window shutters. It was giving meHänsel and Gretelvibes.
Just as I came to a stop in front of his house, the door opened, and my axe murderer appeared in all his hipster-lumberjacky goodness. Full beard, long hair, he was even wearing the same flannel shirt he’d worn in his profile pic. The only thing that was missing was the axe. Instead, he’d slung a small travel bag over his shoulder, and I couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow. Was that his luggage? That one little bag?
How?
