Page 12 of Doctor Grump

“I just want to know what his deal is!” I insisted. “And I do not talk about him that much.”

“Well, we’ve been here for, I don’t know, an hour, and the whole time, you’ve done nothing but talk about him. You didn’t even notice your chocolate fudge melting.”

I looked down at his pointed finger and gasped in horror at the melted mass of goo that had formed in my cup. Melted ice cream was one of the worst things in the world, and it was sad to see something with so much potential for deliciousness disintegrate into a watery amalgamation of its former self. The sadness only made my anger worse.

“This is his fault,” I complained.

“Ah, here we go,” Santiago said. “See what I mean?”

“Oh my God, Santiago, I’m not obsessed with him! Trust me! I could never be obsessed with an egotistic bad-mannered offensive individual like that. I just want to know where he gets off treating people like that. Like we’re all below him! Ever since he came to town, he has acted like he couldn’t care less about anyone or anything here. He hasn’t made any attempt to socialize with us. I think he hates all of us. Like, why even move here in the first place then?”

“He seems to like Monty well enough,” Santiago pointed out. “He even came to Hunter’s birthday party.”

“Yeah.” It surprised me when I saw him at Monty and Kayla’s son’s birthday party. Ever since Ian came to town, I made it a point to be nice to him. It hadn’t just been the fact that he was tall and handsome and sometimes looked like he needed a good hug. Or the fact that he was one of the most fascinatingly irritating men I had ever met. He was quiet to the point of rudeness and very direct. As someone who had been raised on utmost politeness, his devil-may-care straightforwardness was intriguing, to say the least.

I’d tried to help him out. I knew he would have trouble making friends in town because of his blunt nature, so I made it a point to befriend him, perhaps to smoothen his transition into town. But from the beginning, he treated me with cool-mannered contempt. At first, I thought he might have been a little shy or maybe just awkward at conversation.

But now I knew the truth. It wasn’t shyness. It was disdain.

Ian Graham did not like me. He actively disliked me.

And I didn’t know why.

“According to Monty, he moved here for proximity to his foundation,” Santiago said.

“Foundation?” I asked, curiosity overpowering my annoyance for a second.

“Yes. He has a foundation that funds research in the treatment of some mental disorders. It’s recently headquartered in New Orleans.”

“Oh.” I hadn’t known that about Ian, and despite my annoyance, I had to admit it was actually a pretty cool thing for him to do. “Still. I haven’t done a single bad thing to him. I have gone out of my way to be nice to him in every single interaction we’ve had. There is literally no reason for him not to like me.” And it wasn’t a feeling I was used to. Not to be conceited or anything, but most people liked me. I was a very likable person—friendly, helpful, and communicative. I made it a point to know everyone’s name, to help out whenever I could, and try anything to put people at ease, even sometimes to my detriment. Heck, I had won Ms. Congeniality nearly three times in a row.

Men especially liked me. Not that I inspired any great lust or anything like that, but a lot of my good friends were men. I think it was because they saw me as harmless. I was like a little sister and confidante to a lot of them, someone they could talk to about mushy stuff that they couldn’t confide in their guy friends about. I was a comfortable choice because there was never any danger of attraction there. I knew I wasn’t ugly, but I was often not their type, which made it easier for me to be their “gal pal.”

So why was Ian Graham, a man I had never met before, acting like I was a mosquito buzzing around his ear or something?

“Maybe that’s the problem,” Santiago said, putting his cup down.

“Maybe what’s the problem?” I asked.

“The fact that you’ve gone out of your way to be nice to him. As far as I can tell, so has every other marriageable aged woman in town.”

“Really?” I had never even noticed that.

“Yes. Monty tells me the good doctor has just about had it with the women in our town. Dr. Graham is a hot catch amongst the ladies. Don’t ask me why. The man has the personality of a porcupine and the charm of a he-goat, but for some reason, ladies love it.”

“But I’m not like that,” I said defensively, even though I wasn’t exactly convinced myself. After all, there was no mistaking that, on some level, I found the doctor, with his green eyes and angelic looks, very attractive. “I wasn’t after him because I wanted to marry him or anything. I was just being nice.”

“I know,” Santiago said. “But he thinks you want more from him. So I think the best thing to do is to prove him wrong and stay away from him.”

I heaved a sigh. “Yeah. Maybe you’re right.” As much as I didn’t want to admit it, Santiago had a point. Of course, I knew I had mostly pure intentions approaching Dr. Graham, but he didn’t know that, and I guess I had been acting overly friendly with him. I just wished I could figure out why I was so fixated on him.

But enough of that.

Instead, I should be using that energy to figure out what I could do about my current financial predicament.

“I’m sorry about your grandmother, by the way,” Santiago mentioned in the quiet that followed. “I hate that I couldn’t attend the funeral with you.”

I shrugged. “It’s okay. I don’t think you could have anyway.” A part of me wanted to continue by telling Santiago what happened with my family, but I hesitated. I knew what he would say. He would offer me a job on the spot and probably give me a ridiculous, overblown salary to match so that I didn’t have to rely on my parents. But I didn’t want that for the same reason I hadn’t taken any of my friends’ offers for help, even though most of them were married to billionaires. I didn’t want to replace relying on my parents with relying on my friends. That was simply too embarrassing. Besides, it was about time I grew up and got a job on my own merits rather than falling back on someone’s generosity again.

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