Page 6 of The Grumpy Roommate Gamble

The full name. Maybe she was okay after all. “Maybe I wanted to surprise you. Did you ever think of that?”

“Well, Iamsurprised.” At this, she opened her arms.

I put down the coffee and folded her in. And it didn’t matter that I towered over her and was easily twice her size. Her hug still made me feel like I was finally home.

She squeezed me with enough force that I retracted my earlier assessment that she’d gotten fragile. “I’m so glad you made it home safe.”

“Me, too.” I stepped back. “You want a cinnamon roll? Felicity was nice enough to bring two.”

Nana waved the offer off. “Those are all yours. I know you’ve missed them.”

“Fair enough.” I pulled one out of the box and onto a plate, popping it into the microwave for fifteen seconds, just to make the icing gooey again. “Now, how ’bout you tell me why Felicity Harmon has been living in my house?”

“A pipe burst at her place. It was just terrible. She was at work at the time, and by the time she got home, the whole thing was flooded. It took three weeks just to find a plumber who’d go in to tackle the source of the problem, and then the cleanup after was just a nightmare.”

“And what happened to Terry? He should’ve been on top of the cleanup.” I’d contracted with the guy to handle property maintenance and repairs while I was deployed.

“That good-for-nothing weasel skipped town six months ago. And everybody else was backed up.”

“Six months? Who the hell has been looking after the properties?”

“I have. Oh, don’t look at me like that. I did it for years before you took over. It was fineuntil this. But, well, it’s bad, Gabe. I couldn’t just leave Felicity in the middle of all that, so I moved her in here. You weren’t here, and I thought I’d be able to get it sorted before you got home.”

I scrubbed a hand down my face. “And instead, we both gave each other heart attacks last night when I got in.”

“I’m sorry for not warning you. I know this is a shock, but you can’t kick her out. She doesn’t have anywhere else to go.”

My grandmother had always had a thing for strays. I should know. I’d been one.

“I’m not going to kick her out. I’m a grump, not a monster.”

Nana smiled at me and patted my cheek. “You’re a good boy, Gabe.”

“Do you have the keys? The sooner I get over there, the sooner she can go back to her own place.”

“I don’t. But Felicity still has her set. You can stop by and get them from her at the shop.”

“Fine. I’ll go over today.” Nothing like diving straight back into normal world after a deployment.

Except somehow I knew that this new normal wasn’t going to be normal at all.

FOUR

FELICITY

“Wait, wait. Let me get this straight.” My best friend Austen leaned over the front counter at Bloomsday, her eyes wide. “Gabe Bishop, the object of your long-time crush, showed up last night and caught youin a towel?”

For approximately 3.9 seconds, I thought of that slow scan he’d made of my body. He hadn’t looked disgusted. In fact, he’d looked a little like a starving man standing before a feast…

No. Nope. Not gonna go there. That’s not what this is about. You’re imagining things. You couldn’t see that clearly.

“He had no idea I’ve been staying at his place. His grandmother didn’t tell himanything.We about gave each other heart attacks.”

“I’m still stuck on the towel. I mean, this is a classic micro-trope for a reason.” Austen owned Plot Twist, our local bookstore, so she was constantly framing life in story structure—something I found far more amusing when it wasn’t my life she was analyzing.

I snapped my fingers in front of her face. “Focus! My life is not a rom com! I have an actual serious situation here.”

She pouted a little, then sobered. “He must have come homeearly. The rest of the unit is getting home this afternoon on the bus. My parents and I are headed out to meet Rhett, and we’ve got a cookout planned later to welcome him and the other guys home. You should come.”

---