Page 2 of Falling for the Grumpy Stranger

I reached the bench and used the end of my coat to wipe off the moisture. A brass plaque reminded anyone who sat there that Norris and Jean Burnbaum used to stand in this very spot hand-in-hand every evening to watch the sunset. Their family had the bench placed there as a memorial to Norris and Jean.

I pulled off my backpack and hugged it to me as I sat down. I could feel the chill of the metal bench through my jeans. I stared out at the ocean. It was a layer of choppy black beneath a blanket of white. On days like this, even the gulls that normally dotted the surface, bobbing up and down on the current, were gone. They flew inland and hung out in parking lots and around the shops whenever the weather at sea was uninviting. And it was definitely uninviting. I doubted even Heathcliff would venture out on the clammy moors on a day like this. I was hoping to get inspiration, but Ava was right. The only thing I’d return with was a chill.

I was determined not to let the trip be an entire waste. I dug through my backpack, reaching straight past the slick cover of my laptop to the bottom where an inordinate amount of crumbs (possibly even left over from my college days) were gathered. My fingers finally found a pen and the notebook I’d shoved in there months ago to catch all my overflow story ideas. The notebook’s cover was a picture of two llamas wearing flowery headdresses. They stared at me wryly to let me know that they didn’t appreciate languishing for so long in the dark, cookie-crumbed corner of my backpack. When I purchased the notebook, I had visions of waking up in the middle of the night, searching frantically nearby for my notebook and pen so I could jot down my brilliant ideas. That only happened once when I searched for the notebook so I could write down a reminder that I had a dentist appointment later in the week, something I’d forgotten until I woke in the middle of the night thinking about it. A dentist appointment wasn’t exactly the stuff of literary dreams, but at least I didn’t forget the appointment.

I flipped open the cover and thumbed through the pages. Most of them were blank. Six months ago, I’d been temporarily inspired by a dream I had where I discovered I was the queen of the dragons in a strange, desolate land, and there were scratchy notations about possible characters. I even sketched a few dragons in the margins, but the farther I got from the weird dream, the farther the story slipped from my imagination. Starting my career with an epic fantasy was like a brand-new surgeon skipping the tonsillectomy to perform a heart transplant. I needed to prove myself with a decent single title first, preferably one set in reality, the world I knew best. Not that I hadn’t spent a lot of time in fictional worlds. Nonna used to pinch my cheek to bring me back to earth whenever she caught me daydreaming too long about a story.

I opened the notebook to a blank page and had to fight the wind to keep the page from turning. I poised my pen as if a big, lovely and wholly interesting idea was about to flow from the inky tip, but there was nothing. I scribbled a big frowny face in the middle of the page and drew an empty lightbulb over the face. I lifted my mouth from the scarf cocoon. “Stupid, blank mind. Face it, El. This isn’t going to happen.”

Something fluttered in the haze, drawing my attention to the edge of the cliffs. It was the bottom of a long black coat. A man with broad shoulders, his black wool beanie pulled low over dark blonde hair, looked as if he’d emerged from the mist to stand at the edge of the cliff. The long ends of a gray knit scarf flopped around in the wind. I could see his profile, finely carved like a statue, as he stared down at the rocks below. My heart sped up as I considered the horrid possibility that he was there to jump. A longstanding tale of a suicide, one that changed in detail and sordid proportion every time it was retold, had been passed down through generations in Whisper Cove. The only person to ever take their life on the treacherous cliffs was a man named Gregor Turner. One account said that he was so despondent about his beloved Annie leaving him for another man that he walked straight to the cliffs and pushed off. Another account, one that was far less romantic, said that he’d had too much whiskey one night, and on his way back to his cottage got lost in the fog and stepped right off into the abyss. Either way, a fall from the cliffs on this side of the cove would be painful and most certainly lethal.

The man didn’t seem to notice me sitting on the bench just fifty yards away. He looked deep in thought. His hands stayed tucked in his coat pockets as he stared out at the foggy coastline. I thumbed through all the worthless knowledge I’d gathered during my days as a psychology student. What I needed was a quick checklist to see if the man seemed suicidal. Nothing. It wasas if those four long years of studying, highlighting textbooks and trying to stay awake during dull lectures had been a figment of my imagination. None of it had stuck.

He pulled off his beanie and raked his thick hair back with his fingers before replacing it. Would a suicidal man take the time to smooth his hair? I was relieved when he took a few steps back from the edge. His face swung in my direction, and I froze as his gaze landed directly on me. Dark eyes stared out from under the edge of the beanie, and his full mouth was firmly set in a frown. I considered asking him if he was all right, but all the words stuck in my throat. He turned around and walked with heavy, solemn steps toward the road, the tails of his long black coat flapping behind him and the scarf dancing off his shoulder.

I managed to suck in my first real breath since spotting him standing precariously close to the edge. I’d never seen the man before, and Whisper Cove was not a place chock-full of strangers. Truck tires broke up some of the mist clinging to the asphalt. It was an old truck with faded green paint and two white stripes on the hood. Smoke trailed out the back as he pulled away from the curb, disappearing as quickly as he’d appeared. I sat for a minute wondering if I’d imagined the whole thing—the mysterious man standing on the cliff edge, contemplating something or maybe nothing at all. Had my vivid, overactive mind conjured Heathcliff, after all? That silly thought was interrupted by my phone. It was a text from a number I didn’t recognize.

“Hello, Ms. Lovely, this is Andrea May from Stories We Love, the online publication. We received your application and resumé and would love to chat with you. We think you’ll be a perfect fit for our writing staff. Are you still interested in the position?”

I practically dropped the phone in my haste to write back. The cold had turned my fingers into useless lobster claws, but I managed to return a text. “Yes, I’m still interested.” I sent it andthen immediately wondered if I looked too desperate answering so quickly. I stared at my phone waiting for a response. It came. “Do you have time tomorrow morning for a video interview?”

I took a deep breath to calm myself and combed through the mental pile of applications I’d sent out. Stories We Love focused on interesting stories from small towns. It was a small publication but with a respectable number of subscribers. “Yes, tomorrow morning would be fine.”

“Great. Looking forward to meeting you. I’ll send you a link for the meeting. We’ll talk soon.”

“Thank you.” I wanted to add in a dozen exclamation marks but held back. It seemed my adventure out into the dreary fog had paid off after all.

Chapter Two

ELLA

The day might have been filled with a wet chill, but I couldn’t help but skip down the trail. Nothing was finalized yet, but I had a good feeling. I wasn’t halfway home when Ava texted to ask if I could pick up some food at the market on my way back. She said she’d settle for anything that wasn’t filled with corn syrup or covered in salt. Isla was the cook and baker of the household, but she’d been so busy building her bakery, she hadn’t had time to shop or cook, so the rest of us had been eating a lot of processed, meaningless fluff (Ava’s words in the text and quite accurate, too).

I readjusted my scarf to keep from getting a red runny nose and headed, hands in pockets, toward Gem’s Groceries. Gemma Van de Meer had moved into town ten years ago. Up until then, the corner market, owned by a grumpy man named Chester, had deteriorated into a small market that carried groceries that were mostly past their use-by dates and a few shelves of sundries, vitamins and aspirin … most also past their use-by dates. Chester finally decided to retire, and he sold the place to Gemma. She revived it into a wonderful little grocery store where chunky wicker baskets overflowed with hunks of gourmet cheeses, seedy whole grain crackers, fresh produce, and shelvesand fridges filled with things like pistachio nuts, dried fruit and hummus. For a long time, Whisper Cove locals had to make the trip into Fairview, the neighboring town, for groceries. Now almost everything we needed was just a few blocks away.

Renee Evans and her husband, Rob, were the only other customers today. The weather was keeping everyone at home. Rob was busy browsing the cured meats behind the deli counter while Renee chatted with Gemma. Gemma was wearing her signature blue bandana in her hair. She used it to tame the mass of thick red curls that would otherwise spill out around her face.

She smiled at me as I walked inside. “There’s another brave soul out on this gloomy day.” Her greeting had interrupted whatever Renee had been telling her. Renee glanced back at me.

“Have you heard the news?” Renee asked. Her eyes were round behind her glasses as if she had something very important to discuss. With Renee, it was usually something as pedestrian as a change in the garbage pickup schedule.

“Someone’s moved into Grimstone Manor,” Gemma blurted.

Renee huffed in annoyance because her big reveal had been ruined. She had more to add though, so she wriggled with excitement as she pulled down the hem of her sweater. “It’s a man, and no one has any idea who he is. Hannah Jensen, the realtor, was tight-lipped when I asked her. She said she knew very little about him but that he paid cash for that old place. Can you imagine handing out hard-earned money for that dilapidated eyesore, and a cursed one at that? Why, Rob was just saying the other day that it looked as if one big rainstorm might wash the whole darn place right off the hill and out to sea. Can’t say I’d be sorry to see it go.”

I half-listened to Renee as I browsed the cheeses. Most conversations with Renee were ninety percent opinion (hers) and ten percent information. This time she was adding in a lotmore opinion, because, apparently, she had no real information to provide.

“I rather like that place,” Gemma said. “I’ve always been a fan of Arts and Crafts style architecture.”

“Well, Gemma, you probably don’t know about the curse,” Renee said. She turned fully to the counter, seemingly ready to give Gemma the full backstory. I, on the other hand, had a hungry sister at home, and I needed to prepare for my interview.

I picked up a nice block of gouda and some crackers and made my way to the dried fruit and nuts. The cheese and crackers had put the notion of a cozy indoor picnic in my head. We could build a fire in the hearth and sit on the floor in our flannel pajamas and nibble hearty finger foods. I had a craving for some roasted pistachios. I browsed the bags of nuts in front of me and discovered the pistachios were on the top shelf. I was the middle sister in age and height. I really could have used Ava or Aria, the taller sisters, because the nuts were a few inches out of reach. Gemma and Renee had gone quiet behind me. Apparently, they’d exhausted the information they had on the new dweller of Grimstone Manor. I stepped gently on the metal ridge on the bottom of the shelves, hoping it would give me the few inches I needed to reach my pistachio prize. Then something occurred to me.

“I think I saw the new guy, the one who got suckered into buying Grimstone Manor.” I kept talking as I stretched up as far as my fingers could go. I was just short of the darn pistachios. “He was kinda strange, actually, a little dark and grim.” I was still an inch short of the pistachios and pushed to my tiptoes. I waited for Gemma to scold me for climbing on her shelf, but it seemed I had stunned them both into silence with my revelation. I grunted in frustration. “Geez, Gemma, do you think you put these pistachios up—” My words were cut off by the shocked breath I sucked in when a large hand reached over me and tookhold of the pistachios. The sleeve of his coat had slipped back on his wrist revealing a thick mosaic of scars that stretched from the base of his thumb to beneath the edge of his sleeve.

My boot slipped off the edge of the shelf as I clumsily hopped down. He caught me before I landed on my bottom. I turned around. His dark gaze stole my breath away. His eyes never left my face as he handed me the nuts. I flicked a glance toward the two women at the checkout counter. They looked as mortified as I felt. Me and my big mouth.

I managed to croak out the word, “Thanks.”

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