Page 7 of Falling for the Grumpy Stranger

“Is that the old house sitting by itself on the hill, behind the town? It’s a pretty cool house, but looks like it needs a lot of work,” Dex said.

“It’s been vacant off and on for years. Some of the owners have met grisly ends,” Aria said.

Dex’s eyes rounded. “Really? So, it’s haunted?”

“Nope, just cursed,” Aria said lightly. She snapped her fingers. “That’s who that was. Yesterday a stranger walked into the café. Fairly tall—” she looked over at Dex who was well over six feet. “All the other tall people get the ‘fairly’ qualifier because of this giant. Nice-looking guy with a very stern, solemn expression. His left arm was scarred, a burn scar, I think. Not very friendly.”

“That’s right. You mentioned that you were dealing with a grumpy customer,” Dex said.

“No, that was Rupert Coleman.” Aria shook her head. “That man gets grumpier every time I see him. This new customer—he was just quiet, distant. He ordered his meal and hardly looked up from his plate. He was a generous tipper though.” She looked over at Terry who’d continued with her task but could hear the conversation.

Terry looked up with a smile. “I’ll say. He didn’t wait for his bill, which wasn’t more than twenty dollars. At first, I thought he’d pulled a dine and dash but then I saw it—a crisp new fifty-dollar bill tucked under the coffee cup.”

“Wow, that is a nice tip,” I said. “Maybe this won’t be so bad after all.”

Dex’s brow furrowed. “I don’t know about you going up there alone to talk to this guy. He’s a stranger, and not a friendly one at that. Maybe I should tag along?—”

I smiled at Dex. “That’s sweet of you to offer, but I’m not sure if showing up with a plate of cookies and a fierce-lookingbodyguard will work.” Dex was a teddy bear wrapped in a very menacing-looking package.

“Ella’s right. She should go alone, but I’m worried, too, Ella. Maybe you could keep us posted on your phone, and at the first sign that you feel uncomfortable, get out of there. You were always a fast runner. In fact, why not drive up?”

I thought about the suggestion. Every part of Whisper Cove was walkable. It was what we all loved most about our pretty town. There was a glacial chill in the air, and a car would give me a quick escape.

“I’m not sure if driving up to the house fits with my neighborly gesture of dropping off some cookies. I’ll be fine, and I’ll text you after I’ve left the house. I had one interaction with Mr. Lockwood; that’s his name, but that’s all Hannah would tell me about our new neighbor. Well, she did also mention that he paid cash for the place, which makes sense considering the state it’s in. Most banks would give a hard pass on a loan for that house.”

Dex looked unconvinced. I got up and kissed him on the cheek. “Thanks for worrying. I’ll be fine.” I zipped up my coat and adjusted my beanie. “Well, wish me luck. I figure the worst that can happen is he shakes his fist and yells at me to get off his lawn. Not that there’s been a lawn or yard, for that matter, around that house for years. Then I’ll just have to do research the old-fashioned way.”

“The library?” Aria asked.

“The barbershop. But yeah, the library would probably be a good place to start.” I hugged Aria and Dex and picked up my plate of cookies. Most people would be pleased to get a plate of homemade cookies, but something told me Mr. Lockwood was not like most people.

The bitter cold made my eyes water as I walked toward the manor. Grimstone Manor had been built at the end of thenineteenth century by Margaret Grimstone, a railroad heiress. She purchased the entire hill that the house stood on, so the manor came with a lot of acreage. She had a long gravel road plowed for her horse and carriage to travel easily between her house and town. I knew very little else about the house’s origins except that its construction brought a lot of jobs to the small, mostly uninhabited town of Whisper Cove.

I circled around the end of Juniper and cut across two smaller streets to reach the edge of the private gravel road. Most of the gravel had been washed away by rain and wind and the passage of time. Short stubby weeds grew in the bare spots. Very few people ever traveled up the road, and I was sure that had mostly to do with the legendary curse. Plus, there was a fine for trespassing around and in the house. That was mostly to keep curious teens from getting hurt up at the site.

I’d forgotten how steep the climb was, and my breath was coming in short white puffs of air by the time I reached the place where the land leveled off and the house came into view. You could see it from various places in town but only if you looked up toward the hillside. I hadn’t seen it this close in years. I stopped to catch my breath and take in the view.

Grimstone Manor was built in the craftsman style of architecture. The style became the darling of the rich because it was a simpler, less gaudy relief from the complicated Victorian architecture of the century. Grimstone was a collection of three gabled roofs, all with deep, overhanging eaves. The front gabled roof stretched out over a large stone porch that wrapped halfway around the exterior. Many of the stones had been broken off, and the shingles seemed to be barely clinging to the steeply pitched roofs. Squared columns, wooden and weathered, held up the porch overhang, and double hung windows dotted the entire façade, both top and bottom stories. I vaguely remembered the siding shingles being painted a dark brown, but most of thepaint and a lot of the shingles were gone, leaving vacant holes on the façade. A carriage house with matching gabled roof and equally matching missing shingles sat about twenty yards from the house. It had two massive wooden doors on the front, held closed by a giant metal latch. I could almost visualize Margaret Grimstone’s coachman leading the horses and coach into the carriage house after a day on the road. All in all, it didn’t look as bad as I expected. Somehow, it looked more dilapidated when viewing it from down in the town. It was certainly a massive beast of a house, especially compared to our cottage. The landscape around the house was another matter altogether. I remembered a time when we could ride our bikes around the house without much problem, but now it’d take a tractor to navigate the area around it. There was one small patch of gravel at the top of the drive, and the green truck was parked in the center of it. He was home. I supposed part of me hoped I’d arrive to an empty house.

I rearranged my scarf and beanie, took a deep breath and marched to the front steps with my plate of cookies. The wooden planks of the front porch creaked so much, I immediately lightened my steps to keep from falling through them. The front door, in traditional craftsman style, had a short set of windowpanes in the top third of the paneled door. Most of the dark stain had faded and peeled off in long splinters, but the door still looked solid. A shiny new brass doorknob had been added.

The brass knocker, probably original, was a lion’s head with a big ring jammed between its fangs. I lifted it and knocked several times. Silence. A breeze kicked around some of the weeds out front causing me to startle. I knocked again and listened for a sound, anything, but not even a footstep followed. I knocked with my bare knuckles three times. It was hard enough that Icould hear the knocks echo through what sounded like a mostly empty house. There was no response.

There were two large windows on each side of the door. One was covered with plywood, but the other was dusty glass. I wiped a spot clean and peered into the house. Dark wood beams crisscrossed the ceiling of the entryway. A green and gold art deco style lamp hung from the ceiling. A few bulbs flickered in the light fixture. The wooden floor was faded and dusty, but it was in decent shape. If the rest of the house was in as good of shape as the entry, then Hannah was right. The place just needed some TLC. It seemed the stories of the curse had scared away a lot of potential buyers, buyers who would have gotten a good deal on a magnificent, old house. But why was this buyer not scared off? Something told me there were a lot of layers to the elusive Mr. Lockwood.

I knocked once more but no luck. My first assignment already felt like a failure. I glanced at my phone. The library was still open for two hours. If I hurried, I could make it there in twenty minutes. I started off with the plate still in my hand. Verna Denton, the head librarian, was very strict about food and drink in her library. Stopping at home first would take an extra twenty minutes, and I was anxious to start my research. I decided to leave the cookies on the porch. Maybe Lockwood would find the cookies, and the delightful treat would change his whole demeanor, I thought with a giggle. Either way, I needed to leave the cookies behind. I set them down and walked gingerly down the loose front steps.

I reached the top of the gravel trail and looked back. A shiver went through me as a pair of dark eyes stared down at me from the second-story window. I swung around and raced down the gravel path.

Chapter Seven

RHETT

Iate a second cookie. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten a homemade cookie, and it conjured great memories of sitting in my mom’s kitchen doing homework while she baked. I’d come so close to opening the door, but my feet wouldn’t move downstairs. Instead, I watched, like a scowling curmudgeon, as the pretty little songbird with her buttermilk-colored hair skittered down the trail. She’d taken one last look back with those incredible almond-shaped brown eyes, the same eyes that had met mine with surprise when she realized the man she’d been talking about had just handed her the bag of pistachios she’d been working so hard to grab. She looked thoroughly embarrassed, but she shouldn’t have. Nothing she said was untrue. I’d bought a house that, upon further inspection, was not a great investment, no matter how I looked at it. Strange and grim—I couldn’t have come up with a more apt description of myself. The dark mood that had swallowed me in the past year seemed to be permanent. I was sure I would have gotten past it by now, but there was still too much raw pain sticking around.

And then, as if she knew I’d been thinking about her, Christine’s text popped through.

“I really want to see you,” she texted.

---