Page 7 of Stuck with the Grump

Leigh looked up at me, her big eyes watering as thunder rolled outside. “Thank you.”

The thank you was what nearly broke me. I looked outside at the rain. The storm was just barely starting, and it wouldn’t be long before the firewood stored outside would be wet.

“Will you be okay alone for a little bit if I go bring in all the firewood?”

“Yeah,” she said, biting her bottom lip as she emptied the last bag. “I have a couple of things I need to get done. And I’m kind of hungry. It’s getting late.”

“I can make us something to eat. I have to warn you, though, the only thing I really know how to cook is slightly burned toast with a side of the driest eggs you have ever eaten.”

Leigh laughed, and pointed to the sliding glass door. “Go get the firewood, and I will make something edible for dinner.”

I grinned at her and moved around the counter to press a quick kiss to her temple. She froze, looking up at me. I didn’t give her the chance to say anything before I was out the door and running through the rain.

As I brought armfuls of wood inside, Leigh made use of the fresh ingredients I had brought with me. She tossed a couple of steaks on the counter with mushrooms and onions beside them. My stomach was growling as I walked back into the yard to gather more wood.

When I came back in, she had a cast iron skillet on the stove and her hair was piled on top of her head in a messy bun. I wanted to go over to her and pull the elastic out, watching the dark waves fall down her back.

Instead, I behaved like a grown man and subtly adjusted the hard-on I had from looking at the curve of her neck and remembering what it tasted like. The ice-cold rain was refreshing on my skin. It shocked my system and took me away from the thoughts of eating Leigh out while she sat on the marble counters.

By the time I had brought the wood inside and stacked it by the sliding door, Leigh was plating our food. My mouth watered as I scrubbed my hands clean before taking a plate.

“This smells amazing,” I said as she handed me a knife and fork. “Where did you learn to cook like this?”

“Well,” she said, her voice light and teasing as she sat down on one of the chairs surrounding the island. “Some of us can’t afford to have every meal delivered to our houses, so we learned to cook. Besides, you haven’t even tasted it yet. It could be horrible.”

I looked down at the steak and shook my head. “Impossible.”

She snorted as I sat down beside her. I dug into the food, the first bite melting on my tongue. It was as if I hadn’t eaten in years. With my career came the habit of dining at fancy restaurants for business dinners, but Leigh had those chefs beat.

“How did you make it taste this good?”

“Salt and pepper?” She shrugged and took another bite of her own food. “I don’t know, but if you don’t finish that soon, I will.”

I shuffled my plate away from her and got to work finishing my food. Once dinner was clear, and I had finished washing the dishes, I retreated to the dining room to keep digging through files until bedtime. The glass of whiskey I had poured earlier sat abandoned, and for once, I didn’t want to fill it while looking into the embezzlement.

Getting away from the city was exactly what I needed. It would be a shame to leave the lake house, but I had a beach house in North Carolina that I might be able to find peace at. The only benefit to the lake house had been that the media didn’t know about it. At the lake house, I was Clarke. I wasn’t the eligible bachelor billionaire waiting to be taken off the market by the right heiress.

At the lake house, I was nothing more than a son and a friend. The money didn’t matter to the people around me like it did to everyone else. Everyone else wanted to know what I could do for them. What my money could get them. Very rarely did they actually want anything to do with me as a person.

The prime example was Jared. He had been with the company since my website flipping days. He and Tyson had sat in my bedroom with me, buying cheap domains and websites to rebuild. Crestwood Capital had been built from our blood, sweat, and tears. We had brought in the first investors together and we had eventually cut them loose when we started buying companies outright. He was around when we started pulling more investors in again to work on the growth of our business.

Then, he had turned around and stabbed us in the back.

I scowled as I looked down at the paperwork and ran a hand down the side of my face. In the beginning, I had talked to my lawyers about the possibility of hiding the scandal from the media. It had been deemed nearly impossible. So far, we had kept the secret hidden, but that was because only Tyson, me, and our lawyers knew what was happening.

As soon as the embezzlement became public knowledge, we were screwed.

I flipped through the papers, digging through the numbers until they started blurring in front of me. When I glanced at the clock, it was well after midnight and the thunder was still crashing outside. Lightning flashed, illuminating the room.

I wonder what Leigh’s doing,I thought as I got to my feet and stretched. My joints popped, reminding me that I was forty now.

Leigh was sitting curled up into the corner of the couch with a notebook spread across her lap. Her hair was still piled on top of her head but long tendrils of hair were framing her face.

“What’s going on?” I asked as she scribbled something in the notebook.

“Nothing,” she said, exhaustion clear in her voice. “Not a whole lot.”

“You don’t look like not a whole lot is going on. What’s in the notebook?”

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