Page 4 of Falling for a Grumpy Hero

LILA

O n the Friday night after my second week working at CE, I left my last night class for the week looking forward to blowing off some steam with Addy, my best friend and the reason why Virginia Beach had ever even been on my radar.

I probably never would’ve thought of applying to the art institute here if it hadn’t been for her suggesting it when she’d found out I wanted to go back to school.

As I pedaled along the boardwalk from the institute to the bar where I was meeting her, I caught myself thinking about the week I’d just had and more specifically, about my moody, mysterious boss.

Ford Callahan was going to be a tough nut to crack, but after receiving my first assignment from him, I was feeling a lot more optimistic about my decision to take the job at CE.

Honestly, I’d thought he was barging into my office that day to fire me, not to give me a task that had seemed pretty important to him.

Flashing green neon lights on the side of a building up ahead drew me out of my thoughts. Squinting to be able to read the letters in the fading light of sunset, I realized that I’d arrived at her favorite happy hour bar. Time to put Mr. Callahan out of my head.

Well, as far out of my head as I could, but since the first thing Addy asked me was about my job, my thoughts were almost immediately centered right back on him. I stuck the pink straw of my brightly colored cocktail between my teeth and shrugged.

Addy stared at me from across the table. “What’s that supposed to mean? It wasn’t a trick question, Li. All I asked was how it went, meeting your boss last week?”

“Sure. I know it’s not a trick question, but that doesn’t mean it has an easy answer.” I wasn’t trying to be evasive. It was just the truth. “Mostly because he’s a complicated person.”

She arched a dark eyebrow, her deep brown eyes widening as she leaned toward me. “Seriously, is he that bad?”

I shrugged, swallowing the sip I’d just taken before I shook my head. “ That bad? No, I don’t think so. I really don’t actually know yet, though.”

Confusion tightened her brow and she sighed. “It’s not like you to make me fish for answers, Li. Hell, I knew most of your life story before I’d even made up my bed after I walked into my dorm for the first time back at college, so what’s going on?”

I chuckled. “It was my room too, but fine. You’re right. It’s just that I don’t really know what to make of him yet. He doesn’t speak much and he’s easily one of the grumpiest people I’ve ever met, but it seems like he’s that way to everyone.”

“But?” she prompted when I paused.

I sighed. “But he’s already trusting me to liaise with an important potential client and just by having familiarized myself with the projects he’s currently working on, I’ve already learned a lot.

Can I really be complaining about someone who’s actually giving me a job I want to do and who I’m going to get to learn from in the process? ”

Addy smiled. “You can complain to me about anything you want, but you don’t really seem to want to complain about him. Let me know if that changes?”

“Thanks, I will. In the meantime, how are things going with Taylor?”

“That man is awesome.” She let out a dreamy sigh, her full cheeks rising on a beautiful, wistful smile. “God, I love him. I feel like I’ve been blessed with the best boyfriend in the world. I’m going to marry him one day, Lila. I know it.”

I chuckled. “I love the way you two love each other. You two are my couple goals. If I could find a boyfriend who makes me feel the way he makes you feel, I’d marry him too.”

She nodded and held her cocktail up for a toast. “To meeting the men of our dreams, husbanding the hell out of them, and living our happily ever afters.”

“Well, you’re one step ahead of me there, but I’ll drink to that.

” I looked right into her big brown eyes as I clinked my glass against hers.

Then I took a sip and swallowed it. “How is everything at the school? Are my two favorite teachers in the whole wide world still enjoying themselves, working and living together?”

“We absolutely are,” she said with yet another dreamy smile lifting the corners of her lips. “Taylor loves his students and I love mine. We drive together most days and then we cook together when we get home.”

My eyebrows lifted. “Are you both okay with that? It’s not getting to be too much?”

“Nope. We’ve actually talked about it and we’ve agreed to be honest if one of us needs some space. A weekend away or whatever.”

“Oooh, can we make it a girls’ weekend?” I pressed my palms together, fingers pointed at the ceiling as I gave her the good old-fashioned puppy eyes. “That could be so fun.”

She laughed. “You got it. As soon as we’ve got some time in our schedules, you and I will plan it, whether I want to get away from Taylor for a couple days or not. How are your classes going?”

“So well.” I grinned enthusiastically. “I know it probably felt like my decision to pursue this came out of nowhere and let’s be honest, it kind of did, but it’s right for me, Ads. I’ve never enjoyed learning more. Following my heart definitely hasn’t steered me wrong.”

“I’m glad.” She took another sip of her drink, real relief softening her features.

I knew she’d been worried about me and she hadn’t been alone. My own parents had had their reservations when I’d suddenly decided to yank up all my roots in New York to move to Virginia to start studying a whole new career direction.

The degree I’d gotten in fine arts helped, sure, but this was also completely different and no one seemed convinced I wasn’t going to crash and burn.

As someone who liked a bit of order, structure, and certainty to things, Addy must’ve asked me at least six dozen times whether I was sure I wanted to do this.

I’d always flown by the seat of my pants, though. Well, ever since…

“How’s Ben?” she asked, mercifully distracting me from my thoughts, albeit with an equally unpleasant topic. “Have you heard from him?”

“Not a word and I’ve never been more grateful to anyone for anything,” I said honestly.

Ben Jorgensen and I had been together for three years before he’d suddenly broken up with me. It’d been one of the most shocking moments of my life. I really hadn’t seen it coming, but outside of that, I was genuinely surprised by how little the breakup had affected me.

If anything, he’d done me a favor by giving me the opportunity to chase my own dreams outside of the city. Ben was a Wall Street finance bro. No way he’d ever have moved anywhere else. Meanwhile, I’d been feeling trapped there for a long time.

Addy gave me a puzzled look before she frowned. “You’re grateful he hasn’t contacted you? You guys were together for years , Li. Don’t you need closure about why he did it?”

I shrugged. “I already have that. He told me when he broke up with me, remember?”

She sighed. “All he said was that he didn’t see your relationship going anywhere. Haven’t you ever wondered why he said that when you were living together at the time? It had already gone somewhere.”

I chuckled. “Will you please stop worrying so much about all of this? I’m fine, Addy. I promise.”

“How?” she asked, sounding desperately disbelieving. “How can that possibly be true? Absolutely everything in your life has changed in the last couple months and you expect me to believe you’re just... okay with it?”

“I am okay with it,” I said, eyes locked intently on hers. “Ben wasn’t the one for me. I honestly believe our breakup was meant to happen. I’m moving on to better things, Ads.”

“Like a job with a complicated man?”

I smiled. “Well, that, and hopefully, I’ll find real love eventually too. The kicking-your-feet, giggling kind of love that I never would’ve had with Ben.”

“You’re sure you never would’ve had it with him?”

I arched an eyebrow at her. “Sex isn’t meant to be boring and mechanical. It should be wild, and passionate, and fun, and meaningful, and everything else. The same applies to life. Neither sex nor life were anything like that with him.”

Finally, she exhaled a deep breath and giggled. “Yeah, okay. You might have a point about that, but what about your job? Are you going to be able to work for someone so complicated?”

“It was a weird first week with him,” I admitted, just letting myself say whatever words came to mind without overthinking them.

“I am the complete opposite of Ford Callahan. He’s like a dark cloud hanging over me and I don’t think he’s ever smiled in his life.

Honestly, he seems completely miserable. ”

Her brow puckered. “Well, maybe that’s why he’s such a thundercloud. Maybe he is miserable.”

“How can he be?” I countered, having had this argument with myself a fair amount of times since I’d met him.

“He’s built an incredibly successful company, he has a really cool job helping people restore gorgeous old homes, and he probably makes good money.

Something is definitely off about him, though. ”

Something that made me insanely curious about him. What I hadn’t mentioned to Addy, and I wasn’t going to, was that he was also utterly, devastatingly gorgeous. How could a successful, beautiful man who got to do work he was passionate about every damn day, be so sad? I just really didn’t get it.

As Addy opened her mouth to respond, her gaze suddenly darted to something over my shoulder and judging by the radiant grin that broke out on her lips, Taylor had come to join us. I twisted in my seat and yep, there was he was, her raven-haired lover with the kind eyes.

She waved at him before she turned back to me. “If you think something is off about him, just be careful, okay?”

“Who are you guys talking about?” Taylor asked before he dropped into the seat beside Addy’s and bent over to lay a quick, but hard kiss on her.

They shared a moment before he turned back to me. “If you have to be careful of a guy, it’s best to just call it off, Lila.”

“Oh, I know, but it’s nothing like that. We’re talking about my boss. Ford Callahan. He’s just a bit grumpy, is all.”

Recognition sparked in Taylor’s eyes when I said Ford’s name. “Ford Callahan. Early thirties, dark hair, that Ford Callahan?”

I nodded. “Do you know him?”

He shrugged and slid an arm around Addy’s shoulders, glancing at her before bringing his gaze to mine. “I wouldn’t say that I know him, but I know who he is.”

Addy frowned. “What do you mean?”

Taylor rolled his eyes at her and bent over to press a kiss to the tip of her nose. “He’s in that veterans’ group for marines I meet with twice a month.”

I blinked slowly. I hadn’t known Ford had been in the military, but I had known Taylor had been a marine before becoming a teacher. I’d always wondered how he had made it through, but Ford definitely had the personality for it.

Addy smiled. “Oh, right. That makes sense. What’s the tea on him, then?”

He chuckled. “Even if I knew, I wouldn’t give you much, but Ford is a pretty reserved guy. Mostly keeps to himself.”

“So he’s weird with you guys too?” I asked, much too relieved that it wasn’t just me or the people in the office he was so cold to.

Taylor didn’t smile this time, though, which made trepidation trickle through me.

He always smiled, but now, he seemed strangely sad.

“Ford’s not weird, Li. He was in a helicopter crash overseas and it was really bad.

I don’t know the details. All I know is that Callahan was medically discharged after. ”

A profound sense of sadness grew like a mantle around my heart. If that was true, my boss’s less than sunny disposition suddenly made a lot more sense.

I can’t assist him properly if I don’t know what I’m dealing with , I told myself as I looked him up later that night after I got home from the bar.

Disappointingly, however, there was very little about him online other than stuff pertaining to his business.

He also didn’t appear to have any social media profiles, which was seriously odd.

Still, I found him intriguing and I also really wanted to pick his brain a little, but I couldn’t do that unless we had the sort of relationship that allowed for it.

We didn’t have that right now, so as I climbed into bed, bummed that my online stalking hadn’t delivered much, I decided that my only option was to make friends with my slightly scary, very grumpy boss, whether he liked it or not.