Page 2 of The Grump I Loathe (The Lockhart Brothers #3)

CONNOR

“ I f I close my eyes during the scary parts, can I try the Midnight Hollow demo?”

“I’m gonna go with no,” I said, holding my daughter’s hand tightly as we made our way through the packed gaming pavilion at GeekCon.

“Aw, but Dad!” Grace complained, blowing her brown bangs out of her eyes and wrinkling up her nose in that adorable way she’d done since she was a baby. “It’s not even that scary.”

“It’s rated M,” I said. “When you’re seventeen, we can discuss it.”

“Ughhhh!” Grace groaned, skipping along beside me in her scuffed-up high-tops with purposely mismatched laces (because apparently that’s what all the cool nine-year-olds were doing these days).

She flipped one of her tiny, lopsided braids over her shoulder.

“But you’re always saying how mature I am.

I heard you tell my teacher when you took me out of school last month for that business trip.

That means I can handle something rated M. ”

Sometimes Grace was too quick for her own good. But if I gave in and laughed the way I wanted to, she would think that meant she was going to get her way. Ninety percent of parenting was being able to keep a straight face. “The answer is still no.”

Grace hummed with momentary disappointment, stuffing more quesadilla in her mouth before spotting another game demo that pulled her focus.

She pointed and squealed, mouth full, tugging on my hand.

While she watched a playthrough of a game with cartoon animals trapped inside bubbles, I took advantage of her distraction to dab at the stains on my dress shirt.

“Dad, look at this!” Grace said, tapping a touch screen and popping bubbles.

“Very cool,” I said, finally giving up on my shirt. I’d see what my dry cleaner could do, but I was pretty sure the answer would be “burn it with fire.” Some things couldn’t be fixed.

Thankfully, Grace’s lunch order wasn’t on that list. It had taken much longer than I would have liked, but I had finally managed to get her a quesadilla that wasn’t covered in Dragon’s Exhale Chili Hot Sauce.

No thanks to that firecracker in line. And like a firecracker, once she’d prodded me in the shoulder a second time, I’d known she’d be impossible to ignore.

From that flaming attitude to those grating interruptions, I hated how much I’d noticed about her.

Those curvy hips. The huffy sounds she made when I ignored her.

The frustrated set of those perfect rosebud lips.

What the hell did she have to be annoyed about, anyway? I wasn’t the one trying to usurp her lunch order. I resisted the urge to crack my knuckles as the scene replayed in my mind.

“Neat. If you hold it, you get rapid bubble burst mode. Aw, man!” Grace said, staring down where she’d slopped a bit of quesadilla en route to her mouth. “This is my favorite shirt. ”

“Here,” I said, taking the napkin I’d been using to dab at myself to blot the stain spreading across her gray LockMill Games branded tee. “It might come out in the wash. But if it doesn’t, we can always get you a new one from the office.”

“And one of those Eat, Sleep, Code, Repeat hoodies?” She tilted her head, the corner of her mouth curling as she batted her eyelashes. I didn’t know how I ever managed to say no to anything.

“If I can find one small enough,” I agreed.

Grace pumped her arm. “Score. Hey, they have Slime Blasters .” She pointed across the hall to the booth. “That could be a fun demo.”

“You have that game,” I said, keeping close.

“But it’s Slime Blasters 3: Turbo Goo Showdown . It’s totally different.”

“We have to move on,” I told her, scanning the hall for another booth.

I wanted her to have a chance to try all the games that interested her, but I also knew there was still a lot left to see.

Not just for her, but for me. I might not be a typical gamer, but that didn’t stop me from running the best video game company in the business, and I was always on the lookout for new talent.

Especially now, when LockMill was in desperate need of a new narrative designer.

I’d heard good buzz about a young indie designer named Ryker Lowe. He had a new first-person shooter game out called Bodypoint that I wanted to see. If it looked good, the narrative designer job could be his.

Grace took my hand. “It’s basically the same concept as the sequel, but I watched a playthrough online, and they said they finally fixed the splatter decay rate. ”

I stopped looking for Ryker and frowned at her. Sometimes the tech jargon that came out of her mouth…Well, she was definitely a kid who had been raised around video games.

“Can I just check, real quick? ” Grace asked, and I relented.

“Five minutes,” I offered. “And then we move on. Deal?”

Grace fist bumped my knuckles. “Deal.”

We paused for Grace to test out Slime Blasters , and while she did, I pulled back up the search results on Ryker, skimming over the Bodypoint literature one more time.

It certainly seemed like he had talent and drive…

but would he be a good fit for Shadow ? The game was the biggest hit LockMill had ever had, and everything was riding on the success of our currently-in-development sequel. We needed this win.

I needed this win.

After my very rough and very public divorce from the company’s co-founder, the industry press had not been kind. Everyone knew Ali was the creative force behind LockMill. I was the numbers cruncher, the suit, the one who kept the lights on while Ali made the magic happen.

But she wasn’t in the picture anymore—not at work, anyway—and I was bound and determined to prove LockMill could make something just as magical without her. And without Tristan, our former narrative designer who’d left us in the lurch when his own workplace romance had crashed and burned.

To hell with romance. And to hell with sensitive creative temperaments. I was on a mission to find someone I could count on. Someone steady and reliable who would get the job done. I just hoped to God that it was Ryker so I could stop searching and actually put the team to work.

When the five minutes were up, I tapped Grace on the shoulder. “C’mon. Time to check out Bodypoint . ”

“Just a few more minutes,” Grace pleaded, hardly taking her eyes off the demo screen.

“We made a deal,” I said, crouching to look her in the eye. “Remember? We get to do some fun things for you and some work things for me. That’s called a…”

“Compromise,” Grace said, finishing my sentence with a dramatic eye roll. “I know, I know.”

“But after all that compromise?”

Grace cracked a smile. “I get hot fudge from Ghirardelli!”

“The best sundae in San Francisco.” I flicked my head in the direction of Ryker’s booth, and Grace schlepped along behind me, dragging her feet just a little too much for my liking. “Grace—” I turned around to find her staring transfixed at another demo. “Hey, c’mon.”

“Oh, wow!” she said. “This looks amazing . Dad, come on. We’ve got to check this out.”

The words Alterbot flashed across a screen followed by a small spaceship zooming through a solar system before crash landing on a planet filled with strange space…sheep? Yep, those were definitely sheep. And they seemed to be occupying a farm of pink turnips.

My daughter had been playing a game with my brother, Liam, that involved them raising an army of sheep. It’d turned into a joke with my brothers. Grace didn’t need another sheep game. “Grace, let’s go.”

Bodypoint was waiting.

“I have to try this one. The sheep,” she insisted, a pleading edge leaking into her voice. Those damn sheep . “It’s sci-fi, like Shadow ! And has resource gathering! And it’s for all ages! Omigawd, it’s like Stardew in space! Uncle Liam will love this game, too. ”

Christ . If I let her start playing, I’d never get her to stop. “ Bodypoint is waiting,” I reminded her.

“How about you leave me here while you go talk to the Ryker guy?”

I snorted. There was no version of reality where I was leaving my nine-year-old kid unsupervised in this chaos. Even if some psycho didn’t try to kidnap her, we’d never be able to find each other again in this mob scene. “You know that’s not possible.”

She stuck her lip out. I didn’t want to see that disappointed pout, but this was one time when I’d have to put my foot down. But before I could get to the word no , I was almost bowled over by a whirlwind of a woman.

Oh hell! I scowled, recognizing those bright green eyes, the neon blue streaks in her black hair, and the lush curves barely contained in her quirky T-shirt and holey jeans. This was the same woman responsible for wasting my time and ruining my shirt. I wasn’t likely to forget her in a hurry.

She was beaming at me, pure malice glinting out of that ridiculously lovely smile.

I gritted my teeth.

“Hey there, stranger,” she said. “Enjoy your lunch?” She lifted her finger. “You got a little something?—”

I resisted the urge to swat at her and grabbed Grace’s hand instead. “Let’s go. We’re going to see Bodypoint right?—”

“Hi,” the hot sauce-wielding woman said to Grace. “I’m Eddie. Cool shoes. Digging the mismatched laces.”

Grace lit up at the compliment. “Thanks. I’m Grace.”

“Nice to meet you.” She gestured over her shoulder with her thumb. “So I made this sick game called Alterbot . You want to give it a try? ”

“No, she does not,” I growled.

“Yeah, I do!” Grace said, inching toward her.

I tried to stop her, but Eddie caught my gaze with a taunting one of her own. “How do you feel about raising some space sheep, Grace?”

“Heck yeah. Does the game let you name the animals? ’Cause I’ve got some good ones.”

Eddie laughed. “Of course! That’s the best part.”

“We’re not staying,” I said, mostly to Eddie.

“But Dad, please!” Grace said, giving me her best pout. “The sign says it has interstellar travel! That’s just like Shadow of the Hyperion !”