The Gossip and the Grump （Three BFFs and a Wedding #2）
Pippa Grant
INTRODUCTION
The Gossip and the Grump
A one night stand with the boss enemies-to-lovers fish out of water / quirky small-town romantic comedy
See that guy over there? The insanely tall, broad-shouldered, dark-haired, scowling, “I don’t drink coffee” suit?
Surprise! He’s the new owner of my family’s mountain café.
The café that has been my life purpose since I was born in the kitchen there almost thirty years ago.
The café that he’s planning to completely gut and renovate for revenge against one of my family members.
He’s also the funny, charming, irresistible guy I spilled all of my secrets to last week.
During the hottest one-night stand of my life.
As my dog would say, woof me.
Secrets and gossip keep getting me in trouble, and I swore I was done with both, but now my family’s café is on the line.
It’s time to use every last trick I know to uncover every secret this man is hiding.
I don’t care how much I liked him our first night together, or how much I keep seeing glimpses of that man beneath his gruff exterior.
One of us has to go.
It won’t be me.
The Gossip & The Grump is a one night stand to enemies to lovers romcom featuring a woman desperately trying to unlearn everything she knows about everyone, a grumpy misfit hiding a secret heart of gold, an unfortunate incident with powdered cheese, and the world’s biggest lap puppy. It stands alone, but you wouldn’t go wrong to read The Worst Wedding Date first.
This book is dedicated to Schrodinger’s Boob. You know what you did.
This book is also dedicated to anyone struggling with life throwing you a curve ball when you’re already at the very end of your rope. I hope Sabrina, Grey, and Jitter give you a few hours of escape.
1
Greyson Cartwright, aka a guy who should’ve picked a different bar…
It would’ve been nice if today could’ve told me it didn’t intend to go as planned.
Rude, today. Very rude.
But not as rude as the woman currently sitting next to me.
Correction.
Pretending to sit next to me while actually attempting to crawl into my lap and take my kombucha.
“Ooh, is that the lime mojito flavor?” she asks, poking at a glass in my sample flight. The outdoor beach bar is lit mostly with tiki torches and the music is drowning out the sound of the ocean waves. But it’s not drowning out the woman. “They ran out before I got any. Is it good?”
Should’ve picked a different seat.
In a different bar.
Considering how much of a failure every bit of today has been, I didn’t even need to come to this state.
My phone buzzes on the bar. I lift it, see that both my sister and my former business partner are sending me walls of texts, grimace, and flip the device back over without reading it.
Much.
The main points are hard to miss.
Selfish asshole.
You agreed to this.
If you were really over it, you’d send her a birthday gift.
Quit being a dick and get the lights turned back on.
Both of them mad at me for vastly different things.
Both of them telling stories vastly different from the truth in order to—oddly enough— try to get back on my good side.
I should change my number. Maybe my name too. And if I don’t quit gripping this glass so hard, I’ll have to change my shirt as well.
I make myself put it down as I realize how badly my hand is shaking.
“Can you think of anything sadder than leaving Hawaii without trying lime mojito kombucha?” The woman leans even closer, her hair brushing my arm.
I landed in Hawaii four hours late because of a maintenance issue with the plane. Then I was assigned a rental car with a flat tire and waited an extra hour before the company could find another car. And once I arrived at the resort where I was supposed to attend—okay, wreck—a wedding, everything was crickets.
The whole reason I flew across the Pacific was canceled. No destination wedding. No reception. No chance to watch Chandler Sullivan’s face when I announced to his family, friends, and new bride that he was a failure who had to sell his family’s Colorado mountain café to me because of online gambling problems.
A jilting, apparently. At a resort with so few staff, I gave up on finding someone to check me in and found a different hotel a few miles up the road.
And while Chandler Sullivan deserves every shit thing that’s ever happened to him, I’m irritated that I didn’t get to play a part.