Page 2 of The Grump I Got Stuck With

The dog yipped in response.

“I swear this door looked bigger from outside. Ow! Okay, apparently that bone does not bend that way.” She grunted. “What if I get stuck like this and my ass freezes in the storm and I’m lying here like some half-frozen popsicle? I don’t want to die on Scottish soil.” She grunted again. “Ugh, these hips!”

Bark! Bark!

“None of your sass, Princess. If you want to be useful, go find whoever lives in this creepy castle and see if you can charm them into letting us stay the night.”

I bristled. No way was that happening. The woman could take her half-frozen self right back out the way she came. Well, maybe not exactly the way she came, because that sounded like an involved process, but I’d be more than happy to open the door if it meant I could shove her back outside of it.

“You’ll have to be on your best behavior, because clearly whoever lives here didn’t want to answer the door like a reasonable person,” the woman continued. “But, really, why have those giant door knockers if you don’t want visitors?”

I stepped into the room, staring down at a tiny dog, a duffle bag, and what was, in fact, a woman shimmying through my dog door. For a beat, all I could do was stare. I never would have thought it possible for an adult to fit through that door. Beneath the shock and anger building in my chest, I couldn’t help but be a little impressed.

Then that pint-sized Yorkie started barking at me like I was the one who’d snuck into her kitchen.

“Oh!” the woman said, looking up at me, eyes widened in surprise. “Hi! So, I know this probably looks⁠—”

“What the hell are you doing in my kitchen?” I growled. “You people can’t leave me alone even on bloody Christmas Eve? You go so far as to break into⁠—”

“I’m not breaking in,” she exclaimed, cutting me off. “Okay, technically I am. But in my defense—agh, Princess, stop licking me—this was the only house around. My car slammed into a ditch, and I didn’t really have a lot of choices in this weather.” She finally got her hips through the opening. “It was either doggy door or become Frosty the Snowman.”

I would have preferred Frosty. I crossed my arms. “Maybe you wouldn’t be crashing into ditches if you’d stop trying to write headlines from behind the wheel.”

“Huh?”

“Did you think the KEEP OUT sign was just a friendly suggestion?”

Aggravation bubbled deep in my gut. I was so sick of fucking journalists. Sick of being hounded because my board members had dragged me through a trial after my ex embezzled millions from my company. Sick of trying to live my life while everyone else refused to let the news story die.

“Who sent you? Which paper do you work for?”

“Which paper do I—what?” She frowned, grabbing the edge of the counter to climb to her feet. Now that she wasn’t on the floor, I could see that her cheeks were bright red. She’d clearly had to ditch her coat to fit through the door, and her damp clothes outlined curves I had no business noticing. I wrenched my gaze away.

“You bastards were relentless in London,” I snapped. “But when I moved all the way out here, I finally thought the hounding would stop. That you’d find a new story to sink your teeth into.” Apparently not.

The woman blinked at me like she’d never heard of a sleazy tabloid in her life. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m not with a newspaper.”

I sneered. “Online rag, then. Whatever. That doesn’t make it better, you know.” I’d had more than my share of “citizen journalists” who felt entitled to rip my life to shreds for clicks. Those vultures published utter shite, and people lapped it up. If she thought I was about to become her holiday story, she had another thing coming.

“You do realize you’re trespassing, and I could have you arrested,” I informed her.

She laughed uncomfortably. “Doesn’t Scotland have a right to roam law?”

“Outdoors!” I said, gesturing back the way she came. “What part of crawling across my kitchen floor like some feral ice bogle feels like exercising your legal freedoms?”

“It might not be legal, but it was necessary.”

“Are you hearing yourself?”

“Barely,” she said, stuffing her finger in her ear. “I think my eardrums might have frozen.”

“Along with your common sense,” I muttered. “I’m not going to put up with this kind of harassment.”

The woman flicked her long strawberry blonde ponytail off her shoulder, green eyes blazing. I couldn’t help noticing the way the snow melted into her hair, the bits by her temples curling.

“I’m not trying to harass you.”

“Then what do you call all this backchat?”