Page 3 of Oops I Fell for the Grump Next Door

Both attraction and anger swirled together in my stomach, a crazy concoction I’d never experienced before.

One part of me wanted to yell and scream at him.

The only part wanted to climb him like the tall tree he was.

How is there such a thin line?

And now, not only was he rude, but he was also loud.

Yet I couldn't stop staring. I wanted him. In every possible way.

Throwing on my sweatpants and hoodie, I marched outside and over to his yard before I chickened out or changed my mind.

He had it coming.

CHAPTER TWO

Cliff

Tears pricked at my eyes as I hammered the cross into place. The carved name stared at me, reminding me every second why I was building it in the first place.

Wally.

My dog of fifteen years.

Cancer took him in the end.

About a month ago, I took him to the vet, as he had trouble breathing and didn’t want to eat much. They found lumps in his throat and the blood work came back, detecting the cruel disease. We tried medication to shrink the lumps but unfortunately, he was too old for chemotherapy. He declined quickly and next thing I knew, I was at the vet saying my goodbyes.

It was harder than I ever imagined.

My parents gifted me Wally when I was a junior in high school, as their health declined. They were in their forties when they had me, a last-ditch effort to have children, and didn’t lead very healthy lives. By their sixties, the alcoholism they both suffered from took them down.

Wally got me through all of it. Their decline, their eventual passing away to me taking over their cabin here in Appleridge where they raised me.

How will I survive without him?

Tears spilled down my cheeks, unable to hold them back any longer, as I finished with the hammer.

A small cross stood proudly along the back fence. I dug a hole beside it and buried his favorite ball. Inside, I kept his urn on my mantle, along with his picture and a tuff of hair. But he loved being outside the most, fetching his ball.

“Excuse me? Do you realize what time it is?”

A voice came from behind me and I whirled around, surprised to see someone in my yard.

A woman at that.

Where the hell did she come from?

She stood there, hands on her hips, her hair in a messy bun on top of her head.

Beautiful.

I blinked. Wait. She was the woman from yesterday.

The one in the store.

Shit.