The Grump I Got Stuck With (Braeburn Cliffs #3)

1. Alistair

ALISTAIR

If I didn’t know any better, I’d think the whole bloody house was about to come crashing down on me.

When I’d chosen this estate, I’d gone for privacy and security, but I really should have added Ice-Age-level storms to the threat assessment.

Thankfully, these old Scottish estates were originally built as fortresses.

Even the worst snowstorm was no match for these thick walls.

I drew the curtains across the window, trying to drown out the howling wind before I returned to my desk to fire off my last work email of the evening. My phone vibrated as soon as I sat down, and I snapped it up, pressing it to my ear. “All right?”

“Merry Christmas Eve,” Weston said. He was one of my oldest friends, and part of the reason I’d relocated to Braeburn.

“Is it merry?” I asked, my fingers drifting across my keyboard as I finished the list of tasks for my admin assistant. The internet signal flickered dubiously. Fan-fucking-tastic.

“Is that typing I hear? Don’t tell me you’re still working?” Weston said.

I stifled my reply with a huff. It might have been Christmas Eve, but there were some start-ups I was reviewing for potential angel investment, and I wanted to get the offers across the line before the new year.

“C’mon, mate, call it quits,” Weston said. “You’re supposed to be roasting by an open fire.”

“You’re thinking of chestnuts.”

“Well, it might start sounding tempting for you, too, if this storm gets any worse.” I could hear the grin in his voice. “Still glad you moved up here?”

I grunted. “Ask me that tomorrow when I try to get out of the bloody house.”

“Touché. Lena thinks we should park our Christmas plans until we can dig out. Maybe we have the family Christmas in a few days?”

Weston’s wife, Lena, grew up in Montana and knew her way around a snowstorm. Besides, she was about the most practical person I’d ever met. Whenever she advised something, I was always inclined to agree. I glanced up from my laptop as something echoed from the hall. Was that…barking?

I rose to my feet. “A few days sounds good,” I said to Weston. I heard another noise. “I should check on things. I’ll ring you tomorrow.”

“Sounds good. Be safe.”

Weston hung up, and I set off down the hall, following the odd yip toward the sitting room. Had I accidentally left the telly on when I brought Kenna upstairs to sleep? No. I paused in the darkened room, double-checking the windows, making sure they were secure. Maybe it was just the wind.

Bark. Bark. Bark.

I whirled around, heart thumping. Eyes narrowed.

That was no wind.

I strode down the hall and cut through the dining room toward the kitchen.

There was a dog door left over from the previous owners, who’d had a large hunting breed, and I’d yet to close it off.

Admittedly, when we’d first moved here, Kenna took great pleasure in using the smaller door, which she’d claimed was better for her size.

So I’d left it alone…and was now regretting that decision. I heard another round of barks.

How the hell had a dog gotten to my place in this weather? The closest neighbor was over a mile away.

Things grew quiet, and for a beat, I thought I’d imagined it. Then, sure enough, there it was again—that infernal, high-pitched yipping. But that’s not what made me freeze in my tracks.

What made me freeze was the voice.

“Princess, get back here!”

I wasn’t just dealing with a lost animal—I was dealing with a human.

Out here. In the middle of nowhere in the middle of a snowstorm.

On Christmas Eve. This couldn’t be a coincidence.

My thoughts immediately flashed to all the problems I’d endured in London—the paparazzi stalking me at every turn, wanting all the dirty little details that were none of their damn business.

I thought we were safe here from the constant harassment. Will it never bloody end?

I’d rather face a pack of ravaging hellhounds than another fucking journalist. They were worse than cockroaches.

I knew they hadn’t hesitated to steal my post, go through my rubbish bins, harass my family and friends, and even bribe my staff to dig up more dirt on my ever-so-juicy scandal, but physically breaking into my house was a new low.

If moving out to the edges of nowhere—and landing in the snowstorm of the century—wasn’t enough to keep them at bay, what the hell was?

Not to mention, the woman had an American accent.

Apparently, they were sending muckrakers all the way across the pond for this shit.

Bark! Bark!

“Calm down. I’m going as fast as I can!” The woman tutted. “Look at the state of me, crawling through a doggy door.” She groaned. “God, I should have done more yoga.”

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?”

“Um, a healthy and productive conversation?”

“Healthy and productive? You have the communication skills of a stubborn Highland ram, thinking you can just bulldoze your way in here.”

“I’m just trying not to die!” The Yorkie pranced between us, leaving wet pawprints all over the floor. The woman took a deep breath and let it out slowly, like she was trying to calm herself down. I opened my mouth to stop whatever she would say next, but she got there first.