Grumpy Cowboy: A Hot Single Dad, Enemies-to-Lovers Romance Read online

  Hello, wishful thinking? It’s me, Holley.

  “So, I take it we’re all set with our bachelor and his five lucky dates?”

  “Yes.” I dig deep and force a smile to my face. “He has officially been chosen by the readers, and I’ll be meeting with the five selected women today.”

  “How exciting!” She flashes a grin in my direction and rubs her hands together.

  “Uh-huh.” I grind my back molars together. “So exciting.”

  I’m probably the last woman on earth who should be spearheading a contest that involves helping people find love, yet here I am, pretending to be absolutely delighted. Call it survival. Call it a desire to keep my job. Call it a thirty-three-year-old woman in the middle of some kind of nervous breakdown. Whatever the reason for my agreement, the fact remains that I am a journalist through and through, and no matter the story, I will write it.

  “So, tell me about our bachelor. What’s his name? What’s he like? Is he as hunky as we’re all hoping he’ll be?” she asks, her voice giddy and her short red hair bobbing up and down with each enthusiastic word. For a woman who can be such a hard-ass about deadlines, Gloria is the world’s biggest romantic. Her penchant for watching every single season of The Bachelor is proof of that. Also, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out where she obtained the inspiration for this contest.

  Thanks for nothing, Chris Harrison.

  “His name is Jake Brent,” I answer, but I choose to skirt around the whole issue of my not actually being in contact with him yet. “And…he’s certainly something.”

  “I have to tell you, Holley. I’m a little jealous that you get to be the one who goes on all the dates with our bachelor and witnesses the swoony romance in real-time,” she says through a little squeal. I swear to God, if her smile grows any bigger, it might break her damn face.

  Yep. I’m so lucky. Not only do I get to run the whole freaking contest, I also get to discreetly attend the dates as a third wheel. FML.

  “Well, you know, I’d be more than happy to let you take my place,” I respond without hesitation, but what I really want to say is, Seriously, Gloria, for the love of everything, put me out of my misery and sacrifice yourself to this stupid contest you created! “Pretty sure that’s the benefit of being the boss,” I add, in a sad, pathetic attempt to persuade her. “You get to call dibs on any assignment you want.”

  “Don’t be silly.” She waves off my words with a casual hand. “You’re going to have so much fun with this.”

  Oh yeah, Gloria. So much fun. A deathly, so-painful-it-feels-more-like-hell amount of fun.

  “And what about his dates?” she asks. “Were you able to find five women that you think meet the criteria?”

  Was I able to find five women? Yes.

  Was it a horrible, mind-numbing process that took me days upon days of scouring through a weirdly peppy cesspool of hundreds and hundreds of female applicants? Also yes.

  “Uh-huh. And actually, they should be here in the next fifteen minutes or so to sign NDAs and get abreast of how the contest will move forward.”

  “Fantastic. Sounds like everything is running smoothly on your end, then.”

  “Sure is.” Considering I’ve yet to officially talk to our Bachelor Anonymous, it’s safe to say things aren’t exactly running smoothly. But if there’s one thing you learn as a journalist early on, only tell your dictator—I mean editor in chief—what you need to tell them. And right now, all Gloria needs to know is that the contest is in progress.

  “Well, if you don’t mind,” I add before she can ask me any more giddy fucking questions I don’t have answers to. “I’m going to head out and get ready for my meeting with the five women.” She gives a little nod of approval, and I waste zero time hauling ass out of her office.

  Once I’m settled at my desk, I prepare myself for the first priority of the day—the nerve-racking phone call to Mr. Bachelor himself.

  It takes several deep breaths and numerous more read-throughs of the bullet-pointed and numbered notes I took in preparation.

  1. Name: Jake Brent. (Don’t forget to identify yourself as Holley Fields from the Tribune!)

  2. Tell him the readers loved his personal ad submission and he has been selected as the Bachelor in the SoCal Tribune’s Bachelor Anonymous Contest.

  3. Give some time for him to react positively; act supportive and excited.

  4. Tell him it’s best if we get together in person to go over all the details and sign some paperwork; ask what time works best for him. Possible locations if he doesn’t suggest any: Grey Street Coffee, Ballard’s Restaurant.

  5. Don’t forget to ask if he has any questions about the way the contest works; detailed rules and procedures listed on paper under this one.

  Hello, neurotic, right?

  Well, trust me, there’s a reason for my neuroses, and it revolves around my lifelong track record of turning into a flustered, bumbling mess on a dime.

  When I’m confident I have all the important reminders laid out in front of me, I pick up my phone from its cradle and carefully dial the numbers from Jake’s application one by one.

  Here goes nothing…

  When the first ring sounds over the line, I take a deep breath and toss my reading glasses onto the top of the desk.

  Of course, I panic then, because I’m not going to be able to read any of my notes without my damn glasses, and I scramble to get them back on my face as the line clicks over to answered.

  “Hello?”

  “Uh, hi.” I stumble over my words, briefly surprised by the young, female voice. Cold calls are not my forte—to be honest, they’re not even my “five-te.” While I may be a confident, successful, intelligent woman by some measure of the world, I am also an eternally awkward mess. Babbling, stuttering, fumbling—I’m guilty of all the cardinal tells. “May I speak with Jake Brent, please?”

  “Oh! He’s not in right now,” the girl says cheerfully. “Can I take a message?”

  Shoot. I wasn’t entirely prepared for this. I was expecting Jake himself to answer the phone, to be able to follow my little prewritten script, and I foolishly didn’t prepare a backup script for the instance of leaving a message. Still, there is an actual human waiting on the phone for me to get my shit together, which becomes even more apparent when she prompts, “Hello?

  “Ah…yes,” I force through my saliva-filled throat. “I’m Holley Fields with the Tribune. I’m just…” I glance down at my notes, and in all of two seconds, I try to soak up as many bullet points as I can. “I’m…uh…calling regarding his entry into the Bachelor Anonymous Contest. He’s been selected, and I need to go over the details. Can you tell me when might be a better time to reach him?”

  There’s a muffled shuffle and a muted yell on the other end of the line, and I draw my eyebrows together slightly. When a thud sounds in my ear, I pull my desk phone away from my face to look at it—as if the clunky plastic handset will tell me anything—and then put it back. I still hear a small scream in the background. What is happening over there? I swear to Jesus, this guy better not have a secret wife. I cannot redo this contest! The voting already took six weeks to process. Not to mention, the additional seventy hours of work I had to suffer through last week, just to choose the damn women!

  “Did you say Holley Fields?” the woman asks, an edge to her voice that I can’t exactly place. All I know is she no longer sounds easy like Sunday morning.

  “I did.” I said it quite well, actually, thank you very much, I congratulate myself. Eloquently, even. “And to whom do I have the pleasure of speaking?”

  I smack my forehead. Now I sound like the Queen of England.

  “Chloe,” she says simply before adding, “Chloe Brent. Jake’s daughter.”

  His daughter?

  Of course, it’s his daughter, you moron! His personal ad is titled Single Dad Seeks Juliet!

  Oh hell. Suddenly, the reason I gave for calling seems a little too detailed. I sure hope she kn
ew her dad was signing up to be part of an all-out dating meat market since I just outed him. Yikes. You’d think nearly ten years of journalism experience would’ve prevented that horrible mistake, but here I am, fumbling and bumbling my way through this call.

  Oh well, at least it’s not a secret wife, right? Now, that would be bad.

  “Ah, okay. Well…hmm…okay.” I pause, tripping over my own words. On a quiet breath, I sink my head into my hands and find the strength to try again. “Do you know when a better time would be to reach your dad?”

  “He’s, uh…” She pauses almost long enough to confuse me before continuing. “Pretty hard to get ahold of on the phone.”

  Sooo…how am I supposed to get ahold of this guy? Literally all other forms of communication are escaping me right now. How can someone be hard to get ahold of by phone? Isn’t it surgically attached to his hand like the rest of us?

  “All right. Hard to get on the phone…” Holy hell, this conversation has turned remarkably uncomfortable. “Should I…email?

  “He doesn’t really do that either,” she says, and I internally snort. What’s left? A carrier pigeon? Are they even still working, or did some union put a stop to that?

  “Is he of this world? Or a goblin of some sort?” I find myself asking sarcastically before I realize I’m shit-talking to a stranger. A stranger who just so happens to be the daughter of this year’s Bachelor Anonymous, mind you. I slap a hand over my mouth and bang my head against the desk.

  Thankfully, she laughs.

  “My dad isn’t a goblin,” she says through a final snort. “He’s one hundred percent a human man, and he’ll be at Coronado Beach tomorrow morning. He’s literally there every morning, just after sunrise. A bit of a creature of a habit, I guess you could say.”

  “Coronado Beach?” I repeat and mentally calculate that it’s only a short drive from my house. Ten, fifteen minutes tops.

  “Yep. You can find him there.”

  And, what? I’m just supposed to stumble around the beach for a couple hours until I find him? Pretty sure I’m going to need a meet point that’s a little more detailed than an entire freaking beach…

  “Maybe I should just give him another call ton—”

  “No!” she says quickly, and I squint, curious as to her intensity. “He won’t be home. But I’ll let him know that you called, and he’ll be expecting to see you tomorrow at Coronado Beach. Right across from the Hotel Del.”

  “But he doesn’t even—”

  The line goes dead before I finish the rest of my thought, “know what I look like.”

  Well, that didn’t go as planned…

  I pull the phone away from my ear slowly before replacing it back in the cradle. I’m not sure what level of awkward I’d classify that conversation as, but it was definitely on the spectrum. Still, I guess being the daughter of a single man who’s entered himself in a bachelor competition has to be a little unsettling. I know I probably wouldn’t have known what to say or do in that situation either.

  Which is exactly why you shouldn’t have given so damn many details at the beginning.

  I cringe and offer up a silent prayer that my minor conversational fuckup doesn’t come back to bite me in the ass. The last thing I need is Mr. Bachelor threatening to sue the newspaper because I accidentally spilled the beans to his daughter.

  Shit. Shit. Shit.

  You’d think, at this stage in my life, I’d be better prepared for my blundering, but no.

  My foot-in-mouth syndrome appears to be chronic.

  Goodness, I really hope I didn’t traumatize his daughter with my slipup.

  My dad had the good grace to be perpetually single after my mom passed. Don’t get me wrong, I want him to be happy—I’ve always wanted him to be happy, and I know a large part of that would be amplified by a companion in his life. But the interviews I’ve spent the last week doing in order to narrow the Bachelor Anonymous dating pool have been irrefutable proof that it’s scary out there in the open seas of desperate women.

  I sigh, and when I look up from my desk, I come face-to-face with the only five women who seemed like it wouldn’t be an actual crime to make our nominated bachelor date. In the glass-walled conference room across the hall from my office, they sit, waiting for me to join them.

  Damn, sometimes Dolly—one of the main office assistants here at the Tribune—is far too prompt.

  I sigh again. I thought I’d be meeting with them after getting verbal confirmation of participation from our bachelor, but I was clearly a little too ambitious with my timing.

  Oh well. The NDA I’ve had the legal team draft should be all-encompassing. Even if we had to make a change to Bachelor Anonymous at the last minute, it wouldn’t make a difference in the paperwork.

  At least this part will be out of the way.

  I shove my chair back with my hips and press the button on the front of my computer monitor to shut off the screen. The glass walls may have seemed like a good idea to the designer when they remodeled the Tribune two years ago, but I can tell you, they were not.

  My neighbor to the left—Fritz Callo, the contributor responsible for the oversensationalized Men Want More column—is a snoop and, in all honesty, kind of a pervert. I make a point to steer clear of him and his wandering eyes at all costs.

  Meanwhile, to the right of me sits Gianna Welsh, the woman in charge of obituaries. Sounds innocent enough on the surface, but let me tell you, she spends half her workday video-chat flirting with all the widowed men. I can’t even count the number of times I’ve seen her reach into the V neck of her top to pull her boobs up and inward for more camera exposure just before signing on to—or during—a call.

  I do have to hand it to her, though. She’s frighteningly, impressively shameless. Everyone in the office other than the editor knows of her behavior and knows of it well. I’m actually surprised her name didn’t show up on any of the applications I’ve been sorting through over the last two weeks for this contest.

  But I guess all the competition for his affection makes Bachelor Anonymous too hard of a mark.

  The hustle and bustle of the office amplifies as I shove through the glass door of my office and step out into the hall. A huge network of cubicles just on the other side of Fritz buzzes with the anxious anticipation of our print deadline. Beat reporters pull phones away from their ears and cover the mouthpieces to shout at their compadres, and runners sweep the grid, looking for articles that can get picked up, proofread, submitted to the editor, and fast-tracked over to layout. The timeline of our paper’s release never changes—ever. And yet, we’re almost always comically, agonizingly in a rush. Either the expectations to fit this much work into the timeline given are ridiculous, or we’re staffed mostly by procrastinators.

  Based on myself, I’d wager a guess that it’s a healthy mix of both.

  My phone pings with a text from my blazer pocket, and I pull it out quickly to make sure it’s not something of immediate importance. A single text from my dad previews on my home screen, cutting the message off somewhere in the middle.

  Dad: Went fishing this morning. Caught some bass and a couple of sunnies, but when I went to take the boat out of the water, my stomach got to gurgling something fierce. Nearly crapped myself right…

  A small smile curls one corner of my mouth upward as I click the screen off and put the phone back in my pocket. Dad and his fish-capades. He’ll be going on about this for a while—I’m sure of it. I expect no fewer than twenty texts in the next hour. But with the time constraints of getting this contest/dating column up and off the ground, I’ll have to humor him later.

  I shove open the glass door to the conference room—where the bachelor’s future dates sit—and step inside, letting the weight of the door bring it closed behind me.

  Five sets of eyes come up from their phones and land squarely on me. The technology in their hands ticks in my mind like bombs. Normally, I wouldn’t look at something so harmless so skeptically, but I know t
he power of social media these days.

  All it takes is a tweet to bring a whole empire crashing down. By my calculations, that means it would only take about twenty characters to ruin me and my contest.

  Quickly, I set my folder down on the table and open it up. Five NDAs are stacked on top, and if I were an investigator, I’d be slamming them down on the surface in front of each subject. But, obviously, this isn’t an interrogation and I’m not the FBI.

  Calmly as I can, I take the stack and pass it around to each of the ladies. Honestly, these NDAs cannot get signed soon enough if they’re going to be the official contestants. Thankfully, though, at this stage in the competition, there isn’t that much meaningful information they could have leaked. I haven’t revealed the Bachelor to them—or myself, frankly. All I have is a weird phone conversation with Jake Brent’s daughter. Until he signs all the documentation, it could all go down the drain.

  Ha. Ha-ha-ha.

  Man, nothing makes you laugh in absolute terror like the threat of sheer and utter devastation to your livelihood, right?

  “Hi, ladies,” I greet, trying my damnedest to make a smile reach my eyes. I’m a skeptic at my best, and a cynic at my worst. Honestly, since my breakup with Raleigh, I’m barely functioning on a human level.

  I’m more like Skeletor, the almost human woman.

  Though, considering everything I’ve been through with my bastard ex, I think that’s pretty damn understandable.

  Ugh. Do not go there, Holley.

  On a discreet breath, I shove all thoughts of Raleigh Reynolds and his cheating dick aside and focus on the job at hand—this dumb, wait, I mean, awesome contest.

  “Thanks for your patience as I finished up a call…” I smile conspiratorially. “With your bachelor!”

  They all clap and giggle, and I have to fight the urge to cover my ears. It’s good that they’re excited. It wouldn’t make for an interesting read if they were feeling super lackluster about the whole thing, but that doesn’t make me enjoy it any more. Frankly, the shrill sound of their joy kind of makes me want to ralph.