Elijah Grove is the absolute worst.
And he knows it too.
Mainly because I’ve told him so every day since I’ve met him.
I wish that I could just avoid him for the rest of my life but that’s hard to do when we live in this small town.
I thought that we were on the same page about ignoring each other but then one night he shows up at my bakery and offers me a deal.
One that I promptly reject but when he jams his foot in my door and refuses to leave until I hear him out, I relent.
He wants me to be his girlfriend.
It would be fake, obviously. We just need to make it look good and fool his family so that they don’t try to set him up while they’re in town.
In exchange, he’ll help me get my bakery up and running.
I would be an idiot to say yes, but there is a lot of work to be done and we’d only have to pretend for a few days.
I can handle it.
Or I thought that I could, but the more time that I spend around the grumpy giant, the more I start to see that he might not be as bad as I first thought.
But this is all just a façade.
Isn’t it?
ONE
Hartley
I wishI had known just how cold it would be in Honey Peak in January. I mean, I know that it’s Michigan and that there would be snow, but I guess my southern blood just wasn’t prepared for just how cold it would be here.
The skies appeared to have dumped another two feet of snow on the town and I shiver just looking out of my apartment window at the piles of fluffy white stuff.
I have to admit that it does look pretty. I’m used to city streets and bumper to bumper traffic. There’s nothing like that here though.
Honey Peak is a small town and it’s set up like most small towns. There are only a few main roads with most of the businesses set up there. The sun is just starting to peek out over the top of the mountains, glinting off the snow dusting the top of the trees that line the hills. I let the curtain drop, retreating farther into my small apartment.
I’m used to waking up early, a habit of my occupation. I’m a baker. Normally, at this time, I would be taking the next batch of baked goods out of the oven or maybe frosting the last batch if it was cooled down enough.
That was if I was still back in Atlanta, working at the bakery around the corner from my grams’ place. I’m not in Georgia anymore though.
I moved to Honey Peak, Michigan a few days ago, needing a change of, well, everything, after my grams passed away. She had been sick for a while. Alzheimer’s, although it was a stroke that killed her.
She had raised me after my parents were killed in a car accident. They had been driving home in the middle of a rainstorm when their car had hydroplaned and they had crashed into a tree. I was young, barely four, and don’t have many memories left of them, but from the pictures that I’ve seen and the stories Grams told me, I feel like I know them.
My hair is dark brown, so dark that it’s almost black, and with my bright blue eyes, I look a little bit like Snow White. I’m even rocking the pale look since I spend most of my time in a kitchen.
I must get my coloring from my dad because both my mom and Grams had light coloring. Grams had pale blonde hair so light that you barely noticed the change when she started to go gray. With eyes the color of melted chocolate, she was my opposite.
I barely remember them, but I remember Grams. She was my parent, my best friend, and my whole world. She took me in when she was grieving her own loss and she made sure that I was alright and adjusted. She raised me, helped me with homework, listened to me gush over my latest crush in school, and most importantly, she taught me her love of baking.
Grams was an incredible cook, but she said that sweets were her favorite. She had always dreamed of saving up and opening her own bakery. We’d lay awake at night dreaming up ideas of what it would look like and what treats we would serve.
We never did it though.
There was always something that came up, some unforeseen expense, and we’d be back down to zero. Braces for me, a new car when her old beater finally died, school supplies, the list goes on and on.