Fall With The Grumpy Single Dad

Remember love is for fairytales. And nobody gets close enough to matter. Ever.Four years ago, I traded a corner office in Vancouver for a cabin in the mountains, a woodworking shop, and full custody. My ex didn't want the mess of motherhood. I stopped wanting the mess of trusting anyone with the only good thing I've built.Harper is four. She has strong opinions about dinosaurs, stronger opinions about bedtime, and she's decided the woman who moved into the cottage next door is her new best friend.I did not approve this friendship.The woman is a photographer. Six weeks in town to shoot the Autumn Harvest Festival for some magazine I've never heard of. Oversized sweaters. Combat boots. A laugh that carries across two acres like the mountains are in on the joke. She leaves apple cider on my porch with sticky notes that say things like "e;for the grumpy one"e; and "e;smile, it won't kill you."e;It might, actually.Because there's a shriek of laughter coming from the leaf pile in my yard, a sound I haven't heard out of my kid in months, and something behind my ribs is doing a thing I specifically told it to stop doing.She's leaving in six weeks. She wants adventure and open roads and a life that fits in a suitcase. Not a man with a mortgage, a kid, and sawdust in his beard.I want her to stay.That's the most dangerous thing I've wanted in four years.