Until it was love, p.1
Until It Was Love, page 1
UNTIL IT WAS LOVE
PIPPA GRANT
Copyright © 2024
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever, including the training of artificial intelligence, without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. All text in this book was generated by Pippa Grant without use of artificial intelligence.
Pippa Grant®, Copper Valley Fireballs®, and Copper Valley Thrusters® are registered trademarks of Bang Laugh Love LLC.
Editing by Jessica Snyder, HEA Author Services
Proofreading by Emily Laughridge & Jodi Duggan
Cover Design by Qamber Designs
CONTENTS
Introduction
Bring the Story to Life
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Epilogue
Sneak Peek of The Roommate Mistake
Pippa Grant Book List
About the Author
INTRODUCTION
Until It Was Love
A Teammate’s Sister / Enemies-to-Lovers / Fake Dating / Grumpy x Sunshine Romantic Comedy
There are a million reasons why I shouldn’t agree to a date with Fletcher Huxley.
He’s a growly-faced, stubborn-streaked, international rugby legend trying to revive his flailing career in the US after being canned by his team overseas.
While he might have the good kind of thunder thighs, intriguing tattoos, and a booty of steel, he also holds the top position on my very short nemesis list thanks to what happened the first time we met.
Plus, his mustache is as terrible as the reason he’s picked me to be the woman he wants to date.
But he has one big checkmark in the why this date is a good idea column: he’s my brother’s new teammate.
They already hate each other.
And my brother has made an unfortunate habit of interfering with my love life recently.
So a revenge date with Fletcher to make my brother mad? While letting Fletcher think this date is merely for the good of the team?
Yep.
I’m in.
I’m moving to London for work in a month. And it’s just one date. What could possibly go wrong?
Until It Was Love is a banter-tastic romcom featuring an overgrown snack of a man with a soft spot for his purse dog, a normally optimistic life coach trying to live her best life, a mustache catastrophe, and one little tiny fainting spell. It stands alone and comes complete with a swoony happily ever after that will leave your heart in a happy puddle of joy.
BRING THE STORY TO LIFE
Have you ever listened to an audiobook?
If the answer is yes, then you know that it can make the characters come alive.
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Listen to Samantha Brentmoor and Jason Clarke read Until It Was Love in audio HERE!
This book is dedicated to mustaches everywhere.
If you love them, I apologize. The book demanded this treatment for the ’stache. If you hate them, you’re welcome, but again, I can’t take credit.
It’s all Fletcher and Goldie.
And really, this book is dedicated to them. Thank you for all of the hours of utter joy (and cackles) that you brought me while letting me tell your story. I’ll never forget our time together.
1
Goldie Collins, aka a life coach not currently regretting any of her decisions…which is about to change drastically
Is there anything more satisfying than watching someone you don’t like make a serious mistake with their facial hair?
Yes, yes, I know. In the grand scheme of life, there are probably worse decisions than neglecting to take a razor to your upper lip for ten years.
But Fletcher Huxley’s absolutely horrific mustache is giving me the kind of glee that probably can’t be balanced with a simple donation to a food bank or volunteer stint at a blood drive.
And considering he showed up to this blood drive with a cameraperson in tow, and that he’s recording himself looking like that apparently with the thought that it’ll help advance his social media side hustle—yep.
My petty glee meter overfloweth.
“Oooh, Evelyn, look at that,” Odette, my seventy-two-year-old neighbor and one of my pro bono clients, says. “Goldie’s making eyes at one of the rugby players.”
“Ew.” I wrinkle my nose at the Black woman in the bright pink Outlive Our Ex-Boyfriends Club T-shirt. “No. Never.”
“Mm-hmm.” Her smug grin and dancing brown eyes say she doesn’t believe me.
“Which one?” Evelyn replies. She’s a sixty-nine-year-old white woman in a matching T-shirt, though both her jeans and her dyed brown hair are the height of stylish. She’s also three inches taller than Odette and the VP to Odette’s president in their seasoned ladies’ club.
“The one that looks like MacGyver,” Odette tells her.
Now all three of us are staring at the large tattooed white man sitting in the blood-draw chair. We’re at a senior center near the hockey arena, and my companions are tracking how many donors we get today. They want to beat the number that their rival club, Old Man Bikers, got last week.
“If I were forty years younger, I’d make a pass at him, but not before I told him to shave,” Evelyn says.
I grab a warehouse-size box of single-serving Goldfish cracker packets from beneath the refreshments table along the wall. “The ’stache isn’t all that’s wrong with him,” I mutter to myself.
“I couldn’t date him,” she continues thoughtfully. “I’d kick the bucket before him, and what fun would that be?”
“None at all,” I assure her, louder so that she can hear me. “Even if he kicked the bucket before you, I’m sure it would be awful to date him.”
“We could murder the mustache though,” Odette says.
Evelyn cackles. “And we could write its obituary.”
“The facial hair of the scowly tattooed giant died an untimely death when runaway kitchen shears—”
“No, when there was an accident with a weed eater,” Evelyn interrupts.
“When a runaway weed eater older than color television picked the wrong time to malfunction,” Odette intones.
The visual makes me smile.
For the record, there are very few people in this world that I genuinely dislike. Three, to be specific.
My ex-boyfriend.
My former best friend.
And Fletcher Huxley.
Trust me when I say they all earned my dislike.
I rarely spend time dwelling on any of them, but there’s Fletcher, right there, impossible to ignore with that mustache. The sight of him is making my chest suck in on itself a little at the memory of what he did the last time I saw him.
Which was supposed to be the last time in my entire life.
And unfortunately wasn’t.
“I’m not sure about the weed eater,” Evelyn says. “That might do damage to more than just the ’stache.”
“Depends on the skill of the handler.”
I’m actively working on calming my rising pulse and enjoying my friends’ conversation instead as a young white woman who’s finished giving blood approaches our table. I quickly shift my attention to her.
“Hi! Thank you for your donation today. Rock star! How’re you feeling? Apple juice and Goldfish?”
She takes both from me, but looks over her shoulder at the four chairs currently occupied by very large men who came in while she was in her own chair. “Who are those guys?”
She’s a little younger than me with bright blue hair, a nose ring, and clothes that say work-from-home professional of some kind.
“Copper Valley Pounders players,” I reply.
“Is that college hockey or something?”
“Professional rugby. Relatively new here in the States. The Pounders are one of the original teams in the league though. Tickets are on sale now for the
Even if I don’t have happy thoughts about their newest player, who should still be overseas and not here.
“Huh.” She takes her snacks and moves the seven steps necessary to reach the sit here and eat your snack while we make sure you don’t pass out tables under the fluorescent lighting of the cafeteria-like room.
“You meet him yet?” Odette asks me.
“Who?”
“Bad Mustache guy.”
Once.
A long, long time ago, when his facial hair wasn’t as thick.
Not that that’s what I remember most about him.
And I’m sure he doesn’t remember much about me either. Or if he does, the memory is stuck somewhere in that awful ’stache.
Which is about where it belongs, considering what he said that day.
“Nope,” I tell Odette while I pretend I’m adjusting my bra but am actually rubbing at my chest to try, once again, to calm my heart. The man did serious damage. “Haven’t spoken to him at all.”
“If you block out the mustache, he’s not bad-looking,” Evelyn says. “Here. Hold up a finger like this and squint, and you can see his face without the mustache in the way.”
“Quit staring,” Odette tells her. “He’ll think you’re interested.”
“Or he’ll think I have a cute granddaughter. I did pass these sexy genes down a couple generations. Oooh, he’s looking our way.” She winks and wiggles her fingers at him.
He slides his arrogant gaze back to his cameraperson.
And I suppress a shiver.
I’ve healed from a lot of things in the past six years.
What he said is not one of them.
“What if he’s a loud chewer?” Odette says. “Or what if he tosses his underwear next to the laundry basket? When we date, it’s one thing. We’re too old to be in it for anything other than a good time. When we help our granddaughters date, we need to have higher standards for them. They don’t have to get married, but if they want to, we don’t want them with loud chewers who don’t pull their weight around the house.”
“Hey, cafeteria lady,” one of the players yells directly at me, “I feel weak. Bring me some Goldfish. The graham cracker kind. In the blue and pink bag.”
That player?
He’s the reason the rest of them are here.
And he’s here because I threatened to tell all of his teammates about the time he confused his own snot for brain matter when he was sixteen if he didn’t help me get half the city here today.
I wouldn’t have—I truly wouldn’t—but my brother has been a big enough ass himself in the past two years that I know he sometimes thinks I would.
And I’m all in on using whatever means I have at my disposal to help Odette and Evelyn and Sheila, the third member of their little club, beat the Old Man Bikers Club.
Yes, they really call it that. And no, bikes isn’t code for motorcycles.
The club is a bunch of old guys from our neighborhood who get together to ride their bicycles around Copper Valley when the weather’s nice enough.
Between Odette, Evelyn, and Sheila, they’ve dated half the club.
At least, they did before the massive betrayal. Now, they don’t date any of the old bikers.
I’ll miss these women so much when I leave next month.
But we’ll stay in touch through text and socials. They’ve promised to send me all of the obituaries they write with the real juicy stuff the next time one of their exes dies. And I’ve promised to send them real British tea and pictures from everywhere around London.
They might come visit too.
“You have to finish your donation before you get the prize,” I call back to Silas.
Two of his teammates snortle. The third—Fletcher with the Bad ’Stache—shoots Silas a dirty look and then says something to the cameraperson capturing his every move.
Probably start over on a new take since Silas ruined this one.
Dude has no idea his facial hair is already ruining it for him.
It’s thick and growing over his lips and has a part in the middle. The edges are even thicker, and it looks like he tried styling gel to get the ’stache to do…something.
Fletcher Huxley’s upper lip is where Wyatt Earp’s mustache went to die.
And the petty thought does more to lower my pulse than anything else has since I spotted him twenty minutes ago.
I oblige my baby brother and take him a package of Goldfish and a bottle of apple juice.
Much as I love to razz him, and much as he’s completely screwed up my dating life the past two years, I don’t want him passing out.
“See?” Silas says to the guy closest to him. “They like it when you ask nicely and give them nicknames.”
Porter winces. He’s new to the team for the upcoming season, one of the smaller and younger guys, with red hair and a full beard that he, too, claims he’s considering trimming so that his mustache is the prominent feature of his face.
“You’re an ass, Silas,” I tell him.
He grins at me, blue eyes as full of trouble as ever. “I have a nice ass.”
I grin back. “Oh, donkey farming is your backup plan when this rugby thing doesn’t work out?”
His teammates hoot.
Two of them, anyway.
The fourth scowls across the other two at my brother once again.
That, I remember from Silas’s update when we had dinner together last weekend.
This old fucker who got cut from the Premiere League in the UK joined on. Fletcher Huckleberry or something. Dude thinks he invented rugby. Walks around like a god. Has this cameraperson following his every move like he’s some kind of influencer. His game isn’t shit anymore and he’s only here because no other English team would take him after Nottingshire released him. He’s gonna ruin our game and management is too stupid to see it.
This season should be fun for Silas.
But considering what Silas did the last time I had a date, and the time before that, and the time before that, and—you get the picture. Point is, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t exuberant at the idea of my brother’s pending suffering at the hands of Fletcher Huxley too.
When I’m not here to watch.
I love my brother, but our overall relationship can best be described as complicated.
Thanks, Mom and Dad.
“You and your brother are proof positive that gene distribution is fucked up,” Odette murmurs to me when I rejoin her at the refreshments table. Evelyn’s moved to help Sheila at the check-in desk at the other side of the tent.
“I keep waiting for my mom to admit he actually arrived on a spaceship and is some kind of aliens-on-earth experiment they can’t talk about.”
She cocks a look at me, then cracks up.
And that’s when I make the worst mistake of my life.
