Page 108 of Trick or Tease

I had a feeling of satisfaction so deep it made my chest warm. We had done this. We had actually pulled it off. What started as Billy’s crazy idea to expand the pumpkin chunking had turned into something real, something successful.

“And tomorrow’s Halloween,” I said, hardly able to contain my excitement. “If today was any indication, we’re going to make a killing.”

Lucy nodded enthusiastically. “The weather’s supposed to be perfect too. Not too cold, no rain in the forecast.”

“We might need to make another trip to the bank,” I said, gesturing at all the cash spread across the desk. “I don’t feel comfortable keeping this much money in the house.”

“Good thinking,” Granny said, carefully folding her earnings into her ancient leather purse. “Though I gotta say, it’s a nice problem to have.”

My mind was already racing ahead to tomorrow night. We would have to make sure we had enough supplies, enough staff, enough everything. But for the first time since we started planning this whole venture, I felt confident we could handle whatever came our way.

“I should go tell Garrett the good news,” I said, standing up and stretching. “He’s been working so hard on all the business stuff. He’ll want to know how well we did.”

Yes, I was pissed at him for earlier, but I had a feeling success was an aphrodisiac for him. Money and success. I wanted to show him we weren’t a bunch of country bumpkins that didn’t know how to make money.

I bounded up the stairs to Garrett’s childhood room, practically bursting with the need to share this moment with him. Despite everything weird that had been happening between us, this was still something we had built together. He deserved to know how successful it was.

I knocked on his door, but there was no answer.

When he didn’t answer, I turned the handle and opened the door. “Garrett?”

He wasn’t in there. I noticed something on his bed. Something I had no business looking at. I was snooping and it was wrong. But I was only human.

I walked closer and saw the envelope along with a thick stack of papers. It was half under his pillow, like he was hiding it.

Why would he be hiding paperwork under his pillow? Would the paperwork fairy leave a quarter under his pillow?

I shouldn’t look. That whole lawyer privilege thing. But I couldn’t resist reading the words atop the page. Contract for Sale.

I snatched the paperwork and started to read. Line by horrifying line sent heat running through my veins.

Not the sexual tension kind of heat.

Rage.

I was so fucking pissed.

40

GARRETT

Isat on the back porch with Billy, nursing my second beer and listening to him talk about tomorrow’s plans with an enthusiasm that reminded me of when we were kids. The October air was crisp but not uncomfortable. After the busy day, the cold air felt good. The stars were brilliant overhead, the kind of night that made you forget about city lights and deadlines.

“So I got three more kids from the football team to play zombies in the pumpkin patch,” Billy was saying. He took another long drag from his beer. “They’re going to hide behind the hay bales and jump out when families walk through. Nothing too scary for the little ones, just enough to get some screams. We’re going to stay open until midnight so I’m expecting older teens and young people to be out here. And they’re going to want to be properly scared. We’re going to take it up a notch.”

I nodded, taking another sip of beer. “That sounds perfect. You’ve really thought of everything.”

“I want to go out with a bang, you know? Tomorrow’s Halloween—our last big night. I want people talking about this for months.” He leaned forward in his chair, gesturing with his bottle. “And Garrett, man, I think we took in around ten grand tonight. Ten thousand dollars in one day!”

I watched his face as he said it, saw the pure joy there. Ten grand was probably more money than Billy had seen at one time in years. In my world, it was peanuts, but here? Here it was everything.

“That’s incredible, Billy. You should be proud.”

“We should be proud,” he corrected, clinking his bottle against mine. “None of this would have happened without you. The business structure, the insurance, the marketing angle—all of it. You made this real.”

I stared out at the dark fields, feeling the weight of the contracts hidden upstairs in my room. Billy had no idea that while he was counting tonight’s earnings and planning tomorrow’s finale, I was sitting on paperwork that could end all of it. Seven point two million dollars. More money than he’d ever dreamed of, enough to set him and Lucy up for life.

But also enough to destroy everything he’d built here.