Page 77 of Trick or Tease

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GARRETT

Iwas so glad when the last of the kids walked out of the maze. Since it was a weekday we were closing early, but it felt like I’d been in a constant state of arousal. Having to be around Sabrina but not able to grab her and kiss her whenever I wanted was brutal.

She had turned me into a horny teenager. I wanted her every which way in every spot on this farm. It was the longest bout of foreplay I had ever endured. And I wasn’t handling it well. I wanted the woman.

I needed her.

And I wasn’t sure if she truly understood just how much I wanted her. She seemed happy to flirt and giggle between kisses, but I was on a different level. I felt fucking feral. Like a predator. I wanted to devour the woman. When I did manage to get her alone, I just hoped I could restrain myself.

Sabrina was already upstairs working in the old Hogan house while I unloaded the last of the supplies from Billy’s truck. She had strung up battery-powered lanterns that cast dancing shadows on the walls. There was no electricity to the place. I didn’t dare have it turned on. The last thing we needed was to have the damn thing burn down. I was pretty sure the last time the electrical had been updated was sometime in the thirties.

We’d been working for about an hour, and I had to admit it was satisfying to see the room coming together. Sabrina had a vision and she was making it happen. I admired that. Even if she had swatted away my hands and lips when I tried to make my move. She insisted she had to get the work done.

I left the cooler filled with cold beer and some sandwiches downstairs and headed upstairs.

“Hand me that fishing line,” Sabrina called from her perch on the stepladder. She was rigging up our fake ghost. It was nothing more than a white sheet with some creative draping. It was hanging in the window where it would be visible from the hayride route below.

I passed her the spool and took a long pull from my beer. “You know, when Billy first mentioned this haunted house idea, I thought he was crazy. But seeing it come together like this?”

“It’s going to be perfect,” she said, adjusting the ghost’s position. “Kids are going to lose their minds when they see this thing swaying in the window.”

I went back to sweeping, pushing decades of dust and debris into neat piles. It was mindless work, but it felt right to clean the place up a bit. No one would actually be coming in the house—at least that was my plan. But with the way Billy and Sabrina were rolling along with plans, I had a feeling it wouldn’t be long before the place was opened up.

“The reviews have been incredible,” Sabrina continued, securing the fishing line to a nail in the window frame. “I’ve been checking social media all day. People are calling it ‘the most authentic farm experience’ and ‘a hidden gem.’ One family drove two hours just because they saw Lucy’s TikTok.”

“Lucy made a TikTok?” I asked, pausing in my sweeping.

“Oh, yes. She’s been documenting everything. The pumpkin chunking, kids getting lost in the maze, Billy falling off the tractor yesterday.” Sabrina laughed. “She’s got like fifty thousand views already.”

I shook my head in amazement. The world had changed so much since I was a kid. Back then, if you wanted people to know about your farm, you put an ad in the local paper and hoped for the best. Now a twenty-something with a phone could reach thousands of people in hours. I thought my friend’s Instagram post was one of the key drivers, but apparently it wasn’t all about me.

Again.

“We had families from three different states today,” Sabrina said, climbing down from the ladder to survey her handiwork. “Three states, Garrett. For a corn maze and some pumpkin launching.”

“Don’t forget the authentic farm experience,” I said with a grin.

“Right, can’t forget that.” She grabbed her beer from where she’d set it on the windowsill and took a sip. “But seriously, I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. For people to get bored or for something to go wrong. This kind of success doesn’t usually happen to people like us.”

“People like us?”

She gestured vaguely around the dusty room. “Small-town farmers. People who measure success by how much rainfall we get.”

I felt that familiar stab of guilt. Here she was, including me in her vision of simple, honest farm life, and I was secretly calculating property values and thinking about Manhattan.

“You deserve this,” I said quietly. “You and Billy both. You’ve worked your asses off.”

“Thank you for helping out so much. I know you had your doubts at first.”

I stopped sweeping, meeting her gaze. “What do you mean?”

“Come on, Garrett. When you first got here, you looked at all this like it was some kind of quaint hobby. Billy’s little farm project that he’d grow out of eventually.” She flashed me a pretty smile. “But you’ve jumped in with both feet, and I know it means the world to Billy and Lucy. And it means the world to me.”

The guilt hit me like a physical blow. She was thanking me for my help while I was secretly arranging to have the place appraised for a potential sale. I took a long drink of beer, buying myself time to swallow my guilt.

The appraisal needed to happen anyway. The insurance would need it. The last thing I wanted to do was under-insure the place. If it turned out to be worth millions like Ron thought, then I would tell Billy. I would see what he wants to do. Until then, there was no sense in worrying them about something that may never happen.