Page 107 of Trick or Tease

I practically sprinted to the old house, my heart hammering with anticipation and nerves. This had to work. I needed to know if what we had was real or if I had imagined the whole thing.

I rushed upstairs to our room—God, I was already thinking of it as ours—and started stripping out of my clothes. The new lingerie set I’d bought in town yesterday was black lace with little gothic details that seemed perfect for the occasion. I positioned myself on the air mattress, adjusting the lanterns around the room to cast flickering shadows on the walls. The effect was both sexy and spooky, exactly what I was going for.

I heard his footsteps on the stairs and felt my pulse quicken. This was it.

When Garrett walked through the doorway, he stopped dead in his tracks. His eyes went wide, traveling over my body in a way that made heat pool in my belly. Whatever distance he had been trying to maintain crumbled in that instant. I could see the hunger flare in his gaze, the way his hands clenched at his sides like he was fighting not to reach for me.

“Sabrina,” he said, his voice rough. “What are you doing?”

“Fixing the lighting,” I said innocently, stretching slightly so the lace pulled taut across my breasts. “Don’t you think it looks better now?”

He swallowed hard, his eyes dropping to my mouth. “We can’t do this.”

“Why not?” I rose to my knees on the mattress, reaching for him. “I’ve missed you.”

When my fingers touched his chest, he shuddered. For a moment, his resolve seemed to crack completely. He pulled me against him, his mouth crashing down on mine with desperate hunger. I moaned into the kiss, my body singing with relief. This was what I had been craving, what I’d been missing.

His hands roamed over my skin, reacquainting themselves with every curve. When he cupped my breast through the lace, I arched into his touch, already breathless with want.

“God, I’ve missed this,” he groaned against my neck, his teeth grazing my pulse point. “Missed you.”

“Then don’t stop,” I whispered, my fingers working at the buttons of his shirt. “Please don’t stop.”

For a few glorious minutes, it felt like everything was back to normal. He kissed me like he was starving, his hands moving over my body with a familiarity I missed. I could feel how much he wanted me, could see it in the way his pupils dilated when I arched beneath him.

But then, just as suddenly as it had started, he pulled away.

“I can’t,” he said, stepping back from the mattress. His breathing was ragged, his hair mussed from my fingers. “I have to—I have things to do. You should get dressed.”

I stared at him in shock, my body still humming with arousal and sudden, sharp hurt. “What?”

“This was a mistake,” he said, not meeting my eyes. “We open in an hour. People are going to start arriving.”

“So?” My voice came out smaller than I intended. “Since when do you care about that?”

He was already backing toward the door, his expression shuttered. “Just… get dressed, okay? I’ll see you downstairs.”

Then he was gone, leaving me alone on the air mattress in my ridiculous lingerie, feeling more exposed and humiliated than I’d ever felt in my life.

I sat there for a long moment, trying to process what had just happened. He wanted me. I knew he did. I had seen it in his eyes, felt it in his touch. But he still walked away.

The hurt quickly morphed into anger. White-hot, righteous anger that had me scrambling for my clothes with shaking hands. How dare he? How dare he kiss me like that and then just leave? Like I was some kind of inconvenience he didn’t have time for?

I yanked my jeans on so hard I nearly ripped the zipper. My hands were trembling as I pulled my sweater over my head, and I realized I was close to tears. But I’d be damned if I was going to cry over Garrett Hogan.

If he wanted to play games, fine. If he wanted to pretend like nothing had ever happened between us, I could do that too. But I was done chasing after him like some lovesick teenager.

I was done, period.

Later that night, I was sitting in the office with Lucy and Granny Mae, counting money and feeling like we had struck gold. The cash box was overflowing, and we kept having to recount because none of us could believe the numbers.

“Ten grand just from today,” Lucy whispered.

Granny finished counting the money from her little food stand. “I made just over a thousand.” She started cackling, slapping her knee like she’d heard the best joke of her life. “I sold every last piece of candy I brought! Every peppermint stick, every caramel apple, every damn thing. Folks were buying three and four pieces at a time.”

“That’s amazing, Granny,” Lucy said, beaming. “You’ll definitely have your Christmas money now.”

“Christmas money, hell,” Granny said, still laughing. “I got enough here to buy presents for the whole damn county!”