fun joking about it for Hayley to convince them otherwise.
“You’d think you would be used to being taken by surprise,” Brian continued. “Matt says he can’t even sleep in the place anymore.”
“Matt also believes in Bigfoot and alien abductions.”
Brian waved her off. “He just says that stuff to entertain folks.”
Hayley didn’t disagree, but she knew full well he hadn’t entirely outgrown his childhood fascination with Sasquatch sightings and little green men.
“You think you’ll actually be able to sell that place with it being haunted?”
“It’s not haunted.” Hayley studied the panes of glass and window casing, then branched out to see if they’d missed anything else. “I thought you were going to talk to the neighbors.”
If Hayley had her way, she wouldn’t be selling the place at all. But with her gramps’s rising health costs and stubborn refusal to let anyone else help with the bills, they didn’t have any choice but to sell.
Letting go of the bar to pay his medical expenses wasn’t an option, so that left her gramps’s place. Surprisingly, her gramps was more okay with that than Hayley.
“Figured I’d wait for you. You being a celebrity and all these days.” He held up his hands when she glared at him. “Don’t cuff me.”
Knowing better than to let him bait her, she waved him back upstairs.
As expected the neighbors didn’t have any information they could use. Their suspect, judging by a few vague descriptions and the size of the print in the mud, was male and awfully slick.
Processing the scene wasn’t enough to work off the restless energy from the crazy day, and since she still hadn’t heard from Gavin, she decided to get in a little painting after all. She didn’t bother heading back to her apartment to change. Most of her stuff was at Gramps’s place. Had been for the past couple of weeks so she didn’t have to go back and forth all the time.
She parked her truck in the driveway, but by the time she left her bag by the front door, kicked off her shoes and walked through the dark house, the last couple of nights of too little sleep started catching up with her.
The breeze from the sewing room on the second floor drew her down the hall. The room hadn’t been touched since Nan died two years ago. Gramps had been firm on no changes being made to their home until both of them were gone, and then he’d gotten sick.
Like the den, she was saving this room for the end of the renovations.
She stepped over the plastic that was on the floor to protect the carpet from getting wet and pushed open the curtains. The window had been stuck since they found out her gramps had cancer, and no amount of banging or wiggling had been able to unstick it.
When neither she nor Matt had any luck putting it down, she’d had one of Gavin’s brothers over to take a look. He hadn’t fared any better, and neither had his contractor friend. Replacing the entire window, frame and all, had been their professional opinion, although no one could figure out why the window wasn’t closing to begin with. She’d finally ordered a new custom-made window last week, but it wouldn’t arrive for another couple of weeks.
Hayley dropped down on the old sofa by the door, her brain too tired to think about renovations or work or even Gavin.
That kiss, on the other hand, wasn’t too tiring to think about at all. Replaying the taste and feel of Jackson’s mouth managed to reanimate the butterflies back-flipping in her stomach.
It was really too bad she wouldn’t get to kiss him again, but she wasn’t interested in some casual fling before Jackson left town, which would probably be sooner rather than later with a coaching position in the works.
And kissing him earlier had likely cost her. She didn’t want to think about what would happen if that picture taken at the inn started circulating the Net. If she’d ticked off half the town arresting him, she couldn’t imagine what people would say behind her back with a picture like that going around.
Once upon a time she wouldn’t have cared what anyone thought, but all that had changed when she’d turned her life around.
Kissing him to help salvage his career was one thing—her reputation could take a minor hit, maybe—but that didn’t explain why she’d baited him at the last second about a long-ago kiss that was best left in the past.
Exhaling slowly, she