Page 4 of Deceiving Grier

“There is. I’ve heard it, walking around at night, and it messes with my stuff.”

“If you tidied your room, you’d find your missing things.”

The two men continued to bicker, but I didn’t give a shit because ghost or no ghost, I was going to moveintothis house.

Chapter Two

Grier

“What’swrongwithyoutoday?”

I tensed at Bailey’s question, my face heating, but I didn’t look up from my second attempt at the latte I was making. This was the third order I’d screwed up since my shift started just an hour and a half ago.

Come on, Miller. Get it together.

“Sorry,” I muttered. “I’m distracted. I’ll do better.”

“I don’t care about that. It’s just like you’re a million miles away, and that’s not like you. Is everything okay?”

“Yeah,” I told them. “We found someone to rent the third bedroom.”

And since Sawyer Banks had left our house, I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about him. But I kept that last part to myself, especially since I wasn’t sure why my thoughts kept drifting to him.

“Isn’t that a good thing?” Bailey asked.

“I guess.” It should have been, but something about Sawyer made me uneasy, and I couldn’t put my finger on what exactly. Okay, that wasn’t entirely true. I knew why the man made me uncomfortable. He washotas hell, and as much as I wanted to pretend that wasn’t a factor in my overall apprehension about letting the man move in, there was no point in lying to myself. Though I wasn’t nearly so honest with Bailey. “I’m just not sure he’s the right fit for us.”

“Why? What’s he like?” Bailey asked, taking my re-do latte and passing it to the man on the other side of the counter before ringing up his order.

“I couldn’t tell you. I spoke to him formaybefifteen minutes before Jett offered him the room.”

The man at the counter paid Bailey before taking his coffee and joining his friends at a table near the front window. Despite a bit of a rush when I first started my shift, the cafe had emptied as the minutes ticked closer to the dinner hour.

“Jett must like him, then,” Bailey said, leaning back against the counter.

I shot them a pointed look. “Jett likes everything.”

They nodded. “Fair. So, what is it about the guy thatyoudon’t like?”

I sighed, grabbed one of the damp cloths from behind the sink and wiped up the counter where I’d been working.

“I don’t know,” I admitted, because besides pinning me with those blue, laser-like eyes and making me feel as though he could see inside me, I had no real reason tonotlike the man. “He’s justnotwho I thought I’d be living with in my last year of university.”

“Do you think maybe the real problem you have with this guy is that he isn’t Alistair?”

I stopped wiping the counter, chucked the cloth into the sink, and met Bailey’s shrewd gaze. They may have a point.

Alistair, Jett and I had shared a house in The Square since my first year away at college. They were the best friends I’d ever had. They knew me better than my own family, and while they were both like brothers to me, Alistair had been the level-headed one. The friend I knew I could count on for advice. Not that Jett didn’t mean well, but his advice always centered on intuition and doing what feltgood. With Alistair, I knew his words would be considered carefully, logically. He’d been a voice of reason for me and Jett, and I had tried to be that for him.

The idea that Sawyer Banks, with his smirks and assessing gazes, should replace Alistair felt wrong.

“Maybe you’re right,” I conceded, refusing to say more.

After all, I was pretty sure I was making a bigger deal about all of this than I should have been. It wasn’t as if Alistair had disappeared from my life. He and his boyfriend, Finn, along with Finn’s young son, Will, had moved into a house a little farther up the street from where Jett and I lived—I still had a hard time thinking of Oliver Mackenzie’s house as mine—so it wasn’t as if we didn’t see each other anymore, but the dynamic had changed now that we weren’t under the same roof together.

Bailey folded their arms over their chest and smirked. “I’m always right. You’d think you would have figured that out by now after working here for so long.”

I rolled my eyes, but didn’t bother arguing. I’d been working at the cafe for Bailey and their partner, Lana, since first moving to The Square, and in those three years, Bailey was usually annoyingly right—especially when it came to people. They seemed to have an innate sense when it came to understanding others, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t jealous. I wished I could trust my gut the way Bailey did.

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