Page 4 of Love at First Bite
It had been a long day, and by the number of emails waiting for me, it wasn’t over yet.
My phone rang, and I glanced out towards the reception area. My seventy-three-year-old receptionist was asleep.Again.Thats what I got for keeping my dad’s receptionist after he retired. I should have suggested she retire, too. But Mrs. Braverman had been insistent about staying on. She had nothing to do at home but clean and said she’d done enough of that in her youth.
The phone rang again. And as much as I wanted to let voicemail pick it up, it could be important.
“Graham Realty,” I answered as annoyance washed over me.
“Brew? That you?” an all-too-familiar voice said on the other end of the line, and just like that, my shoulders relaxed.
“Onyx? What the hell, man? Why are you calling my office and not my—“ I picked up my cell phone and winced.
“I tried to call your cell, man, but no one picked up.”
“Right. Sorry. I had a showing earlier and forgot to unsilence it. What’s up?”
“Nothing much. Well, mostly.” Concern laced my old buddy’s voice.
“How’s the brewery?” I poked.
“Great, man.”
“You ready for a second location?” I asked in a teasing tone. Maybe not yet, but I knew there would be a day when Onyx and his partners would reach out for that. The brewery had been a great success for the small town of Moonlit. They would be celebrating their first year come New Year’s.
“One day,” he muttered, but I could hear the smile on his face. “This actually doesn’t have anything to do with business. Not really.”
“Okay. What’s up?”
“Well,” he sighed, and I sat up, “you remember that haunted house you would put together?”
“In high school?” My eyes widened, and I heard him grunt.Shit, I haven’t thought about that in so long.
“That’s the one. You helped the fire department a couple years ago, too, yeah?”
“Umm, that was almost ten, maybe twelve years ago now. But yeah, I remember.” I grinned.
I fucking loved Halloween, and that year, I’d been in town for a couple of months before I moved to Arizona.
Setting up haunted houses had always been fun. The engineering of making props do things you wanted them to, to set the vibe and watch people go through them, get jump-scared and then laugh. It had been a thrill. I was sure if there had been a way to make money from designing them, I would have gone into that as a career. But unfortunately, I’d had to be realistic and grow up, according to my dad.
I’d dived in and worked hard to make a name for myself in the real estate world all through California and Arizona. Shit, if my dad’s health hadn’t taken a turn and he hadn’t asked me to come back and take charge of his small but plentiful business, I wouldn’t even be back in Moonlit Pines.
Crazy how life takes turns and twists you never saw coming.
I sure as hell never thought I’d be back in my sleepy hometown. Thankfully, I wasn’t worried about money. I was set. I’d been doing luxury and developmental real estate before I’d let my dad talk me into buying him out here and made good investments throughout my years.
My dad thought I’d bought him out so he could retire and wait until he passed to sell it off, but honestly, I had missed the slower pace of Moonlit Pines. Shit, maybe my age was showing now? If I was honest, at forty, the fast pace of the city didn’t call me anymore.
“Any chance you would be interested in helping out?”
“Helping out whom?”
“Me. Us? Austin’s dumb ass got talked into agreeing to host a damn haunted house-slash-masquerade thing.”
“Like a party?”
“Yup. A masquerade ball.”
“How would that work?” Onyx’s heavy sigh made my lips twitch.
