“Why wouldn’t he?”Jason asked, distracted by a wheezing red pickup truck gliding into a spot in front of Handy’s.“He owns the joint, don’t he?”
Dean did a double-take, wriggling the still locked door of the ghost tour office.“Owns this joint?”he tried to clarify.
“Andthatjoint,” Jason added, nodding toward the bar across the empty street.
Dean frowned.“Well, who’s Pappy then?”
“Hispappy,” Jason grumbled as an old salt in cowboy boots and overalls slid from the front seat of the antique truck like molasses oozing thick from an old Mason jar.
“His pappy,” Dean began before doing another grammar double-take.“Sorry, hisfatherowns the bar?”
“Ownedthe bar,” Jason explained, nodding at the old man straightening his cowboy hat as he stood on the sidewalk in front of the hardware store.“Passed on a few years back and left the place to Sully.”
“The whole ass bar?”Dean was impressed.He’d been expecting some neck-bearded, beatnik, ghost hunter wannabe on the older, heavier side, not some redneck entrepreneur.
“Half the whole ass town,” Jason snorted, waving the chewed-up end of his toothpick toward the bar, the boot store next to it, then back across the street toward the ghost tour shop and even the hardware store itself.“Hell, Happy’s been paying Pappy as long as I’ve been working here.”
“Speaking of,” said the old man, who’d somehow managed to reach the hardware store door while they’d been discussing poor Sully’s far from poor finances.“Get your ass on in here, boy.”
The voice was gruff, the tone was not, the old man’s eyes winking merrily as he chuckled at his own joke.“Hold your horses, Gramps,” Jason said with the familiar air of a retail worker greeting a regular customer.“The hammers and nails ain’t going nowhere.”
He gave Dean a cute little wink, as if they’d become the best of friends in the ten minutes they’d stood on the sidewalk alongside Lonely Street, airing out their cultural differences for half the town to hear.
“All right, Pops,” Jason announced, turning abruptly to slip through the door his customer was still holding for him.“What’ll it be today?Ball peen hammer?Phillips head screwdriver?Or did you just come for more of those pickled pigs feet by the cash register?”
Chapter Two
Sully
“Help you, City Slicker?”
Sully Grayson nodded at the sexy nerd in the faded college ball cap and clingy blue t-shirt.He stood in the open doorway of the bar, all five feet, four inches of him, the afternoon light gracing him with an almost ethereal glow.The pretty boy’s face fell, almost delicate features pinching into a surly little growl that only managed to make him look even more adorable.
Probably not the effect he was going for,Sully thought to himself, his chest grown thick with the rich anticipation of what might happen next.
“Why does everyone around here keep calling me that?”the kid all but grumbled, slinking in the door as if all the air had just been sucked out of him.
