Page 98 of The Heartbreaker Next Door

“Hey, is everything okay?” Felicity asked, glancing back over her shoulder at Damon, as she walked up to me.

“I know it might sound crazy, but I think Damon has a thing for Mikayla.”

“Oh, that, yeah,” she said as if it were old news or common knowledge.

“You knew?!”

“I didn’t know, know. But last year at Dawson and Sadie’s wedding they played Flirt Chicken and I’m pretty sure Damon won.”

“So they have a thing?” I knew that I was out of the loop about a lot of things, but I should have picked up on that.

“No.” Felicity shook her head. “At least, not that I know of. Mikayla has been getting over a bad breakup, and I don’t think she takes your brother seriously.”

“Normally, neither do I…” But I’d never seen him like this.

An alarm sounded on her phone. “Oh, okay, I’m gonna go check on the band, I’ll see you later.”

I reached out and grabbed her wrist. “It’s time for the scavenger hunt,” I reminded her.

“Oh, right.” Her nose scrunched in the most adorable way it did when she was going to bail on something. “I have too much to do, can you take Mav?”

No. I couldn’t take Mav. This was definitely a time I needed her to participate.

“Yeah, sure, no problem. I can,” I tried to play it cool. “I just know he’s looking forward to it being all of us, because it was the first time he said it felt like we were a real family.”

I would never use mom guilt as a weapon of manipulation. In fact, I hated that those two words were even synonymous with each other.

No woman should ever feel guilty for working or spending time with her friends, or exercising, or all the other fifty thousand tasks they have to do, which I never appreciated until Felicity and Maverick came into my life.

But desperate times, called for desperate measure.

Her head fell back and she sighed. “Yeah, no, you’re right. I know he’s been excited and I promised.”

Yes, Mom Guilt, for the win.

That sounded bad out of context.

After a quick roundup of little man, I handed out our handkerchiefs, which were the same color as last year. We gathered the first ten clues with no issue, and I managed to switch the final clue with my card without Felicity noticing.

She and Maverick found it and she read the clue. While she was distracted, I sent out a quick Bat Signal text to my family to meet us at the storage warehouse, and emoji of a ring, and added the word shhhhhh.

“Where saddles sleep and treasures hide, and ranch supplies are tucked inside. No guests check in, no horses stay, find where we stash the ranch away,” Felicity repeated the clue for the second time and looked up to me, her baby blue eyes swimming with confusion. She shook her head. “It has to be the storage warehouse but why would they send people to the storage warehouse?”

“Maybe it’s not,” I suggested, knowing exactly what her response would be.

“No, it has to be!” she exclaimed, doubling down just like I knew she would. “Where saddles sleep and treasures hide, and ranch supplies are tucked inside. No guests check in, no horses stay. Find where we stash the ranch away,” she said, her tone indicating it couldn’t be anything else.

“Yeah, maybe.” I shrugged casually, knowing it would drive her crazy that I wasn’t agreeing with her, which I knew would only make her work harder to convince me.

“No, it is. What else could it be?” She started speed walking to the storage warehouse.

On the short walk she continued defending her conclusion, going over why it couldn’t be anything else, and that she was going to speak to Wes because guests shouldn’t be sent to the storage warehouse.

When we got there, she was still so focused on convincing me it was the location, and trying to figure out what would have possibly possessed Wes and his team to use it, she wasn’t paying any attention as I punched in the code and we walked inside.

“Whoa!” Maverick enthused as he spun around in a circle taking in the decor. “So cool.”

There were fairy lights, rugs layered on top of each other, and one packing blanket as a nod to our first time together, drapes covering up all the boxes, chairs, tables, and everything else stored there. A chandelier hung from the ceiling, there were flowers everywhere and over a hundred photos of us hanging from the rafters on strings.