Page 22 of Your Every Wish

I haven’t stopped pacing since Sam called. Brock Sterling is willing to call the police off, tell them that it was all a huge mistake with one caveat: He wants his money, plus ten thousand dollars extra for his “inconvenience,” in twenty-five days. Twenty-five. Freaking. Days.

I’m no expert in real estate but even I’m savvy enough to realize that selling an eighty-six-acre trailer park takes more than twenty-five days. Forget Willy Keil’s fortune. Finding it could take a lifetime.

“Damn you, Madge!” I shout into the phone when I get her voicemail.

I can’t rely on her help, anyway. She has no savings to speak of and nothing worth selling.

Max? Ha, I laugh out loud. Even if Max had the money, which I’m pretty sure he doesn’t, he’s a cheapskate and a user.

In other words, no help from him either. Nope, I’m on my own. Like always.

Okay, that’s not completely true. Emma has gone above and beyond.

Here’s a person who only met me a few weeks ago, and yet she didn’t think twice about asking her boyfriend to lend me Sterling’s thirty thousand or her mother’s boyfriend to legally represent me.

She’s been more family to me than my own mother.

Even now, she’s concocting ways to come up with the money. “What if we did a GoFundMe?” When I’d looked at her like she was crazy—who donates to an accused thief?—she’d said, “Yeah, bad idea.”

Even this minute, she’s at the bank, studying the balance of Cedar Pines’s coffers to see if there’s a spare forty thousand lying around, which I know there’s not. But at least it’s something—and more than I’m doing.

Instead of wearing down the already bare carpet, I decide to put all my negative energy into a power walk. Maybe something brilliant will come to me while I’m outside, away from these closing-in walls.

I stick to the trail that follows the creek.

It’s a nice walk and with long secluded stretches that seem miles away from a trailer park.

Except for a few random people walking their dogs, the path is mostly empty.

No small wonder because it’s a gorgeous day, nippy enough for a sweater but not too cold to be outside.

The sky is a little gray but between the tops of the trees I can see the sun is starting to peek out.

Oh, and the colors—the burnt oranges and flaming reds and golden yellows.

I never much thought of myself as a nature lover but a girl could get used to this. The stillness, the fresh air, the magic of the woods and the crystal-clear water in the creek. It’s like something out of a travel guide. Hard to believe that it’s part of Cedar Pines Estates.

Some of the residents have started putting up Halloween decorations around their trailers.

Most of them pretty tacky, like the fake spiderweb that covers Rondi’s door and the huge blowup Frankenstein in Daria Jones’s front yard.

But in its own odd way it lends the place a festive feeling, like here in this little corner of the universe all is right with the world.

The Halloween potluck is a little more than three weeks away, and you’d think it was the freaking Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade the way these people planned for it.

Even Emma and I have been relegated a dish to bring and put on cleanup duty, which I guess is better than setup.

The setup committee is headed up by Trapper Bing, the neurotic bird dude, who’s insisting on a theme: monster mash.

He’s coerced Liam into building actual sets and is planning a light show.

Fireworks are forbidden due to fire risk.

According to Harry, Cedar Pines, along with the rest of Northern California, is one spark away from a catastrophic fire.

In Vegas, the fireworks shows are off the charts. The city and casinos spare no expense. And people fly from all over the world to see the spectacular display—and gamble, of course. I miss it: the excitement, the fast pace, the rush of hooking some of the biggest whales in the gambling world.

But I won’t be welcomed back until this situation with Brock Sterling is taken care of.

For now, my bosses at Caesars are willing to look the other way and pass it off as a simple banking error before taking any type of legal action.

Between my clients, a veritable who’s who of high rollers, and my Vegas contacts, who know the right wheels to grease to get tickets to the best shows, reservations to the best restaurants, and access to any closed door a VIP wants to open, I make the casino a lot of money.

But reputation is everything and the top brass is only willing to cover for me for so long. Until I get a handle on the situation, I’m persona non grata at Caesars, and probably the entire Vegas Strip. At least the police are no longer involved. That takes some of the pressure off.

The trail takes me as far as the bocce ball courts, where I can either hop on a different trail that winds its way to the pool and clubhouse or I can take the paved road back. I opt for the paved road but stop to spy over the rock wall at Bent McCourtney’s place. I wonder if he’s trigger happy.

For the hell of it, I hoist myself up onto the rock wall like I did the other day. Only this time, I flip around until my legs are hanging on Bent’s side of the wall. Then I hop down and cross his field toward his spaceship.

The house is actually an architectural marvel and with all that glass he must have views to Tahoe and back.

So far, no bullets have whizzed by my ears or sirens have sounded.

Hopefully the man doesn’t have pit bulls.

I make it to his driveway where there’re more rock walls.

These are lower than the one by the bocce courts and line each side of the road (the guy is probably married to a stonemason).

The walls have lanterns on the top, and lit they must be beautiful.

He has taste, I’ll give him that.

Where the driveway meets the main road, two rock pillars hold up a giant gate. Unless I go out the way I came, there’s no getting out of here. Not without the code to the gate.

I continue to take the driveway up to the house. It’s a climb. Thank goodness I wore tennis shoes. As I get closer, a couple of dogs begin to bark and I brace myself to either be attacked or confronted by the beasts’ owner. Neither happens, so I keep going, even though the barking grows louder.

It’s not until I’m at the front door that I realize the dogs are inside. I can hear them through the glass. I deliberate on whether to ring the bell or turn tail and head back to the trailer park. Why the hell not? I hiked all this way, I may as well see it through.

I wait a few seconds to catch my breath, figuring that if anyone is home, they would’ve come to the door by now with all the racket the dogs are making. Still, I ring the bell anyway, feeling slightly emboldened by an empty house. Empty of humans, at least.

And then, much to my surprise, the door swings open and he’s there, towering over me in nothing but a towel wrapped around his hips.

The only thing I can think to say while trying not to ogle his bare chest is “Bad time?”

“Obviously not great.” He yells something at the dogs, who immediately stop barking. “Come in.”

I hadn’t counted on him inviting me in. I hadn’t really planned for anything.

The whole idea of coming over here had been completely impulsive.

And now, I’m wondering if it’s wise to go inside the home of a strange man—a nearly naked man—alone.

No one even knows I’m here. If he wanted to, he could murder me, bury my body in the backyard, and no one would be the wiser.

No, it wouldn’t be smart at all to go inside. But I do it anyway.

“Let me put on some clothes. Make yourself at home.” He starts for the stairs and calls over his shoulder. “Don’t steal anything. ”

The dogs follow him up to the second story, leaving me alone to gawk at his beautiful house.

And gawk I do, starting with giving myself a tour.

The house is massive. The two-story foyer alone could house a family of five.

I walk into the living room, which is open to the dining area and kitchen, all tastefully decorated with oversized furniture that looks straight out of the Restoration Hardware catalog, the one that comes in the mail unsolicited and is thick enough to kill a cat or a small child if it accidentally slipped off a table.

The floors are some kind of plank-style wood, and the walls are painted a shade of white, probably with a silly name like Swiss Coffee or Sea Salt that no doubt a designer picked out.

The kitchen is on the cold side with white oak flat-panel cabinets, black marble countertops, and stainless-steel industrial appliances, including a built-in coffee maker.

There are two center islands, both with waterfall edges and chunky leather stools.

Everything is so spotless and tidy it makes me wonder if anyone in the house even cooks.

The dining room is more of the same—tasteful, expensive, but kind of sterile. It reminds me more of a boardroom than a place where people gather for holiday meals. Hey, to each his own, right?

The mammoth steel-and-stone fireplace, on the other hand, is breathtaking. But the true star of the show is the wall-to-wall windows that look out to an infinity-edge pool, miles of rolling hills, and an awe-inspiring mountain range that soon will be covered in snow.

While not exactly to my taste, the house is true perfection, the kind of home that’s on the cover of Architectural Digest or Mountain Living.

“To what do I owe the pleasure?”