Page 66 of Merry Mayhem
“Completely,” I say firmly.
She takes a deep breath. “Yeah, okay. I like that. We’ll tell them just what happened. The truth about you and Violet.”
“And you.”
“And me.”
“Exactly.”
“Thea! You ready to go?” her mom calls.
Thea stretches up and presses her lips to mine quickly. Then she calls back, “Yep. Totally ready!” She gives me a sweet smile, then ducks around me. “By the way, I’m sorry.”
“For what?” I ask, realizing I need to go to the bathroom or something to explain why she and I were both out of the kitchen.
“For me and Patty totally kicking your and Muriel’s butts in the next several events.”
I chuckle. “You’re going to have Andi put something amazing together for you and some rickety old thing for me and Muriel?”
She laughs. “Good idea.”
Then she winks at me, and I barely resist reaching out and pulling her back into this little corner with me.
Soon. Soon we can come clean.
CHAPTER 13
THEA
“I love this so much,”Nora says, her eyes a little watery as she faces the town. “We have a five-way tie!”
We all smile at each other. Five of the pairs ended up with the same number of ornaments from the hunt in the park. But not accidentally. We all helped each other to find ornaments.
It started with Beckett realizing that the first two ornaments he found were hand-painted by Andi.
Patty confirmed that Andi’s art classes had painted all of the ornaments in the park.
Beckett is a big fan of Andi. Not just her art, but all of her.
It’s too bad for him that Andi has sworn off all dating, all men—especially younger, sunshiny, golden retriever hockey players—and even all flirting.
Still, Beckett decided he wanted to collect as many of Andi’s hand-painted ornaments as possible, so he made a deal to exchange any other ornaments he found with Andi ornaments that other people found.
That led to Jesse making the same deal, but for ornaments that her kids had painted in the classes they take with Andi.
Muriel then decided she wanted to collect all of the ornamentsshehad painted and agreed to do the ornament exchange with anyone who found those.
We all ended up in the middle of the park, looking over all of the ornaments and swapping back and forth until everyone had what they wanted.
And an equal number of ornaments because, at that point, that only seemed fair.
But, as Beckett pointed out when one of the judges came over to see what we were doing, there are no rules against trading ornaments or a tie.
It would have been a six-way tie, except Sam and Ashley never came over to see what the ten of us were laughing and conspiring about.
“I’m really proud of you,” Patty tells Muriel as the rest of the contestants begin to disperse.
Technically, we don’t have anything else scheduled until tomorrow morning. There are, of course, plenty of food and craft booths to peruse, treats to sample, and holiday decorations to enjoy, though if people are feeling festive.
