Hudson was sitting in an office chair in the corner, spinning himself around in circles. The chair was near a small table...or was that supposed to be a desk? Hard to tell, since it was buried in papers. There was a flat screen and—she looked underneath the desk—yup, it was a computer. Dusty and ancient, at least in computer years. At the corner of the desk, there was a chunk of carved wood that looked like a broken piece of gingerbread trim from some house. There was a giant nail or spike sticking straight up and impaled on that nail were pages of paper. She looked closer—orders? Invoices? Some had folded corners. A few had notes written on them in bold, but illegible, handwriting. She reached out to hold the corner of the one on top to read it better.

“Leave that alone! I have a system.” Zayne barked so sharply she jumped. She turned, leaving her hand right on that piece of paper in defiance. Her eyebrow rose.

“You call this a system?”

He gestured toward the antique spike holding at least twenty papers. “The orders are on there in order, oldest on top, so I can take one look and see how much work I have on tap. If a corner is folded up, that means I’ve started it. If a corner is folded down, I don’t have a deposit yet, which means it moves farther down the pile. It’s a system.”

This was just the opening Andrea needed. She did not need to take on extra work right now, but if she could barter services for the corn maze...

“Does your computer not work?”

“It works.” He sounded defensive. “I have a website. People send me orders.” Zayne’s feet shuffled uncomfortably. “I print them. That’s all I need it for.”

“But how do you keep track of your income and expenses?”

Without making eye contact, he nodded in the general direction of a rusted file cabinet. She pulled open a drawer, which immediately twisted and groaned under the weight of papers stacked inside. Not in folders. Not organized in any apparent way. Just...stacked. Her mouth fell open, but at least she’d discovered what he needed.

“I can fix this,” she declared.

“The drawer?”

“What’s inside the drawer.” She pulled out a pile of wrinkled papers with holes stabbed through the middle of them. “I can organize all of this into an actual accounting system for you.”

“So now you think I’m going to hire you?” Zayne rested his hands on the workbench, making the muscles in his biceps bunch under his T-shirt. Andrea swallowed hard. He was definitely not a boy anymore.