The Fourth of July weekend was garage sale heaven, which made up for the week of hell Tiffany had endured with Brian being home and grumpy. She returned from her bargain safari on the third laden with treasures to add to the piles of goodies she already had sitting in various shipping boxes in the spare room that served as Brian's home office. Not only had she taken over his office, she'd pretty much taken over the dining room, too, using her glass top dining room table as a staging area where she took pictures of her goodies before putting them up for sale.
“Good God, did you hit every house in Heart Lake?” Brian complained as he helped her lug her finds into the house.
“Just about,” she said.
A saltshaker shaped like a rabbit fell off the top of his pile and bounced on the carpet.
“Be careful,” Tiffany said, bending over to pick it up. “That's Fitz and Floyd.”
He set a pile of lingerie and plates on the table. A black nightgown caught his attention. “You're selling this?” He sounded disappointed.
“ ‘Maybe,” she said slyly. “Or I might keep it.”
“Keep it.”
Heaven knew their sex life could use a boost. She moved the nightgown off the to-be-sold pile.
With raised eyebrows, he held up a Christmas plate. “Who's going to buy this in July?”
She took it from him and set it back down on the table. “No one, silly. But it will sell like crazy in November.”
“Speaking of selling, what's been happening to the money from the stuff you already sold? I thought that was going to go to pay down the credit cards.”
Tiffany added a pink quartz beaded necklace to her keeper pile. Now that she thought of it, the necklace probably wouldn't sell anyway. “I'm going to. But I have to build my business first.”
Brian looked at all the items spilled across the table. “Uh, I think you've got enough to sell between this and all the junk in my office. There's barely room for me in there now.”
“It's not junk. And yes, once these go, I'm going to have a big, fat wad of money.”
Well, hopefully. Some of her items had been sitting around like eBay wallflowers, with no bids and no watchers. She wasn't going to tell Brian that, though. He'd say she was wasting money they didn't have and tell her to quit, and she had no intention of quitting. Even with the wallflowers this was a great way to earn money. She got as big a buzz watching her bids go up as she got when she was bargain hunting. And, talk about bargains—she'd found some great things for herself on eBay. That probably had something to do with why she wasn't turning a profit more quickly. But she was saving a fortune staying out of the stores. Talk about willpower.
Brian shook his head. “If you ask me, this looks like one more way to get deeper in debt.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” she demanded. Here she'd found a creative way to earn extra money and he was dissing it.
“How much of the money you've made has gone to pay down those credit cards?”
“I'm getting them paid down,” she hedged.
He raised an eyebrow.
“I am!”
Brian just shook his head and walked away.
“Where are you going?” she called after him. “I thought we were going to the car show.”
“You go,” he called over his shoulder. “I'm not in the mood.”
“Fine,” she snapped. “And I'm not in the mood to keep the nightgown.”
“Whatever,” came his disembodied voice.
Tiffany threw the nightgown on the to-be-sold pile. Her husband was an ingrate and it would be a long time before he saw her in anything sexy.