Barefoot Dreams

by Roxanne St Claire

  “Stay here,” Gabe said as he slowed his step and walked to the storage building, which was far more substantial than a shed.

  “But I had the dream, so I have to at least be close. In fact, I should actually put the rope around his head.”

  “Let me go first.” He took a few more tentative steps, coming around to the open door. “Here, goatie goatie. Come to Papa.”

  He leaned around to peek in, then backed up. “Holy fuck on a Popsicle stick, he’s huge.”

  “He is?” Well behind Gabe, Lila peered into the shed, squinting into the half darkness to spot a large white goat, definitely the biggest she’d ever seen. He stood braced on wide, dangerous-looking hooves. His horned head lifted to see who was there, his giant mouth moving as he chewed on a sweet potato from a large pile on the side.

  “At least he isn’t hungry,” she said.

  “Which means he won’t want this grain.” Gabe set the bucket down, then spread his arms, blocking her way. Or just making sure the buck knew how big and strong a man he was up against.

  The goat scraped a foot and stared him down.

  “Look, dude, let’s make this easy,” Gabe said, taking one step inside. “You get all the tater tots you want, and I put this rope around your neck. Deal?”

  The goat stopped chewing and stared at Gabe.

  “See?” Gabe said over his shoulder to Lila. “Easy-peasy, Mama. I’m going to get closer.”

  “Remember, don’t hesitate. And don’t let go. And that one site said you should use your knees to pin him to the wall.”

  “If I have to. But, honestly?” He took a few more steps, now within arm’s reach of the goat. “Me and Vincent Van Goat here are already good friends. Right, Vinnie?” He gestured toward the bucket of grain. “Got some top-notch slop here, big boy.”

  He responded by chewing the potato and taking one step backward, his big brown eyes wary on Gabe.

  Lila glanced at her phone again, skimming quickly. “It says here if they don’t want food, they always want sex.”

  “Then we have that in common, Bucky. Come with me, and I’ll take you home to your farm where you have a harem of girlie goats.”

  “We could call and get one of the females from the farm brought over.”

  “Nah. I have him.” Gabe lifted the rope, straightening some of it. “I’ll just toss it over him like th—”

  The goat bucked and lowered his head, instantly coming at Gabe, who dodged to the left, narrowly missing getting rammed by the horns.

  “Son of a bitch,” he murmured as Lila covered her mouth, gasping. “Stay back, Lila,” Gabe warned. “We’re gonna go mano a goato now.”

  “Honey, seriously, he’s a dangerous animal.”

  Gabe threw her a look, bouncing a little on the balls of his feet like a boxer, the well-defined muscles in his arms and neck corded and ready for action now. “It’s a big, dumb, scared, horny goat. I got this.” He repeated the action with the rope, tossing it fast and getting it over the goat’s neck, but as Gabe pulled to tighten it, the animal rose up and bucked like a horse, then charged again.

  “I don’t fucking think so.” Gabe leaped to wrap both arms around the goat’s neck, holding on exactly as it had said on one of the websites Lila had read to him. The goat threw his head one way, then the other, but Gabe hung on, grunting and swearing every second.

  “I got to tie him,” he said.

  “Can I do it?”

  “No!” Gabe clung to the goat’s neck, trying to work the rope. “Too…dangerous.” He got it looped, but then the goat gave a wicked kick with this front hoof, catching enough of Gabe’s leg to make him lose his grip on the neck.

  “Oh, this means war, you goat bastard,” Gabe ground out, hopping on one leg for a second.

  As if sensing that the momentum had shifted, the goat charged again, this time slamming Gabe right into the wall with a thud, making a three-foot pile of sweet potatoes shimmy, shake, and tumble like a landslide.

  Gabe lost his footing in the potatoes, grunting again. “Do not come in here, Lila,” he warned when she took a step closer. “The asswad fucking turd wanking bearded slutpipe prick is going down.”

  She bit her lip, having forgotten just how colorfully Gabe could swear since he’d censored himself around Rafe.

  The goat snorted, too, and reared for another pass at him, making Lila shriek as he rose up to slam a hoof on his rival. But Gabe rolled with speed and grace, leaping to his feet on the other side of the goat and jumping on the animal with all his weight.

  He squeezed his neck. “Don’t hesitate,” he ground out, pulling the goat down. “Don’t let go,” he added, almost bringing him to the floor. “And wear sensible shoes.” With that, he managed to get the beast all the way to the ground, grabbed the rope, and slipped it around his neck.

  “Now, Lila,” he said, holding the goat with all his strength. “Tie the rope.”

  She scrambled in and tied the knot while Gabe held him down, sweat beading on his forehead, his chest heaving from the effort. Once the rope was knotted, Gabe popped up again and grabbed it, grinning victoriously.

  “Let’s return him so he is officially not lost anymore.”

  Lila beamed at him. “Thank you.”

  He slid her a sly look. “Admit it, you’re a little turned on by my goat-catching prowess.” The goat tried to jerk away, but Gabe was having none of it, subduing him with a solid tug that had to have burned his bare palms. He didn’t even flinch and she fell even deeper in love with this man.

  “More than a little,” she said, far from the goat but close enough to lean over and kiss Gabe. “The voodoo gods better be scared.”

  “Shit. Now we have to find something breakable, drop it, and not break it from…how high was that Indigo place again?”

  “Two thousand feet.”

  He snorted. “What the ever-lovin’ piss were those Jamaicans thinking anyway?” He led the shamed animal from the shed, through the farm, and back toward the cul de sac where Luke waited with a La Dolce Vita truck that had a closed pen on the back.

  Standing next to Luke was his wife, Ari, who scowled at the two of them. “Did you forget that you’re getting married in a matter of hours?” she called. Of course, as one of the on-site wedding planners responsible for tonight’s event, Ari would be a little peeved that Lila was out goat hunting instead of quietly sipping champagne and preparing for the big night.

  Lila laughed off the chastisement, smiling at Tessa, the gardener, who’d emerged with her curious little ones.

  “Don’t get too close, kids,” Gabe called out. “Billy the Kid is in custody, but he’s still armed and dangerous.”

  Luke and Gabe led the buck into the back of the truck while Lila stepped to the side to assure Ari that she’d be fine for tonight. Except…she and Gabe weren’t done yet.

  “What were you thinking?” Ari asked, her dark, exotic eyes twinkling with a mix of humor and dismay.

  “We’re on kind of a…wild-goose chase. Wild-goat chase?” She tried to laugh, but there was a very serious matter of her son and a curse. A curse that had to be kept secret.

  “How bad’s the shed?” Tessa asked, keeping a hand on the backs of two of her kids.

  “Some fallen potatoes,” Lila told her. “Nothing serious.”

  “Mama, can we finish our egg babies now?” Tessa’s daughter, Emma, looked up with big blue eyes and a serious expression.

  Lila smiled at the child, her heart folding in half for how much she wanted to be with Rafe right now. Holding him and making sure he was one hundred percent safe. Instead of this.

  She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, a flash of the rushing blood river still vivid in her mind. She wouldn’t rest until she and Gabe had done this, and then there’d be plenty of time to laugh about how dumb it was.

  “Egg babies?” Lila reached out to ruffle Emma’s soft blond hair. “That sounds like a fun project.”

  “So much fun!” Emma exclaimed.

 
Tessa gave a secret eye roll and nudged her daughter back toward the offices. “Go get your stuff, and we’ll finish at home,” she said. “The goat excitement is over, and we can start putting faces on those yolkless eggs.”

  “Faces on eggs?” Lila asked. “What kind of school project is that?”

  “A pain-in-the-rear kind,” Tessa answered. “It’s supposed to teach them how to care for a child. Like blowing the yolk out of an egg, painting a face on the shell, and then naming it is child care.”

  Lila smiled, but her heart was heavy. “If only child care were that easy.”

  “At least you don’t have to figure out a way to keep the egg whole,” Ari chimed in. “When I was in school, we had to do that hideous physics project where you drop an egg and it doesn’t break.”

  Lila barely heard the comment as the goat clomped into the truck and sneezed on Gabe, covering him in goat snot. She bit back a laugh and braced for an ear-burning response, but Gabe spun around and zeroed in on the ladies.

  “What did you say?” he demanded.

  Ari and Tessa looked at each other, not understanding which one he’d asked or why, but Lila knew instantly. “What was that project exactly?” she asked Ari.

  “The ‘eggsperiment’ that every high school physics student has to do. You know it.”

  No, she didn’t know, and she wanted to.

  Gabe walked away from the truck to get closer to the women. “I don’t know it,” he said. “What is this experiment?”

  If his sudden interest in high school physics surprised Ari, it didn’t show. “Well, the genius kids could always figure out a way to protect an egg and drop it from the second floor without breaking it, but I never did.”

  Lila could barely contain her excitement. “But it’s possible? How do you find out?”

  “I’m sure it’s on the Internet,” she replied, angling her head in warning. “And now, Miss Bride-To-Be, you are done rescuing missing goats. Can you go home and put your feet up before your big night?”

  Not if Rafe’s life hung in the balance. An egg that didn’t break when dropped? Surely that would appease the Obeah gods, she thought, but then sighed as she remembered the other stipulation. Indigo Hill. Not like they were going to fly to Jamaica today.

  “I’ll do my best,” she said vaguely to Ari. “Gabe and I have a few other things to do today.”

  “What could be more important than getting well rested on your wedding day?” Tessa asked, obviously on Ari’s side in this discussion.

  “I will rest,” she promised, stepping away as her mind whirred with the egg dropping possibilities and the stipulations of the curse.

  From the height of Indigo Hill in Jamaica.

  The height. Not the actual hill. But there wasn’t a rise you could actually call a hill on Mimosa Key. Just the causeway to the mainland, but maybe dropping an egg in water would be cheating.

  “Ari,” Lila said, inching closer to the other woman, remembering that Ari had met Luke when they discovered that the place called Barefoot Mountain was an ancient Native American burial ground. “How high from sea level is Barefoot Mountain?”

  Ari shrugged. “Maybe a few hundred feet. Why?”

  “I need to get high.”

  Both women looked at her with wide eyes and loose jaws. “Before your wedding, Lila?” Ari asked with a dry laugh. “That’s not a service the Barefoot Brides generally provide.”

  “No, no. I mean, Gabe and I want to get…up. To the highest possible place.”

  They both blinked at her, clearly not understanding this bizarre request.

  “To pray,” Lila said suddenly.

  Still, they just stared.

  “We need to get close to God before we get married.” Oh boy. What a tangled and ridiculous web we weave. “It’s very important to me…to my…it’s just a cultural thing that says a bride and groom should get as high in the sky as possible on their wedding day.”

  “That’s a British culture?” Ari asked, assuming, as everyone did, that Lila Wickham was from England. “I honestly thought I’d heard every wedding tradition in the world, but not that one. How about the causeway?”

  “Can’t be above water,” she replied, hoping they didn’t ask why.

  “I have an idea,” Tessa said. “Zoe’s taking her hot air balloon up in about an hour to test a new wind gauge. Not an official ride with passengers, but she might take you, especially since it’s your wedding day.”

  Zoe Bradbury was well known around the resort. Not only was she one of the original investors in Casa Blanca Resort & Spa, she famously ran a hot air balloon business that resort guests loved.

  “Would that work for you?” Tessa asked.

  Lila gave Gabe a questioning look.

  “If the egg doesn’t break,” he said under his breath.

  Both women exchanged a look, and then Ari gave them a sweet smile. “I think the stress is getting to you two.”

  “Which is exactly why we need a hot air balloon ride,” Lila said.

  “She’s launching in about an hour,” Tessa said. “I’ll text her, and you can meet her on the beach at the balloon launch site.”

  “Perfect,” Lila said, sharing a long look with Gabe, who barely hid his misery as he sighed with resignation. “Oh, and Tessa? Do you have any extra eggs?”

  Chapter Six

  “I’m having déjà vu all over again,” Gabe whispered into Lila’s ear as they leaned against the wicker basket and bounced higher and higher, drifting above Mimosa Key.

  “You’ve been in a hot air balloon before?” Lila asked.

  “Actually, yes. But that’s not what feels familiar.” He put an arm around her, holding tight to his jacket. He didn’t need it, of course, but the jacket made a good cover for the baby blue plastic ball—the only color they could get their hands on at the Super Min. Neon pink would have been better, but it’s what they had.

  In the convenience store parking lot, they’d cut open the ball and stuffed with popcorn and wrapped plastic around one tiny egg. The ball also held Lila’s phone, similarly wrapped, so they could track the landing spot. The whole thing was closed with tape and hidden under the folded jacket.

  They’d followed the directions they’d scoured websites to find, working fast and hoping like hell they’d chosen to copy from a smart physics student.

  “Then what feels familiar?” she asked.

  “This. You and me on a mission. Hiding something. Saving someone. Risking life and limb for a cause.”

  She smiled up at him. “You miss being a spy, Gabe?”

  “I do,” he said, not hesitating one second. “But I like our life now better. It’s safer, smarter, and I have a lot more to worry about than my own ass.” He slid his hand down her back. “It’s yours I worry about.”

  “And Rafe’s.”

  “Obviously, or I wouldn’t be on fool’s errand number two. But still, this takes me back to China and Greece when we were always on the hairy edge of trouble.”

  “You were on the hairy edge,” she corrected. “All I did was translate.”

  “What about Pakistan? That wasn’t translating when you had to make small talk in Urdu with the guy at the front desk long enough for me to break into a room and steal a laptop.”

  She whistled. “That was a close one.”

  “Hey, I got the laptop.”

  “But the hotel clerk followed me out to the street.”

  “Who wouldn’t? But then I almost had to kill him.”

  She nodded at the memory. “You did scare the life out of him jumping out of that alley.”

  “Good times, blondie.”

  She laughed, leaning her head on his shoulder. “Cuba was the best, though. Not as much cloak-and-dagger stuff at Gitmo, but we had fun in that little apartment.”

  “We had sex in that little apartment,” he corrected.

  “So much sex,” she agreed.

  “That’s when I knew I loved you,” he said softly. “When we woke up that morning,
right before you told me you were leaving, I was completely sure. I would have married you that day. But then…” His words trailed off, replaced by the dark memory of how the next five years unfolded.

  “Shh. It’s over. We survived, we reunited, and now we’re on another mission, and it’s Rafe we’re saving.”

  “Just to set the record straight, it’s your mood and our first night of marriage I’m saving. I don’t think making egg drop soup in a hot air balloon is anything but something the two of us will laugh about on our anniversary for the rest of our lives.”

  “I hope you’re right.” Lila glanced past him. “Can you drop it without Zoe and her tech seeing us? We should be getting to the altitude that matches Indigo Hill soon.”

  Gabe followed her gaze, staring across the basket at Zoe, who was engrossed in the business of her balloon, talking in hushed tones to another woman, turning the fire power up and down, which made them bounce a little in the air.

  “You two okay?” Zoe asked with a playful grin. “Don’t mind a little turbulence I hope.”

  “We’re fine,” Gabe assured her. “What’s the altitude?”

  She squinted at a gauge. “Just passed two thousand,” she said. “We won’t go much higher today. In fact, we need to head toward the landing site.”

  Gabe nodded his thanks and inched over the edge of the wicker basket, looking down at Mimosa Key far below. “This is going to be tricky,” he said. “But we’re headed east. If we stay south of all those trees and brush, we could plop this puppy right in the sweet spot outside of the resort but in the open area south of the baseball stadium.”

  “That would be perfect. We could easily find it.”

  “But wind could take it into the trees or brush.” He’d already talked to Zoe about the wind speed and direction, feigning interest in balloon technology and meteorology because he couldn’t reveal that his true motives were to thwart a black magic spell.

  She’d explained enough for him to get an idea of how far the winds could take a plastic ball that’s been stuffed with popcorn and plastic to protect a raw egg and a phone.