I had one important question first, though. “What kind of goat is she?”
“A fainting goat. We’ve got a pygmy who has a similar problem, but hers is with grains, so I’ll probably keep them together so I can get someone to monitor their diets.”
Ari’s eyes lit up even more. “Where?”
Ah, fuck. Her family were going to kill me.
Gesturing behind him with his thumb, Sean narrowed his eyes on her. “You’re going to adopt them, ain'tcha?”
By this point, Gaynor was under Ari’s t-shirt and was pushing her face against it like a fucked up version of Alien. Every time she pressed forward, I could see her face perfectly, except it was covered with pale pink material. Now that was nightmare inducing Hollywood shit right there.
Apparently Sean thought the same thing because he shuddered.
“Can we go and see the pygmy?” she asked, not realizing what was going on with the goat in her arms.
Knowing I couldn’t let it happen without getting a video of it for her brothers and cousins, I pulled my phone out. “One sec, don’t move a muscle. I just want to get this.”
So, while she discussed Gaynor and the other goat’s diets and care—as well as mentioning her cat and the dogs to him—I recorded the goat’s face pushing out and retreating, then pushing out with its mouth wide open before retreating again. On the last one, she bleated her ‘will survive,’ and then her head disappeared only to pop out at the bottom of the t-shirt.
“I think this one was born a Townsend,” I muttered, ending the recording.
To another family, being compared to a weird goat might offend them, but Ari was proud of it.
“What was she doing?” she asked, leaning over my shoulder to see my phone.
So, with Gaynor’s head in the crook of my elbow as she watched with us—if goats watched movies—I played it for her.
“It’s like a horror movie,” I chuckled, watching it all over again as she snickered beside me.
Before she could answer, Gaynor launched herself out of Ari’s arms so that she had her stomach on my forearm and her head on my chest, slightly freaking me out. I really was shit with anything that wasn’t a patient or an adult. All the kids and animals I’d really been around were of the Townsend variety. There were roughly five thousand Townsend offspring walking the lands of Texas, and each one was enough to put an average human off having kids. Their animals were just as bad.
Warily reaching up to her head, I scratched it with my index finger, a smile twitching on my lips when she closed her eyes and sighed.
“She likes you,” Sean chuckled, seeing how stiff I was.
“Huh.”
Still, I scratched away, moving my finger as she tilted her head to guide me to where she wanted me to be.
“What are you thinking?” Ariana whispered, smiling up at me like I was a goat whisperer or something.
“That your nephews and nieces and your cousins' kids are a good example of why people shouldn’t reproduce.” That would have been a great thought not to say out loud, unfortunately it just came out.
Freezing, she stared at me in shock while Sean held onto the wall and laughed his ass off loudly. All the while, I scratched away at that goat’s head like I was digging myself a tunnel with one finger, waiting for her to stab me with its hoof.
Finally, she reacted, and not how I expected. “You’re right. I have to take Benadryl before I babysit because they give me so much anxiety I get palpitations. Benadryl relaxes me and makes me mellow enough to survive it.” I wasn’t sure that was a good idea—in fact, I knew it wasn’t—but okay. “I even told the principal of the high school I’d get him footage of them to show his students for sex ed so they’d understand the consequences of having unprotected sex…” she paused, leaving both of us waiting for what he said.
When she didn’t finish, Sean guessed, “He’s asking for permission from the school board, isn’t he?”
Nodding, she put Gaynor on the ground and stood up. “Yup. He agrees it would be the best form of birth control or safe sex advertisement.”
Clearing his throat and shooting me an amused look, he waved his hand out of the enclosure. “Want to go see the pygmy?”
Nodding excitedly, Ariana said goodbye and gave a promise to come and get her soon to Gaynor, and then followed behind him, leaving me to close the gate and apologize when the goat looked up at me like I was leaving her on the side of the road.
“I’ll be back,” I told it, getting a baleful baaaa/’will survive’ back. “I promise!” Baaaa. “As soon as your doctor says it’s ok, I know she’ll be back for you and I’ll come with her.” Baaaa.
This time, she added a headbutt to the gate, making me worry she was going to give herself a traumatic brain injury.
With a groan, I opened the gate again and picked her up, awkwardly trying to figure out how I was meant to hold her. I started to hold her with my arms outright so she was far away from my body, but then she leaned her head onto my hand and stared at me like I was a heartless asshole. Remembering how Ari had held her, I moved her so she was against my chest and moved over to where they were now looking down at a tiny little grey goat who was bleating at them.
“What’s her name?”
“Sneezy,” Sean sighed. “My daughter’s a huge Disney fan, so when she was born she decided to name her after one of the Seven Dwarves seeing as how she was a pygmy goat. It was like a frigging omen because the second she had her name, the thing started sneezing.”
“Just as well she didn’t call it Grumpy,” Ariana teased, thinking it was funny.
“Got one of those as well. Bad bastard bites me every time he sees me. Evil little shit,” he muttered.
Opening the gate, he waved her in, and she sank to her knees in the thankfully clean straw. Unlike Gaynor—who I think was asleep in my arms—Sneezy’s tail went insane when Ariana scratched her with her nails.
“Wait for it,” Sean warned.
And just then, the sneezing started, the first one landing right on Ari’s chin.
Wiping it off, she picked her up and cuddled her. “Is she allergic to something?”
“Nope, doc says it’s one of those things where the excitement makes it happen. Some of them piss, some of them shit, some of them sing ballads from the seventies,” he looked at Gaynor. “This one sneezes.”
“Happens with humans, too,” I pointed out, and it was true. There was a syndrome where some people started coughing or sneezing when they got stressed or anxious, some even did it when they were happy. There were a lot of triggers, and it was dependent on the person itself. Some people even fainted, which made me think of something about the goat in my arms. “What makes Gaynor faint?”
“Fainting goats have a condition called myotonia congenita, which makes them stiffen and fall over if they get a fright. Not all of them do it, mind you, but a lot of them do,” he explained. “Loud noises, someone jumping out at them, if they get a fright, they just stiffen up and fall over with their legs rigid.”
“Would you be willing to let me buy them from you?” Ariana asked, angling her face away from the goat tongue trying to get to it. “I promise I can give them a good home. I just need to speak to our friend who’s an animal behavioralist to see what’s the best way to introduce them to my Dachshunds and the cat.”
Pointing over at three hounds who were watching us while they lounged on overstuffed cushions in the corners, he replied, “They’ve grown up with dogs. Those three are the guardians. They love the babies and the animals and refuse to leave them at night. There have been multiple occasions when one of the animals has been ill or in distress in the middle of the night, and one of them has come out baying at the top of its lungs to wake us up.”
“Cool,” Ari breathed, no doubt imagining her two doing the same thing.
“Depends on the breed and their upbringing,” he shrugged.
“I got mine at the same time my sister-in-law brought her chickens and squirrel to live
at my brother’s house. Every time they get a lick of freedom, they run to the coops to crawl in with the chickens and snuggle up with them in their nests.”
See, her dogs were filthy! Chickens shit in their beds, it’s a fact.
“I’ve got an idea, speak to your friend, and maybe bring the dogs here to meet them first, see how they get along. If it’s all ok, we can get one of those fences that keeps kids from getting out and put it around one section of the living room so that they’re still separate, but they can all get used to each other. If that goes well, we’ll slowly to mix them together. How does that sound?” I suggested, literally winging it by the seat of my pants.
“Baller,” Sean snickered, nodding his head. “Bring the behavioralist with you when the pups meet the kids so that she can read what the dogs are saying about it all. Our dogs are born with the goats around them all the time and learn from their parents how to interact with them, but there’s still the odd one here and there who struggles and ends up being rehomed. It happens.”
Chewing on her lip, Ari glanced from Gaynor to Sneezy, looking torn over leaving them.
“I’ll bring you back to see them whenever you want,” I promised, but it wasn’t just for her. I kind of liked the little one who was snoring on my chest right now and wouldn’t mind seeing her again. She could also just drive herself here to see Gaynor and Sneezy, so me offering was almost a test to see if she’d spend that time with me.
And with that, she stood up and held a hand out to Sean, ignoring the tail waggling and sneezing kid in her other arm. “You’ve got yourself a deal.”
Moving away from them, I moved toward the other pens and peeked over the fence. I hadn’t ever realized baby goats were as cute as they were, but serious as shit, they were adorable. There was a small pig in the next pen with tiny little piglets fast asleep next to her stomach, totally milk wasted. Grinning, I moved to the next one, seeing a goat glaring at me from on top of a metal bucket.
Refusing to look away, I glared back. “Attitude’s fierce in you, kid.”
When I realized what I’d called it and the unintentional pun, I burst out laughing, the noise sounding like a loud bark. Sure as shit, the goat went rigid and fell off the bucket, ending up on its side with its legs like sticks in front of it.
Looking around, I saw Sean and Ari watching me with a smile on their faces and gave them a forced smile that covered up the panic I was feeling at that moment.
I’d killed a fucking goat. I’d given it a heart attack.
How would I make it up to its goat family? Surely there was something I could do? I felt like the biggest rat bastard in the world, a goat murderer. I spent my days helping people who were sick, doing my best to save as many lives as I could, helping them recover from pain and illnesses… and I’d killed a fucking goat.
The longer I stared at it, the more I beat myself up. Then a flicker of movement from its hoof got my attention. Slowly but surely, the asshole started to come back to life, moving its joints and raising its head to look around until it stopped on me and glared then bleated at me.
Covering Gaynor’s ears, I hissed, “Back at you, you little shit.”
Because it was bleating at me, I didn’t hear the footsteps. I sure as hell felt the hand that smacked down on my shoulder, though, and the voice that said, “Ah, I see you’ve met Angry.”
The noise that came out of me was like a human goat noise, but it was so loud that the asshole who’d only just been reborn froze and dropped dead again.
Fuck’s sake!
It wasn’t until I was dropping her home, pulling up in front of her house, the light from her living room that she’d left on for her dogs allowing me to see her in the dark of my vehicle, that I approached what’d been weighing on me since our talk on the way to the farm.
“Are you afraid of me now?”
Her head jerked slightly at the question, followed by a frown. “What? No. Why would you ask that?”
Looking away from her, I said quietly, “I know that my past is hard to accept, and I’d understand if you wanted to just be friends,” I trailed off and then shook my head. “Actually, no, it would fucking suck if you want just to be friends, but I’d accept it.”
Anything else that I would have said after it disappeared as she reached across the center console and wrapped her hand around the back of my neck, pulling me toward her in a move so quick, I didn’t register what she was doing until her lips were on mine.
I could feel her trembling as she deepened the kiss slightly, only just dipping the tip of her tongue into my mouth. The groan that came out of me was loud and part relief, part torture.
Without moving away from her, I pulled her closer to me and pushed her tongue out of my mouth, then took control of the kiss. With every dip and lick into her mouth, the taste of her, the beauty of her, filled me.
How I’d lived without this, I didn’t know. But what I did know was that I was going to do everything I could to make myself worthy of keeping it for the rest of our lives.
Seven
Ariana
I hadn’t seen Parker since he’d taken me to the goat farm three days ago, and I’d used the time to help me come to terms with the change in our relationship. I was a thinker, so it’d been good for me. Sure, I’d heard from him, but two doctors had come down with food poisoning, so he and Chris had been covering for them. I couldn’t understand the system they had for work, but doctors were always needed, so he had to be there.
“So, you’re adopting goat babies together,” Sadie said as she wiped down the bar. “Seems like a level of commitment most couples aspire to.”
Looking over her shoulder with a raised eyebrow, Beau snorted, “Not me. Goat babies has got to be one of the most random things I’ve heard, and that includes everything your family’s gotten up to.”
She had a point.
“What are you calling them?” Sadie asked as she waved at the members of my family entering the bar.
“Not a clue. Right now they’re called Gaynor and Sneezy and they suit the names, so I might just leave them.”
“You could always ask Lily to name them,” Beau suggested snickering as Lily stopped in front of us.
“I’ll do it. What needs naming?” she agreed excitedly, making my stomach drop slightly.
Before I could distract her, a deep voice belonging to the man I’d just been thinking about spoke behind me. “She’s not going near their names. They’ll end up with something fucked up.”
“Hey,” she snapped, looking offended. “I’m not only inventive, but my names are awesome.”
Throwing his arm around his wife’s shoulders, holding his daughter Rebel in the other one, Tate nuzzled her neck. “I love the names you pick.”
He was lying out of his ass. He’d vetoed getting any more pets because of the shit she came up with, and I had it from reliable sources he was already dreading any future kids’ names.
“Didn’t you name a chicken KFC?” Sadie asked.
“No,” she replied slowly. “I called it King Ferdinand, the Chicken.”
Sadie blinked. “So… it is called KFC, then.”
“The other one’s called Bojangles,” Beau supplied helpfully, getting chuckles from everyone apart from Sadie, Tate, and Lily.
Looking confused, Sadie asked, “Like the song?”
“No, like the chicken restaurant.”
Shaking her head, Sadie looked over at Parker, who was now twirling a strand of hair from my ponytail around his finger. “I see why you don’t want her to name your babies.” Then she pointed to Lily. “You’re a sick, sick woman naming your chickens after chicken restaurants. I didn’t even know there was one called Bojangles.”
Tate stiffened and glared at Parker. “You knocked my sister up?”
“What are you talking about?” Parker asked, sounding as confused as I was.
“She said something about Lily naming your babies,” he gestured with his head at Sadie.
Ohhh!
“Goat kids.”
Frowning, my brother tried to make sense of this. “Goat kids?” Then his face went dark as something occurred to him. “Are you trying to tell me you’re into some fucking sick kinky shit?”
As always, Sadie broke the tension with something bizarre. It was her superpower. “You know how kids are yelling out yeet just now when they throw stuff?”
All of us turned looked at her questioningly, but she was unphased by the intense glares and stares focused on her, including my cousin’s.
“Well, the definition of the word yeet is actually goat porn. So when kids use it like whatever it is they’re talking about is being thrown through the air, it’s technically porking a goat.”
“How do you know this shit?” Elijah asked, looking even more intrigued by the little Brit now.
Shrugging, she leaned on the counter, her boobs looking uncomfortable as the sharp edge of it pressed into them. “You learn things when you go online. Granted it’s weird stuff that’ll probably never be useful, but in this case, it was. Now we all know what yeeting is.” Waving her hand at Parker and me, she added, “Now you may continue to discuss whether you’re yeeting with those poor babies or not.”
And just when I thought the attention was off the disgusting subject, my brother’s focus was back onto it.
“Y’all are yeeting?”
“Fuck no,” Parker growled. “I took Ari to see goat babies at the farm, and now she’s the proud mother of two of them.”
Looking at Lily, he sighed. “Yeah, you’re not naming the poor little boogers.”
If the glare she gave him was anything to go by, my brother’s life was going to be uncomfortable until he took the words back. Realizing this also, he escaped quickly over to the rest of my family, leaving her killing him with her eyes.
“Just out of interest,” Sadie murmured, leaning closer to Lily. “What would you have named them?”
Forbidden Gold (Providence Gold Book 5) Page 10
