“No Doc. Or Grumpy.”
“Why not?”
“Tori is Doc.”
Charlie smiled. “That’s cute. And…” A thought hit her, and she narrowed her eyes even as her grin grew. “Who’s Grumpy?”
“Ran out of goats.”
“Uh-huh. But they didn’t name one of these Grumpy because…”
“No idea.”
“Are you sure it’s not because they already had a Grumpy… in you?”
He lifted a brow. “Are you going to actually be helpful now or not?”
That wasn’t a denial that he filled the role of Grumpy.
She loved every damn thing about this petting zoo so far.
“Oh, I’m not going anywhere,” she told him. “I’m definitely going to help.”
He sighed.
Feeling suddenly lighter and happier than she had in a long time—and that was saying something as she was generally light and happy, not to mention on her way to Paris soon—Charlie turned back to the animals.
“Okay, now that we know each other better, how about you all be sweet and head back to the barn? We can keep this party going over there?”
Not one animal even looked at her.
“Hey, Stan?” she called. “You’re clearly a leader. How about you show me that you can do some good with all that staunch determination and lead everyone back to the barn?”
“You can’t be serious,” the guy said. “Talking to them isn’t actually going to work. You know I don’t really think that.”
“Talking is what I do.”
“No kidding.”
She just lifted a brow. “So what should I do instead?”
Maybe he could give her an opening for charming him into putting that very nice, smirky, sarcastic mouth against hers and…
“Nudge ’em,” he said simply.
Now she blinked at him. “What?”
“Nudge them,” he said again.
“Just… nudge them? As in, push them?” She narrowed her eyes. Were they talking about goats? Or were they maybe talking about grumpy farmers who needed more than a subtle flirtation to make a move?
“Sometimes that’s all they need.”
Okay then. She was going to keep that in mind.
“So…” He nodded toward the goats.
She blew out a breath. Okay, so for right now, they were talking about goats.
Charlie approached the smallest of the animals. He—or she—looked up at her. “Hello, I’m Charlotte. Would you please accompany me across the street back to your barn?” She heard the man’s snort even from a distance. That made her smile even though she was still stuck with the problem of herding goats.
The goat, of course, didn’t move a step.
“I would very much enjoy it if you would grant me the pleasure of your company across the street at your barn,” she told the goat.
This time the goat didn’t even lift his head.
Charlie propped a hand on her hip. “I don’t feel that we know each other well enough for me to actually put my hands on your body, so it really would be easier if you would just head in the general direction of your barn.”
“For fuck’s sake.” Suddenly the man was back beside her.
He bent and lifted the goat, and Charlie couldn’t help but think this had worked out very well. She hadn’t had to touch the goats, but she hadn’t been entirely unhelpful to him.
Okay, that wasn’t true. She had been completely unhelpful to him. But she hadn’t left him out here with the goats alone, and she hadn’t gone back inside the bar and told her rowdy cousins on him.
The man pivoted and pressed the goat to her chest. Instinctively her arms went up and around it. He let go.
And just like that, she had her arms full of goat.
Charlie gasped, partially in surprise and partially because it only took her a millisecond to think about the fact that she now had a barnyard animal up against her Alex Perry cocktail dress.
“Oh my God, you have to be kidding,” she said to the man.
“When nudging doesn’t work, sometimes you have to get hands-on.”
Charlie blew out a breath. She was tucking that away in her idea of how to handle him too. But she was preoccupied at the moment.
And not so sure she wanted to kiss him after all.
No, that wasn’t true. She still wanted to kiss him. Especially now that he was standing closer.
Even if she had to kiss him over the back of a goat.
Which probably meant she really wanted to kiss him.
She’d definitely rather do it without a goat between them though.
She could throw a fit, of course. He was probably expecting that.
She could put the goat back down. She could stomp off in a huff. She could still sic her rowdy cousins on the guy.
But in spite of the fact that she was holding a goat and she didn’t even know the guy’s name, she wanted to stay out here with him.
“If I am going to literally carry goats back to a barn,” she said, noting that the man seemed to be waiting for her to throw exactly the kind of fit that she had just entertained in her mind, “you’re going to have to keep talking to me.”
“What is it that you think we need to be talking about?”
“Whatever I want.”
“Why do you get to pick?”
“My eight-hundred-dollar cocktail dress is now going to smell like goat,” Charlie told him. “I think that’s only fair.”
“Eight hundred dollars? Jesus. Maybe that’s what’s making it look so good.”
Okay, now she was shocked. “Did you just say I look ‘so good?’ As in, you just gave me a compliment?”
“Well—” His gaze roamed over her, and, despite the goat in her arms, he seemed to like what he saw.
Charlie felt her body heat.
“I think I gave the dress a compliment,” he finally said. “I mean, if you’re willing to pay that much, you must have something pretty awful to cover up. And it’s doing a fine job of it.”
She felt her brows climb. But she also felt the urge to laugh. That comment was a lot more in character for him than an outright compliment. And it was weird that she already thought she knew his character, wasn’t it?
“Is this where I’m supposed to offer to prove that there’s nothing horrible under this dress?”
His gaze flew back to hers. He straightened slightly and took a breath. “No. Hell no.” He shook his head.
Her eyes widened as he took a step back.
“I mean, no, sorry,” he went on. “That’s not what I meant.”
Oh, now he was flustered. She kind of liked that, too.
Gruff, accidentally charming, sweet with animals, funny even if he didn’t mean to be, and chagrined about possibly being ungentlemanly.
Who was this guy?
Charlie tipped her head to the side. “This goat is getting heavy. Make me the deal for more conversation in exchange for being a shepherdess, or I’m heading inside with this goat in my arms to get you some different help.”
The man seemed to believe she was serious and once again realized that he did not want any of the Landrys inside the bar to come out at this moment. But he also relaxed, grasping that she wasn’t offended by his comment about her dress.
“Why do you want to keep talking to me so badly?” he asked, seeming genuinely curious.
That was a really good question. One she was still trying to answer. “You turned me down for a dance. And don’t want to keep talking to me.”
“And that makes me a challenge or something?”
If she wasn’t mistaken, there was a flicker of humor, and even interest, in his eyes.
“Yep,” she said simply.
“So, if I’d danced with you, I could have avoided all of this?”
“Yep.” Then she added, “Though if we’d danced, you probably wouldn’t have been outside to find Sugar had come over looking for you.”
He almost smiled again. Instead, he shook his head as i
f he couldn’t quite believe her audacity. She wanted to laugh. Audacity was a highly prized characteristic in her family.
Finally, he gave a short nod. “Fine. We can talk. But you can’t be a shepherdess. They’re goats. So you’re a goatherder.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Oh, that’s not nearly as cute.”
“It’s gotta be cute?”
It did because that seemed to bug him. She nodded. “Cute is always the way to go.”
He made a noncommittal grunting noise at that.
She laughed. “How about just between us we call me a shepherdess. No one else needs to know that we weren’t absolutely, technically correct.”
Instead of saying “no, that’s ridiculous,” or just going along with it because that really would be a lot easier—something a lot of people realized pretty quickly when dealing with Charlie—he said, “Do people ever say no to you?”
That was a really good question. It showed that he was catching on.
She pretended to think for a second. Then shook her head. “Not that I can remember.”
He sighed. “No going slowly with the animals just to drag out the conversation.”
Charlie laughed. And noted that he hadn’t said yes or no to the shepherdess terminology. “You think I’m going to find you so fascinating that I’m going to want to drag out the conversation? It’s occurring to me right now that taking animals to a barn is going to involve a lot of animal smells. I haven’t met a man in a long time that could keep me interested enough that I would tolerate the smell of a barn.”
“Is that right? Now that is interesting.”
Charlie opened her mouth to respond, though she wasn’t sure with what, but before she could, the man turned and scooped up another goat and started off across the street again.
He found that interesting? Which part exactly? The part where she wasn’t really a barn type of girl? Surely that wasn’t a huge surprise to him. It must be the part about her not finding a guy lately that she had had such an engaging conversation with. Or perhaps it was the part where she thought that he might provide such a conversation.
Whatever it was, he found something about her interesting, and that made her happy. Which was stupid. She liked people to like her, of course. But making people like her wasn’t usually that difficult. Why did she care if this guy found her interesting? Why did she find it so satisfying that she’d made him smile? Or almost smile anyway. And seriously, why was she in a cocktail dress and heels and carrying a goat?
But she was.
Charlie started after him, quickly finding that balancing in heels while carrying a goat was a little bit more complicated than walking in heels without carrying a goat. She also was fascinated to find that the other goats started to follow her as she headed in the general direction of the barn. Or at least what she assumed was the general direction of the barn since she had yet to see the structure.
Sure enough, as she rounded the corner of the bar, crossed the street, and followed the sidewalk leading away from the boat docks, she found herself approaching a wooden structure that could only be described as a small barn. It was tucked back under a cluster of trees and was inside a very typical wooden fence with a dirt yard in front. The space had two large boulders, two plastic barrels, and three feeding troughs. There was also a large basin of water.
The man set the goat he was carrying down and then turned to take her goat from her. His attention went to something behind her—she assumed the rest of the goats following her—and he smiled.
Charlie just stared.
She knew she was staring. She knew that was a crazy reaction. She knew that he was going to notice that she was staring and that it was a crazy reaction. But she couldn’t stop.
Without the smile, he was sexy, hot, and rugged. She’d found him incredibly attractive inside the wedding reception and had actually been very disappointed that he’d turned down her invitation to dance.
However, him smiling did things to her stomach that no man had done in a very long time. Possibly ever. And it was that thought that gave her the greatest hesitation. It was one thing to flirt. It was one thing to charm. It was one thing to poke at a guy who was a little gruff and didn’t think he wanted to have conversations with her. It was one thing to tease the guy who turned her down for a dance.
It was quite another to have a man smile and make crazy, warm, curly, tingly, twisty things happen to her insides that she’d never experienced before.
Whew.
It was a really good thing that she was only in town for this wedding. She was getting on an airplane in two days to go to Paris. She wasn’t hanging out on the bayou for any period of time. She wasn’t spending the summer here as she had for so many years. She was out of here tomorrow night.
And suddenly that seemed not only practical but like a really good idea.
It wasn’t that she was scared of the guy. Quite the contrary—she found herself wanting to spend a lot more time with him. She had no desire to return to the wedding reception. She was even considering what it would take to scatter the goats so that they would have to stay out here and round them up again.
This guy rattled her. And all he had done was smile.
“You okay?”
Just as she’d expected, he was watching her with a puzzled look, as if he couldn’t figure out why she was standing there, not moving or saying anything.
Charlie pulled herself together. Kind of. “Now what?”
And she wasn’t talking about the goats.
He took the goat from her, their hands brushing, and dammit, she felt some tingles. That was crazy. She loved tingles. Tingles were awesome. In fact, if a guy didn’t give her tingles after three dates or so, she usually ended it. Tingles were required.
For dating. For guys she wanted to have hot, fun sex with. For guys she would consider potentially getting serious with. For that last group, tingles were absolutely essential.
Tingles, however, had no place in a petting zoo barn with a guy whose name she still didn’t know and who had turned her down for even a simple dance. Especially a guy who lived in a tiny town in Louisiana when she was on her way to Paris in forty-eight hours.
Chapter 3
Griffin had never seen a woman in a cocktail dress holding a goat.
He supposed it was likely that most men could say that. But it turned out that he’d been missing out on one of his major fantasies.
This woman was stunning. She would have been stunning in a potato sack. He knew better than to actually believe that the eight-hundred-dollar—holy shit—cocktail dress had anything to do with how beautiful she looked.
He’d been incredibly attracted to her from the minute he’d seen her across Ellie’s bar. Which was why he had turned down her offer to dance. He knew better than to get attached in this little town.
Frankly, he was already struggling with that.
Autre, Louisiana, had a way of getting under a person’s skin. Even his. He’d learned the hard way not to settle down anywhere, not to get attached to a place or to the people there. But Autre had proven, in the six months that he’d been here, to be dangerous to even the best-laid plans of a guy who had a pretty high, firm wall around his heart.
It did, however, seem typical of the way his luck worked that when he’d successfully resisted temptation at the wedding dance and escaped outside for some air, that the same gorgeous blond who had been tempting him with nothing more than, “Do you want to dance?” and then a genuinely surprised look on her face when he declined, would be the person to find him talking to goats.
It was no surprise that this woman didn’t hear no from men very often. In fact, even Griffin, who had no trouble saying no to just about anyone, had almost immediately regretted his answer. Not enough to change his mind and go after her, of course. Until she’d walked up and asked him about the metaphoric carrot in his pocket.
Of course, she had to be funny, clever, bright, friendly, and charming on top of looking like sex on
a stick in the cocktail dress and heels she was wearing.
Even when he’d lived in D.C., he hadn’t gone for the hours-in-the-salon-chair type. This woman screamed high maintenance. She wore heels that were not only completely impractical for walking around the bayou town but were the type of shoes that fought for attention with the form-fitted cocktail dress that hugged her breasts and hips. It was clear that she also spent a lot of time on her nails, and no one’s lips were the color of hers naturally.
Still, he had been inordinately pleased to see her once he’d gotten over his surprise, and nothing about their conversation had done anything to dim his interest.
Which in and of itself was a shock. She was a talker.
Griffin was not.
But then she’d held a goat. In a cocktail dress and high heels.
And he suddenly had a new fetish.
She hadn’t fought it. She’d barely glared at him. In fact, she’d used the goat, and the potential goat smell on her dress, as a bargaining chip. For some reason, this woman wanted to keep talking to him and spending time with him. That, again, made her unusual.
There’d been a time when plenty of women had wanted to spend time with him. But that had been before he’d become a surly, unpleasant pessimist. Even women less friendly than this one found him to be a bit of a downer. Or an asshole.
But he hadn’t really been much of an asshole with this one so far. He’d tried. Half-heartedly. He’d been a little gruff, and he definitely made it clear that conversation was his least favorite pastime, but he’d told her the animals’ names. The ridiculous animal names. He’d also teased her about the talking. And he’d commented on how she looked in her dress.
He shouldn’t have done that. Not only because it definitely could’ve come off as creepy, but because he shouldn’t have been noticing how she looked in the dress in the first place.
He also got the impression he shouldn’t give this woman any hints to his inner thoughts. And not just the lusty ones. She would use them—all of them—against him. Somehow he knew it.
Griffin set Sleepy down on the floor of the barn. The goat scampered off to explore the barn as if he’d never seen it before.
The other goats darted about the enclosure, two of them climbing up on one of the boulders, another headbutting one of the plastic barrels. Alice and Mike, the ducks, waddled off to find the rest of the Brady Bunch. And Hermione had already reunited with Harry, Ron, and Dumbledore.
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