Griffin knew where his line was with all of this, and he wouldn’t hesitate to hold it. Not even with big blue eyes blinking up at him, looking at him like he was amazing.
Yeah, the look on her face when he’d been interacting with Andre and Brownie had given him a hot kick to the gut.
Charlie looked at him like he was a rock star. Or a big piece of chocolate cake. Or both. Dammit.
And Tori, Sawyer, and Maddie clearly liked this idea.
That meant he couldn’t shoot it down entirely.
Tori had given him a job when he was jobless and trusted him completely as she began relinquishing more and more of the practice to him. Besides that, he really liked her. He also liked and respected Sawyer, Maddie, Josh, and Owen, and everyone else who worked with Boys of the Bayou. The Landrys were an amazing family, and he was getting close to counting them as friends.
Of course, his loyalty would always be with the animals first. Which meant speaking up if he thought things were getting out of hand.
“Who’s going to consult with Charlie on which animals to add?” he asked. “We all know she’s not going to stop at hedgehogs.” He sighed. She’d already added rabbits to the list. “And someone should set guidelines for how this will all go. How much and often the animals are fed. How to rotate the ones who are interacting with people and which ones are off display. I don’t think any of them should be interacting with tourists all day, every day.”
Tori nodded. He knew that Tori would want the best for the animals as well.
“I think Charlie will be fine with guidance on the animal care portion of the idea by someone with expertise,” Tori said.
“Absolutely,” Sawyer agreed. “She’s gung-ho for sure, and she will have big ideas and move on them quickly, but she’ll listen to you.”
“Me?” Griffin asked.
“You’re the one with concerns,” Sawyer said.
Yes, he most definitely did have concerns where Charlie Landry was concerned. But he wasn’t sure that his primary ones had anything to do with adding hedgehogs to their petting zoo.
“Will you give me full authority to approve or disapprove any animal additions?”
Tori gave him a contemplative look. “Of course, I trust you completely, Griffin. And I know that you will guide Charlie appropriately. But you can’t shut down all of her ideas.”
He really wanted to shut down her ideas.
He had a very bad feeling that Charlie was going to stir up a whole lot of things for him that he’d, so far, successfully kept under wraps since coming to Autre.
The job was straightforward. A little boring even. The otters were, by far, the most interesting animals he dealt with. And that was fine with him. He didn’t need big, crazy ideas or anything “interesting” or challenging. Anymore. He needed basic, routine, unexciting. Like an addict needed to avoid their substance of choice, he needed to avoid situations that might get him worked up, passionate, and… fired.
“Right,” Maddie agreed with Tori. “Obviously, Griffin and Charlie are the perfect people to work on this together.”
Griffin felt a very strange mix of trepidation and excitement swirl through him. The excitement was obvious. Charlie Landry was someone that he would very much like to spend more time with. It would be torturous, of course, but she was like a bright light, and he was a moth.
The trepidation came from knowing that excitement always led to big disappointment. The universe had proven that to him over and over. Excitement was definitely cause for worry as well.
This girl was going to be big trouble for him. And he no longer had the great buffer of an ocean between them.
“For sure,” Tori said. “With your experience working with animals on display, whatever you can bring to this project is far beyond anything I could do.”
Tori was already moving toward the door of the clinic, and Griffin had the impression she was trying to escape before he could make a really good point about why he shouldn’t be brought into this project. Or why the project was a bad idea.
“This is a Boys of the Bayou project,” he said. “I shouldn’t be involved in actually expanding the business. I’m not part of the Boys of the Bayou.”
Maddie was also moving toward the door. She waved a hand as if his comment was unimportant. “Of course you’re part of it. You’re part of the family, Griffin. We know that you have our best interests at heart, and we’re so glad to have you onboard.”
Dammit. She had to pull out the you’re part of the family, didn’t she? Of course, anyone who spent more than about ten minutes with the Landry family was one of the family. He’d been living with Mitch for about six months. That had clinched it. But even though he now had a place of his own, he still ate most meals with the Landrys and, of course, worked with many of them. And whether they knew it or not, the idea of being accepted into a big, boisterous, loving family was hard to resist.
He’d tried. He had put up every wall that had worked in every other place to keep the Landrys out. But they’d gotten past all of his defenses.
He only had his brother in the world now, and Donovan was busy traveling the country as a wildlife rehabilitation expert. They’d had some rocky times for sure, but they were good now, and he’d even go so far as to say they were friends. They didn’t, however, live near one another or have regular meals or tease and fight good-naturedly the way the Landrys did.
Griffin liked all of that. Too much.
“And,” Sawyer said, also taking steps toward the door, “we trust you implicitly. We know that you’re going to do whatever you can to make the business successful, even while watching out for all of our animals, as well as our visitors.” Sawyer shrugged his big shoulder. “Really, there’s no one else who could do this job. Charlie can come up with a plan, and you’ll be sure it’s implemented perfectly.”
He should object. He should tell them he wasn’t going to do it.
But he wanted to do it.
He’d prefer that Charlotte Landry’s sweet ass was still planted in some swanky café in Paris. But if she was going to be here and doing this, he wanted in on it. He wanted to be sure it was done right.
And she was going to do this. He’d seen the sparkle in her eyes. She was excited about this. The chances of talking her out of it were zero. He already knew that.
“Do you have a long mop?”
He turned at the sound of Charlie’s voice. When he saw her, all thoughts left his mind except, Shit, I really like her.
Charlotte Landry, the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen, the woman that he still had very dirty dreams about even two months later, the woman whose mouth he could still feel and taste if he closed his eyes, now stood in front of him in short shorts, wearing rubber boots that went up to her knees, rubber gloves that went up to her elbows, and a facemask that covered her nose and mouth.
He couldn’t help but grin. Kennel three seriously had been a mess. But Charlotte had headed in there without an argument and was cleaning it up. From the looks of her boots, she had waded right in.
Griffin glanced behind him to get the reactions of her cousins but found they’d already left. Cowards. They’d taken the chance to escape when he’d been distracted. He turned back to Charlotte.
And boy, was he distracted.
“All the cleaning supplies are in the closet across the hall.”
“Great. I hope you’ve got plenty.” Her voice sounded nasally.
“Is that mask pinching your nose?”
She lifted a hand and pulled her mask down. Her nostrils were plugged. By two tampons.
He stared. Huh. He knew that they sometimes used tampons to stem the flow from bloody noses. He supposed the tampons would also keep smells out.
Creative. He would absolutely have to add creative to the list of adjectives he used to describe Charlie. He hadn’t realized that he had a specific list, but looking at her now, he realized he absolutely did.
Funny, intelligent, sexy as hell, a little manipulativ
e, willing to hold a goat in an eight-hundred-dollar cocktail dress—yes, he realized that was more than one-word—and now creative.
He watched as she turned on the heel of her rubber boots and headed back down the hall.
That view made him think that having her around the clinic might not be so bad.
Or really bad. Actually terrible.
Because she was untouchable.
He didn’t actually think the Landrys would have a problem with him and Charlie having a fling. The family was passionate, slightly crazy, but all about pleasure and having fun. If they thought he and Charlotte were having a consensual let’s-have-a-great-time affair while she was in town, none of them would have any issue with it.
He was the one who had an issue with it.
Charlie was more than just a gorgeous woman he wanted to do extremely dirty things to—even when she was wearing rubber boots. She was someone who made him laugh, could imagine himself talking to for long periods of time, and who, dammit, had him eager to work with some hedgehogs.
She was someone he could get attached to.
She was trouble.
He turned away from the hallway even though she’d already disappeared into the storage room.
Speaking of creative… His eyes landed on the papers that she had been showing Maddie and Sawyer and Tori. This was her big marketing plan for Boys of the Bayou.
Curious in spite of himself, Griffin stepped forward and flipped through a few pages.
It only took him five pages to realize that he really should shut this idea down.
Not because it was bad.
On the contrary, it was pretty great.
And if she pulled it off, he would have even more animals to care about, and he’d be even more attached to this business, and this town, and this family.
He didn’t want the petting zoo to be great. He didn’t want to be crazy about the otters. He was already attached to the animals that were here, and if they added more, it would make it even harder in the end.
It would be even more for him to be protective of and for him to worry about. And for him to potentially get fired over.
Charlotte Landry was such a bad idea for him.
But she was now his assistant. And he had a surgery to do.
Dammit.
* * *
Of course, Charlotte Landry was seemingly good at everything she did.
Herding goats, blowjobs, turning his professional life upside down, and assisting in surgery.
She took a selfie with Brownie—who licked her cheek as she snuggled her face in next to his—to text to Michael and Andre with the caption, “Best dog kisses ever.”
Then she took every direction Griffin gave her to get the surgical area and the puppy prepped. She was calm and sweet with the dog, petting him and talking to him softly as Griffin administered the anesthesia. As they performed the procedure, she wasn’t a bit squeamish. Her hands were steady and confident. She followed his instructions to a T.
She also somehow looked sexy in the scrubs he gave her to wear. She smelled amazing. He didn’t mind at all having to stand close to her and press against her as she positioned the dog for him.
But she would not. Stop. Talking.
She listened to his instructions and did what he needed her to do, but in between his directions, she talked. And talked. And talked.
“I had no idea otters could get to be sixty pounds,” she said, turning Brownie ten degrees to the right. “There are even some up around Alaska that can get to be 100 pounds. And they have the densest fur in the entire animal kingdom. They have like a million hairs per square inch.”
Her tone made it clear that she thought this was absolutely an amazing fact.
“I know,” Griffin replied, feeling that she was waiting for a response. He didn’t have much else to add to that, however.
“And I had no idea they almost never come on land. They spend most of their time in the water.”
Griffin shook his head as he began stitching Brownie back up.
“The funniest thing I saw was some baby otters bobbing up and down in the water like little corks.” Charlie laughed. “They were wrapped in kelp to keep them safe while the mom was off hunting. They were adorable.”
“Charlie?” Griffin asked as he bent close and placed the stitches. “You spent time researching otters?”
“Of course.”
“Why?”
“Because I always research my projects before I start them.”
“And the otters are your new project?” Griffin asked.
“Well, they are part of my new project.”
Griffin finished the stitches, and Charlie handed him gauze and a bandage.
“But you must find otters interesting,” she said.
“Why do you say that?” He wrapped the gauze around the dog’s leg, securing it with the bandage.
“You work with them every day.”
“The otters belong to the business that has contracted me for my veterinary services. I work with the otters because they’re here.”
“But you do like them, right?” Charlie asked. “And you know a lot about them.”
Griffin braced his hands on the edge of the table next to the still-asleep dog. He did like the otters. But that didn’t matter.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“What do you mean?”
“You’re getting ready to ask me for something. What is it?”
She looked surprised. “How can you tell I’m getting ready to ask you for something?”
“You’ve been asking me for things since you got here.”
There was a flicker in her eyes, and he couldn’t tell if it was amusement or heat or a combination of the two. “Are we talking about since I got back this time? Or the last time I was here? Because yes, there were some things I wanted from you last time for sure.”
This woman was dangerous. He needed to remember that she was quick and bright and was never going to let him get away with anything.
“The things you asked me for last time were a lot more fun than the ones you want now.”
“What if I told you I want some of those things this time too?”
He shook his head. “Not possible.”
“You’re not really my boss, you know,” she said. “I’m really working for Boys of the Bayou and helping you out on the side. No one’s going to hold it against you if something happens between us.”
“I’m going to hold it against me.”
“Why?”
“Because I like things simple, Charlotte. And you are anything but.”
She didn’t seem offended by that. In fact, he almost suspected she took that as a compliment.
“So, the last time I was here, it happened because I was leaving, and there was no chance for it to get complicated?”
“Yes.”
“Would it make a difference if I told you that I was leaving again this time too? I’ll be here a little longer this time, but I’m not staying.”
He studied her across the table. It should make a difference. It should make him happy to think she wasn’t staying. Not only because he wouldn’t have to spend years of his life resisting her, but because the havoc she was wreaking on his professional life would end, hopefully, at some point. But for some reason, the idea of her leaving made him even more convinced that nothing should happen between them.
Charlotte Landry was definitely the type of woman to break a guy’s heart. She was blowing in like a hurricane, and everyone knew that even after a minor storm, there was cleanup to do.
He felt as if he’d been doing cleanup in the aftermath of storms in his life for years. He’d settled in Autre, in part, because he thought chaos couldn’t find him here.
Then Charlotte Landry showed up.
“No, that wouldn’t make a difference.”
Charlie blew out a breath. “I grew up around Cajuns, but you are possibly the most stubborn man I’ve ever met.”
“You gre
w up around people who never told you no,” Griffin said. He shouldn’t have been surprised to find that he was fighting a smile. This woman had that effect on him. It had been stronger last time before she was here messing with his job, but even now, he found himself amused, and he had to admit that watching her brainstorm earlier about turning the petting zoo into a jungle tour had been fascinating. A little over-the-top. But fascinating.
She nodded. “You’re right about that.”
“So, you just see me as a challenge,” Griffin told her. “But having a man around who’s not wrapped around your little finger could be good for you.”
Her smile grew, and Griffin felt a definite uh-oh in response.
“You think you can be good for me, Griffin?”
With that tone of voice and the look in her eye, he had all kinds of ideas about how good he could be for her. But those were exactly the reasons that she was bad for him.
“I think that I could be good for you in a number of ways,” he said. “For instance, I can teach you the difference between sea otters and river otters.”
“Really? I don’t have every one of those facts exactly right?”
He knew instantly that she already knew that she’d been sharing facts about sea otters rather than river otters, like the ones the Boys of the Bayou had on display.
“What do you want that has to do with otters, Charlie?”
“What do you mean?”
“While it’s not impossible for me to believe that you were talking about sea otters while I operated simply because you cannot stand silence,” Griffin told her, “I think there’s a better chance that you were doing it for a purpose. You knew that I would know the difference.”
“It’s hot that you’re figuring me out.”
Desire hit him hard in the gut. The woman was not only bright and surprising and entertaining, she was also very blatant about her attraction to him.
He wasn’t used to people being quite so straightforward. In fact, most of the people he’d dealt with prior to coming to Autre had been focused on being political and always saying things in just the right way. But the Landry family was different. You knew exactly where they all stood on nearly every topic, they always said what they meant, and most importantly, they meant what they said.
Fall in Love Book Bundle: Small Town Romance Box Set Page 235
