Clementine jogged over to the scale and jumped up on it. She put her front hooves on the wall and stretched to reach the anything-but-tasteful nude Beautification Committee calendar. The goat took a bite out of December while the two babies not cradled in Jax’s arm jumped onto the first vinyl chair and romped onto the next, the whole way around the room.
The receptionist was laughing so hard that tears slid down her cheeks as she swiped Jax’s credit card.
“Need help herding them out?” Sammy offered, checking her watch. It was five past closing, and that shower was calling her name.
She’d help shove these goats in a car, lock the front door, and be elbow-deep in craft wire and pine boughs in no time.
Jax was just scrawling his signature on the credit card slip when the front door burst open.
“What the—” Sammy’s brain couldn’t quite keep up with she was seeing.
A sheep wearing what looked like a makeshift halter of a leather belt and mismatched tie-down straps careened into the waiting room, dragging a body behind it.
The humans in the room froze.
The goats gleefully raced to investigate the intruder. As the baby goat in the Happy Kwanzaa onesie nimbly hopped up onto the sheep’s back, the body behind the sheep raised its head and then began a slow scramble to its feet.
His feet.
His big feet.
Big feet clad in fancy loafers caked with mud. Stylish, low-slung jeans were wet at the knees and smeared with more mud. The man’s sweater had—until recently—been a blinding white. Now it was damp and dirty. Sammy could see the point of one manly nipple through the wet fabric.
Then there was his freaking face. Holy guacamole, that face.
Eyes: Cloudy winter gray and troubled. Jaw: Chiseled with a dusting of new stubble. Mouth: Sternly frowning. Hair: Medium brown. Neatly and expensively cut. Currently accessorized with a few leaves and at least half a cup of dirt.
There was something deliciously grumpy and broody about him.
The sheep bleated and trotted up to her, raining baby goats onto the linoleum floor. It stopped at her feet and looked up expectantly.
“Is there a sheep and a hot, dirty guy in front of me, or am I hallucinating?” Sammy whispered.
“Girl, we’re both hallucinating,” Jonica sighed, appearing next to her, her brown eyes glued to the man glaring at the sheep. “Dirty hot is so my type.”
“You are aware that I can hear you, aren’t you?” Dirty Hot Stranger said snidely with a gravelly voice.
“Whoops. Sorry,” she said, recovering.
“Are you the vet?” he demanded, eyeing her skeptically.
“I am. How can I help you?”
“Here.” He shoved the end of the leash at her and turned for the door.
5
How could she help him? Ha.
The veterinarian in ridiculous, stained Christmas scrubs with her blonde hair exploding out of a crooked ponytail didn’t look like she could help herself, much less him.
Besides, he was beyond help. And that was before he may or may not have accidentally hit the sheep with his teeny-tiny stupid car.
“Hold it,” she said as he headed for the door.
Despite her disheveled appearance, the vet’s voice was steely enough that it stopped him in his tracks.
“You can’t just abandon your sheep,” she warned him.
“It’s not my sheep,” Ryan argued. “This woolly mammoth belongs to some irresponsible hippie. He ran out in front of my car. I don’t know if I hit him or if he’s hurt. Or if he’s a he,” he supplied, refusing to resume control of the makeshift leash he’d made with his own belt and supplies he found in his stupid car’s tiny hatch. “He answers to Stan.”
After “Hey, sheep” and “Stupid, jackass livestock” hadn’t elicited a response from the animal, Ryan had to get creative.
It had been easier than he’d thought to stuff the sheep into the passenger seat. Stan had hopped right in. Catching him had been another story. Ryan’s shoes were ruined. His jeans were wet from the snow he’d fallen in five or six times. And his hands were so numb he had serious concerns about losing digits.
Now he appeared to be in a stare down with the bigger, non-pajamaed goat. Ears flicking, it stalked toward him. Ryan took two steps back. Great. He was going to die by goat. It was a fitting end to a disastrous week.
“Back off, demon,” he said.
“She’s mostly friendly,” the man cradling a baby version of the yellow-eyed monster assured him. “She only hates me.”
As if to prove his point, the goat changed directions and head-butted the guy in the thigh.
“You mother-effer,” the guy hissed through his teeth.
Ryan wondered if he was cleaning up his language for the sake of the baby goats. This town was insane.
“Knock it off, Clementine,” the vet said sternly. The goat actually looked contrite.
Kneeling face-to-face with the sheep, the doctor stroked competent hands over Stan’s thick wool. The sheep’s tail fluttered like he—or she—was enjoying the attention. Ryan hoped it was a sign of sheep happiness and not an impending sheep shit.
“He ran out in front of me. I slammed on the brakes. I couldn’t tell if I hit him or a pothole. It took me half an hour to catch him and load him up,” he explained, still not quite believing this is what his life had come to.
“Where did you find him?” Goat Guy asked.
“On a farm,” he said, shoving his hand through his hair and finding more mud there.
“Whose farm?” the vet asked without looking up from her examination of the sheep’s legs.
“My great-uncle’s. Carson Shufflebottom. I think everyone here knows him as—”
“Old Man Carson,” Goat Guy filled in.
“Yeah.”
At the mention of his uncle’s name, the vet gave him a weird look.
“Carson doesn’t have any sheep,” the vet said, blowing a hunk of honey blonde hair out of her eyes. “Just chickens.”
Freaking small towns. Where everyone knew who had what livestock.
She stood, still avoiding his gaze and coaxed the sheep to walk with her around the waiting room. The beast pranced like a show pony next to her. He caught a glimpse of a bright, shiny smile as the vet beamed down at Stan.
She had one hell of a smile. The kind that if it was aimed in his direction had the potential to knock him back a step. People who smiled a lot made him suspicious. No one should be that happy all the time.
“You’re not Ryan, are you?” she asked, snapping him out of his suspicion.
He debated lying. God only knew what unstable Uncle Carson had told his hometown about him. Then decided it didn’t matter what a reasonably attractive veterinarian in a town he’d never visit again thought of him.
“I am,” he admitted.
“Listen, Sammy. I gotta get the kids and Jojo’s car back,” Goat Guy announced, hooking his thumb toward the door.
“Better hurry, Jax, or Joey will make sure you never finish that screenplay,” the vet—Sammy apparently—said. “Call me if Thor’s limp doesn’t get better.”
Jax—what kind of a name was that anyway—leaned in and gave the vet a kiss on the cheek. Ryan moved the too-charming man onto his Things to Dislike About Blue Moon list right between “the weather” and “free range farm animals”.