She marched up to the animal pen with purpose, and to her surprise, Jack was right beside her.
“I don’t need your help,” she said.
Which was when Diego pecked her shoulder, making a liar of her.
“Oh, this is good!” Stella exclaimed from behind her.
Jack made a grab for Diego, but the bird hustled out of reach, somehow managing to stay on the goat’s back.
The goat rammed the gate, clearly panicked by his persistent rider, and his pygmy buddy joined in, hitting the gate at a lower height. Still, the goose clung on, giving its mount another good peck. This one created a welt, easily visible under the bright lighting.
“We’ve got to get him off,” Maisie said. She made another grab, got another peck. She was about to say screw it and step into the danger zone beyond the baby gates, but Jack started to sing softly, crooning under his breath. An old Mamas and the Papas song about shining stars and dreams. Her mother used to sing that to her when she was a toddler, sleepless at night, and for a second she just gaped at him, mouth open. Just like that, her initial impression of him floated away, leaving something like wonder in its wake.
Then the goose came to him—it came to him.
He gently lifted it off the goat, who took a mouthful of his dress shirt for his efforts. At least he’d taken off the jacket. It seemed to think the shirt was tastier than the breadstick, or maybe it shared her sudden curiosity about what was under that shirt. Jack looked to her for help.
Bread wasn’t great for goats, but they could eat it in small quantities, and desperate times and all that. She grabbed a handful of breadsticks from the table and lured the goat away from Jack—only for the rest of the animals to come charging over, butting the straining baby gate.
“Don’t let Grumpy eat wheat!” Stella shrieked. “He’s gluten-free!”
Maisie exchanged a glance with Jack, who was still holding the goose and miraculously didn’t have a bloody face.
“Which one’s Grumpy?” he asked.
“It’s clearly that one,” Maisie commented, nodding to the one in front. Part of Jack’s shirt was hanging out of his mouth—he’d chomped the sleeve—and he had a look in his eyes that implied he would happily chomp Jack’s arm to get more of it.
“Nah,” he said, rearranging the goose. “That one’s got to be Dopey.”
Stella had finally left her painting for long enough to approach the gate, and the one she tugged away from the buffet was the little pygmy.
“I would have pegged that one for more of a Tiny Tim,” Jack muttered in an undertone.
Huh. So he did have a sense of humor. And a lovely singing voice. And a talent with animals, obviously. Not that she hadn’t already known that part. Jack lived with Adalia, in a house the Buchanan brothers and sisters had inherited from Beau, their grandfather, after he passed away. They’d also inherited his cat, the infamously evil Jezebel, who needed a double dose of sedatives to be brought to the vet. According to Adalia, the hell cat cuddled with Jack as if she were sweet as sugar.
And there was something else she knew about him. Adalia had told her that he had a little sister, one he’d helped raise, and she was about to move in with them. Which meant he was a pretty solid guy. One who was good with kids, no less.
Looking at Jack now, holding that goose as if it were a puppy, his face stretched in a rare smile, she felt a powerful punch of attraction. With his dark hair and soulful dark eyes, Jack Durand was a handsome man, something she hadn’t noticed until this very moment. Of course, maybe she was just feeling the effects of her months-long man drought. Ever since River had accepted the brewmaster job at Buchanan Brewery and started seeing Adalia’s sister, Georgie, she hadn’t had the heart to go on a date or engage in one of her usual casual relationships.
She hadn’t had much of a heart left to do anything.
But she’d come to terms with it, mostly. Josie was probably right—the man who’d played such an important role in her life had fallen in love with someone else.
So why not have some fun? No one needs to know.
Because from the way Jack was looking at her, with a crooked smile that spoke of attraction and amusement, he wouldn’t be opposed to the kind of fun she had in mind.
Because he’s Adalia and Georgie’s brother, you idiot.
Then she heard the pop of a breaking zip tie, and the plastic baby gates came down, the animals rushing in a stampede over the fallen plastic. The next instant they were treating the buffet table like it was a trough. It had probably been inevitable, the way things were set up, but Maisie hadn’t helped things by dangling a carrot—or some breadsticks, as it were—in front of them. Oops.
There was a backyard fence, so there was no real danger of them getting away. The only threat to their safety lay in whatever delicacies Dottie had included in the spread, but they were probably safe. Goats could eat practically anything.
“Oh, that happened earlier than expected,” Dottie said without a hint of alarm. “I was hoping everyone would be here by the time they got out.”
The animal wrangler finally shook out of his stupor. “You said nothing like this would ever happen again!” he shouted at Lurch.
“And you believed him?” Maisie asked in amusement, glancing at Jack again. The goose flapped its wings a little, and Jack shrugged and let him loose.
“Doesn’t seem fair that they should enjoy the feast without him.”
“I predicted all of this!” Josie said victoriously from behind her booth. “Feel free to approach my station for a painfully accurate reading.”
“She shouldn’t feel so vindicated,” Jack said in an undertone. “I think anyone could have predicted this wouldn’t go well.”
Maisie laughed out loud at that, then laughed a little harder when Stella bustled up to the buffet, shrieking, “No! Blitzen is lactose intolerant.” She released Grumpy to go after Blitzen, a rotund goat with a brown and black coat, only for Grumpy to immediately latch on to a breadstick and chow down.
The donkey wrangler had apparently had enough of this circus and departed without another word, literally riding off on his donkey to wherever he’d parked his trailer. Maisie and Jack exchanged a look, both of them laughing now, but they stepped forward to help wrangle the animals. By the time they got the goats back into the pen, Jack’s dress shirt was torn in three different places, and the bottom of Maisie’s dress was covered in some kind of bean dip. Lurch tried to do his part, too, and lunged for Diego, somehow managing to get a goose footprint on top of his bald head, made with some kind of red dip, it looked like. Apparently it burned—Dottie was sometimes big on making things look like they tasted—because Lurch shoved Diego at Jack before running to the ice bucket someone had put out for beer and sticking his whole head in.
As soon as the goats were contained again, Stella had run into the house in dramatic fashion. Maisie had thought she was going inside to change her clothes, but the back door opened again, and when Stella walked out, she looked much the same as when she’d gone in—dress eaten away in parts by Grumpy, a green stain on what remained of it. She was carrying a blank canvas, and she hurried over to her abandoned easel, threw the painting in progress on the ground, and started painting on the fresh one.