Still, he’d turned her down when she asked him to dance. Without an explanation. He hadn’t claimed a sprained ankle or being a terrible dancer or having a girlfriend. He didn’t have a ring on his left hand.
So yes, even before she saw him sitting on the back step with a goat—correction, nine goats, two ducks, and a potbellied pig—she had been wondering what the hell his deal was.
It was probably the not-being-used-to-being-told-no thing, but something made her walk around the corner of the building and say, “So, does she think that’s a carrot in your pocket? Because it sounds like you’re not that happy to see her.”
The man’s head came up quickly and, if she wasn’t mistaken, he gave a little sigh when he saw who she was.
But surely, she was mistaken. People didn’t often tell her no, and they very rarely sighed when they saw her. Or if they did, it was certainly in relief. Charlie was a very well-liked person. She was an optimist, she was a hard worker, and she always tried to make the best of every situation. She was a damned delight. And if this guy had taken ten minutes to dance with her, he would have known that.
“I can’t believe I lost out to a goat,” she said.
The man continued to pet the goat’s head as Charlie approached.
“I mean, I assume that’s why you turned down my offer for a dance.” Charlie stopped in front of him. “Because for the life of me, I can’t think of any other reason.”
“Not wanting to dance with you couldn’t possibly have been the reason?” His voice was a low rumble, and his tone was dry.
Charlie lifted a shoulder. “Nope.” Charlie scanned the menagerie around him. “This is your fan club, huh? I might actually be hoping for Taylor Swift even more now.”
The guy was looking at her as if she was the weird one. But he was the one with the goat standing between his knees looking at him as if he was a salt lick, and it was majorly sodium deficient. And despite his Old McDonald role-playing, Charlie had to admit she and the goat might have something in common.
She looked at him for a long moment, then asked, “You’re not going to ask me about the Taylor Swift comment?”
“I’ve found that when you ask people questions, it keeps conversations going.”
Ah, he wasn’t much of a conversationalist. Got it.
Charlie smiled what she knew had to look like a sly grin. There was nothing more fun than drawing someone into a reluctant conversation and charming them with her wit and charisma.
This guy was pushing a lot of her buttons. He was good-looking, he was clearly a friend of her family’s since he was at these weddings, and, most of all, he was trying to resist her.
She didn’t flirt her way through life, exactly, but she’d rarely met another human she couldn’t win over if she wanted to.
“Well, I overheard you telling your friend that it was inappropriate for her to be here and that she couldn’t stalk you with her friends, and I have to admit I was hoping for a flash mob to break out.”
“And you thought Taylor Swift would be a part of that?”
Charlie grinned. Score one for her. He’d just responded to her despite clearly not wanting to. Even better, he was talking to her about Taylor Swift. She had no idea how she knew, but she was certain that this man did not say the name “Taylor Swift” on any kind of a regular basis.
“I was just going through the songs that I would use if I were arranging a flash mob for the guy I was stalking.”
“You’re stalking a guy?”
He was still talking to her. Charlie’s smile grew wider. “I was thinking about stalking the guy who turned me down for a dance at a recent wedding reception, but it seems like I’ll have to get in line.”
The man stretched to his feet. The goat backed up, but only a couple of steps. The duck did as well to avoid being stepped on. The potbellied pig lifted her head to see what was happening. Everyone else continued grazing.
Well, not everyone else. Charlie took the opportunity to sweep her gaze over the man from head to toe. Twice.
He was tall, at least six foot three inches. He had dark hair, but she hadn’t been close enough in good lighting to decide if it was dark brown or black. It was a little shaggy, curling sexily against the collar of his shirt. He had at least a day or two’s worth of stubble on his jaw, his skin an I-work-outside-in-the-sun-a-lot tan. All she could tell from earlier in the bar was that his eyes were dark. She would very much like to be close enough to tell what exact color they were. He’d smelled really good in the bar.
He was dressed, as all the men at the wedding reception were, in dark jeans and a button-down dress shirt. His shirt was now untucked, the top two buttons unbuttoned, and the sleeves rolled up to his elbows.
He started walking away from the bar toward the dirt road that ran in front of her grandmother’s establishment, without another word.
Charlie watched him go for a few steps, the adoring goat trotting beside him and one of the ducks waddling along behind them. The rest of the animals seemed oblivious to being left behind.
He turned and looked back at the animals. “Come on, everybody.”
A couple of the goats lifted their heads, and the potbellied pig glanced over, but no one seemed inclined to move. Charlie crossed her arms, fighting a grin.
He sighed and started back.
“Seriously, it’s time to go home.” He got behind a couple of the goats and nudged one of them with his knee. The goat bleated at him and gave him what Charlie could only describe as a glare.
“Let’s go, Dopey.” The man nudged the goat with his knee again.
“Is insulting them the best way to get them to do what you want?”
He gave Charlie an irritated look. “Dopey is his name.”
“You named him Dopey?”
“I didn’t name him anything. I didn’t name any of them anything.”
“So they’re not your goats?”
“They are most definitely not my goats.”
Charlie was definitely fighting laughter now. “So she fell in love with you, and she’s not even yours? You don’t feed her or anything?”
He shrugged. “What can I say? When you’ve got it, you’ve got it.”
Charlie snorted. “I’m feeling a little better about us not dancing together.”
“Worried about my animal magnetism?”
Actually, she was starting to worry about his charm. It was there, even if it took a little bit of digging to get to it, and it was surprisingly potent. “I’m not sure that I want to be in the same fan club as Lulubelle here.” She gave the goat a mock appraising look. “I would never wear that collar with her hair color.” The goat had a pretty green collar on that looked completely fine with her mostly brown coat.
Now the guy stopped and turned to face Charlie fully. His gaze tracked over her from her hair to the toes of her Valentinos and back again. “Yeah, you seem pretty… put together.”
He bent and put both hands on Dopey’s rump and pushed, leaving Charlie to wonder if being “put together” was a compliment from this guy or not.
She was going to go with not.
“By the way, her name is Sugar,” he said.
Charlie laughed. “So that was not just a term of endearment?”