“It most definitely wasn’t.”
“But how can you resist someone who obviously loves you so much that she would follow you all the way down here to this wedding?” Charlie looked around. “Come to think of it, where did she come from, Mac?”
He frowned. “Mac?”
“As in Old McDonald had a farm?”
“Cute.” His tone made it clear he didn’t find it cute at all.
“Right, they’re not your goats,” Charlie said.
He was still talking to her. Kind of. She couldn’t explain why, but she really liked that. She often wanted to keep people talking. Talking was one of her favorite things to do. She was very good at it even when the people she talked to didn’t think they wanted to talk or listen to her. In fact, that was when she did some of her best work. Marketing and PR had been an obvious choice when it had come to deciding her college major. Her father had laughed, shaken his head, and said simply, “The world isn’t going to know what hit it.”
Dopey finally took a few steps, but none of the other goats seemed inclined to follow. The guy turned to nudge another goat, which caused Dopey to stop moving. The remaining duck that wasn’t following Sugar got offended by the other goats being pushed around, and she squawked, flapped her wings angrily, and went waddling off—in the opposite direction.
“Dammit, Alice,” the man exclaimed.
That seemed to annoy the pig, who decided to go find a quieter place to eat and went wandering toward the front of the bar.
“Hermione,” the man said, raising his voice slightly, calling after the pig. “I really like bacon. And pulled pork.”
Charlie snorted again. He looked over.
“Did you say her name is Hermione?”
He sighed.
Charlie grinned at him. It was. The pig’s name was Hermione. “I know you didn’t name her—though it would have made it even better if you had—but I have to tell you, something about hearing you say Hermione really delights me.”
He rolled his eyes. She couldn’t see it in the dark, but she was sure of it.
“I get the impression that you’re pretty used to people wanting to delight you,” he said, turning to nudge another goat. Who didn’t want to be nudged.
Hmmm, also not exactly a compliment. But not really an insult either. It could have probably sounded like an innuendo, actually. But this guy didn’t seem like the innuendo type.
“It’s true,” she admitted. “People like to make me happy.”
“Why is that?”
That was an interesting question. But she liked to make other people happy, so it seemed that they should feel the same way in return. “Probably because I’m delightful.”
“You don’t say.”
Yeah, he didn’t seem convinced. “If you’d danced with me, you would have known that.”
“I’m not too easy to… delight.”
She felt her lips curl into a smile.
His brows rose. “What’s that?”
“What’s what?”
“That smile.”
She shrugged. “Just a smile.”
“No.” He shook his head. “That’s an oh-that’s-really-interesting smile.”
“Is it?” She pretended not to know what he was talking about. But it was really interesting that he wasn’t easy to delight.
People who were hard to delight were her catnip.
“It is,” he confirmed.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“I’m not really the dancing type.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And delightful isn’t a word I use any more often than Taylor Swift.”
“Okay.”
“You’re still smiling.”
“Huh.”
And apparently, good-looking, six-foot-three-inch guys with scruffy jaws, who had a soft spot for goats and who weren’t easy to delight, were more like chocolate-covered catnip with colored candy sprinkles.
Because he was not getting rid of her now.
Not until he admitted that she was delightful. And that he should have said yes to that dance.
He sighed. “So are you going to help?”
“Help with what?” She had a list already started in her mind of things she’d like to help him with. Like getting him out of his pants.
“The goats.”
Yeah, those weren’t even in the top ten.
Charlie looked around. Then back at him. “Do I seem like the type of girl who would be helpful with goats?”
She’d spent every summer of her life in Autre until she’d turned nineteen and landed her first marketing internship as a part of her college program. She wasn’t not the type to help with goats. She’d spent plenty of time dirty and muddy and not smelling so good when down here on the bayou. Some of the best times of her life.
But right now?
She was wearing Valentino. And her nails were totally inappropriate for this event, but they were spectacular.
“You really don’t,” he said simply.
Well, at least they were on the same page with that.
“But you’re human and have two arms, two legs, and two hands. That’s really all I need right now.”
Charlie bit back her first retort in response to that being all he really needed from her. She was a lady. Kind of.
She was a Landry lady, which meant that she sometimes let the inappropriate comments slip out. But she’d been raised away from the bayou, unlike most of her cousins, which meant that she was typically able to swallow her inappropriate responses before they made it past her lips.
“How about I just go back inside and get you some help from in there?”
The man groaned, and he straightened fully. “Jesus, don’t do that.”
Charlie immediately realized what he was talking about. The people she would go retrieve to help him with this little situation included her cousins Mitch, Fletcher, Zeke, and Zander. And they would absolutely give him shit about this. She would have considered getting her nicer set of cousins—Josh, Owen, and Sawyer—but they happened to be the grooms at this triple wedding, and she couldn’t imagine pulling them away from their new brides for goat herding.
Clearly, this guy realized which men she would most likely bring out to help wrangle the animals. That he didn’t want to deal with them made her think he knew her family rather well.
She looked from him to the goats, then back to him, then to the pig, then back to him again. She blew out a breath and said, “Fine. But you’re going to owe me.”
He hesitated for just a moment, then said, “I may regret this, but I think owing you might be better in the long run than dealing with the Landry boys.”
Charlie decided not to tell him that he was incorrect in that assumption.
Not that him owing her wouldn’t be fun, but where he might end up getting mocked, possibly even bruised, and definitely muddy hanging out with her cousins, it would be an event that he would soon forget about. It would simply be another night hanging out in Autre with the Landrys.
But hanging out with her was not something that he was likely to forget for a long time. At least if she had her way.
2
“Okay, just tell me what you need me to do,” she said brightly, suddenly more enthusiastic about this task.