“For fuck’s sake.” Suddenly the man was back beside her.
He bent and lifted the goat, and Charlie couldn’t help but think this had worked out very well. She hadn’t had to touch the goats, but she hadn’t been entirely unhelpful to him.
Okay, that wasn’t true. She had been completely unhelpful to him. But she hadn’t left him out here with the goats alone, and she hadn’t gone back inside the bar and told her rowdy cousins on him.
The man pivoted and pressed the goat to her chest. Instinctively her arms went up and around it. He let go.
And just like that, she had her arms full of goat.
Charlie gasped, partially in surprise and partially because it only took her a millisecond to think about the fact that she now had a barnyard animal up against her Alex Perry cocktail dress.
“Oh my God, you have to be kidding,” she said to the man.
“When nudging doesn’t work, sometimes you have to get hands-on.”
Charlie blew out a breath. She was tucking that away with her other ideas about how to handle him too. But she was preoccupied at the moment.
And not so sure she wanted to kiss him after all.
No, that wasn’t true. She still wanted to kiss him. Especially now that he was standing closer.
Even if she had to kiss him over the back of a goat.
Which probably meant she really wanted to kiss him.
She’d definitely rather do it without a goat between them though.
She could throw a fit, of course. He was probably expecting that.
She could put the goat back down. She could stomp off in a huff. She could still sic her rowdy cousins on the guy.
But in spite of the fact that she was holding a goat and she didn’t even know the guy’s name, she wanted to stay out here with him.
“If I am going to literally carry goats back to a barn,” she said, noting that the man seemed to be waiting for her to throw exactly the kind of fit that she had just entertained in her mind, “you’re going to have to keep talking to me.”
“What is it that you think we need to be talking about?”
“Whatever I want.”
“Why do you get to pick?”
“My eight-hundred-dollar cocktail dress is now going to smell like goat,” Charlie told him. “I think that’s only fair.”
“Eight hundred dollars? Jesus. Maybe that’s what’s making it look so good.”
Okay, now she was shocked. “Did you just say I look ‘so good?’ As in, you just gave me a compliment?”
“Well—” His gaze roamed over her, and, despite the goat in her arms, he seemed to like what he saw.
Charlie felt her body heat.
“I think I gave the dress a compliment,” he finally said. “I mean, if you’re willing to pay that much, you must have something pretty awful to cover up. And it’s doing a fine job of it.”
She felt her brows climb. But she also felt the urge to laugh. That comment was a lot more in character for him than an outright compliment. And it was weird that she already thought she knew his character, wasn’t it?
“Is this where I’m supposed to offer to prove that there’s nothing horrible under this dress?”
His gaze flew back to hers. He straightened slightly and took a breath. “No. Hell no.” He shook his head.
Her eyes widened as he took a step back.
“I mean, no, sorry,” he went on. “That’s not what I meant.”
Oh, now he was flustered. She kind of liked that, too.
Gruff, accidentally charming, sweet with animals, funny even if he didn’t mean to be, and chagrined about possibly being ungentlemanly.
Who was this guy?
Charlie tipped her head to the side. “This goat is getting heavy. Make me the deal for more conversation in exchange for being a shepherdess, or I’m heading inside with this goat in my arms to get you some different help.”
The man seemed to believe she was serious and once again realized that he did not want any of the Landrys inside the bar to come out at this moment. But he also relaxed, grasping that she wasn’t offended by his comment about her dress.
“Why do you want to keep talking to me so badly?” he asked, seeming genuinely curious.
That was a really good question. One she was still trying to answer. “You turned me down for a dance. And don’t want to keep talking to me.”
“And that makes me a challenge or something?”
If she wasn’t mistaken, there was a flicker of humor, and even interest, in his eyes.
“Yep,” she said simply.
“So, if I’d danced with you, I could have avoided all of this?”
“Yep.” Then she added, “Though if we’d danced, you probably wouldn’t have been outside to find Sugar had come over looking for you.”
He almost smiled again. Instead, he shook his head as if he couldn’t quite believe her audacity. She wanted to laugh. Audacity was a highly prized characteristic in her family.
Finally, he gave a short nod. “Fine. We can talk. But you can’t be a shepherdess. They’re goats. So you’re a goatherder.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Oh, that’s not nearly as cute.”
“It’s gotta be cute?”
It did because that seemed to bug him. She nodded. “Cute is always the way to go.”
He made a noncommittal grunting noise at that.
She laughed. “How about just between us we call me a shepherdess. No one else needs to know that we weren’t absolutely, technically correct.”
Instead of saying “no, that’s ridiculous,” or just going along with it because that really would be a lot easier—something a lot of people realized pretty quickly when dealing with Charlie—he said, “Do people ever say no to you?”
That was a really good question. It showed that he was catching on.
She pretended to think for a second. Then shook her head. “Not that I can remember.”
He sighed. “No going slowly with the animals just to drag out the conversation.”
Charlie laughed. And noted that he hadn’t said yes or no to the shepherdess terminology. “You think I’m going to find you so fascinating that I’m going to want to drag out the conversation? It’s occurring to me right now that taking animals to a barn is going to involve a lot of animal smells. I haven’t met a man in a long time that could keep me interested enough that I would tolerate the smell of a barn.”
“Is that right? Now that is interesting.”
Charlie opened her mouth to respond, though she wasn’t sure with what, but before she could, the man turned and scooped up another goat and started off across the street again.
He found that interesting? Which part exactly? The part where she wasn’t really a barn type of girl? Surely that wasn’t a huge surprise to him. It must be the part about her not finding a guy lately that she had had such an engaging conversation with. Or perhaps it was the part where she thought that he might provide such a conversation.
Whatever it was, he found something about her interesting, and that made her happy. Which was stupid. She liked people to like her, of course. But making people like her wasn’t usually that difficult. Why did she care if this guy found her interesting? Why did she find it so satisfying that she’d made him smile? Or almost smile anyway. And seriously, why was she in a cocktail dress and heels and carrying a goat?