They knew she was coming to town today. Granted, she wasn’t supposed to be here until this afternoon, but she’d expected at least the main contractor to be here to be sure everything was finished. He’d been great about communicating with her via text, sending her multiple questions, answering hers, and following up.
She crossed to the gate that led into the enclosure. She definitely needed to be sure the storage area was ready to go. She had big shipments of supplies coming in tomorrow, not the least of which was a truckload of fish. She supposed her office chair could wait, but it wasn’t like fish could just sit on a truck for an extra day.
She pulled on the gate but it was locked. Which was good. And bad.
“Dammit.” She looked at her phone. “I need to go,” she told Evan. “I need to get a hold of the builder.”
“I know. You’ve got a lot going on. But this all looks great and I know it’s going to be amazing.”
“Thanks, Ev. I’ll talk to you soon.”
“You better.”
They disconnected and she pulled up the number she’d put in as “penguin builder guy” and typed out a text.
Jill: In town early. At the habitat. Was hoping to meet you and go over things. When will you be here?
She waited for a moment, but no little dots popped up indicating he had received her message and was replying.
She looked around. There really weren’t any indications that construction was still going on. There was no caution tape anywhere, nothing draped with tarps, no piles of supplies or materials. Still, she’d like to talk to the builder. She looked down at her phone, but there was no new message from him yet.
She blew out a breath, then decided to check out more of the enclosure.
Maybe just the outside was finished and there was still more work to be done inside.
She shook the gate again, but it was tight and barely gave. She looked around, but there was clearly no other way in. But, dammit, this was her penguin habitat.
So she climbed over the fence.
That sounded easier than it actually ended up being. The gate was tall and the metal rods ran vertically with no horizontal beams to support a hand or foot.
She was very grateful that she made time twice a week to work out. And couldn’t help but wonder how much easier this would have been if she’d worked out four or five times a week.
But she felt pretty cocky when she dropped to the pavement on the other side.
Then remembered that the moat was not only twenty feet across, but it was deep. Like penguins-could-dive-and-swim-in-it deep. And it was cold.
Dammit.
They had definitely listened to her instructions. Including the ones about the penguins preferring cooler water temps.
Still, she wanted to get over there and it looked like the only way onto the island was to go through the penguin building that sat on the edge of the island. That was also locked.
She really had no choice here.
So she prepared to jump into the water.
Then she remembered her phone.
Relieved, she pulled it out, held it over her head, and eased herself into the water instead of jumping and started doggy-paddling.
But she hadn’t remembered to take her shoes off.
Dammit.
5
She emerged onto the sandy beach, shivering, her feet squishing in her shoes, but with a dry phone.
Which vibrated with a text as she walked across the sand and grass.
Penguin builder guy: Running late this morning. Can meet you in an hour.
Dammit. An hour? She had a lot to do today.
But what choice did she have? And she was early, after all. He hadn’t been expecting her.
She toured the interior of the habitat and discovered that on her belly she could wiggle into the penguin building through the door the penguins would be using. Sure, she was a little dirty afterward, but she was thrilled too. It was all finished.
The only other thing that had to be completed before Thursday was the food storage facility.
Feeling pleased, though cold and squishy, Jill decided to head back to the hotel to change her clothes. But once back in her car, it occurred to her that might not be a great idea.
What if Zeke was still there? It wasn’t that she didn’t want to see him at all. In fact, she would very much like to see him again. But not right now. She didn’t do morning afters. Dan was always up and out right away the next day. Or, if they stayed at his place—as she tried to do because he always had good breakfast food too—she got up and out quickly. They were both too busy for anything else. And she wasn’t really the brunch type even with girlfriends or her mother.
Now that she was in Autre, her focus was even more specific. She had a waddle of penguins to take care of and she needed to have some penguin babies sooner rather than later. She also had her own habitat to worry about. She had definitely been blowing off her contractor for that. She probably should go check out her own house as well.
And hey, at least that was a place where she could get out of her shoes and socks and dry off a little bit. A place that didn’t have a hot, very tempting Cajun who was very good with his mouth.
She pushed all thoughts of Zeke’s mouth—and the parts of him that her mouth had really enjoyed—out of her mind and tapped her new house address into her GPS and found that she was only a mile away. Huh. She’d known that her new hometown was small but this seemed…very convenient, actually.
The tiny town size didn’t bother her. She’d grown up in a small town in Kansas. From what Griffin had told her, Bliss, Kansas, and Autre, Louisiana, had a few things in common. They were small, they were full of quirky characters, and everyone knew each other’s business.
Jill had to admit that she wasn’t looking forward to that last aspect of small town living again. In Omaha she had not only been in a big city, but she hadn’t known anyone until she’d started work. She didn’t have family there and her friends were all people she got to know from the zoo. So her social circle was very small, as was the number of people who knew anything personal about her.
She turned left at the entrance to the animal park and rumbled along the dirt road for about half a mile. This was definitely the edge of town. To her right was part of the bayou with boat docks and several boats of varying sizes, including what looked to be two large fishing vessels anchored along the water. And, as she drove east, it looked as if she was coming to an area where the bayou curved behind the trees in the distance.
“You’ve arrived at your destination,” the GPS lady told her.
“You sure?” she asked as she rolled to a stop. This was a dead-end road and there were only eight houses down here. A couple of them looked like perhaps no one was living in them. The paint was peeling, the front porches were crooked, and there were weeds growing up along the front walks.
However, three of them looked well cared for and had vehicles parked in front of them, plants in the flowerbeds, hammocks on the front porches and so on, indicating people lived there.
Then there was one house that really stood out. It looked to be nearly brand-new.
“Let this be mine,” Jill said out loud as she shut the car off.
It was bigger than the others and definitely newer construction. It had a wide front porch that wrapped around three sides and was two stories with a gorgeous stone and wood combination front. The way it was positioned on the lot, it looked out over the bayou on one side and the expanse of open land with the trees in the distance on the other. Whoever lived there could watch the sunrise on one side of the house and sunset on the other side.