Liars (Licking Thicket 2)

Or at least not today.

“Parrish,” Diesel had said a few weeks ago, the morning after our custody win, when we’d gone to poke around inside our rambling Victorian and found that it was not quite as move-in ready as Cameron the Realtor had suggested it was. “What if I renovated the kitchen myself so we could do everything to our own specifications? Just consider it, okay?”

He’d shown me those eyes, and my stomach had flipped, and I’d agreed enthusiastically. Anything to make my husband happy and to help him feel like this house was ours.

“Hey, Parrish,” he’d said a week after that, when our new kitchen was in the throes of demolition and the Partridge Pit flagship location’s grand opening had been a resounding success, “I’m thinking you’re right about us moving the girls up to a bigger pen at the new house, but what if we put an addition on the Pullet Palace so we could handle a couple more birds? Sid Tinson, one of my customers, was telling me about these rescue chickens and… Just consider it, okay?”

But one look in those eyes and I hadn’t needed to think twice. What bother was an extra chicken or two?

“Baby,” he’d said the following week, when the hardwood floors had been laid in the kitchen, construction of the Chicken Chateau—complete with a nest box turret—was underway, and Marigold had started cruising around the living room in a way that suggested she’d be walking in no time, Lord help us, “what if we get a dog to kinda guard the place? One that could grow up with Mari? Jim Orson was telling me his sister’s having trouble finding a home for the runt of her last litter. Just consider it, okay?”

Heck, what was there to consider when Diesel’s brown eyes were so imploring and when a guard dog would be useful anyway?

Three weeks ago, when the kitchen cabinets were in, the Chicken Chateau had been wired for light, heat, and cable television—kidding, but barely—and Marigold had taken to toddling around led by Biscuit, our new three-legged beagle/Bernese mountain dog mix, Diesel had done it again. “Parrish, since we’ve already broken the seal on getting a pet… do you think we could get another? I wouldn’t suggest it, but someone abandoned a mama cat and her kittens in a cardboard box by the splash park, and the no-kill shelter is full. Just consider it, okay?”

Poor Diesel had looked so outraged on behalf of the mama cat and her poor babies that only a heartless man could have said no, and I was not a heartless man. Especially not since Diesel Chur—that was to say, Diesel C. Partridge—had come into my life and shown me what it felt like to be truly loved and wanted for who I was.

Two weeks ago, when the countertops were in place and the kitchen was painted, when the Chicken Chateau had been outfitted with fresh straw bedding for the girls, and Marigold, Biscuit, and Drumstick—a brown-and-white tabby with the biggest ears and longest legs any of us had ever seen on a feline—were doing their nightly parade around the tiny living room back at the little house, my husband had come to me once more. “Parrish, I have the best costume idea for us to wear for trick-or-treat this week. Something the whole family can get into. Just consider it, okay?”

And though it had been on the tip of my tongue to say no—costumes were not my thing and never would be—when I’d seen the genuine excitement in his eyes as he said the word “family,” I’d caved like a cheap card table.

Then last week, after we’d finally moved into the Victorian, gotten all Diesel’s girls—including fourteen rescue chickens, which seemed excessive—comfortably ensconced in their chateau, and put Marigold and her fur babies to sleep in her sunshine-yellow bedroom down the hall for the first time, Diesel had caught me in a very satisfied, very breathless moment to ask me about hosting Thanksgiving in our new home with Marnie, Beau, Birdie, and Dot, his single-dad pal Wade, and Wade’s baby Cora, Miss Sara, Colin from the store, Colin’s husband and kid, and “a couple other folks” who wouldn’t be able to travel for the holiday. “I know it’s a lot, but they’d all be cool with eating tofurky, and we can make it like a potluck, so just consider it, okay?”

That time, I actually had stopped to consider it, because even the power of those eyes was not enough to make me impetuously agree to hosting a holiday dinner for an unknown number of people. In the end, though, I’d said yes to that too, because it turned out that the big, hulking, tattooed badass I’d married was a collector of strays. And I kinda liked that about him.