Violet, Melanie and Gertrude were staring at her, unblinking. When Rory had been briefed on her goat duties, no one thought to mention what good listeners goats could be. Petunia butted her hip.
“I think Zeke took my heart with him when he went.”
Violet tried to get to Rory’s shirt again. She pushed the goat away. Melanie pooped in the straw Rory had already cleaned. “I’ve always loved him, but this is different. I think I might be in love with him.”
She put the empty bucket down and Gertrude kicked it. “It’s a shock to me, too. I’ve spent nearly a month thinking it was just this place. My isolation and how that might’ve made me cling to him a bit too hard. But talking to you guys has helped me think it through.”
From the stall next door, Alvin yelled. Alvin really did have a problem with body odor. All the girls complained, and he shut up. If only other males were so easy to manage.
“Of course, I can’t tell Zeke. I can’t do anything that might wreck this job. That’s the last thing I want. The whole reason I took this on was to prove to the family that I am reliable, that I can be trusted not to crack under pressure. To prove it to myself. This is not the time or the place to go having divine realizations that I’m in love with my best friend.”
That was met with a chorus of bleating.
“Oh my God.” She hid her eyes in the crook of her elbow. “I am completely, utterly in love with my best friend.” The barn swayed, and she stumbled across the space to a bale of hay and sat. “It’s different to anything I’ve ever felt before.” How could she have missed this for so long? Ignored what was right in front of her. Conned herself.
Again.
One of the mini goats, Therese, who was an expert escape artist and was in the wrong pen, jumped up beside her and snickered, sounding like a cartoon goat who wanted to see the manager this instant.
“Zeke has always lit up the room for me. Always challenged and inspired me. He makes me feel like I am more than enough, not for how I look or the skills I have but for who I am inside. He has always seen the real me, not Rory who can pretend her way through anything, but Aurora Rae who likes dancing on bar tops as much as she likes hiding away to read on her own for hours.”
Bernadette licked her boot, leaving a trail of slobber. Yuck. The other goats were eating, aside from Therese who was bouncing on and off the hay bale as if she were dissatisfied with the manager’s complaint handling and was pushing things up the chain.
“I’m working out my feelings by talking to goats.” She picked up a handful of loose hay and wiped her boot. It was possible Zeke knew her better than she knew herself and that was unsettling.
“And he waited all this time for me to work it out.” That thought made her almost sob aloud. She took a few deep breaths, filled her nose with the earthy warmth of the barn, the funky farm animal smell that was undeniably real.
“Here’s my plan. Tonight, I tell Orrin my happy news. When Zeke is back I’ll be totally normal with him. No letting him see I might die of pleasure just to be able to look at him any time I like. Then we find the damn weapons cache and call Tres and when this is all over, it can be about us.” She stood and pushed Melanie away. “And if I’m very lucky, and if Zeke loves me like I think he does, we’ll all live happily ever after.” Only seemed fair. That’s the way it worked in her favorite books.
She was a junkie for epic romantic fantasies for a reason.
She went straight from putting Therese into her rightful pen to Orrin’s apartment.
He answered his door with a predatory smile. “Adorable.”
She squinted at him. She was banking on being bathed in eau de barn and that acting like bug spray, keeping him at arm’s-length. He gestured to her head and then pulled a stalk of straw from her hair.
“Goats,” she said.
“I heard you were reassigned.”
As if he didn’t have everything to do with that. After starving her, he wanted her fattened up for the kill. Macy had looked relieved when she’d brought Rory the news of her reassignment.
“I love my new job. And for some reason, when you tend goats everyone wants to be your friend.” She shrugged. A big exaggerated gesture. “I don’t get it.”
He stuck the end of the stalk in his mouth and drawled around it. “Are you still lonely, little one?” He looked delighted to see her. Replace the word lonely with horny. The feeling was not mutual.
Orrin held the door open for her and she crossed into his apartment with a quick catalogue of the place to see if anything had changed since the last furtive visit. “No. I think I found my people in the barn.” The signal jammer sat in its place, green light blinking ineffectively without its antennae, which she’d let Bernadette munch on. Goats really will eat anything if you let them.
“There is a sharpness about you, Rosie, that I find most attractive, even when you use it to mask your greatest need.”
“Which is?” Right now, leaning into Zeke’s side and not doing anything to make him worry for her sanity. Later, there was quite a list of things she wanted, starting with her e-reader and the rest of her tech, and an hour to peruse the shelves of her corner bookstore for all the new releases. Orrin in an orange jumpsuit would be a nice touch. Knowing she’d helped put him there would be a victory. Bring on that happy ending.
Orrin’s smile went all the way to his eyes. “Hmm.” He gave her a top-to-toe perusal. “I can’t work out if you simply need to be loved right or you just want your music player charged.”
She held her hand out with the tiny iPod in it and flashed a smile. “Can’t it be both?” She’d been tempted to steal the charging cable for it but that would’ve added extra time to her fake baked-goods delivery, antennae-stealing mission.
He closed his hand over hers. “Did you come here looking to bring our bond date forward by a few nights?”