Wild At Heart (Wild 2)

Jonah chuckles. “I know you are. But you’ll laugh about it one day.”

“Will I?”

Jonah dips his head to graze the side of my neck with his lips, tickling me with his beard. “I promise.” His breath skates over my skin.

“You’re right. Maybe in an hour, after I’ve finished guzzling that bottle of champagne George and Bobbie sent with us, this’ll be really funny.”

“Drunk, angry Barbie. Can’t wait,” Jonah says wryly, drawing out my chuckle. “Before you pop that cork, though … we have a problem we have to deal with out back.” He sighs heavily. “And you’re gonna be really pissed about this.”

* * *

“You have got to be kidding me.”

Jonah scratches his beard. “Nope.”

“What happened to his neighbor taking it?” I was sitting right across from Phil at his kitchen counter when he confirmed—several whiskeys in—that the guy on the other side of the lake was taking his livestock.

“The note says they had a fight and the guy changed his mind. He took the chickens, though.” Jonah stands in front of the sizeable animal pen, enclosed with wire fencing, his hands on his hips, in a staring match with Phil’s black-and-white goat.

Our black-and-white goat now, apparently.

I wrinkle my nose against the faint, acrid scent of bird poop that permeates the cold. The empty chicken coop is a ramshackle box of plywood and haphazardly nailed shingles that sits three feet off the ground to our left. Next to it is a much larger but equally dilapidated structure. I assume, nighttime shelter for Zeke. “A fight about what? What kind of argument ends in ‘I’ll take your chickens but keep your goat’?”

“No idea. That’s all the note said—that him and this guy, Roy, had a falling-out, and there should be enough hay and grain to last Zeke until spring.” Jonah presses his lips together in thought.

I don’t like that look on his face. I’ve seen it before. He’s problem-solving, weighing options.

There are no options here.

“So, we’re going to convince Roy to change his mind, right?”

“I guess.” Jonah cocks his head. “You’re seriously scared of this little guy?”

Zeke lets out a loud bleat and turns those disturbing horizontal pupils my way. A shiver runs down my spine. “We don’t need a goat.”

“Bandit might like a friend.”

“Raccoons don’t have friends.”

Jonah sets his jaw. “Who says he can’t be friends with a goat?

And goats don’t like to be alone.”

I see where this is going, and my frustration flares. “I agreed to move to a log cabin in the woods for you. I didn’t complain about the raccoon in the cage. I’m about to sort through fifty years’ worth of someone else’s shit and there is piss all over the bathroom floor because Phil was too drunk to hit the toilet bowl. I draw the line at owning a goat!” My voice carries through the dense, quiet forest that surrounds us.

Jonah’s lips twitch.

“This is not funny!”

He rubs his forehead. “Fine. You’re right. I’m sorry.”

“Okay.” I take a calming breath. “So, let’s go meet Roy.”

Jonah’s eyebrows spike. “What, like, right now? We just got here. I thought you wanted to go pick up the mattress today.”

Zeke bleats loudly, his hoof kicking at the steely wire fence of the enclosure.

“Yes. Like, right now.”