Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
Dove
When I turned the corner holding Eddie's carrier, I stopped short when I saw Deacon leaning against the fence post, looking away from me as his publicist nattered in his ear.
Curse him. Couldn't he just look ugly sometime? Why must he constantly look ready for the cover of Vogue ? There was nothing this man could wear, nothing he could do, no silly faces that he could pull that would make him look less swoon-worthy.
“Stupid genetics,” I muttered to myself as I started walking toward him, hoping I might be able to skirt past without him taking notice. Yep, nothing to see here, just a purple-haired zookeeper carrying a toucan in a crate.
I walked faster, and Deacon breezily turned my way and gave me a little wave. The memory of him grabbing my elbow in the gym flashed through my mind. The way his eyes had scanned my face, how, for a split second, he’d been close enough that I could just lift on tiptoes and kiss him . . .
I refuse to notice those freaking cheekbones, and lips, and jawline, and broody bedroom eyes. What the hell is wrong with me? I never care about hot men!
Hackles raised, I lifted Eddie's carrier higher and approached. “Let's get this over with then.”
Deacon looked me over, his mild expression darkening as he noted the way I scowled at him. If he thought one amicable lunch and flustered gym encounter would make me tolerate all his nonsense, he had another thing coming. I couldn’t believe I was agreeing to do a fluff piece about one of our animals to help repair his image. And poor Eddie the toucan was caught in the crossfire.
Think of the skinks, Dove. Think of the breeding program.
Deacon jogged ahead of Cody to keep up with me. “I see the little storm cloud is back over your head,” he said playfully, swatting the air above me.
“Don’t touch me,” I snapped.
He swirled his fingers over my head again. “I wasn’t touching you.”
“Don’t touch the air around me.”
“You don’t want me to touch the air ?”
“Ugh,” I groaned. “You are worse than all of my siblings combined.”
“So you’re saying I feel like family now?” Deacon waggled his eyebrows.
I tried to walk faster, but it was no use. The man was 6’3” with legs sculpted by the same personal trainer that worked with Hugh Jackman for goodness’ sake. His superhero-worthy calves could run circles around me.
“This is the most insane thing I've ever said yes to,” I muttered. “Why are we doing this again?”
Deacon shrugged. “I just do what Cody tells me.”
“Great to see you still think for yourself.”
“I know when to defer to people with more knowledge and skills than me about something,” he corrected. “Which is why I have appointed you as the interim director of my charity, which, you have to agree, was a smart move.”
“You’re trying to flatter me so I go through with this buffoonery, aren’t you?”
“Yep.”
We turned the corner to the aviary, and I passed the carrier to Deacon as I unclipped the carabiner of keys from my belt. Cody huffed and puffed behind us as he caught up. “I didn’t realize we were doing cardio first.”
I ignored Cody and pointed to the carrier in Deacon’s hand. “Don't shake that.”
Deacon chortled, giving me a look of disbelief. “I’m not a toddler.”
I flashed him a mocking smile. “Then stop acting like one.”
“I'm sorry I sprung all of this on you. I know it’s a lot.” He cocked his head at me. “But the best way to show people I’m getting hands-on with this is to do something hands-on. We want them to know we’re taking the conservation trust seriously, don’t we?”
“Your strategic use of the word ‘we’ is noted,” I said flatly.
“We need to make a show of it. Politic a bit. I need to kiss some babies, you know?”
“So call that British model you were dating.”
He clenched his jaw and a golf-ball-sized muscle popped out because of course it did. At least it was satisfying getting under his skin.
“Whoa,” Cody said, waving his hands between us. “I’m calling an audible here. Let’s just focus up, okay, team?”
Deacon ignored him and leaned in toward me, his temper flaring. “Kate and I never dated. We barely even met.”
I whirled on him as I unlocked the door, holding the airlock gate ajar with my boot. “What?”
Deacon let out a mirthless laugh as if disappointed in me. “It was all publicity. The photos we took in one day with a bunch of outfit changes. They were fed to the media over months to make it look?—”
“Uh, uh, uh,” Cody said, slicing a hand between us. “Those are Harrow team secrets. Cone of silence, m’kay? Unless you want her to sign an NDA, something I would highly recommend at this point.”
“So this is what it takes to be your real self around people?” I scoffed. “Contracts, legally gagging them into keeping your secrets. Do you really not trust anyone anymore?”
“Don't answer that,” Cody said, taking out his phone. “Right, director ,” he added pointedly at me. “You ready to launch your new charity? Shall we get this show on the road or what?”
I let out a bracing breath and ushered Deacon and Cody into the aviary. “Careful where you step,” I instructed as I latched the door behind us. “And if you don’t want bird poop in your hair, don’t stand directly under any perches.”
“The things I do for you,” Cody said to Deacon as he clapped him on the back.
We moved to the center of the aviary, and I put Eddie's carrier down on a tree stump. I could feel the terrible grinding of my logic and my emotions, stuck between several rocks and even more hard places.
This temporary director role would’ve been an absolute gift if it had come from anyone else. It would be great for my CV. I didn't plan on working at Prickle Island Zoo for the rest of my life, but if I’d only had one job since I’d been fifteen, who else would ever employ me? Especially when that employer was my mother.
Plus, when else would I have millions of dollars of conservation money to allocate as I saw fit? This was a really big deal despite how much I hated that it had been given to me by Deacon. And I still wanted to do a good job, wanted to make a difference, and maybe doing a deal with the devil to get there would be worth it.
Great, now I’m sounding like the Madigans.
But no matter how much I loathed Deacon, I couldn't bring myself to run this thing into the ground just to spite him. The charity deserved a chance, and I wanted to build it into something at least semi stable before I passed the baton off to whoever the permanent director would be.
“Okay,” I said, dusting a hand down my cargo shorts. "I am going to get him out and pass him to you.” I tipped my head to Deacon. “Then all you have to do is throw him up in the air and he'll fly off to a perch and it'll be some majestic bullshit when you play it in slo-mo or whatever it is you plan to do, got it?”
Deacon’s cheeks dimpled. “Got it.”
I went to open the carrier door, but Cody said, “Wait.” He swirled his hands as he got his phone out and pointed the camera at us. “This way. Better lighting.”
I had a million petty retorts on my tongue but held them back. When we had shuffled to and fro to Cody's liking, he gave us a thumbs-up.
I was about to open the door again when Cody added, “Maybe, Deacon, say a couple things before you release the bird. You know, about the charity and what you’re doing.”
“Good idea,” Deacon said with a sage nod.
I wanted so badly to point out how laughable this was but buried it deep. Just get through the next ten minutes , Dove , and then you can go have the leftover donuts that Frankie baked this morning, I promised myself. I deserved a treat after all this.
I opened the carrier and grabbed Eddie, holding his wings tucked into his little body.
“Careful,” I said as I passed him off to Deacon.
“I got him,” Deacon reassured me, and I tried very hard to ignore the way his warm fingers skimmed across the backs of my hands as he took control of the toucan. I tried even harder to not think about how giant his hands were compared to mine.
I swallowed thickly. “Good?”
Deacon nodded and held Eddie a little higher. “I thought toucans had orange beaks.”
“You’re thinking of a toco toucan. This is a keel-billed.”
“Of course, how could I forget?”
I rolled my eyes. There was a time when I would’ve peppered Deacon with fun facts about keel-billed toucans, but he didn’t deserve my fun facts anymore.
“I thought his beak would be heavier. It feels hollow,” he said, surprised as Eddie nibbled at Deacon's finger with his serrated beak.
“It is. Their beaks are made of keratin, same as fingernails.” Dammit, Dove! He doesn’t deserve your fun facts! “How would he fly if it were heavier?”
“Good point,” Deacon replied. “Huh, look at you teaching me new animal facts. We're practically pals.” He smiled at my frown. “Chums? Besties?”
“No.”
“We’ll get there,” he added with a wink that I was sure had dropped a million panties over the years.
“Can you please just focus?”
Deacon looked down at the toucan nibbling his fingers. “At least Eddie here likes me.”
“He's trying to attack you,” I pointed out. “He's just very weak and unable to peel your skin off the way he wants to. Although, I’m sure if we gave him enough time?—”
“Okay, Wednesday Addams,” Cody called, making a chopping motion through the air. “Move out of the shot now.”
I huffed. “Gladly.”
“No.” Deacon toed my leg with his shoe. “You should stay. She should stay,” he added to Cody. “We want people to see that the grumpy girl in the viral video and I are friendly now, right?”
“If someone can get that memo to her face, then sure,” Cody replied. My frown deepened and he waved me up and down. “My point exactly.”
“Dove's actually quite the actress,” Deacon countered. “She played one hell of a mischievous tiefling?—”
“When we were twelve,” I cut in. “But I think I can manage to hide the hatred in my eyes for this one video.”
“The role of a lifetime,” Deacon said with another panty-dropping wink.
“Alright, let's get this over with,” Cody called with a thumbs-up. “Deacon, you ready?”
“Yep.” Deacon bobbed his chin in reply to Cody because his hands were filled with a grumpy toucan.
“Eeyore, you ready?”
“I am, dickhead,” I sang back with a smile.
Deacon was right. I was an excellent actress.
“Alright...and action.” Cody pointed at Deacon with a finger gun, as if he were some big shot cinematographer and not a guy filming on his iPhone.
Deacon plastered on that smoldering smile, and I fought every cell in my body not to frown and instead fawn like every girl waiting outside the zoo gates.
“Hi, I'm Deacon Harrow,” he started, and I snorted.
Cody grimaced. “Okay, we'll try that one more time.”
“Why are you laughing?” Deacon muttered from the corner of his mouth.
“You just sound absurd. ‘Hi, I'm Deacon Harrow,’” I mocked in a low voice, laughter rolling out of me. “I'm a grade A asshole who makes animals go extinct, but look at my biceps in this too tight T-shirt and my sexy face.”
“You think I have a sexy face?”
I shot him a look. “You ran straight past the point of that statement, didn't you?”
I extracted a grape from my treat pouch and put it on Deacon’s hand so that Eddie would double his efforts to attack him. Unfortunately, Eddie managed to grab the treat without doing any major physical harm.
“Kids,” Cody snapped. “Go again. Cranky pants, don't laugh this time.”
“You got it, jerkface.”
Cody pointed at us again, and I thrust my hands into my pockets so I could clench them without the camera seeing.
Deacon started over. “Hi, I'm Deacon Harrow, joined by Lucky Role Conservation Trust’s interim director, Dove Lachlan, and this”—he lifted Eddie toward the camera—"is Eddie. Eddie has just come from the vet hospital for his annual checkup and we're releasing him back into his enclosure. Isn’t that right, Eddie?” Eddie clicked his beak as if on command. Traitor . “If you want even more wildlife news and to make a difference to more critically endangered animals, make sure to subscribe to our socials and join the conservation trust’s newsletter.”
We had a newsletter? And social media handles already? Wow. The devil worked hard but Cody Novak worked harder.
I had to give it to Deacon too. He nailed that, unscripted, on the first take. Deacon looked back at me in confirmation that he could release Eddie, and I gave him a nod.
“Fly free, Eddie,” Deacon said, which I thought might be hamming it up a little too much, but I kept my face trained into pleasant neutrality.
Deacon threw Eddie into the air and posed with a smile like the poster boy action hero he was. And Eddie lifted skyward, wings still tucked.
I watched the toucan’s wings. Still tucked. Still tucked. Still tucked.
Any minute now , I thought as the toucan loaf launched upward. Any minute Eddie would open his wings and majestically fly off . . . except he didn't.
Eddie reached the apex of his toss and, wings still freaking tucked, started to plummet back toward the ground.
“Shit,” Deacon said at the same time as I shouted, “Fuck!”
We both scrambled forward, hands out as if we could catch the bird like a football with a giant beak, but we were both too far away. We watched in horror as the stupid bird fell down, down, down to Earth.
Right before Eddie collided with the ground, his wings spread and he took flight. The dramatic little piece of shit. Deacon and I both let out exasperated sighs of relief . . . just as Eddie flew smack dab into the chain-link fence and got his beak stuck in a hole.
“Holy crap!” I shouted, running forward and extracting the toucan from the fence. “You are seriously trying to give us all heart attacks today, aren’t you?”
Fortunately, the second I retracted Eddie, he ruffled his feathers and flew up to a perch unharmed, searching for more grapes, as if he hadn’t just made all of our cortisol levels shoot through the roof.
"I swear to God you are a bad omen,” I grumbled at Deacon.
Deacon simply shrugged. “I’ve been called worse. What now?”
“Now, you go away, please and thank you.” I ushered Deacon and Cody to the door.
“Do you need some help?” Deacon offered to my surprise.
“If you’re bored, feel free to wander around the zoo, but”—I gave him an incredulous look—“you are the last person I need help from, Deacon.”
He gave me another infuriating smile as he wandered to the airlock. “I’m going to change your mind about that, just you wait.”