Chapter 20
Chapter Twenty
Dove
Deacon did a triple take back and forth between my bucket of raw chicken and the open gate leading to the crocodile moat.
“You can't be serious.”
“You said you wanted to help out,” I countered.
Deacon had decided to stay on the island for another week after filming had wrapped to prepare for the swanky fundraiser and do more promotional work for Lucky Role Conservation Trust. And every single time I saw him, it took everything in my power not to think about the way he’d kissed me on that film set. I’d known it would be good, but I hadn’t expected it to be that good. And then I high-fived him . . .
Ugh! That high five would haunt me for the rest of my life!
It would’ve been far smarter to keep away from him, but no.
I kept finding excuses to have him around me. And then whenever he was, I kept him at arm’s length. Curse me to all the hot movie star hells! At some point, something had to give. I couldn’t keep torturing myself with him. Deacon was a drug I craved and a pill I couldn’t swallow all at the same time. It made the ebb and flow of tension between us all that much worse.
“I thought helping would involve more sweeping and fewer giant, pre-historic water monsters,” Deacon argued, keeping his eyes firmly fixed on the murky green water.
I leaned against the open gate smugly. “This from the man who single-handedly battled an entire zombie army.”
“Those zombies were computer generated,” he replied, never taking his eyes off our old pair of crocodiles, Doris and Clyde. “I was battling a bunch of tennis balls on a green screen sound stage.”
“Okay, action hero.” I shrugged. “You can stay behind the fence if you'd like. I’m used to doing this shift without help.”
“You want to go in by yourself and make me look like a coward?” He puffed up his chest like a grumpy spider monkey. “No. Absolutely not.”
I grinned. “There’s the superhero of the silver screen I know and barely tolerate.”
Deacon ignored that jibe and gestured to the bucket. “You do this every day?”
“Well, usually Crane does it, but all of our routines are kind of messed up right now. We’re all pitching in.” I latched the lock to the fence and tugged it twice out of habit. “Crane is helping Hawk rebabyproof his house for the hundredth time.”
Deacon gave an approving nod. “Well, I'm glad I can pitch in. Just don't tell my agent, or Cody, or Ricardo, or Luca for that matter. I'm pretty sure my next contract with Universal forbids me from risk-taking behaviors, and while feeding crocodiles isn't explicitly stated . . .” I chuckled as he weighed his head back and forth. “Better to not tell them.”
“Your secret is safe with me,” I said, zipping my lips. “Besides, we're perfectly safe.”
Deacon snorted. “Yeah right.”
I held his gaze for a split second longer than I should. “I wouldn’t put you in harm’s way.”
His smile made my insides melt. He held the gate open for me, and I radioed Heron to let them know that I was entering the croc enclosure. The countdown was officially on, and I had to radio in updates every ten minutes while in close proximity to dangerous animals.
Deacon followed, uncharacteristically quiet as we crept to the edge of the concrete lip that curved down about seven feet before reaching the reed-filled water of the crocodile moat. Beyond the moat was an island holding some of our iguanas and other reptiles, a service bridge already lifted and secured for the night.
I passed Deacon a plastic glove and he put it on. “Having you here is actually kind of nice,” I admitted.
Deacon laughed. “Don't sound so surprised.”
“I mean, it's hard to feed Doris and Clyde when they’re eager and hungry at the same time. Having two people definitely makes it easier.”
“Oh, I thought you meant nice as in romantic.”
“You think feeding crocodiles raw chicken is romantic?” I asked incredulously.
“Well, it's certainly a unique kind of date,” Deacon amended.
“This isn’t a date.”
He had such a slappably smug look on his face. Oh, how he loved to get a rise out of me.
We picked up our quartered pieces of raw chicken and began lobbing them over the barrier of swamp grasses. I encouraged Doris farther to the left as Deacon threw Clyde’s food slightly to the right, keeping the two of them apart long enough that they didn't accidentally snap each other's legs off in their feeding frenzy.
“Wow, they are even more intense than I remembered,” Deacon murmured. “And when I was a kid, they seemed like ten times this size to me.”
“Doris is particularly moody and ravenous,” I said. “So I’m hopeful that we might have a clutch of eggs from her this year. We might need to resegment the moat into multiple enclosures if that's the case,” I added. “We have it trisected right now in case we need to separate the two of them for some reason, but they normally have free range of all three.”
“This is so cool,” Deacon said more to himself than to me. His lips were parted, his eyes wide, his wonder reminding me that it wasn't in fact an everyday occurrence for most people to feed crocodiles.
“Do you remember?—”
“Yes,” he said, and I laughed.
“You don't even know what I was going to say.”
He gave me a sideways glance. “Do I remember the time you snuck us behind the scenes of the cheetah enclosure and I almost had my hand bitten off, but we managed to jump over the fence and get out again without anyone ever noticing?”
I blinked at him. “ How did you know I was going to say that?”
“Because I know you,” he stated with a grin, and my insides turn even mushier.
Damn my hormones. It was entirely unfair when someone as attractive as Deacon said these things. Far stronger women had turned into hot butter at the sight of him.
“To this day, no one knows we did that,” I mused. “Nowadays, with the electronic locks and cameras, we would’ve never gotten away with it.”
“Our secret,” he whispered conspiratorially, and his eyes roved my face for a split second before looking away.
That kiss flashed through my mind again, and I wondered if he was thinking the same thing. And then I had to go and be so cringey about it. But the way Deacon was looking at my mouth now . . .
Well shit. That was just plain cruel. Leave it to Deacon Harrow to prove me wrong and make feeding crocodiles sexy. If anyone could do it, it was him.
“Here, wait,” he said with a secret smile as he fished his phone out of his pocket. “I need to show you this.” He scrolled through his photos and turned the screen to me. “Who does this remind you of?”
It was a selfie of Deacon and a surfer dude with a lazy smile and a mop of blond hair over one eye. I let out a cackle, knowing instantly who this surfer reminded him of. “Our petting zoo llama who spit in your ice cream that one time.”
“Yes!”
I doubled over, laughing so hard I had to wipe tears from my eyes. “You found the human version of Garrett? He’s still here, you know.”
“What? No way.”
“Yeah, he's like, what? Eighteen now,” I said, looking skyward as I did the math. “An old man and just as grumpy as ever.”
“Garrett the llama,” Deacon recounted with a belly laugh. “I knew you’d know.”
I didn't understand how something could be comforting and unsettling at the same time, but Deacon managed it. After all these years and after such a short time as friends, how could he still know me better than almost anyone?
“Ah, good times,” he said, going to put his phone away as it slipped from his grip. “Shit!”
He lurched forward, managing to catch it and volley it back into the dirt behind us, but in the process he tumbled forward, down the steep lip, plummeting toward the crocodile moat.