Chapter 16
Chapter Sixteen
CHRISTIAN
O n the way home to check on Bella before heading to Starling’s place, I call Matty, wanting to get as much information as I can on the rumors he’s heard about my shop, but he doesn’t answer. I leave a message, ask him to call me later, and swing into my driveway.
Inside the house, I find Bella asleep on a nest she’s made of my dirty underwear and snap a pic.
Beneath the image, I write— My little angel can’t get enough of my feral man musk. Those are my dirty boxer briefs. In case you couldn’t tell —and send the text to Starling.
She texts back a laughing crying face and— Kyle does that too! I came home a few weeks ago to find him wearing my panties as a hat. Maybe they got stuck there when he was rooting through my dirty laundry, and he couldn’t get them off. Maybe it was a deliberate fashion choice. With him, you never know…
I’d wear your panties as a hat , I shoot back as Bella awakens with a big yawn and emits a soft cooing sound, clearly happy to see me.
Quit flirting with me over the phone and come flirt with me in person, Starling counters. Flirting at my place is okay, right? As long as we don’t let flirting become something more?
Hating our “no banging at our homes” rule, but knowing it’s for the best, I assure her— Absolutely. Be right there. Just have to grab Bella’s food and toys and sweet talk her into her crate for the trip.
Of course, Bella proves what a fool I am for bothering with the crate by freeing herself from her confines somewhere between my house and Starling’s. But I’m so happy to be just a few minutes from my girl that I can’t get too upset. I simply scoop a grinning Bella up from the back seat of the truck and head for Starling’s gate.
On the way, I remind myself that she’s not my girl.
But she’s mine for now, and I intend to make the most of every minute. Which means fessing up to my sins and assuring her I’ll make things right ASAP.
“Come in.” She motions me into the yard and onto the deck, where she’s already laid out chips, dip, and two beers, proving she’s ever the hostess with the most-est. “Long time no see,” she teases with a wink as I set Bella down to play. “The separation was torture.”
“Those twenty minutes were hard for me, too,” I flirt back, watching Bella waddle off toward where Kyle’s doing weird turkey shit on the swing set Starling bought the spoiled creature. Though, in his defense, he immediately welcomes his new playmate with a happy gobble before showing Bella the steps leading up to the slide. Assured the critters are going to get along, I sober as I turn back to Starling, “But you might be less excited to see me once you hear the dumb mistake I made.”
“Oh no.” She frowns. “You’d better spill it quick, then. I always like my bad news fast and to the point.”
We settle in on the deck and I give it to her straight. As I finish telling her about Matty’s tip that someone is using my business as an after-hours chop shop and the nanny cam I installed to catch the perp, her eyes go wide with horrified understanding.
“But the footage goes straight to my private online account,” I hurry to assure her, “No one else has access, and I’ll delete everything from the past few days without watching it, I promise. I don’t want you to think I filmed us on purpose or that I have any intention of holding on to that sort of thing. I value and respect your privacy too much for anything like that. It was honestly just a dumb mistake.”
“Wow. So, there’s film of us doing the deed.” She sits back in her deck chair, blinking several times. “That’s…”
“Crazy?” I supply. “I know. I’m sorry. Truly. You can watch me delete it if you want. I didn’t bring my laptop, but if you don’t mind watching Bella for a little while, I can go get it right now.”
She shakes her head. “No, I don’t… I’m not upset. I mean, I am upset that someone is doing illegal things in your shop—that’s actually what I wanted to talk to you about—but I’m not upset about the camera. I mean, maybe a little upset, but I’m also…interested.”
“Interested.” The fluttery feeling in my stomach inches lower as she holds my gaze and nods, her softly parted lips making me think her interest in this footage is something that might interest me, too. But before I let myself go any further down that road, I need to know what she knows. Willing myself to focus, I say, “I want to hear a lot more about that, but first, tell me what you heard.”
“Nothing much, really,” she says. “Raney just mentioned that she’d heard a rumor that some bad people were doing bad things in your shop and warned me to be careful. She didn’t want me to get in trouble by association if you were involved.”
I curse. “Maybe I should skip the nanny cam and go straight to the police.”
Starling’s forehead furrows sympathetically. “Yeah, maybe so. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. It’s my own fault. If I’d been paying closer attention to my business, this wouldn’t have happened. I’ve just been so distracted by learning the fundraising gig and applying for jobs. And I thought Gage could handle managing things over there.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” she says, reaching out to squeeze my knee beneath the deck table. “You should have been able to trust your employees not to do sketchy things. This is their bad, not yours, and I?—”
We’re interrupted by a sharp chirp from the deck. I look down to see Bella standing at the top of the porch steps. She stomps her feet and chirps some more, but this isn’t her usual happy chirp.
This chirp sounds…alarmed.
“Is she mad that I’m touching you?” Starling whispers, slowly pulling her hand from my leg. “Did you tell her about the no banging at home rule, so she knows we’re going to keep our clothes on this time?”
“No,” I say as Bella stomps and chirp-grunts again, making me think it wasn’t Starling’s hand that has her upset. “And she’s a skunk. She wouldn’t have understood that, even if I had.”
“So you assume. Animals understand way more than we think they do.” Starling makes a soft, distressed sound as Bella adds scratching at the deck and deeper grunts into the mix. “Oh, honey, what’s wrong? Aren’t you having fun with Kyle?” Starling sits up straighter, the color draining from her face as she jerks her attention back to the yard. “Kyle. Where’s Kyle?” She surges to her feet, calling, “Kyle? Kyle! Where are you, buddy? Kyle!”
Bella whimpers and scampers over to my chair, her fit seeming to pass now that she’s alerted us to the danger. I scoop her up, cradling her in my arms as I stand and go to Starling. “Don’t worry, we’ll find him. He can’t have been gone long. I remember seeing him by the slide right before we started talking about the nanny cam.”
“I should have known better than to look away from him for a second. The wild turkeys have been walking around behind the fence again and that always gets him riled up.” Starling drags a frantic hand through her hair and calls more loudly, “Kyle! Kyle, please come back!”
I rest my free hand on her back while Bella continues to lick my other hand. “Come on, let’s go look for him. Where can we put Bella in the meantime? I don’t want to leave her out in the yard alone. She’s probably too big for an owl to carry off, but no sense taking the risk.”
“Right. Absolutely. We don’t want to lose another friend.” Starling reaches out, quickly stroking Bella’s head. “Thank you, good girl. You did the right thing, letting us know Kyle had flapped out of the coop.” She starts toward the back door. “Come on, we can put Bella in the big bathroom with some snacks until we get back. Kyle did this once before, so I have some idea where to look. Hopefully, he’s in the same spot and we’ll have him home watching America’s Funniest Home Videos before it gets dark.”
But unfortunately, after driving by the creek where Starling found Kyle last time as well as the fields behind the house and the swing set a few streets down that Starling theorizes Kyle might like more than his own swing set, we’re still empty-handed.
“I’m a horrible turkey mom,” she says, wringing her fingers as I turn back toward the house. “I should never have taken my eyes off of him. Or I should have had the fence heightened, even if it is insanely expensive. I can always make more money. I can’t make another Kyle.”
“It’s okay,” I say. “He’s a big boy. He handled himself in the wild for a long time before he became a house turkey.”
“But he was high on drugs back then,” Starling says. “He was hopped up on toxic mold and scared his predators away with his crazy. Now, he’s just a normal, sweet, domesticated turkey who’s used to being tucked in at night and has no idea how to protect himself.”
“Toxic mold,” I mutter. “Do you think he might have gone back to that shed? The one where he used to get his fix?”
Starling’s eyes widen. “Maybe. I mean, they tore down the shed and disposed of all the poison grain, but he doesn’t know that. He might have headed back that way. Can we check? Do you have time to drive by with me? It’s about a mile and a half back the way we came. Not far from the Reginald farm.”
“Of course,” I assure her. “I’m here until we find the runaway. Nothing I have to do is as important as being with you.”
I reach out, taking her hand before I think better of it.
We both look down at our joined palms and something passes between us, something bittersweet, but still kind of…wonderful. I didn’t think I’d ever feel this way again. I wasn’t sure I was capable of opening my heart the way I did with Ashland. Once you realize how deeply someone can hurt you, trust is so much fucking harder.
But looking into Starling’s eyes…
How could I not trust this woman? This big-hearted, generous, wild, silly, kind woman who loves her pet so much, she’s on the verge of tears because she’s worried that she’s let him down. If she can love a turkey like this, just imagine how much she’s going to love her husband.
He’s going to be one lucky man…
“Your truck isn’t one of our homes,” Starling whispers as I turn around and head back the way we came. “This is okay.”
I tighten my grip on her hand and say in an emotion-rough voice, “It sure is.”
It’s better than okay.
It may just be the best thing that’s ever happened to me.
Am I really going to let it slip through my fingers?