Chapter 11
Idon’t get a chance to find Reg and make him pay me back for his stupid egg white omelet before Wayne waylays me.
“Today we’re going to learn how to properly fit a pig,” he says as though those words mean anything to me.
“Great,” I say, though Petunia is in his pen, eyeing Wayne with suspicion.
Which, as it turns out, was more than warranted. Because once we get Petunia out of his pen and walk him—with Wayne shouting, “Head up! Head up!” the whole way—Wayne hands me a scrub brush.
“My dad always says a clean pig is a winning pig,” he tells me. “You’re going to want to really give him a good scrub. Get into all the nooks and crannies.”
Admittedly, I kind of skimmed over the chapter in the MBI handbook about sexual harassment, and I’m pretty sure this precise scenario isn’t covered anyway, but I can guarantee that getting into all of a colleague’s “nooks and crannies” with a scrub brush and a hose is something I am not allowed to do on duty.
“Um…”
But Wayne has his back to me as he turns on the hose, and I’m left to stare at the scrub brush in my hands.
Maybe it will be okay? I mean, we’re deep undercover.
Surely Grayson understands there might be some…
bathing involved, right? And I’m not really Agent Jensen at the moment.
I’m Sally Conway, pig show hopeful and eager pupil.
She would just go ahead and scrub the pig.
But when I look at Petunia, he’s baring his teeth at me in exactly the way I would be baring my teeth at him if he looked poised to get into any of my crannies.
Okay. I’ll take that as a “get close to me with that brush and I will tear you limb from limb.” Good to know.
Wayne turns back and sees me standing there like an idiot, brush still in hand, trying to reassure Grayson with just my eyes that I will not scrub his…
well, everything. But Wayne is a kid and doesn’t get subtext, and also there’s no way he would pick up on any of this regardless of his age because when he looks at Grayson, he sees just another pig.
“What are you waiting for? We need to get to work,” he says.
And then he snatches the brush from my hands and takes a step toward Petunia’s hind end.
One minute, Wayne is standing there, blithely unaware that he is in grave danger.
The next the pig has wheeled around, teeth snapping dangerously close to Wayne’s outstretched hand.
The kid is so surprised he takes a step backward, slipping on the wet ground and falling onto his own hind end in the muck.
“Whoa,” he says, blinking up at me. “Does he do that often?”
“I don’t think he likes to be scrubbed,” I say. But because we’re on-duty law enforcement—or law enforcement-adjacent—personnel and Wayne is a literal child, I also slant a quick glance at Grayson and say, “I do hope he’ll be better behaved around civilians from now on, though.”
The pig snorts. “As long as we maybe skip the scrubbing,” I add.
Wayne gets up gingerly, his hand running over his oversized belt buckle before he attempts to wipe some of the mud—or whatever else it might be—off the back of his Levi’s. “I guess he looks clean enough. I’ll show you how to paint a pig.”
He starts walking away. “Wait,” I say. “We paint the pigs?”
“Yep. And then we’ll bone the legs.”
Bone the…
I wait for my inner voice to tell me to focus, but it’s totally silent. The word “bone” has killed it. Dead. Gone.
And so there’s nothing in my head to drown out the thought of boning.
Not boning the pig, of course, but boning Grayson himself.
My cheeks flame, and I cover my face with hands, trying to bring my sanity to heel.
I’m an agent of the MBI. I’m on the hunt for the country’s most dangerous witch.
I have two days to salvage my career and save the lives of countless people.
And yet I can’t stop picturing Grayson on top of me in that lone hotel bed, those blue eyes sparkling down at me, those damn gray sweatpants tossed carelessly on the floor.
Something nudges my leg, and I look down to see Petunia looking up at me. And just as in my fantasies, those blue eyes are sparkling.
But not with smoldering desire. At the moment, they’re dancing with mirth.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. He said ‘bone.’ I heard it. Now let’s get going before I change my mind about that scrub brush.”