18. Brooks #2
She steps closer, her bare toes practically touching my boot.
“I know exactly how old I am, Brooks. And I know how old you are. Thirty-one isn’t the middle ages, even if you carry yourself like you’re the town monument.”
“Daddy!” Sophie’s voice barks from the porch. “The brown goat is eating the purple book!”
The tension breaks instantly.
“Franny, no! That’s an advanced reader’s copy!” she yells, sprinting across the lawn with her gold curls flying.
I stand by the silver tank for three long breaths, the wrench heavy in my hand, my heart hammering against my ribs.
My jeans feel tight, that hot, heavy ache pulling at my stomach as I watch her wrestle a mangled paperback out of a goat’s jaws, her laughter ringing out across the pasture.
Six years, I repeat, the words tasting like copper. Six years.
? ? ?
The valley is still, the kind of heavy, humid summer quiet that usually makes my skin itch. Sophie’s at her grandmother’s, leaving my cabin with that hollow, stagnant silence that usually drives me to drink or work until my hands bleed.
I’m on the front porch, the cedar planks warm under my socks. Shirtless, jeans low on my hips, a cold beer sweating against my thigh. Across the gravel lane the Gilded Goat’s porch light flickers to life, humming with a pathetic, buzzing energy.
A second later, the screen door whines open.
Emmy.
She’s wearing a pair of those loose, short cotton lounge shorts and a white tank top that’s doing zero favors for my blood pressure. Her gold curls are a chaotic mess held together by a plastic claw clip that looks like it’s fighting for its life.
She’s carrying a kitchen chair in one hand and a giant blue plastic bowl in the other. She drops the chair, flops into it, and rests the bowl on her lap like she’s about to sacrifice a goat.
I lean back, watching her through the dusk.
She doesn’t see me. She starts whipping the contents of that bowl with a massive metal whisk, her shoulder working in a violent, rhythmic circle. Every three seconds, the metal slams against the sides with a loud, aggressive thwack.
“You’re going to wake up the whole damn county with that, Emmy,” I call out.
She freezes. The whisk stays mid-air. She blinks against the glare of her own light, squinting until her eyes lock onto me in the shadows.
A slow, wicked smile creeps across her face—the kind that spells trouble.
“It’s cheese, Brooks,” she calls back, standing up and marching toward the edge of her porch. “Real, artisanal cheese. I ordered a starter culture online. It cost forty-two dollars, so you can either respect the process or go back to your brooding.”
“Forty-two dollars?” I let out a harsh, disbelieving laugh. “You’re a sucker. You’re getting absolutely fleeced, and you’re still gonna find a way to let it rot in the bowl.”
“It’s French,” she says. She crosses the gravel lane like she owns the dirt under her feet, swaying those hips just enough to make sure I’m watching.
She stops at the bottom of my steps, looking up. I don’t move. I stay slouched against the wall, peering at her over the condensation of my beer bottle.
“Look at you,” she says, her voice dropping to a teasing, condescending purr.
She leans a hip against my railing, her gaze raking over my bare torso, then down to my knees.
“Off duty? No tools? Just sitting here in the dark like a hermit. Are you sulking, Brooks, or just waiting for someone to come by and entertain you?”
“I’m off,” I say, my voice dropping an octave, turning rougher as she takes a step up onto my porch. “And you need to keep your voice down. Mel drives past here in ten minutes. I don’t need the neighborhood watch seeing the ‘crazy city girl’ creeping on my porch at night.”
“Oh, right,” she says, her smile turning predatory. She takes another step, invading my space, looming over my chair. “Heaven forbid the local golden boy gets caught with a woman who doesn’t knit sweaters for the church bazaar. It might ruin your perfect, boring reputation.”
“I’m serious, Emmy,” I mutter, my eyes dragging down to her mouth. “People talk here. You have no idea how fast they’ll strip you down once they decide you’re the entertainment for the week.”
“Let them talk,” she whispers, leaning in closer.
She dips an index finger into that white, creamy mixture, scoops up a glob, and holds it out to my face, her eyes glinting with a challenge.
“Taste it. Tell me if I’m as incompetent as you keep insisting.”
I look at her finger, then up at her dark, defiant eyes. My throat feels like it’s filled with sand. “I’m not eating that, Emmy.”
“Come on,” she mocks, her voice dropping to a low, provocative murmur. She brushes the cream against my bottom lip, leaving a cool, sticky trace against my stubble. “Don’t be such a prude. Just try it. Unless you’re afraid of a little risk?”
My restraint—the flimsy wall I’ve been building for weeks—shatters. I reach out, my fingers wrapping hard around her wrist, stopping her movement.
“You’re playing with fire,” I say, pulling her wrist sharply.
She loses her footing with a sharp gasp, tumbling forward. I catch her, her bare legs landing on either side of my thighs, trapping her in my lap. The bowl rattles on the side table, and the whisk clatters across the deck like a gunshot.
“Brooks,” she breathes, her hands flattening against my chest, her pulse jumping under my fingertips.
“You think you’re in control?” I lean down, my mouth hovering over hers, my left hand gripping the back of her neck to hold her steady.
“You think you can come over here, talk that trash, and just walk away? If Mel drives by right now, I’m going to have to explain why the new baker is straddling me in her short shorts.
And I don’t feel like explaining a goddamn thing. ”
“Then don’t,” she whispers, her mouth curving into a breathless, defiant smirk. She shifts her hips against me, making my jeans feel like they’re two sizes too small. “Let them guess. Or better yet, let them watch.”
I pull her down and catch her mouth with mine.
I tilt her head back, my tongue demanding entry. I pull back just an inch, grazing my teeth over her lower lip, listening to her ragged, sharp inhale, before diving back in, deeper this time, forcing her to realize exactly who is in charge on this porch.
I slide my hand from her neck down to the small of her back, pressing her flush against me, feeling her nipples harden against my chest through that flimsy tank top.
She’s whimpering, shifting, trying to find a rhythm, but I’m setting the pace, nipping at her throat, moving back to her lips only to punish them with another kiss.
“You like that, city girl?” I say against her skin, my hand sliding down to cup her ass, squeezing the soft flesh through those shorts. “You like being manhandled?”
“Yeah,” she gasps, her hands tangled deep in my hair. “Don’t you dare stop.”
“I’m just getting started,” I promise, my palm rubbing firmly against her thigh. “But you’re gonna have to beg for the rest.”
BLEE-EE-AT!
A loud, flat, vibrating trumpet sound shatters the air.
Emmy freezes, breaking away from my mouth with a sharp gasp. We both snap our heads toward the steps.
Kevin the goat is standing there, his hooves planted on the bottom step, his weird, horizontal eyes locked directly onto the bowl. Before we can move, he gives a greedy, violent lunge, bites down on the edge of the blue plastic, and flips it.
Three quarts of forty-two-dollar French culture go cascading across my floorboards in a thick, white, pathetic puddle.
Emmy stares at the mess. Then she looks at the goat, who is chewing on a piece of the plastic rim like he’s proud of himself. Her face is flushed a deep, bright crimson, her lipstick smeared across her chin.
“He ruined it,” she whispers, a tiny, breathless, hysterical laugh cracking her voice. “He ate the pedigree.”
I look at the white puddle dripping through the cracks of my deck, then back at the goat. The absolute absurdity of it hits me—the hormones, the ego, the fucking goat—and a rough, dark chuckle breaks out of my chest, shaking us both.
“Get off my lap, you menace,” I mutter, giving her waist a parting, possessive squeeze as I push her up. “Before he decides he likes the taste of your shorts better than the cheese.”