Chapter 11
Tad
“You realize we’re terrible at this, right?” Randy’s voice cuts through the cold Monday morning air, sharp as the bleating sheep.
“We’re not terrible per se,” I mutter, chasing after a woolly escapee by the name of Bob Dylan who looks way too pleased with himself.
“Tad.” His tone is flat and completely unforgiving. “This morning alone, we’re missing four sheep. We’re shit at it.”
I straighten and let out a deep exhale. My breath fogs in the cold. “We’re not missing them exactly. Betty Bagley called and said they’re in her front yard.”
Randy stares at me like I’ve grown a second head.
“What? They can’t be missing if you know where they are.”
He sighs, and I resist the urge to bury him in blame. It’s his fault we’re doing this in the first place, and he knows it. If I’d had my way, he’d be doing whatever the fuck he wanted without me to worry about.
“Just…keep the rest corralled,” I instruct instead. “I’ll grab the four at Betty’s and be back.”
“Yeah, go play shepherd,” Randy calls after me. “I’ll just stay here and wait for the other half of the flock to chew their way into traffic!”
I leave him to his bitching, hopping in my truck and heading down the road with a bucket of feed and my sanity hanging by a thread.
I’ve got a lot of pent-up anger with my brother—and I know it’s not a one-way street—but you can’t meld two minds when they’re on opposite sides of the same damn coin.
His greatest frustration with the sheep is that we don’t excel—but we’re never going to. The point, for me, is to exist.
Main Street is awake and active as I make it into town. Storefront lights are already on, the smell of coffee and donuts and fried food wafts in the air, and snow is pushed along the curbs in tired gray piles.
Sheriff Peeler’s cruiser pulls up beside me at the one and only stoplight in town, and I rev the engine playfully like I’m reckless enough to race the sheriff. Some days, I am. Today, though, I’m feeling pretty good, still high off the unexpected, incredible sex of two nights ago.
Frankly, I’m thinking getting Randy laid might help a tremendous amount with his disposition.
Pete rolls his window down, grinning at me like he’s been waiting all morning for this. “Morning, Tad. Lost sheep again?” I follow his eyes toward Fran’s flower shop, where all four of my missing sheep are currently munching from the flowerpots outside like it’s an all-you-can-eat buffet.
Shit. Apparently, they had their fill of Betty Bagley’s yard.
“Morning, Sheriff,” I say, tipping my ball cap toward him. “They’re not lost. They’re just…uh…sight-seeing.”
He chuckles. “Let’s hope they don’t make it down to Melba’s again.”
He’s referring to the Melba Danser Bakery Disaster about a year ago. That was before my sheep Mabel got pregnant and managed to sneak into Melba’s shop and raid her bread display.
Frankly, it’s a day I’d prefer everyone in Red Bridge forget.
“Oh, no worries. I’ll have them wrangled up before they get that far.”
The light turns green, and Sheriff Peeler chuckles as he drives away.
When I pull my truck to a stop outside Fran’s, Mayor Norman Wallace is the next person to call my attention from across the street. “You ever thought about pigs instead, Tad? I hear they’re much easier to keep in a pen.”
I pretend to laugh to keep the peace. Mayor Wallace’s ego knows no bounds when wounded—the yellow bridge in a town named for a red one is evidence enough of that.
He moves on with a wave, his head bobbing with pride over his joke, and I head toward my woolly hooligans who have now destroyed all the flowers Fran has sitting outside her shop.
Shit. Landscaping bill is going to be big this month, given the destruction to Sheila and Marty’s Japanese maple, Betty’s hedges, and now this.
As I wrangle the flock toward the back of my truck, where a big pen waits for them to climb their asses inside, Cindy Jo Barringer offers a flirtatious finger-waggle in my direction.
She’s Red Bridge’s one and only wedding planner and moved here from Texas about two years ago.
She’s also single, in her late twenties, and always ready to mingle.
“Oh hey, Tad,” she says, stopping to watch me muscle fluffy ass after fluffy ass up the ramp and into the trailer.
“Hey, Cindy Jo.”
“Missed you at karaoke on Friday. You still owe me that duet.”
“How about a rain check?” I say, managing a friendly smile through the sweat dripping into my eyebrows. “I should have these troublemakers contained by the end of the week.”
I wink, and she laughs. “Those sheep of yours need leashes,” she teases.
“I’ll be sure to tell Randy. Maybe we can tie them all to his legs.”
She cracks up and then scuttles away toward her boutique next to The Diner, but before I can finish up, I field two more single bloodhounds as they sniff out their chances of turning my eye.
After Cindy Jo, there’s Peggy, and after Peggy, there’s Nicole. Nicole is fully single, but technically, Peggy is in the middle of a divorce—she’s just handling her social life like the papers have already been signed.
I’m kind and friendly and everything a man should be when a nice woman greets him, but I don’t dare invite attention that goes further than that.
They seem like vipers, but I know for a fact that they’re the type to cling and clang about relationships and marriage as soon as their backs hit your bed.
Unlike Breezy Bishop, who snuck out early Sunday morning without a word or a trace. I don’t even have her fucking phone number, and it seems she actually wants it that way.
Though, it’s hard to really ghost someone in a town this small. It’s almost a certainty I’ll see her at some point.
Unless she already went back to New York, that is…
I ignore the uncomfortable ping in my chest and refocus on my sheep.
By the time I get them squared away in the trailer and pay Fran for all the flowers they’ve destroyed, I’m parched.
CAFFEINE is the perfect solution. I figure Randy deserves a peace offering anyway, and if Breezy Bishop just happens to be there to see her best friend Josie, all the better.
Two birds, one stone, you know?
I push open the door of CAFFEINE, the bell chimes above my head, and Josie is waiting behind the counter. “The usual, Tad?” she asks, her morning rush clearly already over.
“Yeah, but make it two and toss in a few cinnamon rolls as well.”
“Randy pissed at you again?” she asks, grinning at me as she rings me up. “Saw a few of your sheep make their way from Betty’s house to enjoy a buffet of flowers across the street.”
“When isn’t Randy pissed at me,” I retort on a snort. “And trust me, I know. I just paid Fran for seven bouquets worth.”
Josie makes my coffees and packs up the cinnamon rolls in a cute box, and I scan the tables around the café for the second bird.
Breezy sits at a table near the window, laptop open and fingers typing furiously. She’s dressed to the nines, even in a small-town coffee shop on a Monday morning, and makes the rest of us look like we just fell out of bed.
Jackpot.
I turn my baseball cap around, grab my coffees and cinnamon rolls, and head in her direction.
“Hey there,” I greet, drawing her blue eyes up to mine on a startled jerk.
“Oh, hello,” she says casually. “Can I help you, sir?”
Did she just call me sir?
“What?”
“Did you need something?” she asks, and my head fucking spins. I know how to play it cool, but this is more like fucking ice. I mean, I did lick this woman’s pussy not even two nights ago.
“Well. I guess not. I just…thought I’d say hello.”
“I love chatting with all of Bennett’s friends and neighbors,” she says sweetly, nodding toward me. “But I’m in the middle of something right now.”
My jaw runs tight. “Bennett’s friends and neighbors?” I ask with a whisper. So that’s how it’s going to be.
A wicked, teasing smile softens her face, and instantly, I eat crow. She had me fucking going good—too good for shit that’s so in line with my own damn terms of use sex policy.
“You’re messing with me, aren’t you?”
She scrunches her nose and grins. “Maybe a little.”
I groan, scrubbing a hand down my face. “You’re cruel.”
“Or…funny,” she tosses back. “Depends on how you look at it.”
And damn it, she is funny. Infuriatingly so. Beautiful and quick and confident enough to make me feel like I’m twenty again and out of my depth.
“You left early,” I say quietly, leaning closer.
“Pretty sure I left right on time.”
Before I can find the words to agree, with the caveat that we should arrange a time for her to hop in my bed, ride my cock, and leave expeditiously again, Clay Harris’s voice fills my ears.
“Tad Hanson,” he says, clapping a hand on my back. “Haven’t seen you in a while, bud. You planning on stopping by The Country Club tonight? I’ll be bartending.”
I flick a glance at Breezy, whose eyes are fixated back on her laptop, but it’s clear to me she’s listening. I look back at Clay. “Nah. Planning on staying in tonight. All night. By myself.”
It’s a hint and an invitation that would go over a dumb head like mine without notice. But Breezy Bishop is smart. Sophisticated. Educated.
She’ll pick up the nuance. I’m sure of it. She doesn’t look up from her screen, but the corner of her mouth curves just enough to let me know she heard while Clay and I say our goodbyes.
My dick tingles, and my heart picks up speed.
The rest of sheep-battling with Randy today just got a lot more interesting—I can’t wait to spend the day planning some moves for round two.