Adams were pissed.”
The long day must have caught up to Alex because he had no witty reply to that. Instead, he was horrified. Garden gnomes? He had to stay in a town where people had fucking garden gnomes? Moreover, destroying them was considered a crime? Alex let out a hysterical snort of laughter.
“I need a drink,” he muttered.
“Seeing as drinking was what got you here in the first place, I’d reconsider,” a gruff voice said from somewhere behind Alex.
Alex turned around and came face-to-face with a giant. Well, not an actual giant, but damn, the guy must have been at least seven feet tall. Alex had never considered himself a small guy, but next to this man, his own six foot one seemed almost petite.
The guy reached out his hand. “Carl Renner,” he said. His voice matched his body, low and rumbly and with a distinct bite to it that made Alex want to salute the man and call him sir. That, of course, might have also been because the man looked like he wrestled bears for fun.
“Alex Ellison,” Alex replied and shook Carl’s hand. “I’m excited to be here.” That wasn’t strictly true, but Alex didn’t think mentioning it would do him any good. The fact was, Alex was going to have to survive this place for the next three months, which meant that in order to make life a bit more bearable, he had to start things off on the right foot with the man who was responsible for assigning jobs. Hell was going to freeze over before Alex spent his summer shoveling shit, and if he had to do some ass-kissing in order to ensure that never happened, he was willing to make the sacrifice.
Noah was eyeing the exchange from his spot by the parrot. Alex would have given a lot for the ability to hear thoughts right then because Noah’s face gave nothing away.
“I’ll give you a tour,” Carl said and walked out the door without saying another word. Alex looked at Noah, but the guy didn’t seem to find Carl’s gruff demeanor out of character.
“I guess I better go,” he said and sent Noah another smile. “Even though the welcome in this office has been more than pleasant,” he said with a wink.
Noah was still looking at him like he was trying to solve a tricky puzzle, but since Carl had already strode off, Alex turned around to follow the man. Fuck knew how far ahead Carl had already managed to get on those massive legs of his.
Still, Alex exited the building with a satisfied smirk on his lips. He had a feeling he just might have left some unfinished business in the office. Ah well, guess he just had to go back later to finish the job.
Carl didn’t acknowledge Alex in any way as Alex stopped next to him. He just started moving again. Alex fell into step behind him. For the longest time, they walked in silence. The place was huge with a bunch of enclosures on both sides of the dirt path they were following. Carl pointed out animals as they went. Two elks, a young moose, a cougar that looked like it was about ready to kick the bucket. There was also a bear and a litter of baby foxes that, even Alex had to admit, looked cute as fuck.
“This place is huge,” Alex said as they passed a shed that, according to Carl, occasionally housed smaller animals like raccoons and a couple of rabbits. “We don’t get many of those,” Carl grunted. “We mainly deal with large mammals, and Diane down in Olney takes in the smaller ones.”
“Don’t like raccoons?” Alex joked.
Carl gave him an unimpressed glare. “There aren’t many people around who can handle bears or moose, so we’ve chosen to concentrate our efforts on them.”
“Well, I think it’s admirable what you’re doing here,” Alex said. Completely nuts and he had no idea why anybody would want to waste their time living in a middle-of-nowhere town in the north of fucking Oregon, but to each their own. He guessed it was kind of nice there were people like Carl and Noah, if only because that meant Alex didn’t have to spend his days taking care of a bunch of critters.
Carl stopped and looked at Alex. “You can cut the bullshit, you know.”
Alex cocked his head to the side. “What bullshit?”
“The ass-kissing routine you’ve got going on. Tom told me all about you. Spoiled, arrogant brat, used to getting everything