my place, so I stick with my standard answer, even though it’s hard to do so when Shay is giving me so much more insight to Bobby and the Tannens. “Nothing, really. I’m just a regular girl who needed a break. A fresh start somewhere, but not too fresh, you know what I mean? I figured I knew someone here, at least.”
“Hank,” Shay fills in for me. “Is it true you hadn’t seen him in years when you showed up?”
I nod. “Yeah, since I was fourteen. Seemed about time to lay old bones to rest.”
Before she can ask me anything else, a whining noise fills the air and the goats get up to check it out.
“Damn, that was faster than I thought. Bobby’s coming,” she tells me right as another Gator comes over the hill. It nearly catches air on the bumpy, grassy surface before sliding to a stop.
Bobby gets out, striding straight toward me. Automatically, I rise, setting Trollie down, which he argues about loudly. Baaaaaa!
Bobby doesn’t go for the gate. No, he hops right over the pen fencing, making the shortest distance between point A, that’d be him, and point B, that’d be me, his direct route.
“I didn’t get a chance to do this,” he murmurs right before his hands cup my cheeks and tilt my face up. Then his mouth covers mine, kissing me passionately. He smells like sweat and fresh dirt, and . . . man. He tastes like . . . intensity and mint, like he knew exactly what he was going to do when he saw me and prepped for it. Unnecessary—I’d kiss him even if his breath were as bad as Trollie’s—but the intent is sweet.
A throat clears behind him and one of his hands leaves my face. I crack one eye open to find him flipping Brutal a middle finger, all the while giving me one of the best kisses of my life.
“Hi,” I say breathlessly when he lets me go.
“Hi,” he answers, smiling. “Whatcha doing?”
I blink, trying to clear my head so that I can form a complete sentence. Or even a two-syllable word would be good right now.
“Uh, goats. Pet. Soft. Pictures. Cute.” It’s all I’ve got, but it gets my message across.
His grin turns cocky, and he slings an arm around my shoulders, pulling me to his side. I fit there like the space was carved out just for me. “With your camera over there?” He points with his other hand to my camera bag outside the pen in the grass.
I realize I truly haven’t taken any pictures. Shay took the ones of me, but those aren’t bloggable, and I would love some cute animal pictures. One, it’s a unique subject for me, which is always an exciting challenge, and two, I do think they’ll be a blog favorite. Who’s not going to ‘heart’ an adorable goat?
And that’s when I have an even better idea.
I grab my camera, checking the sky and adjusting my settings. “Let me get a few shots here.”
I take some close-ups of horns, eyes, hooves. Click, click, click.
I take some broader shots of the herd, the blending of their colors and the lines of their curved backs. Click, click, click.
“Bobby, can you pick that one up?” I point to the goat currently weaving its way through his legs like a house cat that wants to be pet.
“Why?” he asks cautiously.
I shoot him a soft smile, and though he grumbles a bit, he bends down and picks up the goat, its legs dangling over his arms.
“I’ll do a close-up so no one can tell it’s you. You don’t mind being on the blog, do you?”
Let me take this picture, please.
My ovaries are literally exploding like Fourth of July fireworks right now. He looks that good. Dirty jeans with a tear by his right hip that lets the pocket show, veins popping in his muscled forearms and biceps bulging, jaw tight, eyes dark and promising me anything my heart and body desire, all topped off with the utter cuteness of the baby goat. It’s easy to replace the cute animal with a baby in my mind, and the thought of Bobby’s baby, of him as a dad, is sexy as hell. And not in a Daddy fetish sort of way—yes, I saw that video too—but as an actual father. He’d be good at it, protective, loving, firm, sweet.
Boom. Pop. Hiss. Yep, there go my ovaries.
“Anything you want, Willow,” Bobby answers, turning a bit toward me so I