Bennett shouted and stalked toward the gluttonous creature. “Get away from my pants!”
The goat stopped in mid-swallow, a hunk of denim dangling from the corner of his mouth. Bennett stormed closer, verbally berating the goat’s entire ancestry.
Frank Sinatra’s back legs stiffened. His eyes rolled back in his head. Tremors ran through his body, and then, to Bennett’s horror, the goat keeled over onto his side and lay immobile.
Bennett ran over and knelt beside the goat who did not appear to be breathing. His shouting had caused the old goat to have a heart attack.
Terrific! He’d killed Great-Gramma Kahonachek’s prize possession. He was a goat murderer. A cabrito assassin.
Bennett’s stomach pitched as he imagined telling Great-Gramma that Frank Sinatra had expired. What if the negative news was too much to take and the elderly lady suffered a heart attack, too?
Lacy would be devastated.
What to do?
He had no choice but to dispose of the carcass.
Bending, he scooped the deceased goat into his arms. Where could he hide the body until he had time to ease Great-Gramma into the notion that she would never see Old Blues Eyes again?
Lugging the heavy animal, he pivoted on one heel. To the right lay the house, to the left the road, behind him the barn.
Think, Sheridan, think.
Goat hair tickled his nostrils.
He sneezed.
Bennett realized he looked totally ridiculous. How had he, a surgical thoracic resident from Boston, come to find himself nearly naked in the backyard of a Texas farmhouse, a dead goat in his arms, his half-consumed blue jeans lying on the lawn?
It was preposterous. Laughable.
He sneezed again.
Great. Super. Stupendous.
Then he thought of a line from his favorite Mel Brooks movie, Young Frankenstein.
Could be worse. Could be raining.
It wasn’t raining.
But something else unexpected happened.
The goat stirred.
Bennett was so startled, he stumbled backward into the picnic table.
The goat lifted his head, stared Bennett straight in the eyes, and bleated long and loud.
Bennett yelled.
The goat kicked.
They both fell to the ground in a tangled heap of hands and hooves.
Quickly, Frank Sinatra recovered, springing to his feet and trotting away.
Bennett stared at the sky, feeling like the biggest idiot on the face of the earth.
“Bennett! Are you okay?”
He looked over to see Lacy hobbling toward him, her eyes wide with concern, her blond hair tumbling about her shoulders.
“I heard you hollering and came running as fast as I could.”
He considered the situation and then started to laugh. So much for a clean, painless getaway.
“What’s so funny?” Lacy cocked her head quizzically.
Bennett propped himself on his elbows and waved a hand at the goat. “Frank Sinatra was eating my blue jeans. I yelled at him, and he keeled over. I thought I’d killed him. I thought he was dead. I didn’t know how to break the news to your grandmother, so I picked him up to hide the body.” He waved at the goat, who was in the corner of the yard giving Bennett the evil eye. “As you can see, he’s fine.”
Lacy slapped a palm over her mouth. “Oh, Bennett, I’m so sorry. I forgot to tell you that Frank is a Tennessee fainting goat. They pass out when they feel threatened.”
“No kidding.”
Their eyes met. Lacy dropped her hand and grinned at him.
“You’re a city boy through and through.”
“Tell me about it,” he said, getting to his feet and dusting himself off.
“That was sweet of you to try and protect my grandmother.”
“Hey, I didn’t want to have to tell her that I’d killed her favorite pet.”
Lacy’s giggle gave his heart wings. “You poor thing. You must have been terrified when Frank woke up in your arms.”
“Shocked is more like it,” he said, not willing to admit how much the goat had disconcerted him. He was a doctor. How could he not have noticed the goat wasn’t dead?
How? Well, it wasn’t as if he’d performed a postmortem on the darned thing, but mostly it was because his mind had been filled with sensuous thoughts of Lacy. Thoughts that hit him like the A-bomb whenever he dared look at her. Thoughts that could lead them both into serious trouble.
Lacy limped closer and reached up to pluck a piece of straw from his hair. She swayed on her good leg. Bennett put an arm around her waist to brace her.
“Where are your crutches?” he asked, erotic sensations flooding his body at her nearness.
“I was in such a hurry to check on you, I forgot them in the barn.”
Her lips were close. Too close. He recalled the flavor of those lips, so recently