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“Okay…”
“It suits her, don’t you think?”
He let a little grin sneak out and that’s when Nicole’s familiar scowl returned to her face.
“Well,” she said, continuing on with her buckets, “you have fun naming all one hundred cows.”
“I will,” he said cheerfully. “There could be Deborah and maybe Jessica. I could name one Lois. Victoria is a good name.”
He heard a faintoh, my Godas Nicole disappeared around a corner, shaking her head so that her ponytail bounced back and forth.
“I think I’m starting to really win her over,” he said to Diane, who was far more interested in her brush bristles than her new name.
Brendan followed Nicole around to one of the smaller storage sheds where she was putting the buckets away.
“You don’t like my idea?” he teased, not wanting to give up on this slim foothold he seemed to have gained with her.
She looked up at him, still mostly baffled more than anything. “If it makes you happy, Brendan, then go ahead,” she said dryly and with maybe,perhaps, the slightest hint of a smile.
“You could join in,” he said, waving his marker around, which made her roll her eyes. “Come on, I’m sure you know plenty of appropriate names. Lucinda. Carol. Daisy — we definitely need to name one Daisy.”
Nicole started trudging off to her next task, and Brendan lost no time following her. If there was even the slightest link coming loose in her ice-cold armor, then he was going to take full advantage of it. At the very least it was entertaining.
“I’m fine, thanks,” said Nicole, sounding like she was humoring a small child. “But maybe get up early to work on your new cataloging system instead of wasting half the day with it.”
“Well, I was up at like four this morning, so that’s not really too hard…”
That made Nicole stop in her tracks. Brendan nearly walked straight into her, stumbling to a halt just in time as she turned and tilted her head at him, straight back to looking confused.
“Why were you up that early?”
He shrugged, a little self-conscious about it now. Maybe it made him look desperate, or like a teacher’s pet.
“Just wanted to get to know the place, I suppose,” he said, holding Nicole’s gaze no matter how searing it was. “Can’t exactly just wander around aimlessly during the day, so I got up early to do my wandering. Looked at all the switches… and stuff.”
Yeah, he definitely sounded like a teacher’s pet. He’d been glad he’d done it in the moment, feeling more surefooted today, but saying it out loud, it sounded stupid.
But Nicole wasn’t sneering at him. She didn’t even look as icy as usual, her shoulders relaxing for once. Instead she looked at him like she was working out a math puzzle in her head.
“So, you just, what, wandered around and looked at stuff?”
Her tone was surprisingly gentle. Brendan didn’t make any sudden movements in case he broke the spell. It was like having a conversation with a rattlesnake.
“Uh, yeah,” he said. “Just mapping it all out in my head.”
“Oh.”
She didn’t seem to know what else to say to that, and they stood there in silence for a few seconds. It took pretty much all of Brendan’s willpower to not crack a smile, watching her reconfigure her thoughts about him in real time. Maybe he wasn’t doing that badly after all…
“Well,” said Nicole, starting to walk off again, “come on, then. We have work to do.”
As she turned her back, Brendan allowed himself a quick grin. He wouldn’t say they were on their way to being best buddies or anything, but maybe now he had a shot of winning her over just a little bit.
CHAPTER7
NICOLE
Nicole lay awake in bed, staring at the dark ceiling, wondering if she could actually go through with the plan she had cooked up in the middle of the night.
