Hearing the challenge in my voice, Alex’s brow quirks. “We’ll see. I’m quite nifty at sidestepping dirty situations.”
His flirty tone brings back the sexual tension my dad’s overbearing presence snuffed. It also reveals that he noticed the crinkle between my brow I haven’t been able to smooth since Friday night. If the friction between us continues growing at the rate it has been the past two days, I’m sure it won’t be long.
After gathering my coat off the kitchen counter, I pivot on my heels and head for the door. “When your shoes go to shoe heaven, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
My heart does a funny flippy thing when Alex murmurs, “I’m not worried about my shoes. Me, on the other hand. . .”
Chapter Twenty-Five
“I’m not doing it. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice. . .”
My quote falls short when Regan clutches her stomach to laugh hysterically at the terror in my tone. She has done the same thing multiple times this morning. The most notable was when she convinced me a bull was a dairy cow and the area she wanted me to tug on was its udder. Thank god the bull didn’t take kindly to my cold hands, or I would have marked bestiality off a list I never wanted to make.
“They’re chickens, Alex. What harm can they do?” Regan asks, still laughing from her post outside the hen house.
I shoo away a big black beast eyeing me with its beady eyes before replying, “I’m stealing their babies. Poultry or not, they will be pissed.”
“They’re not their babies; they’re eggs. The same eggs you were munching on this morning.”
I shush her so loudly, half a dozen chickens pecking seed outside their nesting boxes stop what they are doing to peer at me. “If they smell their offspring on me, they’ll pounce.”
Regan laughs even louder, assuming I am joking. I’m not. I’d rather be inappropriate with a bull than have my eyes gouged out by an angry mother hen.
When I fail to move for nearly a minute, Regan shouts, “Come on, Alex; stop being a pussy. Get the damn eggs!”
Barely holding back what I intend to do to her for her constant ridicule, I gather the last four eggs in the far corner of the nesting box.
I think I’m scot-free.
I’m terribly mistaken.
There is a chicken I didn’t notice upon entering.
Except, he’s not a chicken.
He’s a rooster.
Coming between a mommy chicken and her babies is bad enough, but this makes matters ten times worse. A rooster is an alpha in the animal world. And from one alpha to another, I know he isn’t impressed I’ve made his women sad.
With my hands raised in the air, I step away from the big white beast. My cowardly retreat makes the situation more volatile. He’s seen the eggs I’m holding. He knows I have his babies’ lives in my hands.
“I’m just gonna place them right there.” I point to a fresh bundle of hay next to my mud-covered shoes that are so dirty, I can’t remember what their original color was.
When I set the eggs down, the rooster feathers himself, ignoring the invisible white flag I’m waving. When he leaps down from his perch, I spin on my heels and run. I dart past the chickens glaring at me as if I am an idiot. I run and run as if I’m being chased down by a grizzly, not stopping until I’m safe on the other side of the chicken coop.
Regan finds my cowardice hilariously entertaining. She is laughing so hard, tears stream down her face as her body shudders in humor. She can laugh, she didn’t have a flappy maniac pecking her heels as she raced across poop-covered dirt that is extremely slippery. I barely make it out of the hen house with my life intact.
“They can have their fucking eggs. I’ll buy you some when we go to town,” I say, winded.
My lungs stop sucking in air like I’ve run a marathon when Regan pats my back. Her gesture is one I use on rookie agents many times after their first raid. “Let me show you how the pros do it.”
With a grin that makes me wonder if I’ve died and gone to heaven, she rolls up the sleeves of her long-sleeve shirt and heads for the realm of hell I just escaped. I straighten my spine when she slides into the stinky space without so much of a bead of sweat on her nape.
When the life-gnawing beast fluffs his feathers in the same manner he did with me, she splays her hands across her cocked hip and glares at him.
I don’t feel so stupid about my telepathic conversation with a rooster when she snarls, “Really, Pat? You’re going there? I thought we were friends?”
Believing her angry sneer has Pat subdued, she heads for the wooden hatch in the far back corner of the pen.
