“Come on, goat!” I tug the leash, trying to get him to leave my vines alone. Miraculously, he stops and turns his bearded chin toward me. With an ominous bleat, he rears up suddenly on his two back legs, yankingthe leash from my grip. When he lands, he angles his head down, those demonic eyes flashing. I have a split second to notice his curvy horns before I realize they’re pointed atmeand quickly approaching.
A shriek rips out of me as I take off down the rows, my short bathrobe flapping in the wind. Am I faster than a goat? Only time will tell.
“HELP!” I shout as I run pell-mell toward the winery, the goat hot on my tail. “MAD GOAT!!”
Tristan peeks his head out the glass patio doors, spots me, and his eyes jack wide open. “Why’s there a goat chasing you?”
“WHO THE FUCK CARES, GET IT OFFA ME!!” I wheeze-shriek as I beeline toward the barn next to the winery. It’s full of barrels and other equipment in storage, but goats like barns, apparently.
Tristan takes off after us both, but while he’s strong, he’s not fast. My survival is up to me.
I push my lungs to their limits, and with a last burst of speed, I fly through the barn’s planked door, its rusty hinges screaming. I hit something painfully solid on the other side of it, aperson, knocking the air from my lungs with a loudoof. I tumble to the ground on top of them, their hard stomach and soft chest heaving and rustling beneath me, trapped.
Oh god!No. NO! I squeeze my eyes shut.
“What the—hell?!” Laine grunts from underneath me, trying to push me off. My mouth’s still opening and closing like a fish, trying to suck in air that my lungs momentarily refuse to accept, likehaha, air, what’s that?
I manage to push myself up to sitting, still gasping for breath that won’t come. Laine’s angry face quickly turns to concern as she hoists herself onto her elbows, still beneath me. “Are you okay? Why are you—” Her eyes flicker down to my chest, where my pink bathrobe gapes wide open, exposing my breasts, the smooth line of skin all the way to mynavel, thighs spread on either side of Laine’s hips. The fact I’m not wearing any panties isquiteevident. Color darkens her high cheekbones, and we both realize at the same time that her hands are gripping the sides of my thighs.
That does it. The sheer mortification forces air into my stubborn lungs, and I scramble to close my robe. “Mad—goat! Chasing—me!”
Laine’s brow furrows, and she peers past me, out the open barn door, to where the devil goat stands peacefully grazing on some overgrown grass. She turns her dubious gaze back on me.
“He was—chasing me!” I wheeze. “I swear!”
“Sure, boss.” Then, she has the nerve to smirk.It’s not lost on me that neither of us has moved, and is it my imagination, or have her hands slid higher up my legs? Heat emanates from where her fingers rest against that tender space between ass and leg, just enough pressure there to part me good and proper. She bites the corner of her lower lip, staring up at me, that blazing firelight returned to her eyes. I’m spread wide open against her, and it feels so good, ithurts. Apropos of nothing, her breathy, intense words from the pruning debacle spring to mind: “Areyou my boss?”
My hand itches to dive into her hair, pull her head back, and slide my tongue up the tender skin of her neck until I wipe that smirk off her face.
“Um, Zoe?” Tristan says, hands on thighs and breathing heavily, having finally arrived on the scene.
“Hmm?” The voice that answers sounds dreamy, far away. I can’t seem to rip my eyes from Laine’s right now.
“That goat’s running down the road.”
“Fuck!”
“Well?” Laine’s voice holds an urgent edge to it as she hunches over the steering wheel of my truck, her eyes scanning from left to right and back again. “Do you see him?!”
Of all the things Laine Woods could care about, I didnotsee Maeve’s goat coming. But Tristan barely got the words out that he was cantering down the road before Laine was scrambling up off the barn floor, bringing me with her.
“Come on! We’ve gotta catch him!”
“Us?” I’d asked incredulously. “Why?”
“He’s from that petting zoo Maeve rescued, remember?”
“Yeah, so?”
“That means he’sdomesticated, Zoe! He can’t survive out there!”
I’d started to saynope, that I’d call animal control or better yet, Maeve, to come fix the mess she’d made, but Laine looked so worried in that moment, her eyebrows raised in a fitful rainbow of concern, that I just … couldn’t.
“Can I change first?” We’d both seen what was under my scanty bathrobe, aka nothing.
“No!” Laine yelled like I was the world’s biggest idiot for asking, then threw herself into my truck and revved the engine to life. And that’s how I ended up here, riding shotgun in nothing but a bathrobe and sneakers, while Laine barrels down the highway on the hunt for a damn goat.
But I don’t have to like it. I glare at her.
