And his jaw, today, was doing the thing.
I was trying not to notice his jaw doing the thing. I was also trying not to notice that he was carrying a thirty-pound goat in front of me like the goat weighed nothing and that I had spent five minutes earlier this morning watching him scratch a dog's ears with a hand that I had thought about more times than I had thought about almost anything else in my professional life.
I followed him down the road. Penny snored.
Gibson Hart's place was a quarter mile past Treyton's drive, down a gravel road that looked like it had been graded sometime during the previous administration. The fence at the property line was solid. The pasture was clean. There was a hand-painted sign at the gate that saidDon't Let The Goats Out, which was painted in a way that suggested the sign-painter had known, on some level, that the sign would fail.
Gibson came out of the barn before we made it to the gate.
He was tall — almost Treyton's height — and sun-bleached, with hair that was halfway between blond and brown and the lower half of his face covered in a well-kept beard. He had on a t-shirt, jeans, and boots, and he walked with a kind of loose-limbed ease that I recognized from somewhere I couldn't place. He saw Treyton, then the goat. Then he saw me and grinned.
“Berg. You brought me a present. And a friend.”
“Penny was on the south road again.”
“Penny is on the south road every day. Penny is on the south road because of the south road. Penny has dreams.” Gibson reached for the goat. Treyton handed her over. Penny opened one eye, registered the change of personnel, and went back to sleep on Gibson's shoulder. Gibson scratched her ears. “Penny. You princess.”
“Soleil,” I said, because Treyton wasn't going to introduce me. “Soleil Graham.”
“Gibson Hart. You're the artist.”
“That’s me.” Gibson Hart… the name stirred up a memory. I blinked up at the good-looking man who looked a lot more like a cowboy now than the infamous rock star whose music had defined my college years.
Before I had the chance to fangirl, Gibson shot me one of his trademark smiles. “He mentioned you.”
Wait… Treyton had mentioned me? To Gibson? Heat swept up my neck and covered my face.
“I didn't,” Treyton said.
“He mentioned you once. Which is once more than he mentions most things. Come inside. I have coffee.”
“It's not even nine,” Treyton said.
“It's after eight. That's coffee territory.”
I looked at Treyton. Treyton was obviously calculating whether to refuse, which was a calculation I'd been watching him run on himself for five days, and which I now had the advantage of being able to predict.
“Coffee,” I said.
Treyton's jaw did the thing for the third time today and he followed us into the barn.
Gibson's barn was the cleanest barn I’d ever been inside. The floor was swept. The hay was stacked. There were hand-painted signs above each goat's stall with names —Penny, Bramble, June, Iris, Tilly— and a small chalkboard listing what each onewas eating that week. The barn also had, against one wall, a fully working espresso setup.
“My sister sent the espresso machine,” Gibson said, putting Penny in her stall. Penny immediately tried to climb the gate. “She thinks I drink too much instant. She's right.”
“What does your sister do?” I asked.
“Soap. She has a little business right here in town. The goats are for the milk. Goat milk soap. Lavender, calendula, cedarwood — Treyton makes the cedar boxes she ships them in, which is why we’re friends and not just neighbors.”
I looked at Treyton, happily surprised that the man was capable of friendship. Treyton was studying a goat like it had just become the most interesting animal in the world.
“He doesn't sign the boxes,” Gibson said. “She asked him to, but he won't. She also can't tell me why he carves a tiny pine sprig into the inside corner of each one, but I have my theories.”
“I don't carve anything,” Treyton said.
“You absolutely carve.”
“I do not carve into the boxes.”
