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I thought it was bullshit, but whatever, my place smelled great. I knew for a fact that the look on Archie’s face had nothing to do with the way my place smelled and everything to do with the fact that it was in Glendale, not the Upper West Side.
“Archie!” I called out, drawing his eyes from Violet to me. “So nice of you to join us.”
“My name, madam,” he said haughtily, “is Archibald Fairweather.”
“And my name, is Ricki,” I countered with a smile. “But you insist on calling me madam, so it appears we are at an impasse.”
Archie sniffed, but didn’t respond, which was fine by me. I’d dealt with men like him my entire life and I was over letting them intimidate me. Archie didn’t know shit about me or my life, but he’d learn.
“Uh, Ricki?” Asher chuckled behind me, and goddamnit, even his laugh made me shiver. “You wanna tell me why you’ve got a man with a goat in your tattoo shop?”
“Oh, that’s Archie and Nacho,” Violet supplied, getting another huff of annoyance from Archie.
“Nacho? Why would you name a goat Nacho?”
Violet and I exchanged a look.
“Because it’s cheesy,” we answered at the same time, then burst out laughing.
“Blaaaaaaaah!” bleated Nacho unhelpfully.
“If you please, miss,” Archie cut in. “I do believe master Nacho requires the facilities.”
Sure enough, Nacho chose that moment to create a puddle on my new floor, staring at me with those bizarre eyes the whole time.
“Nacho!” Violet gasped. “Nacho, no! Bad goat. Bad.”
“Blaaaaaaaah!”
“It’s alright, Nacho,” I cooed, moving over to him and running my hand over his soft head. “I understand. When you gotta go, you gotta go.”
“And that’s the whole problem,” Violet lamented, throwing her hands in the air. “My stupid building won’t let me keep him there. What’s the point of living in a fancy Manhattan building if you can’t even keep a baby goat?”
“Who said you can’t keep him there?” I asked. We’d figured Violet’s new place would be the best spot for Nacho, because it had, like, a zillion bedrooms. “Your place is huge. Surely, they aren’t freaking out over one teeny tiny little goat.”
“My co-op. Or, one board member, in particular. No one seemed to have an issue with Nacho untilhestarted complaining. I don’t know what that guy’s problem is. I mean, after all, one lady has half a dozen standard poodles! One little goat is nothing compared to that massive hoard of dogs.”
“To be fair,” Asher cut in, rocking back on the heels of his boots as he ran one hand down his face and over his beard. Damn, I loved that beard. I wanted to scratch my fingers through it, to rub against it and see the kind of marks it could leave on my body.
Standing, I stepped away from the spreading puddle on the floor and crossed my arms, hoping to hide my suddenly pert nipples.
“He may be a little goat now, but Nubians get fairly hefty when they’re grown.”
“What did you call my baby?” Violet was outraged, but I snorted.
“He’s a Nubian goat,” Asher continued. “He may be just a little thing now, but he’ll get to be well over two hundred pounds if you feed him right.”
“What are you, some sort of goat expert?” I asked, suddenly curious. Because no matter how often my nipples got hard for the guy, I really knew nothing about him.
But I wanted to, and that freaked me out.
“Nah,” Asher waved me off humbly. “But I grew up in farm country, and there was a place a few miles down the road that bread them for milk.”
“You can milk a goat?” Violet asked, staring down at Nacho curiously.
“I mean, you can milk afemalegoat,” Asher pointed out, and yeah, that made sense. “Goat’s milk is good for all kinds of things, like soaps and lotions, but it makes really good cheese.”
“Blaaaaaaaah!”
