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“Of course you do.”
Then she sashayed up the steps, waving her sassy words and curvy ass like a red flag in a bull’s face.
And I was fully ready to charge.
Chapter Four
~BETTY~
Walkingthrough my living room to the front door of my new home, I tossed another empty box on the front porch and exhaled a lovely, happy sigh. With a hand on my hip, I stared out across the street, which was nothing but sugarcane fields, the tall green stalks waving in the afternoon breeze.
It was harvesting season, so it would be chopped down to the dirt before long, then they’d replant and start all over. I’d thought of buying a house in a neighborhood, maybe close to the park where my mom lived. But I loved the solitude out here on this country road and the faint breeze that seemed to always be blowing.
Glancing at my barren porch, except for the leaning tower of cardboard boxes, I made a mental note to look for some front porch furniture. Maybe I’d buy a rocking chair like Mom bought from that guy Country at the Tractor Supply store.
There was so much to do.
“Tomorrow,” I mumbled to myself.
Today, I had to get my kitchen fully unpacked. I’d been in my new house for over a month and still had boxes stacked in different rooms.
Glancing at the bottle of Malbec that I hadn’t yet opened, I remembered my encounter with Bennett before the read-through of the script yesterday. He was sincere in his apology. Sowhywas I still butt-hurt when it came to this guy? I couldn’t even figure it out myself, but every time I saw the man, my defenses shot up, ready to battle.
“Better get over it,” I muttered to myself since we’d be working closely together for the next few weeks.
Huffing a sigh, I settled on the tile next to the box of hand-me-down pots and pans from my mother and grandmother. Mom had also included some weird tools to help me eat healthier.
“Whatisthis?” I snort-laughed at the zucchini noodle maker, trying to figure which way was up. Then I reached for the box dedicated to donations to Goodwill. Because there would never be an occasion where I was going to be making zoodles.
“Sorry, Mom,” I muttered, noticing movement out of the corner of my eye as I put it back in the box.
My heart dropped because I sure as hell saw something dark move by the doorway leading to the sunroom. An animal was definitely moving around in there.
“Holy shit!” I jumped up with a pan in my hand, ready to swing at whatever mongrel dog had managed to get in my house.
“Baaaa!” came a bleating noise, then the animal clip-clopped into my kitchen, proud as you please.
“A goat? Where the hell did you come from?”
“Baaa!”
He was a teeny, tiny thing. All black with a white diamond on his forehead and two white socks on his back feet. Hooves. Whatever.
“Baby goat, aren’t ya?”
It flipped its floppy ears when I stepped closer and high-tailed it out through my sunroom.
“Hey!”
He squeezed through a crack in the screen door, left open because it had snagged on one of the boxes I’d been stacking near the entrance. I had empty boxes everywhere.
I chased the little hellion into the yard, wondering where the baby goat came from. He zig-zagged all the way to my back fence, then squeezed his little ass under a broken bottom panel of the wooden fencing.
My trifold stepladder was leaning against the patio where I’d used it to screw in hooks for my hanging plants. I hauled it to the back fence and walked up to peer over the top edge.
And stared in shock!
A dozen little goats jumped and cavorted around my neighbor’s backyard. A woman was carrying a bucket of something toward a wooden trough set low in the center of the yard.
