Page 140 of The Goat Next Door

“Get up,” she says, shoving me harder now.

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By 11:00 AM, the farm is a disaster area of mud, silver feed-bag paper, and aggressive barnyard animals.

I’d walked back across the lawn at dawn to wake up Sophie—thankfully, she has a free day today—presenting her with the news that we were spending the day next door. She’d nearly taken my shins out with her excitement, sprinting across the wet grass before I’d even managed to lock my own back door.

Now, she is sitting on an overturned milk crate near the small wooden paddock holding a tin cup full of alfalfa pellets.

“Don’t let Gertrude get the whole thing, Soph,” Ember calls out from the tool shed.

She steps out into the yard wearing a pair of mud-caked yellow muck boots, an oversized flannel shirt, and a pair of denim overalls with one strap completely unbuckled.

She looks entirely ridiculous and, somehow, completely beautiful.

“She’s a total glutton. She’ll eat the cup if you let her.”

“C’mere, country girl,” I mutter, catching the back loop of her overalls before she can walk past me toward the feed bins.

She blinks at me, surprised. Then her eyes narrow with delight.

“Excuse me?”

Shit.

I grin anyway, holding my ground. “You heard me.”

She points a finger at her own chest. “Me? The woman you spent six months calling city girl because I owned pink boots and complained about the hardware store coffee?”

“You still complain about the hardware store coffee.”

“Because it tastes like battery acid, Brooks.”

“Yeah, well,” I tug her closer, closing the distance between us. “Now you also smell like hay half the time and carry apples around for livestock in your pockets.”

“That is unbelievably judgmental.”

“You have goat feed on your sock right now.”

She looks genuinely offended, lifting her foot to inspect the evidence. “That could happen to anybody.”

I laugh and kiss the top of her head before I can stop myself. It’s a reflexive, easy movement.

She freezes for half a second at the casualness of it, her body tensing before she relaxes into my touch. Then she looks up at me, softer now.

“So what are you then? You don’t get to rename me without consequences. Hot neighbor doesn’t quite fit anymore.”

“I don’t need a nickname.”

“Hm,” she ignores me, tapping her chin with a gloved finger. “Maybe hot farmhand.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Grumpy lumberjack?”

“I’m not a lumberjack.”

“Suspiciously competent goat security?”