Page 9 of Talk Birdie to Me

Geena pressed her lips together to stifle a giggle. “That doesn’t sound so terrible.”

“It is when the whole aviary lets their swearing rip in front of a field trip full of first graders. Then they all get excited by our visitors’ reactions. It’s a whole thing.”

“Oh, damn,” Geena muttered under her breath.

“Damn bird!”

Cody shook his head. “See?”

“And that’s him being nice,” Lauren added. “I’m surprised he’s been so quiet up until now.”

“Yeah,” Cody said. “It’s like he’s being polite for y’all.”

Gary fluffed his feathers and puffed himself up as if he was proud of himself.

“I thought you were the behavioral guy,” Geena said. “Can’t you train that out of them?”

“Tried,” he said. “I can make traction pretty easily with the others on their own, but this little ringleader here has a five-year lifetime of this to untangle. I don’t want to keep him in here for that long. He’d be better off in a home environment like he was in before he was surrendered to our care.”

Geena realized they were standing close to one another in front of the cage again. So close now that their forearms were touching, and his clean, earthy scent lingered in the air around him. The combination of touch and smell did things to her brain and body that Geena definitely did not want to deal with right then.

“So,” she said, taking a step back and clearing her throat. She held up her camera again. “Let’s take these photos, so we can get him that home.”

Cody watched as Geena adjusted the settings on her camera. Her moves were swift but methodical. The ease with which she handled that camera indicated years of practice and honing her craft. A kind of dedication Cody couldn’t even begin to imagine.

Not that he didn’t have passions or didn’t care about his work. Just not like that.

He loved caring for and training animals, but it wasn’t as if he worked with one animal all the time. There was variety in what he did, what he worked with, and even where he worked.

And he liked watching sports in his free time. Mostly football and basketball. But again, the experience was always different. He watched different teams in different places with different people around him.

He figured he’d be miserable if he did the same thing all the time.

But watching Geena and marveling at the dedication she had for her own passion… it was kind of a turn-on.

Along with the back of those tight jeans with the T-shirt tucked in.

“You can take him out now.”

Panic gripped him as the sound of Geena’s voice cut through his mental chatter. He’d gotten so lost in his own thoughts he hadn’t been paying attention to whatever they’d been discussing. He’d been so focused on her precision with that camera. It was definitely sexy. And when something went sexy, his thoughts and focus blew in that direction.

“What?”

“The bird,” she repeated, holding up her camera in one hand. “You can take him out of the cage now.”

“Oh. Right.” Cody shook his head and pushed the sexy camera and jeans thoughts away. He opened the door and stepped back, giving the bird a clear exit. “Hey, buddy. Ready to show off?”

“Squawk. Bet your ass!”

“Great,” Taylor said. “So we not only have to find someone who knows how to take care of this thing but also someone without a delicate ear?”

“Or delicate skin,” Lauren added. “He’s not a random nipper—we’d never have let him loose in the aviary if he was aggressive—but he’s very firm about his boundaries.”

Taylor nodded admiringly at the bird. “I like that in a guy.”

Cody wondered if Geena did as well. Or if that was a deal-breaker for her. Because as respectful as he was of other people’s boundaries, Cody didn’t have a lot of those for himself. Not in a tread-on-other-people kind of way, but in a go-with-the-flow way.

Boundaries were walls. He didn’t much see the need for walls. He was an open book for whoever wanted his story.

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