Page 174 of Texting, Trouble & Touchdowns
At seven in the morning.
Seven on a Monday morning. She’s using my day off to boss me around. I’ll teach her who’s the boss later tonight.
I lean my hip against the front desk of the clinic. Arms crossed, trying not to stare like a guy who’s just realized his whole future might include glitter glue and goats in sweaters. Sarah, in a velvet navy bow tie, lounges at my feet with the kind of sigh that says she’s already over the day. Smart dog.
“Lucian,” Olivia breathes, panic already curling around her words as she rushes past me holding two mismatched mugs and a clipboard with a disturbingly colorful sticky note situation, “please tell me you know how to fix an espresso machine, because I just broke ours. I panicked.”
Her voice is higher than usual. Her hair is pinned back in a way that makes her eyes look impossibly wide. She’s got that determined sparkle that says she’s going to get through this even if it kills both of us. And maybe the goat.
I push off the counter, tugging at the bottom of my hoodie as I follow her toward the back room. “Let’s assume I do. Is it hissing or flashing any sort of demonic code?”
She whirls around, eyes wild. “It beeped four times, hissed like a cat, and then said something that sounded like . . . ‘please refill receptacle.’ What the hell is a receptacle? Why does it need to be refilled? I already refilled it. I told you we only needed a regular coffee maker not some fancy espresso machine that can vaporize us.”
I bite the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing. “I’m guessing it meant the water tank.”
“Oh.” She blinks. “That makes more sense. Less apocalyptic.”
Olivia points to the espresso machine as if it was personally attacking her. “It’s our first day, Lucian. Soft opening,remember? Just family and friends. Not a full launch. And yet somehow, it feels like we’re hosting a gala and the carpet is on fire.”
“Technically, the carpet’s fine. Just the sign that’s wrong.”
Olivia groans and pulls her stethoscope down from her neck like it’s choking her. “Don’t remind me. Who puts Halston’s Exotic Pet Emporium on a vet clinic sign? Do I look like I sell lizards in trench coats?”
I look her up and down—hair in disarray, glasses smudged, mascara smudged-er—and say, “Honestly? Maybe just on weekends.”
Should I tell her that it was probably my mistake? I was goofing around when I called about the sign and . . . well that’s what came out of it. Fuck, she shouldn’t put me in charge of important things.
Her glare is immediate and weak. “Don’t make me throw my favorite coffee mug at you.”
“You have seventeen of them.”
“That one has a llama and says ‘No Prob-llama,’ Lucian. It’s sacred.”
I can’t help it. I laugh. That full-body, bent-at-the-waist kind of laugh that sneaks up and knocks you breathless. Olivia scowls as if she wants to stay mad, but her lips twitch at the corners, betraying her. She’s trying so hard to hold it all together, as she always does. But I know her.
I know the breath she just took was shaky.
I know she hasn’t eaten yet.
I know she triple-checked the animal wellness chart at four in the morning and that she’s been spiraling ever since the sign arrived.
And I know—know—this woman doesn’t need a hero.
She needs someone who can carry a goat in a tutu without flinching.
“Where is Sir Wiggles?” I ask.
She perks up. “Oh. In the breakroom. He’s wearing a top hat.”
Of course, he is.
Sir Wiggles, for the record, is not a sir. Nor is he particularly wiggle-prone. He’s a grumpy rescue goat with one ear and a fondness for nibbling shoelaces. Olivia found him half-frozen behind a barn last Saturday and is beginning to nurse him back to health until we can find him a home. I’m pretty sure he lives here. She just won’t tell me until she makes it official in her mind.
“He doesn’t like me,” I mutter as I lift the goat into my arms. “He thinks I’m trying to replace him.”
“You’re trying to find him a home before he’s ready,” Olivia says from the counter, where she’s now arranging cookies shaped like paw prints next to a sign that reads, Treat Yo’Self (But Please Don’t Feed the Ferrets).
I raise a brow. “We have ferrets?”
