Page 5 of There's Pumpkin About You
Her honey eyes flash again, and a single eyebrow rises, and immediately Sam’s words from five years ago come into my mind.
Sometimes, Auggie, it’s not what you say, but how you say it.
“Are you always this impossible to talk to?” she demands.
“I’m autistic, I’m told it’s in my nature.”
“Being autistic doesn’t mean you’re automatically impossible to talk to.”
“Well, then I suppose it’s just my charming personality.” I flick my hand towards the door. “After you.”
She steps forwards but falters as soon as Emilio bleats at her. She surveys the goat warily. When Emilio bleats again, she holds a pointed finger at him, glaring through squinted eyes. “Don’t you dare bleat at me like I’m the one that just groped you. I’m accepting nothing other than an apology, mister. Until then, I don’t want to hear it.”
“Why did you even let him near enough to bite you?”
Her head whips towards me. “You think I let him bite me? He came into the barn when my back was turned!”
“Leading me to wonder once more why you were in the barn in the first place.”
“I—” She stops herself and huffs like a child before pushing past me and storming out of the barn.
My eyebrows scrunch together, and I look down at Emilio, who looks up at me with his big eyes. “I seriously can’t have misinterpreted that, can I?”
Emilio bleats once, a sound I take to mean: “Women, am I right?”
With a sigh and a shake of my head, I pick up my axe and reluctantly follow her.
* * *
She has marched herself over to the black SUV that had caught my attention when I came back from the field.
Bash chooses that moment to exit my office, immediately smiling at the stranger in a way that makes me walk towards her faster.
“Well, hi.” He smiles and holds out a hand for her to shake. “I’m Sebastian, one of the owners of Goldleaf Farm, but please call me Bash. Everyone does. It’s a pleasure.”
The woman’s frown instantly vanishes and is replaced by the kind of smile that makes my chest squeeze. I marvel at how quickly she switches from angry at me for no reason, to being nice to my brother who she has seen for all of two seconds.
“Nice to meet you, Bash. My name is Wren. I’m a party planner over in Beckford.”
“Oh, him you’re nice to,” I mutter.
She turns to glare at me. “He is not the one being rude after his goat bit my ass.”
“A goat bit your ass?” Bash questions.
“A goat bit my ass,” she confirms.
“It hasn’t been proven that Emilio bit her ass,” I interject.
“Emilio bit her ass? I thought you said Emilio had cut it with the biting,” Bash says, sighing.
“He has cut it out, which is why I said it hadn’t been proven that he bit her.”
“Why would I lie about him biting me?”
“Because you got caught somewhere where you didn’t belong?” I offer.
“Where were you?” Bash asks.
