Page 27 of The Mistletoe Kisser
“Why were you here in the first place to witness my newest level of shame?” His fingers brushed something on his forehead. A sticky note. He peeled it off and read it.
“I brought your sheep back,” she told him.
She handed him one of the cups of coffee she held. Large and steaming.
“He’s not my sheep.” He took a long gulp of hot, glorious caffeine. It scalded his throat, but the pain was better than the rolling vertigo.
“You are currently in possession of said sheep until his owner can be identified.”
He wanted to slink off into a dank basement and die in a corner somewhere. He also wanted to throw up. In a distant third, was the scenario where he curled up with his head in the pretty vet’s lap and slept for three days straight.
He groaned. “What am I supposed to do with a goddamn sheep?”
“I’ll show you. Since you’re also in charge of Carson’s chickens.”
He made a grab for the jeans. The move had his head spinning, and he had to lean against the wall until the urge to puke his guts up passed.
“Just when you think things can’t get worse,” Ryan muttered.
“Are you always so cantankerous? Or is it just small-town life that does it to you?” she of little sympathy asked, patting his cheek on her way into the hideous kitchen.
“The world has enough happy-go-lucky dumbasses in it. I’m a realist,” he yelled after her, shaking his jeans out and sending fragments of dried mud everywhere. He hated mud. Dirt. Puddles. Slush. Snow. Basically all nature and weather.
“Go shower, realist,” she called over the bang of pots and pans. “I’ll make you something greasy for breakfast, show you how to feed and pasture your animals, and then we can both go back to our regular lives, never to speak again.”
He was too hungover to argue. Though he did wonder what was going to become of his “regular life.” It was Saturday. On Saturdays, he went to the gym for leg day with Lars, the mean Icelandic trainer he was too afraid of to fire. Then he headed into the office for a few hours of uninterrupted work. In the afternoons, he’d catch up on his professional development reading, and—Wow. He was so fucking boring. When had that happened?
Deciding it didn’t matter, Ryan stumbled into the bathroom on the second floor, vomited, and then gratefully slid under the hot water in the powder blue-tiled shower. He fell asleep standing up for a few minutes, but the smell of food woke him.
Five minutes later, dressed in clothes made more for business casual Saturdays in the office than sheep tackling, he returned to the first floor and found his way into the kitchen.
The room was still ugly, but the atmosphere had vastly improved thanks to the smell of actual food and the very attractive woman standing at the stove.
“You look better,” she observed, tapping the wooden spoon on the pan of eggs.
“With my pants on?” he asked, helping himself to her coffee she’d left unattended on the tiny yellow Formica table.
She gave him a long look.
“What?” he asked, gingerly taking a seat. He was rather pleased when his head didn’t separate from his neck and roll across the table.
“I’m trying to decide if you’re human and just made a joke.”
“Always assume I am inhuman,” he told her. He considered it a kindness when she didn’t comment.
With practiced efficiency, she dumped a handful of shredded cheese over the eggs and turned off the burner. “Check this out,” Sammy said, wiping her hands on a dish towel before popping open the freezer door on the piss yellow refrigerator.
There were over a dozen neatly labeled casserole dishes stacked inside. “That’s a lot of leftovers,” he observed.
“That’s a lot of love,” she corrected. “These are all from your uncle’s neighbors. Blue Moon makes sure he doesn’t live off junk food and cold pizza. You can thank Carter Pierce for the cheesy, free-range eggs you’re about to scarf down. Or maybe just not insult him to his face if you run into him.”
“Pierce? I bet he has a beard and some goats,” Ryan said as memories of last night coalesced in his brain. Mayor Beckett Pierce. His mother, Phoebe. And of course, Jax, the flirty big Hollywood deal.
“You met him?” she asked, sounding surprised.
“His brother. Brothers. And mother. Also, I’m not an asshole,” he insisted as her previous comment finally sank in.
She set a plate of eggs and toast in front of him, delivered with a skeptical stare.
