CHAPTER ONE
Jasper
“Noooo, goat-a-roonies, come back. Please. Pretty please, with sugar on top.”
This was not the plan for my morning. Or my day. Or my life.
In an incredibly grown-up, responsible move, I’d jumped—fine, rolled—out of bed and made a to-do list. Aseriouslist. It had columns and bullet points and sub-tasks. I scheduled my day hour by hour: clean out rooms, scrub said rooms, and make more lists about the other lists.
I was going to be productive. Efficient. Mature.
By the second hour, I was already behind. Turned out, you couldn’t clean a room that hadn’t been cleared out, and I’d wildly underestimated just how much stuff there was to move. And that was before the goats decided to be their goatiest selves.
“Ladies, what are you doing over there?”
I’d left them in the side yard with very clear, very intentional instructions to mow the grass. I’d already searched the yard, the field, and the barn. Nothing. They were gone.
Maybe a real cowboy would’ve known goats could teleport through imaginary fence holes, but I wasn’t one of those. I was a wannabe bed-and-breakfast owner and, as my dad liked to remind me often, a failed coffee shop barista.
There was a slight widening in one panel of the fence, but since it only seemed big enough for a goat head, I thought we were good. Spoiler alert: we were not good. Turned out that goats operated via magical portals, and now my sweet babies—Dolly, Tammy, Loretta, and Reba—were in my neighbor’s field.
Which would be fine, except I hadn’t met the neighbor yet. And I’d only lived here three days.
Goats had been on my vision board from the moment this place became a possibility. So when I saw someone selling a herd just outside Comfort, it felt like fate. I didn’t even wait to settle in—I picked them up on my way into town, loaded them into the back seat like tiny, bleating passengers, and hoped for the best.
The previous owner hadn’t named them, which felt criminal. So I did what any respectable gay boy with a love of country divas would do: I named them after the legends. Dolly was a classic blonde. Tammy had roots. Loretta was all black and stubborn. And Reba? Red and ready to kick.
Luckily, the gate was easy to climb because opening it required solving some kind of medieval puzzle lock. I wasn’t about to spend half my morning decoding that nonsense.
My madras pedal pushers and flip-flops were made for air-conditioned cleaning, not field frolicking. Ideally, I’d be indoors, vibing to something danceable while looking adorable. Instead, I was dodging prickly pear and questioning every life choice that had brought me to this dusty pasture.
I tried to sneak up on them, but my girls were too fast. Every time I got within ten feet, they pranced, danced, and bounced just out of reach. My only hope was to catch one and hope the others followed. A classic Pied Piper manifestation. Brilliant in theory, absolutely useless in practice.
All I accomplished was getting sweaty, scratched up, and completely covered in dirt.
“Ugh. Gross.”
“What the hell are you doing?”
The disgust in that voice straightened my spine. And he was close enough that I felt the breeze of annoyance on the back of my neck. I couldn’t catch a goat, but apparently, he could sneak up on me like a damn poltergeist.
“Well,” I said, lifting my chin, “I’d say it’s pretty obvious. I’m sharing the joy of my sweet girls. Your field looked barren.”
“It’s a pasture, not a field.”
Lord save me from gravel-voiced men. My greatest weakness.
“My apologies to the cactus.”
“You need to get your goats out of here.”
I bit back the snarky comeback. One of the items on my to-do list—buried undermake more lists—wasbe less sarcastic. I only wrote it so I could check it off, but still. I hadn’t planned on speaking to anyone today, yet here I was, being judged by a stranger.
“I’m working on it,” I said through clenched teeth, spinning around to look him in the eye. He wasn’t winning this. I would get my checkmark.
Oh. Dear. Sweet. Baby. Goats.
My second biggest weakness was pretty eyes.
