Page 23 of The Goat Next Door

I push my sunglasses onto my head, feeling a defiant, thrill-ride grin tugging at my lips.

“Get ready, hot neighbor,” I murmur to the breeze. “Things are about to get complicated.”

6

Brooks

“LOCAL FIRE CHIEF SEEN SMILING.

TOWN DEMANDS EXPLANATION.”

— Suncrest Hollow Newspaper

The afternoon sun catches in her curls, turning every strand into something annoyingly golden.

She’s standing there with a brown paper bag from Marge’s bakery clutched against her chest like she’s just won a championship trophy, grinning at me with the kind of hyperactive triumph that makes my jaw start aching from clenching it in advance.

“You’re late, Chief,” she calls out. “I was beginning to think you’d abandoned me to the elements. Or worse, to the local social registry. I’ve already been thoroughly snubbed by a random woman and a man with an antacid dependency.”

“Shift ended at ten,” I grunt. “I had to drop some things off at the house and prep some gear. And I’ve already heard all about it, news travel fast. And that woman is the head of the historical society, which means you’re officially on their watch list now.”

She waves a dismissive hand as she walks toward her sagging front porch. “The point is, I survived the village gauntlet, I secured a strategic economic foothold at the bakery—more on my upcoming career as a flour bin technician later—and I am ready to construct a definitive structural plan. I have my own tools, Big Guy.”

I stop at the base of her porch steps, looking at the pile of supplies she’s accumulated.

Beside a heavy five-gallon water jug and a box of goat feed, there is a brand-new, entirely plastic tool kit that looks like it was manufactured by a toy company, along with about forty tubes of white silicone caulk and a ruptured caulk gun that is currently glued to a piece of cardboard.

“Is that the tool kit you bought at the store?” I ask, my voice deadpan.

“It’s a starter kit, hot neighbor. It has a level with green liquid in it and a very cute little claw hammer with a pink rubber grip.” She steps up onto the porch, her white overalls stretching as she turns to face me. “And don’t look at the caulk gun. We’ve had an internal operational failure. The tube suffered a structural breach.”

“That is not how normal people describe exploding caulk.”

“It is when you’re trying to preserve morale.”

“You didn’t cut the tip wide enough, so you didn’t puncture the inner foil seal,” I say, stepping onto the porch. “You’re lucky you didn’t break your wrist. Silicone doesn’t just wash off canvas.”

“Whatever. Now, where are we starting, Captain Firefighter? The ceiling? The flooring? The plumbing? I want to learn everything. Don’t just do it for me. Teach me. I need to know the physics.”

I stare down at her.

She’s a full head shorter than me, her curls bouncing slightly as she tilts her head up to look into my face.

She’s entirely serious.

Beneath the sarcasm and the designer denim, there’s a strange, fierce current of determination in her eyes that I don’t know what to do with.

It’s annoying. It’s deeply inconvenient.

And God help me, it’s the most entertaining thing I’ve looked at in three years.

“We’re starting with the kitchen floor,” I say, dropping my heavy canvas bag onto the porch with a solid thud. “Because if you step through that rot in the parlor again, I’m going to have to fill out a medical extraction report, and I’ve already done enough paperwork this week. Put these on.”

I reach into my bag and toss her a pair of heavy work gloves. They’re old, broken-in, and entirely too big for her small hands, but they’re better than her bare skin against seventy-year-old splinters.

She pulls them on, her fingers swimming in the leather, and gives me a small, ridiculous thumbs-up. “Lead the way, Ranger Rick.”

For the next three hours, the Gilded Goat ceases to be a quiet money pit and becomes a noisy classroom.