Flipping Love You by Erin Nicholas

5

She emerged onto the sandy beach, shivering, her feet squishing in her shoes, but with a dry phone.

Which vibrated with a text as she walked across the sand and grass.

Penguin builder guy: Running late this morning. Can meet you in an hour.

Dammit. An hour? She had a lot to do today.

But what choice did she have? And she was early, after all. He hadn’t been expecting her.

She toured the interior of the habitat and discovered that on her belly she could wiggle into the penguin building through the door the penguins would be using. Sure, she was a little dirty afterward, but she was thrilled too. It was all finished.

The only other thing that had to be completed before Thursday was the food storage facility.

Feeling pleased, though cold and squishy, Jill decided to head back to the hotel to change her clothes. But once back in her car, it occurred to her that might not be a great idea.

What if Zeke was still there? It wasn’t that she didn’t want to see him at all. In fact, she would very much like to see him again. But not right now. She didn’t do morning afters. Dan was always up and out right away the next day. Or, if they stayed at his place—as she tried to do because he always had good breakfast food too—she got up and out quickly. They were both too busy for anything else. And she wasn’t really the brunch type even with girlfriends or her mother.

Now that she was in Autre, her focus was even more specific. She had a waddle of penguins to take care of and she needed to have some penguin babies sooner rather than later. She also had her own habitat to worry about. She had definitely been blowing off her contractor for that. She probably should go check out her own house as well.

And hey, at least that was a place where she could get out of her shoes and socks and dry off a little bit. A place that didn’t have a hot, very tempting Cajun who was very good with his mouth.

She pushed all thoughts of Zeke’s mouth—and the parts of him that her mouth had really enjoyed—out of her mind and tapped her new house address into her GPS and found that she was only a mile away. Huh. She’d known that her new hometown was small but this seemed…very convenient, actually.

The tiny town size didn’t bother her. She’d grown up in a small town in Kansas. From what Griffin had told her, Bliss, Kansas, and Autre, Louisiana, had a few things in common. They were small, they were full of quirky characters, and everyone knew each other’s business.

Jill had to admit that she wasn’t looking forward to that last aspect of small town living again. In Omaha she had not only been in a big city, but she hadn’t known anyone until she’d started work. She didn’t have family there and her friends were all people she got to know from the zoo. So her social circle was very small, as was the number of people who knew anything personal about her.

She turned left at the entrance to the animal park and rumbled along the dirt road for about half a mile. This was definitely the edge of town. To her right was part of the bayou with boat docks and several boats of varying sizes, including what looked to be two large fishing vessels anchored along the water. And, as she drove east, it looked as if she was coming to an area where the bayou curved behind the trees in the distance.

“You’ve arrived at your destination,” the GPS lady told her.

“You sure?” she asked as she rolled to a stop. This was a dead-end road and there were only eight houses down here. A couple of them looked like perhaps no one was living in them. The paint was peeling, the front porches were crooked, and there were weeds growing up along the front walks.

However, three of them looked well cared for and had vehicles parked in front of them, plants in the flowerbeds, hammocks on the front porches and so on, indicating people lived there.

Then there was one house that really stood out. It looked to be nearly brand-new.

“Let this be mine,” Jill said out loud as she shut the car off.

It was bigger than the others and definitely newer construction. It had a wide front porch that wrapped around three sides and was two stories with a gorgeous stone and wood combination front. The way it was positioned on the lot, it looked out over the bayou on one side and the expanse of open land with the trees in the distance on the other. Whoever lived there could watch the sunrise on one side of the house and sunset on the other side.

Jill frowned. “Do I care about sunrises and sunsets?”

She’d been living in an apartment in downtown Omaha for the past four years. It was a gorgeous place in one of the renovated buildings in the warehouse district in the Old Market area of Omaha. She hadn’t sat on a porch in a very long time.

“I think I could care about sunrises and sunsets,” she decided as she studied the gorgeous house.

She glanced at the other houses clustered at the end of the road. She also wasn’t really a neighborhood barbecue type or a take-brownies-to-your-new-neighbors type, but it seemed it might be hard to avoid getting to know her neighbors in this little collection of houses at the end of this road.

“Maybe they’ll bring me brownies.” She really liked brownies. And she definitely wasn’t a baker. It wasn’t that she was opposed to making brownies or going to barbecues, of course. She had grown up in a small town and had been to plenty.

But she was a workaholic. Self-proclaimed, and proud. Unapologetic.

She took time off once in a while to go to movies, and to go home to visit her family and friends in Kansas, and to… Okay, so those were the only examples she could think of.

Her last vacation had been an exchange with a zoo in Canada where one of their veterinarians came to Omaha for a month and Jill took her place at the Calgary zoo. It was a fun way to see a new place and learn how another zoo ran their program.

“That counts as a vacation. I had to pack a suitcase and get on an airplane.”

She didn’t agree with Evan when he’d declared that if most of her time on her trip was spent doing something that resulted in the paycheck, it was considered work and not play. Any time she got to interact with animals, learn something new, and immerse herself in an experience, she considered that fun.

She shut off her car and got out of the car, checking the address in her emails from the contractor. She squinted at the gorgeous house with the maybe-I-do-like-sunrises front porch. Nope, the numbers on the front didn’t match. Figured. She looked at the house next to it. The one with the peeling white paint, the green shutters—half of which were hanging crookedly, and the three missing front porch steps. Yep, that was hers.

“Of course it is”. At least it had a front porch too. “It just doesn’t have steps to get to the porch.”

She made her way up the front walk.

“This is what you get for buying the place without photos,” Jill told herself. “Location, location, location.”

From the realtor’s description, it had been close to the penguin’s new home. That was really all she’d considered.

“That was really stupid, girl.”

Price had been no object, considering she’d just come into a few million dollars overnight, but she hadn’t wanted to build a new house. That was silly. She was a single woman and she didn’t have time to sit around waiting for a new house to be built anyway.

She also didn’t need marble countertops and twenty-foot ceilings and chandeliers and expensive furniture. She needed a place to sleep.

“And shower,” she said out loud, as she looked down at her soaked clothes and shoes. She bypassed the missing steps and jumped up onto the porch from the ground.

She’d already taken off before it occurred to her to hope the porch floor was sturdy and she wouldn’t go crashing through rotting wood. But it held up as she landed. She approached the front door and realized she didn’t have a key to this place either. Obviously, showing up early with no appointments to see any of these building projects was becoming an issue. Still, she tried the front door. Sure enough, the knob turned, and the door swung in.

“Okay, in Autre we don’t lock up houses. Or goats. But empty penguin enclosures are like Fort Knox.”

But it only took her six steps inside the house to realize she had nothing to worry about. There was nothing here to steal, for one thing. And while a family of raccoons might find it a fine place to bunk down overnight, there wasn’t much here that anyone would find appealing.

The house was old, and the best word that came to mind was shabby. And as far she could tell, her contractor hadn’t done a damn thing.

The rooms were all empty. There was dust all over everything. The wood floor in the entryway was dirty and scarred. There was carpet in the main room off to her left that looked to be older than her grandmother. The huge front windows were dirty, two of them were cracked, and one was completely missing and was boarded up with plywood. And that wasn’t new plywood as if they were in the process of replacing the window. Even the plywood was old.

She went to the wall and flipped the light switch. Nothing happened. Then again, looking around, there were no light fixtures even if the electricity did work.

“Perfect.”

She was wet, dirty, cold, and homeless.

With sixteen million dollars, give or take, in the bank.

Awesome.

Yep, she was going to have to talk to the house contractor today as well. She pulled her phone out again and went into her email. She had been emailing back and forth with this guy, rather than texting.

Fine, he’d been emailing her.

She hadn’t given him her phone number. It was much easier for her to keep the two projects separate. Her phone was for work almost entirely. The only people she texted were her mother, Evan, and his wife Cori. Everything else that happened with her phone was related to work.

She found the guy’s email and typed out a quick message. It was similar to the one she sent about penguins.

I got into town early, stopped over at the house. Have lots of questions. When can we meet up?

It wasn’t even a minute before she had a message back. At least this guy was more on the ball first thing in the morning than the penguin guy.

Have some stuff this morning. Can meet you at the house around noon.

She blew out a breath and realized she couldn’t be frustrated. It stood to reason that he had other things already lined up for the day.

She replied, Sounds good. See you then.

Him: Watch out for the front steps. There are a couple missing.

Her: I noticed.

Him: And watch yourself on the porch. There’s some rotten wood and I wouldn’t want you to fall through.

Jill’s eyes went wide. So, she had gotten lucky jumping up onto the porch. Great.

She took a couple of steps toward the front door and her shoe squished.

She grimaced. She really should just go back to the motel. She needed to change, and she really needed coffee and some breakfast.

She braced herself for more squishing and started for the front door again but stopped in the doorway. “Dammit.” She didn’t know where these rotten boards were, and she definitely didn’t want to go crashing through the porch.

She pivoted and headed back to the house. She assumed there was a back door. “Not that you would know,” she told herself. “You didn’t even look at photos.”

She made her way down a little hallway, noting the powder room to one side, the dining room off to her right, a room that could easily be an office—though she had that building right up next to the penguins, which was where she’d be most of the time— and stepped into her kitchen.

“Noooo. Not even a fridge?”

She really didn’t care where she lived, but this house was making her sad. It was definitely drab, but she wasn’t great at envisioning things like interior decorating that wasn’t already in place.

“Maybe Charlie can help.” Charlie seemed stylish and put together. “I’ll just give her a million dollars and tell her to go crazy.” But then she shook her head. “The lawyer said you could use money to move here and take care of basic needs. That’s probably like…a chair. And a fridge. And bread.”

Looking around the completely bare kitchen, Jill felt overwhelmed. Not so much because she hated shopping for appliances, though she was sure that she did, she’d just never done it. She’d always lived in places that came with that stuff.

Picking out things like refrigerators and stoves seemed like such a waste of time. She just needed something to keep her food cold and to heat food up on occasion. Actually, she probably didn’t need a stove and oven. She wasn’t a baker or cook. Though she was under the impression that Autre, Louisiana, did not have food delivery services like she was used to.

“Ugh.” She tipped her head back as she groaned.

And noticed the ceiling had nothing on it but cracked plaster and some wires sticking out from what she assumed had been a light fixture of some kind.

“Hell no. I’m not picking that stuff out too.” She straightened and looked around. “I’ve never picked out furniture and shit! I’ve always had hand-me-downs and lived places that come with this stuff!”

She would never take light fixtures for granted again.

She focused on the crown moldings around the edge of the doorway. They were as old and dull as the rest of the house. The guy hadn’t done anything with them.

Probably because she hadn’t responded to his email asking what she wanted the crown moldings to look like. She’d had to Google crown moldings when he’d asked that question.

“Who the hell cares?” she asked the universe at large, throwing her arms wide.

Cori, her friend Evan’s wife, had talked her into moving to Louisiana with nothing but her clothes. She’d insisted that Jill needed to start from scratch and that she not only didn’t have enough furniture to fill a house, but that she needed new stuff if she was going to remodel the house and start a new life.

Coriwas who Jill needed to call next.

She pulled up her friend’s number on her phone and texted. Help!

Cori responded almost immediately. Hey! What’s wrong?

I know nothing about furniture.

Cori: Yes, I know.

Jill: Do you?

Cori: More than you do.

Jill: Then you do it.

Cori: I’ve been waiting for this text. Send me photos of the house and I’ll help you pick stuff out.

Jill: I don’t want help. I want you to do it.

Cori: *laughing emoji*. Fine. Photos.

Jill held her phone up and took several shots of the kitchen, sending them to Cori.

Jill: My kitchen at present.

Cori: What?! What’s the contractor been doing all this time?

Jill really wanted to blame the contractor but it was, of course, partly her fault. Not answering questions like what color she wanted the walls painted and what she wanted the flooring to look like had clearly kept him from moving ahead.

Jill: He’s waiting on me to make decisions. You know how I am about that.

Cori: Yes, I do.

Jill smiled. It was nice having people in her life that understood what she was like and loved her anyway. She knew she drove her mother crazy. Actually, some of her tendency to only worry about the basics came from her mother.

Okay, most of that tendency came from her mother.

The rest came just from… not wanting to deal with stuff.

The fewer balls Jill had to juggle, the fewer got dropped, and the less frustrated Holly got with her. Her mother was a master ball-juggler. Jill had watched her do it her whole life.

She’d gotten pregnant right after medical school and put her career as a physician on hold to raise her children and then, when she’d tried to go back to work, she’d had to quit after only a few months because her mother had gotten sick.

Holly had been the quintessential stay-at-home mom to her four children. She attended every event and activity, had dinner on the table every night, kept an immaculate house, and the kids never had to worry about forgetting their lunch or permission slips or a pair of shoes to change into after school.

And by observing Holly, Jill had learned that it was far easier to keep track of and take care of one ball rather than many.

Jill knew her current habits came from the fact that her mother had always handled everything for her. When Jill had left home and been on her own, she’d needed to drastically simplify her life because she didn’t have someone taking care of her.

For just a second, her thoughts went to Zeke again. But not his dirty mouth or his hot hands. Last night, he’d said that he probably wouldn’t have taken the goats back to their barn if she hadn’t insisted. He’d admitted it was because he knew someone else would have come along to do it and he’d said that was how things worked here for him. Other people took care of things, even if he had good intentions to help out.

That was a weird thing to have in common, but she understood that. Her mother had made Jill’s life very easy growing up.

And had made her pretty pathetic at taking care of adult things now.

But how was someone supposed to learn to cook and how to get stains out of fabric and multi-task and organize if they were never taught and practiced? She could have looked things up or taken cooking classes, she knew. But she’d gotten so wrapped up in her career that she didn’t have the time. Or didn’t want to take the time. So Jill didn’t cook, she threw things away if they got stained, and she focused on one thing at a time. Simple.

Jill: You’re hired to take care of this whole thing. Do you want the contractor’s email?

Cori: Yes, I do. Do you want the whole house done in black and white? :-)

Jill: Yes.

Black and white were her favorite colors. Yes, of course, that had to do with penguins.

Cori: I’m not doing your entire house in black and white. But if you want a black and white bedroom I’ll do that… if you let me include hot pink accents.

Jill rolled her eyes, but grinned. Cori Carmichael Stone was a very…colorful person. She would die if all she could do was black and white. She was so good for Evan. She made sure he had fun when Evan had spent so many years trying so hard to be serious and responsible.

Jill: Make it red, not pink and I’ll say okay.

Cori: Deal.

Jill: Thank you. You know this isn’t my thing.

Cori: *heart emoji*. I know. Don’t worry about this. Go make some penguin babies.

Jill: I’m on it. The new penguin habitat, on the other hand, looks amazing.

Cori: Maybe the guy who built the penguin house can work on your house. LOL!

Jill: :-) I’ll have to ask.Thank you! Talk to you soon.

Cori: Love you. It’s all going to be okay.

Jill felt the stinging behind her eyes. She certainly hoped everything was going to be okay. It really needed to be. Now that she was here in Autre, with this amazing penguin habitat sitting just up the road, she really had no choice. It wasn’t like she could leave Louisiana if things didn’t work out here. She couldn’t just pack up and move eight penguins—and hopefully more than eight penguins soon—if she decided she didn’t like gumbo or one thousand percent humidity.

She had to make it work here. This was where she was settling.

She headed out the back door of the kitchen, looking around and stepping carefully. There was a back porch as well. It was probably considered a mud room. They had these in Kansas too. It was a smaller room off the kitchen where people could discard muddy shoes and boots and outerwear before coming into the house. She stopped at the swinging screen door that was, of course, hanging crookedly from its hinges, and sucked in a little breath. The view back here, though… “Wow.”

The back of the house looked out over the vast expanse of land that ran from this edge of town down to the bayou. It looked a little like the prairies in Kansas, but she knew from her research that as she went toward the bayou, the ground would get progressively more marshy and that the trees, vegetation, and a lot of the wildlife she would find between her back porch and the Gulf was vastly different than what she had grown up with in Kansas.

That made her heart flutter.

“This is fun. This is an adventure.” She reminded herself. She was excited to be working with the penguins of course, but being here in Louisiana also meant learning about other new animals and habitats. “I wonder if Zeke would take me out on the bayou. I bet he would.”

Now where had that idea come from? Why did her mind keep wandering to that guy?

Of course, it didn’t take a lot of wondering to figure that one out. Zeke was hot and charming and very good with his tongue.

That was it. Simple. Just the way she liked things. She’d had an amazing night with him and it had been very straightforward. They hadn’t shared back stories, they didn’t share anything professionally, they didn’t even know each other. Everything between them had been simple and obvious.

Except that little bit about how he didn’t have to worry about much around here…

“Nope.” Jill shook her head. “That was just one little thing. The rest was just sex. Really, really great sex. Simple. Easy.”

She could definitely use more of that in her life.

She stepped out the back door and down the three stone steps that were definitely crumbling but were at least present as opposed to the steps in the front. She hit the ground and turned to round the house to head back to her car when she noticed him.

She froze. And gasped.

“No.” But she whispered the word.

There was a fucking alligator in her backyard.

He was easily eight feet long and he was nestled in the tall grass. She wasn’t even sure how she’d seen him because he wasn’t moving a muscle.

“Maybe he’s dead,” she whispered. “And maybe you should stop even whispering.”

Her mind spun, trying to remember if alligators had good hearing. What was it about adrenaline pumping through a person’s veins that made them unable to remember basic facts that they should be able to come up with in a snap?

The word snap made her think about alligators’ jaws though. And she did know that they were immensely powerful and not something she wanted to get close to. At. All.

“It would be way too convenient if he was dead,” she whispered.

Fucking stop talking out loud to yourself!

There, that was in her mind only.

And then his eyes blinked.

She didn’t scream. She wasn’t a screamer. But she wasn’t breathing at the moment either.

She did, however, regret not reading up on what to do when you encountered an alligator in the wild.

She was a vet. She knew things about alligators, of course. But dammit, school had been a long time ago—she hadn’t touched, or even seen, an alligator in years—and that didn’t mean that any of that knowledge was currently retained in the brain that was chanting you’re going to be gator food on your first day? Really?

At least that was in her mind and not out loud.

Oh God.

She spun and bolted for her back door, lunging inside and slamming the lightweight slab of wood behind her.

But that was evidently too much for the elderly rusted hinges because as soon the door made contact with the frame, the whole thing gave a creak, then fell. And, of course, it fell outward, essentially creating a ramp that covered the back steps that would make it very easy for a reptile to climb up into the house. With her.

She still didn’t scream, but she shrieked a little now.

She ran down the hallway of the house toward the front door, ripped it open and sprang out onto the porch. She prayed the whole way across that she wouldn’t step on any rotten wood.

As soon as her shoes hit the front walk, she turned and ran to the gorgeous house with the I-could-sit-there-every-day porch next to hers.

Possibly a subconscious choice because she was also curious about getting a brief tour of the place.

But right now, what she needed was to get away from the alligator in her yard and get some help from someone who lived in a place where people regularly had alligators in their backyards.

She bounded up those front steps, all of which were completely sturdy and intact, and pounded on the front door.

She stood, breathing heavily, realizing it was during the workday and that it was possible her new neighbors wouldn’t be home. But then she had heard footsteps coming closer to the door and she worked to steady her breathing and pasted on a smile.

She saw a form on the other side of the beveled glass set into the front door just before the knob turned and the door swung in.

“Hi, I’m—”

Jill’s words died and her mouth dropped open as she stared at the person who had answered the door of her neighbor’s house.

“Well, hey, cher.”

“Zeke?”