Flipping Love You by Erin Nicholas

7

Zeke got dressed quickly, trying very hard to ignore the sound of the shower running in the bathroom off his bedroom and to not wonder which body wash she was choosing. But he was grinning stupidly the entire time.

He pulled on jeans and a t-shirt and laced up his work boots. Then he headed over to grab shoes from Paige. There were a number of pairs of varying styles on the back porch and he grabbed a pair of short ankle boots that laced up since he and Jill were going to be walking around the penguin habitat.

He left a quick note that he’d borrowed the boots, though he was certain he would run into Paige and/or Mitch sometime today and could tell them then. He was also certain neither of them would care.

He headed over to Jill’s house and scoured her yard, front to back and sides for any signs of stray alligators. It had probably been Chuck. The alligator made a habit of sunning himself behind the houses down here. Of course, the backyard of the abandoned house had been perfect for him and the humans since he wasn’t bothering anyone there.

Until now.

Zeke was going to have to come up with something.

For one, he was going to have to teach Jill what to do and how to handle gators in her path in the future. That was definitely something that happened periodically down here this close to the bayou. For the most part the alligators were well fed from all the boat tours tossing food out so the animals would come close enough for the tourists to see them. But it was important to know to look for them in the first place.

He was sitting on the front steps of his porch when Jill came out a few minutes later. He’d put her slightly damp clothes in his dryer while he’d been at Paige and Mitch’s and then tossed them back on the floor of the bathroom before she was out of the shower. They hadn’t been too wet and he wasn’t sure she even noticed the difference.

“Are you going to tell me where the rotten wood areas are on my porch?” she asked.

He stretched his feet. “Of course. But the strip from the steps to the door is fine. I made sure of that in case anyone was coming over to make any deliveries or anything for you.”

She came to stand right in front of him. With her on the porch and him two steps down, they were a little closer in height.

“Thanks for…everything.”

“You bet. And I can do whatever else you need. We can talk about your house now that you’re here.”

She held up a hand. “I don’t—”

He captured her hand in his. “Yeah, I know you don’t care.”

But he wanted her to care. He wanted to talk about how to make that house amazing for her. The bones of the house were great and yes, it needed a lot of work, but that meant they could do anything. And she had the money. He didn’t want to spend down her bank account completely, of course, but with her finances and that house, he could really stretch himself, maybe try some new, fun things.

Plus he wanted to…take care of her.

Damn, that was a weird thought.

He didn’t take care of anyone.

He barely took care of himself.

But getting her shoes, helping her get cleaned up, having her come to him—even if it had been kind of accidental—about the alligator, and now taking her to eat all felt good in a way that was very different for him.

“Let’s at least talk about the kitchen.”

Maybe if they took it one thing at a time he could get answers from her. He could walk her through the project step by step.

The kitchen was a great place to start since she had a bedroom and bathroom.

“Okay,” she agreed.

He felt a rush of relief.

“Can you get me a refrigerator that keeps my milk and yogurt cold?”

He blinked at her. “Um…of course.”

“Great.” She smiled brightly.

“What else?”

“That’s all I really need.”

He frowned. “But do you want a center island? An open concept? A pantry that—”

“I really don’t care what it looks like. I’m not going to be hosting dinner parties, so I don’t need anything fancy. I’m not really having any big family holiday dinners, so it’s not like I need a huge oven or the double-decker convection thing my mother has. In fact, I really don’t even need a full-sized refrigerator. I could get by with a dorm-sized fridge.”

Zeke knew he was staring. He did homebuilding and remodels for a living. He had never had someone tell him that they didn’t care about the layout of their kitchen or what their appliances looked like.

“I am not putting a dorm fridge into that kitchen,” he told her.

“Why not?”

“Because that’s ridiculous. You’re a grown woman with an enormous kitchen. You will have a full-sized fridge. Actually,” he said, interrupting himself. “I’m getting you an extra full-size.”

“This is a matter of ego and pride for you?”

“Damn right.”

“I don’t even need a whole house. I could just live in an apartment.”

“Well, you bought that house and I’m going to fucking remodel the hell out of it, so too bad.”

She tipped her head, a slow smile spreading her lips. “You’re hot when you get all riled up.”

“You’re not getting a dorm fridge even if you act all sexy,” he told her.

“I’m certain I could convince you to put a dorm fridge in that kitchen if I had your cock in my mouth.”

Heat grabbed him in the gut and he coughed. “Stop it.”

“This is really important to you, isn’t it?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m damned good at what I do. And while it’s your house and I want to make you happy, I also can’t stand the idea of someone not making that old house magnificent when they have the time, money, and contractor to do it.”

She just studied him.

“And since you don’t care anyway, why don’t you just keep your sweet ass out of my way, say, ‘yes, sir’ when I tell you something, and be sure you pay your invoices on time?”

She smiled again. “Very hot.”

“I mean it.” He wasn’t teasing her now. Though hearing ‘yes, sir’ from her in another context would be very welcome also.

“I know. I think that’s why it’s hot. It’s not just the bossy stuff, but you’re actually really into this.”

“I am.”

He would paint a bedroom neon orange. He would put a fireman’s pole from the upstairs bedroom to the kitchen. He would turn a bathroom into a spa for a dog. He’d actually done all of those things. But because the owner had cared. It had mattered to them. It had been part of making the house their home.

But he’d be damned if he’d let some woman put a dorm fridge and nothing else in that awesome kitchen just because she didn’t give a shit about anything else.

“Okay. Then you’re in charge,” she told him.

Thank God.

“What do you keep in your fridge?” he asked.

“Milk for my cereal and yogurt.”

He paused, but she clearly wasn’t kidding.

Fine. He didn’t have much in his fridge either. Who was he to judge?

“Do you need an icemaker? A freezer for ice cream, frozen pizza, frozen waffles?”

She shook her head. “Nope, I’m good. I mean I assume that there will be room for ice in the freezer because they don’t really make refrigerators without freezers, do they?”

He didn’t think so. But he wouldn’t really know. “I know a lot more about added bells and whistles rather than any kind of stripped-down version. I put a fridge in a kitchen two weeks ago that tells the weather and news of the day and keeps track of grocery lists electronically.”

Her eyes widened. “See, that’s another reason why buying cereal, milk, yogurt, bread, and peanut butter is the best way to live. I don’t even have to keep a list.”

“That’s all you eat?”

“Well at night, I have this vegetable powdered drink thing. But only because I should be eating vegetables and I don’t like to buy them.”

“You don’t like vegetables?”

“It’s more that they go bad. I forget that I have them or forget what I planned to do with them and they get rotten.”

Again, he couldn’t really judge. He didn’t think he’d ever had a fresh vegetable in his refrigerator. But that didn’t mean he didn’t eat them. He ate them at his grandmother’s all the time.

“Vegetable powdered drink mix?”

“It’s not as bad as it sounds. Though it’s not as good as it should be. Still, it’s a way to get the equivalent of three vegetables for the day. And it doesn’t go rotten.”

She’d said bread so he asked, “And you eat sandwiches?”

He couldn’t explain why, but he was fascinated by all of this.

“Of course.”

“So do you like turkey or ham or roast beef or what?” He suddenly really wanted to know what kind of sandwiches this woman ate. But why? He wasn’t sure he even knew what his cousin Kennedy’s favorite sandwich was and he spent nearly every day of his life with her. And Jill was a little odd. And some of her oddities were kind of annoying.

Just put a fridge in your fucking kitchen, woman.

“Peanut butter and jelly,” Jill said.

“Just peanut butter and jelly?”

“Oh jelly. I would need to put that in my fridge. Maybe I do need to make a list.”

Zeke felt the corner of his mouth curling up. There was something about this woman that was just so…different.

He didn’t get a lot of different in his life. His family was a bunch of crazy, quirky characters and they certainly all had their own personalities, but underlying it all was a commonality because of how they’d grown up and lived together all their lives.

The women who had come into his cousins’ lives—Tori and Juliet and Paige—had brought a breath of fresh air to the bayou. They were all from other places and had come to Autre for various reasons, but had fallen in love with the Landry boys as well as the town and the rest of the family and had stayed.

Maddie, Kennedy, and Charlie, the other girls in the family by marriage or blood, had all spent time on the bayou growing up so they’d fit right in with the Landry craziness.

Jill was turning out to be one of those breaths of fresh air. And damn if Zeke didn’t want to breathe deeply.

“So you only eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches? No other kind?” he asked.

“Peanut butter and jelly don’t go bad.”

Right. Back to that. So she tended to buy food that didn’t have strict expiration dates.

“But milk and yogurt both go bad,” he pointed out.

He wasn’t sure how they’d even gotten on this topic and why he felt compelled to keep talking about it.

“They do, but I eat them every day, so they’re habits and I’m much less likely to let them go bad,” Jill said.

“Do you forget a lot of things?”

“A startling amount, actually.”

He gave a soft laugh. He really liked her ability to be self-deprecating.

“Do you need a keeper, Jill?”

She didn’t even blink. “You have no idea.”

He opened his mouth to say something flirtatious about how he’d like to take care of her, but hesitated. He wasn’t really a guy who took care of other people. He got taken care of. He wasn’t exactly forgetful. Then again, he also never had a zucchini in his crisper drawer in the fridge. For all he knew he would forget it was there and let it go bad. He did love a good turkey sandwich, but he always ate them at his grandma’s or his mom’s house. How long did turkey stay good in the refrigerator? He didn’t even know.

Yeah, if this woman needed someone to take care of her—or perishable food—he was probably not the guy.

Suddenly remembering the shoes, that had ironically made him feel like he was taking care of her, he held them up. “Gotcha these.”

She reached for them with a smile. “These will be perfect.”

“These too.” He handed her some socks from his own drawer.

She took them with a questioning look. She turned the boots all directions, checking them out. “They look…pretty.”

The boots were a pale pink. “They’re Paige’s. She does go walking around and out on the swamp boats and loves the otters, but she is not a real outdoorsy girl. And when she’s with the otters, for instance, she’s barefoot. I don’t think those boots are really right for yoga.”

“Yoga?”

“Yeah, she teaches yoga. She actually does otter yoga down at the otter enclosure twice a week.”

“I’m assuming it’s people doing yoga with otters around them and not making the otters actually do yoga.”

“Right,” he said with a chuckle. “She also does cat yoga in her studio downtown. “

“People keep telling me I should do yoga,” Jill said.

“Yeah? Why is that?”

“I’m a workaholic. I don’t really take time to take care of myself and I can be a little…tense about things.”

“I’m sure Paige would love to have you come to class.”

Jill sat down on the top step of the porch and pulled a sock and boot on and started to lace them up. “Yeah, I’m not going to do that.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t do very well with things that go according to a schedule.”

Zeke shook his head. He wanted to keep talking to her for hours. He also thought she was maybe a little nutty. And he definitely wanted to bend her over his couch now that he’d mentioned it.

He couldn’t explain it entirely. He figured it had something to do with the fact that this woman’s mouth around his cock last night had been one of the best things he’d ever felt in his life and that watching her ride him cowgirl had been like an erotic movie come to life.

He hadn’t realized he was quite that easy for sex. Well, that wasn’t true, he knew he was pretty easy for sex. But the idea of spending the entire day with this woman was looking like more and more fun. And in spite of having some pretty great sex in the past he couldn’t remember the last time he’d wanted to spend the entire next day with the woman he’d taken to bed the night before.

“So timelines are trouble for you?” he asked. “Schedules, expiration dates, things like that just in general?”

She slid her other foot into a sock and boot. “Definitely.”

“You can’t just put notifications for appointments and stuff on the calendar in your phone?”

He wasn’t judging. He actually ran his business according to a schedule, having start and end dates for projects, but outside of that he wasn’t a huge fan of schedules and having to be certain places at certain times. He lived on the bayou and owned his own business so he didn’t really have to worry about a hectic schedule.

Jill tied the boot and looked up at him. “Sure, I put things in my calendar on my phone. And then I leave my phone laying on my desk three rooms away and it doesn’t really help.”

They were talking about sandwiches and the fact that she didn’t like schedules and timelines. Why was that so damned adorable?

She lifted a foot turning it back and forth to show off the boots. “They are a little big. But they will totally work. Thank you.”

“My pleasure.”

“How did you know about putting socks on to make them fit better?”

“Growing up I borrowed boots and shoes from all of my older cousins and brothers and always needed to wear extra socks.”

Both of her eyebrows went up. “There are bigger men than you down here?”

He narrowed his eyes playfully. “Not anymore. I caught up and shot past most of them. I’ve even got half an inch on my twin brother.”

Now, her eyes widened under those arched brows. “You have a twin?”

His eyes narrowed further and he wasn’t as playful when he said, “Not that it matters.”

“Who says it doesn’t matter?”

“My brother and I aren’t into sharing.”

He and Zander had never been with the same woman at the same time, nor could he imagine them ever doing that. They both tended to be pretty possessive. Not when it came to ball gloves and trucks and sweatshirts maybe, but definitely when it came to women.

But they had been out with the same woman at different times. Autre was just too small to never date a friend or brother’s ex. As long as it was cool with everyone, it was fine. After all, just because you took the girl to prom when you were seventeen didn’t mean she could never date another guy you hung out with. If that was the case, no one in Autre would ever date anyone else from Autre after about age fourteen.

But there was no way any other guy in Autre was touching Jill.

The thought was sudden and shocking.

But Zeke felt a powerful surge of possessiveness when thinking about Jill being with any other guy. Not just his brother, but any other guy.

He was going to ruin dating for her in this town. And he’d just met her. That was really a dick move on his part.

And he wasn’t even sorry.

He had never cared about the sandwiches the girls he dated ate or what color their bedrooms were painted. He cared about both of those things with Jill. And now he was getting possessive. This was all very strange.

“We should get going.” He pivoted and started down the walk. He heard the boots on her feet hit the pavement behind him.

“To the penguin habitat?”

“To get breakfast.”

“Any chance you decided to just find me some yogurt?”

“Ellie might have yogurt.”

Zeke stopped next to his truck and opened the passenger door. He waited for Jill to join him. He noted the fact that she’d been fine putting the same clothes on again after showering. Sure, it was all she’d had here, but he knew many women who would have insisted on changing after tromping around a penguin habitat.

No, scratch that. He actually didn’t, because he didn’t know too many other women who would have been tromping around in a penguin habitat in the first place.

Tori, his cousin Josh’s wife. Possibly Charlie, if she got a wild hair. Bailey Wilcox, his friend Chase’s girlfriend, who also happened to work for the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries. She tromped around in worse all the time. Jordan, Fletcher’s wife, would. Possibly his grandmother. Other than that, he couldn’t think of many. None of the women he dated, for sure.

Jill climbed up into the passenger seat. “Who’s Ellie? I thought we were going to your grandma’s.”

Zeke nodded. “Ellie is my grandma.”

“And you call her Ellie?”

“There are a lot of grandmas and grandpas down here and several that aren’t even ours by blood that seem like grandparents, so early on we all started calling them by their first names. It’s unconventional down here, that’s for sure. But I can’t imagine calling Ellie anything else. Except maybe ‘brat’ once in a while or ‘lovable pain in my ass’. But then again, she calls me both of those things too.”

“I know what it’s like to grow up in a small town with your whole family around. But if I called my grandmother anything but ‘grandma’ she would’ve gasped so loud, you would’ve heard it down here.”

With her on the truck seat and him standing beside it, they were again at a more even height.

He took advantage and looked into her big green eyes. “You’re not from Omaha then?”

“Nope, not even from Nebraska. I grew up in a little town called Bliss, Kansas.”

“Bliss? Sounds like it should be a happy place.”

“It is for the most part. It’s a pretty typical Midwestern small town. Everybody knows your business, you’ve known everybody there since you’ve been born.”

“Everybody takes care of one another and pulls together?” Zeke asked.

“Yeah. For sure.”

“You miss home?”

“Sometimes. But I couldn’t do my dream job there and that’s always been more important than anything else. I go home to visit a few times a year.”

“Dream job as a zoo veterinarian?”

“Dream job working with penguins. Veterinary school was a good way to get credentials for that job. And Omaha was the first position that opened up that would give me direct contact with them.”

“You don’t like working with the bears and monkeys and giraffes?”

Jill shrugged. “Sure, they’re great.”

“But if it weren’t for the penguins, you wouldn’t have been there?”

“Nope.”

She didn’t seem apologetic about it, or even like she had to think about the question for more than a second.

“But when you inherited all this money and you could move the penguins anywhere, why not take them back to Kansas?”

“Griffin,” she said, thinking about that question for only about three seconds. “It’ll be nice to have another veterinarian around who has the level of passion for animals that I do.”

“Moving back home didn’t even occur to you?”

She was no longer looking him in the eye. “It really didn’t. If I was back in Bliss, I would be caught up in all of the family stuff, the community stuff, my old friends. I love them all and going home to visit at the holidays or for events, like anniversaries and babies being born, is great. But living there full-time would definitely cut into my work. My family doesn’t fully understand what I do or why. So they would be constantly harping on me to leave work at a decent hour and come over for dinner and to be available for picnics on the weekends or to help take my grandmother to appointments.”

Her eyes flew back to Zeke’s face. “It’s not that I don’t want to be around them or to help out. It’s more that it’s really hard for me to juggle everything and it’s easier when I’m further away and not just around the corner for them to drop in on.”

She frowned. “That sounds terrible, I know.”

It did sound a little terrible. Zeke had no idea what it would be like to live far away from his family and friends. It had never occurred to him.

Being around for family picnics and to help take people to appointments along with those anniversary parties and the births of babies was what life was all about in his opinion.

He loved living in the town where he’d grown up and where all of his family had stayed. He’d loved growing up fishing and running around and swimming and raising hell with his brothers and cousins, and now that they were all older and settling down and starting businesses and doing amazing things for the community and the world, he was thrilled to have a front row seat to see it all and to be part of it. Building lemur, sloth, red panda, and now penguin enclosures for his family’s new animal park was awesome. He couldn’t imagine being this happy anywhere else.

“Oh my God, you’re thinking it’s terrible,” Jill said, studying his face. “Aren’t you supposed to reassure me that I’m not a bad person for not wanting to be around my family twenty-four seven?”

He gave an exaggerated wince. “I am definitely not the guy to tell you that not wanting to be around your family is a normal thing.”

“Really? You love being around your family all the time?”

“Absolutely.”

As if on cue his watch vibrated on his wrist and he glanced down to see a text message from his brother asking if he was going to be up at Ellie’s for lunch.

“What’s that?”

Zeke looked up at Jill. Then down at his watch. “This is called a watch. Since you have trouble with times and appointments, you might think about investing in one.”

“It’s a good thing that you’re hot and have a big cock because you actually aren’t that funny.”

He gave a choked laugh. He was used to his brothers and cousins saying graphic and inappropriate things out of the blue, but he couldn’t say he was used to it from the women he was interested in. Except that it made him even more interested in Jill.

He leaned in close. “I’m glad my big cock made an impression.”

She didn’t lean back, or even blink. “Yeah, well, the way you bent me over the motel’s desk chair and used that big cock on me, I think I might still have some impressions of the chair on my hips.”

He felt like lightning had struck his head and streaked through his body.

“Damn, girl. I’m so glad you’re moving in next door.”

Now she did lean back. “Yep. Once a month it will be great.

“Yeah, I don’t think the once a month thing is how this is going to turn out.”

Her eyes were wide. “I think we need to go eat breakfast.”

Okay so now she was trying to put up some barriers. Well, she could try. He wasn’t going to stop her, but he also didn’t think he was going to have to. She might not care what kind of sandwiches he liked, but she wanted him as badly as he wanted her.

Of course, after he took her for breakfast at Ellie’s and she met the Landry clan and saw just how twenty-four-seven involved they all were, she might push even harder.

So it might just take him a while to get a refrigerator installed in her house. But he’d be happy to keep some milk and yogurt in his fridge for her to come over and borrow any time.

Grinning and feeling very optimistic—which was saying something considering Zeke had a pretty charmed life and felt optimistic ninety percent of the time—he leaned in to press a quick kiss to her lips before she could protest, then leaned back and shut the door.

He was actually whistling as he rounded the front bumper and got into the truck.

* * *

Jill wasn’t sure why she felt trepidation as Zeke pulled his truck up in front of a plain square building that could’ve been anything from a storage shed, albeit a big one, to a workshop of some kind.

What it did not look like, however, was a restaurant.

There were two small windows in the front and a glass door but otherwise it was the definition of nondescript. It was a rectangular building that she had literally not even noticed when driving by on her way to her new house because it was so average.

“Do they have cereal here?” Jill eyed the building, already knowing the answer was no.

Zeke shut the truck off. “Define cereal.”

“If I have to define it, the answer is no.”

A bowl of cereal standing at her kitchen counter and she was done in five minutes. It’d taken more than that to drive to this place. Now they were going to have to go inside and order and wait for everything to get prepared and probably have conversations in the meantime. Everyone knew that talking while you ate made eating take longer.

Jill’s inability to just sit and have a meal and conversation that lasted for more than ten minutes drove her mother insane. Her mom, like most of the town of Bliss, loved to sit around and talk. They dressed the events up with food and drink and called them barbecues and picnics and potlucks and block parties to make it seem like it was a meal, but truly it was just an excuse to sit around even longer and tell stories and gossip.

It had always driven Jill crazy.

It wasn’t that she was opposed to eating with other people. But her main focus was the eating and if there was some conversation on the side as well, fine, but no one needed an hour and a half to finish a hot dog and potato chips. In fact, left alone, Jill could eat a hot dog and potato chips and even have dessert done in less than ten minutes. People just needed to focus.

And no, the prepackaged Hot Cakes snack cakes that she counted as dessert weren’t as good as her mother’s homemade fudge brownies, but Jill was generally willing to sacrifice a little bit of homemade goodness for a saved hour in her schedule. And hey, those Hot Cakes people knew what they were doing.

“How long do you think this is going to take?” she asked as she joined Zeke at the front door to the building.

He pulled the door open and looked at her with a grin. “Longer than you’re gonna want it to.”

“It’s that obvious?”

“That you do not want to walk in here and have breakfast with my entire family and half the town? Yes, it’s that obvious. What’s that about anyway? Are you antisocial, shy, or just anti-people in general?”

“I’m anti-wasted time.”

“Eating breakfast is wasting time?”

“Telling my whole life story to a room full of strangers while trying to eat breakfast is a waste of time.”

His grin grew. “You really are from a small town.”

Then he nudged her through the doorway.