Total pages in book: 64
Estimated words: 60081 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 300(@200wpm)___ 240(@250wpm)___ 200(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 60081 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 300(@200wpm)___ 240(@250wpm)___ 200(@300wpm)
I lean forward on my stool, making a “come on give it up” motion with my fingers. “Spill.”
She blinks and reaches for her beer. “Spill what?”
“You’ve got the hots for Drew’s brother, don’t you?” I ask, as she chokes on her first sip. “Your boss? Barrett? Isn’t that his—”
“Shush!” She leans in, covering my mouth with her hand as her eyes do an anime expression once again. She glances back and forth before turning to search the space over her shoulder. Only when she’s certain I haven’t been overheard, does she set my lips free.
And because I’m me, I can’t resist grinning and finishing, “Barrett McGuire, the OB-GYN of your dreams? The one you want to give you a private, after-hours exam?”
“Shut it, woman.” She mimes zipping her lips. “Your cookies are fantastic, and I got a strong ‘we should be friends’ energy from you when we met, but I’m serious. No talking about stuff like that in public.” She glances over her shoulder again. “There are McGuire eyes—and ears—everywhere. As long as you’re in Bad Dog, you’re never more than ten feet away from a McGuire, a McGuire cousin, or someone who’s known one of them since they were in elementary school. And I would die if he found out.” She shudders. “Just shrivel up and die. Someone would mistake me for a raisin, throw me in a salad, and that would be that.”
I shudder with her. “A salad? What kind of monster puts raisins in salads?”
“Better than raisins in a cookie.”
I grunt. She has a point. But she’s also potentially making a big mistake. “You don’t think B returns your feelings?”
She shakes her head. “No. He doesn’t think of me that way. Melissa, his little sis, and I were best friends in middle school, when I was in my even more awkward phase. He saw me giggling over boy bands in my kitty cat pajamas and crying in the bathroom because I was scared of the horror movies the other girls were watching in the basement. The damage is done. In his head, I’m perpetually twelve years old.”
I take another thoughtful sip of my beer, scanning Wren up and down. Even in her shapeless scrubs, she’s a hottie, but she does look young. A hazard of being only five feet tall and wearing her hair in a ponytail for work. “Have you tried to do anything about that?”
She frowns. “Like what?”
I lift a shoulder. “Like find some low-cut scrubs and ask him to happy hour? Help him see that you’re a gorgeous, funny, fully grown woman who’s a total badass?”
She giggles before reaching for her beer. “I’m not a badass. I’m the girl voted most likely to become an accountant in high school.”
“But you didn’t become an accountant. You became a nurse who doesn’t blink an eye while separating two people joined at the crotch and totes a shotgun around to protect herself from killer poultry. That’s a badass in my book.”
She sags on her stool. “Ugh, don’t remind me. Kyle was in rare form this morning. When I looked out the window, the yard was empty, so I thought it was okay to head to work without the shotgun. But as soon as I stepped off the porch steps, he rushed me from behind. The jerk was hiding in the holly bush. He pecked me in the bottom twice before I made it to the car.”
“Jeez.” I wince. “You poor thing. Can’t you call animal control? Get them to do something?”
“I could,” she says. “But Tim, the head of animal control, is crazy about turkey hunting. He’d get a depredation permit and kill Kyle, even though spring turkey season doesn’t start for months, and I can’t do that. Kyle’s a terrorist, but I don’t want him dead, just far away from me and my front door. And my butt.”
I tap my chin, brain whirring. I have zero experience with feral wild turkeys but dwelling on Wren’s problems is highly preferable to pondering my own. My situation is hopeless. Hers might not be…
“What if we relocate him?” I ask.
She snorts. “How? He’s huge and mean and really fast. You should have seen him run the other day when I started throwing tennis balls at him through the car window. He’d beat us in a 5K any day. Then he’d wait at the finish line to peck our eyes out.”
“That’s why we don’t try to outrun him. We outsmart him. I may not be a nurse with a master’s degree, but I’m smarter than a turkey. And you’re clearly a genius, getting through all that school and becoming head nurse at your practice by thirty. If we can’t Big Brain a solution to this, who can?”
She takes another thoughtful sip of her beer. “If we do this, will you promise to stop trying to get me to make a move on B? I know you mean well but I’m not a ‘get a makeover and win the guy’ kind of girl. I like sports bras and loose scrubs and too much makeup makes me feel like I’m suffocating. I also love being an OB-GYN nurse and B’s is the only practice in town. If I made a fool of myself and couldn’t bear to show my face in the office again, I’d have to move, and I would hate that. Bad Dog is my home—gossipy neighbors, killer turkeys, and all.”