Of course, his loyalty would always be with the animals first. Which meant speaking up if he thought things were getting out of hand.
“Who’s going to consult with Charlie on which animals to add?” he asked. “We all know she’s not going to stop at hedgehogs.” He sighed. She’d already added rabbits to the list. “And someone should set guidelines for how this will all go. How much and often the animals are fed. How to rotate the ones who are interacting with people and which ones are off display. I don’t think any of them should be interacting with tourists all day, every day.”
Tori nodded. He knew that Tori would want the best for the animals as well.
“I think Charlie will be fine with guidance on the animal care portion of the idea by someone with expertise,” Tori said.
“Absolutely,” Sawyer agreed. “She’s gung-ho for sure, and she will have big ideas and move on them quickly, but she’ll listen to you.”
“Me?” Griffin asked.
“You’re the one with concerns,” Sawyer said.
Yes, he most definitely did have concerns where Charlie Landry was concerned. But he wasn’t sure that his primary ones had anything to do with adding hedgehogs to their petting zoo.
“Will you give me full authority to approve or disapprove any animal additions?”
Tori gave him a contemplative look. “Of course, I trust you completely, Griffin. And I know that you will guide Charlie appropriately. But you can’t shut down all of her ideas.”
He really wanted to shut down her ideas.
He had a very bad feeling that Charlie was going to stir up a whole lot of things for him that he’d, so far, successfully kept under wraps since coming to Autre.
The job was straightforward. A little boring even. The otters were, by far, the most interesting animals he dealt with. And that was fine with him. He didn’t need big, crazy ideas or anything “interesting” or challenging. Anymore. He needed basic, routine, unexciting. Like an addict needed to avoid their substance of choice, he needed to avoid situations that might get him worked up, passionate, and… fired.
“Right,” Maddie agreed with Tori. “Obviously, Griffin and Charlie are the perfect people to work on this together.”
Griffin felt a very strange mix of trepidation and excitement swirl through him. The excitement was obvious. Charlie Landry was someone that he would very much like to spend more time with. It would be torturous, of course, but she was like a bright light, and he was a moth.
The trepidation came from knowing that excitement always led to big disappointment. The universe had proven that to him over and over. Excitement was definitely cause for worry as well.
This girl was going to be big trouble for him. And he no longer had the great buffer of an ocean between them.
“For sure,” Tori said. “With your experience working with animals on display, whatever you can bring to this project is far beyond anything I could do.”
Tori was already moving toward the door of the clinic, and Griffin had the impression she was trying to escape before he could make a really good point about why he shouldn’t be brought into this project. Or why the project was a bad idea.
“This is a Boys of the Bayou project,” he said. “I shouldn’t be involved in actually expanding the business. I’m not part of the Boys of the Bayou.”
Maddie was also moving toward the door. She waved a hand as if his comment was unimportant. “Of course you’re part of it. You’re part of the family, Griffin. We know that you have our best interests at heart, and we’re so glad to have you onboard.”
Dammit. She had to pull out the you’re part of the family, didn’t she? Of course, anyone who spent more than about ten minutes with the Landry family was one of the family. He’d been living with Mitch for about six months. That had clinched it. But even though he now had a place of his own, he still ate most meals with the Landrys and, of course, worked with many of them. And whether they knew it or not, the idea of being accepted into a big, boisterous, loving family was hard to resist.
He’d tried. He had put up every wall that had worked in every other place to keep the Landrys out. But they’d gotten past all of his defenses.
He only had his brother in the world now, and Donovan was busy traveling the country as a wildlife rehabilitation expert. They’d had some rocky times for sure, but they were good now, and he’d even go so far as to say they were friends. They didn’t, however, live near one another or have regular meals or tease and fight good-naturedly the way the Landrys did.
Griffin liked all of that. Too much.
“And,” Sawyer said, also taking steps toward the door, “we trust you implicitly. We know that you’re going to do whatever you can to make the business successful, even while watching out for all of our animals, as well as our visitors.” Sawyer shrugged his big shoulder. “Really, there’s no one else who could do this job. Charlie can come up with a plan, and you’ll be sure it’s implemented perfectly.”
He should object. He should tell them he wasn’t going to do it.
But he wanted to do it.
He’d prefer that Charlotte Landry’s sweet ass was still planted in some swanky café in Paris. But if she was going to be here and doing this, he wanted in on it. He wanted to be sure it was done right.
And she was going to do this. He’d seen the sparkle in her eyes. She was excited about this. The chances of talking her out of it were zero. He already knew that.
“Do you have a long mop?”
He turned at the sound of Charlie’s voice. When he saw her, all thoughts left his mind except, Shit, I really like her.
Charlotte Landry, the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen, the woman that he still had very dirty dreams about even two months later, the woman whose mouth he could still feel and taste if he closed his eyes, now stood in front of him in short shorts, wearing rubber boots that went up to her knees, rubber gloves that went up to her elbows, and a facemask that covered her nose and mouth.
He couldn’t help but grin. Kennel three seriously had been a mess. But Charlotte had headed in there without an argument and was cleaning it up. From the looks of her boots, she had waded right in.
Griffin glanced behind him to get the reactions of her cousins but found they’d already left. Cowards. They’d taken the chance to escape when he’d been distracted. He turned back to Charlotte.
And boy, was he distracted.
“All the cleaning supplies are in the closet across the hall.”
“Great. I hope you’ve got plenty.” Her voice sounded nasally.
“Is that mask pinching your nose?”
She lifted a hand and pulled her mask down. Her nostrils were plugged. By two tampons.
He stared. Huh. He knew that they sometimes used tampons to stem the flow from bloody noses. He supposed the tampons would also keep smells out.
Creative. He would absolutely have to add creative to the list of adjectives he used to describe Charlie. He hadn’t realized that he had a specific list, but looking at her now, he realized he absolutely did.
Funny, intelligent, sexy as hell, a little manipulative, willing to hold a goat in an eight-hundred-dollar cocktail dress—yes, he realized that was more than one-word—and now creative.