He felt as if he’d been doing cleanup in the aftermath of storms in his life for years. He’d settled in Autre, in part, because he thought chaos couldn’t find him here.
Then Charlotte Landry showed up.
“No, that wouldn’t make a difference.”
Charlie blew out a breath. “I grew up around Cajuns, but you are possibly the most stubborn man I’ve ever met.”
“You grew up around people who never told you no,” Griffin said. He shouldn’t have been surprised to find that he was fighting a smile. This woman had that effect on him. It had been stronger last time before she was here messing with his job, but even now, he found himself amused, and he had to admit that watching her brainstorm earlier about turning the petting zoo into a jungle tour had been fascinating. A little over-the-top. But fascinating.
She nodded. “You’re right about that.”
“So, you just see me as a challenge,” Griffin told her. “But having a man around who’s not wrapped around your little finger could be good for you.”
Her smile grew, and Griffin felt a definite uh-oh in response.
“You think you can be good for me, Griffin?”
With that tone of voice and the look in her eye, he had all kinds of ideas about how good he could be for her. But those were exactly the reasons that she was bad for him.
“I think that I could be good for you in a number of ways,” he said. “For instance, I can teach you the difference between sea otters and river otters.”
“Really? I don’t have every one of those facts exactly right?”
He knew instantly that she already knew that she’d been sharing facts about sea otters rather than river otters, like the ones the Boys of the Bayou had on display.
“What do you want that has to do with otters, Charlie?”
“What do you mean?”
“While it’s not impossible for me to believe that you were talking about sea otters while I operated simply because you cannot stand silence,” Griffin told her, “I think there’s a better chance that you were doing it for a purpose. You knew that I would know the difference.”
“It’s hot that you’re figuring me out.”
Desire hit him hard in the gut. The woman was not only bright and surprising and entertaining, she was also very blatant about her attraction to him.
He wasn’t used to people being quite so straightforward. In fact, most of the people he’d dealt with prior to coming to Autre had been focused on being political and always saying things in just the right way. But the Landry family was different. You knew exactly where they all stood on nearly every topic, they always said what they meant, and most importantly, they meant what they said.
Charlie was absolutely a Landry in all those ways. And now, he wanted her more than he wanted any woman in as long as he could remember. So having her constantly putting their attraction out there between them made it impossible to ignore.
“You’re not really that hard to figure out,” he said, refusing to comment on how hot it was.
“Yeah, ditto.”
Strangely, he played the political game rather well when he wanted to. He’d bitten his tongue and smiled through frustration more times than he could count. But maybe some of the Landry ballsiness was rubbing off.
No, it wasn’t the boldness he appreciated. It was the lack of filter he enjoyed about the Landrys. It seemed that his filter had been slowly dissolving over the past few months in Louisiana.
“Then you must have figured out that I’m not interested in a fling.”
“Actually, I think it’s that you’re not interested in a fling with me,” Charlie said, tipping her head. “It seems that maybe flings are exactly how you like to do things. They’re much more superficial and—what was the word you used?—simple.”
He recovered quickly, but she’d caught him off guard. She had figured him out. Maybe it wasn’t hard to tell that he was more of a fling guy now, but they hadn’t known each other long. How was she reading him this well?
Maybe she’d talked to her cousins. The guys here had made a note of the fact that Griffin wasn’t looking for anything serious. Maddie and Juliet, Sawyer’s wife, had tried to set him up a couple of times, but he’d rebuffed every one of their efforts, and they’d now given up.
However, he’d lived with Mitch for several months and hung out regularly with the younger, single Landry boys, including Fletcher, Zeke, and Zander. They were the ones who introduced him to women who wanted nothing more than a fun, physical encounter.
It didn’t surprise him that they would have shared that fact with the rest of the family. The Landrys had no secrets as far as he could tell, and apparently, that extended to the people they adopted into the family.
Yes, he was one of those people. Once they brought you into their fold, it was impossible to truly want to escape. He told himself regularly that he wanted to escape, or at least avoid getting any closer to any of them. But in his less resolute moments, like when he’d had a couple of shots of Leo’s moonshine, or when he was alone in the otter encounter and was spilling his guts to his—thankfully—nonverbal friends, he would admit that he loved the Landry family and enjoyed all the time he spent with them.
So, maybe someone had shared his determinedly single status with Charlie.
But no, he realized a moment later. That was impossible. She had been surprised to find out that he was the veterinarian here. If she’d talked to any of her family members about him and used his name, that would’ve come up. He had to assume that she hadn’t asked anyone about him after the weddings.
Good. That was good. He didn’t want her interested in him any more than he wanted to be interested in her. Because already today he’d seen what could happen when Charlie got interested in something.
She was going to turn their tiny barnyard into a full-scale petting zoo. She wanted to put in a concession stand, for fuck’s sake. He could only imagine what would happen if she decided to pursue a man she was interested in.
“Yes, I am much more into simple and superficial,” Griffin finally answered.
“I can be simple and superficial.” Charlie gave him a little smile that he found, in spite of himself, adorable. Nothing about this woman was simple.
“I’m not interested, Charlie,” Griffin said, telling the biggest lie of his life. “I hope that doesn’t affect us being able to work together.”
She studied him for a long moment, then nodded. “Actually, I think that makes it even more important that we work together.”
More important? He wondered what she meant by that but quickly squelched the curiosity. He didn’t need to pursue anything with Charlotte Landry, even a conversation, at the moment.
She ran her hand over Brownie’s still form. “I think it’s fascinating that baby otters can swim as soon as they’re born.”
“They can’t, actually. They’re born with fur that keeps them from sinking, and they can bob along in the water,” Griffin said. “But they have to learn to swim. The mothers teach them. Just like human parents teach their kids.”
Charlie gave him a bright smile that hit him right in the chest. “That is a great fact.”
He narrowed his eyes. Damn. She’d pulled him right in. One seemingly off-hand comment—incorrect comment, by the way—about an animal, and he engaged.