She took his face in her hands and said seriously, “If my hand ends up on your balls at any point tomorrow, rest assured you will be very happy to have it there.”
And then the best thing happened. He laughed, then lowered his head and kissed her long and hot and deep.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, Charlie,” he said as he lifted his head.
“For sure, Griffin.”
They just stood looking at one another.
Finally, Griffin said, “I’m gonna watch you until you get to the front door.”
She was staying with her grandmother, whose house sat across from her bar. It was about a hundred feet from where they stood right now. She glanced at the house and back to Griffin with a smile. “Really?”
“Really.”
“Why?”
“Well, for one, I really like watching you walk away.”
She laughed. “I’m going to assume that means you like the view from behind rather than because you’re always happy to see me go.”
“That’s definitely it,” he said. “Though, if I’m honest, sometimes I’m glad to see you go.”
She laughed louder. “That’s fair.”
“But tonight,” he said, his voice dropping. “It’s more because I just want to be sure you’re okay.”
“I’m never more okay than I am when I’m here in Autre,” she said honestly. The truth of that fact hit her harder than she would’ve expected.
There was even a flicker of what could have been surprise but also looked like satisfaction in Griffin’s eyes.
“Then, it’s really because I feel like I should be walking you to the front door, but if I do that, I’m afraid something might happen that would scandalize Ellie.”
Charlie grinned up at him. “I can’t even imagine what it would take to scandalize Ellie.”
“You really have no idea all the things I want to do to you, then.”
Her smile dropped as heat streaked through her. She started to reach for him, out of instinct, she supposed, but he caught her wrist. He turned her hand and lifted it to his mouth, pressing a hot kiss to the center that sent tingles dancing up her arm. But then he dropped his hold and said, “No more touching right now, Charlie. I don’t have the self-control.”
She took a deep breath and let the sense of satisfaction seep into her. She was testing Griffin Foster’s self-control, and it had nothing to do with him protecting an animal. That was definitely worth being proud of. She nodded and stepped back. “Fine. But don’t think that I’m always going to let you off the hook so easily. I would love to see you lose some of that self-control.”
“Just keep being you, then,” he said. “And stop scheduling me such early patients so I can stay up all night.”
Flirting with Griffin was an entirely new experience for her. She never knew when he was going to say something hot or sweet or funny. And she loved it.
She lifted up on tiptoe to press a kiss to his cheek. Then turned on her heel and walked toward her grandmother’s front door, very aware of his eyes on her the entire way.
When she was on the porch with the front door open, she turned back and gave him a smile. He was indeed watching her, and a warm flurry of butterflies fluttered through her stomach.
She lifted a hand and blew him a kiss and then stepped into her grandmother’s house with, she was sure, a very obvious I’m-falling-in-love smile on her face.
And on her way up to her bedroom, she wondered what exactly went into getting a license to own an elephant.
13
“So what do you know about elephants?”
Tori looked over at Charlie with her muffuletta halfway to her mouth. “Um, can you be more specific?”
Yes, she could. But they were all going to think she was nuts. Oh, well.
“Specifically in regards to having them in zoos. Or animal parks.”
Tori set her sandwich down. “I know that there is a lot of licensing involved. Who can own what animals varies state by state.”
Yeah, Charlie had figured there was a lot of paperwork involved. At least. She’d tried looking some things up online, but it was stupidly hard to get a direct answer. Still, she hadn’t stopped thinking about growing the business with more animals in the past two days since she and Griffin had heated up the barn.
“Right. For individuals. But what if an established animal park or zoo wanted one?”
“Zoos have connections to get animals,” Tori said simply.
“What about animal parks?” Charlie pressed.
“Are you getting us an elephant?” Zeke asked with a chuckle. He was leaning back in his chair, nursing a glass of tea, with half his attention on the TV over the bar.
“I was thinking about it,” Charlie admitted.
That caught Zeke’s full attention. “No shit?”
Tori leaned in. “You were wondering about getting an elephant for the petting zoo?”
“Well…” Charlie realized that everyone at the table—Tori, Maddie, Zeke, Fletcher, and Owen—were all listening now. “I was just wondering about the potential for expanding beyond the petting zoo.”
Maddie’s eyebrows rose. “You want us to have a zoo zoo?”
“An animal park.”
“What’s the difference?”
She wasn’t sure. Animal park sounded smaller and less formal than a zoo. “I was just… talking… to Griffin the other night, and he mentioned that he’d fallen in love with elephants while he was in Zambia.”
“You want to get Griffin an elephant,” Tori summarized with a grin.
Charlie really should have tried to have this conversation with Tori privately. It was just so damn hard to do anything privately with this family.
“It just got me thinking that if we want to really grow the business, maybe one way is to expand with more animals,” Charlie said.
“What do elephants have to do with the swamp?” Owen asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Maddie and Sawyer said you were working on a way to tie the llamas—”
“Alpacas,” Charlie and Tori corrected at the same time.
“And goats and shit to the bayou,” Owen went on as if they hadn’t spoken. “So how does adding another definitely-not-from-the-bayou animal help?”
Charlie nodded. He had a point, of course, but her mind was already working. “Our ‘safari’ can span continents,” she said simply. “The kids and families will start their adventure in North America, starting on the farms of the Midwest and traveling down to Louisiana to the swamp. Then they’ll travel to Africa to learn about other animals.”
Owen just stared at her.
“Well, then why not keep going and get some penguins and take them to Antarctica too?” Zeke said. He tossed a fry into the air and caught it in his mouth.
Charlie frowned at him. “Maybe I will. Maybe I’ll get a panda too and have them tour Asia.”
“You have to get kangaroos then and have them ‘visit’ Australia,” Zeke said, putting air quotes around visit.
He was teasing her, she knew, but dammit, now Charlie couldn’t stop thinking about all of this. Kangaroos would be awesome.