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.”