“I know what it’s like to grow up in a small town with your whole family around. But if I called my grandmother anything but ‘grandma’ she would’ve gasped so loud, you would’ve heard it down here.”
With her on the truck seat and him standing beside it, they were again at a more even height.
He took advantage and looked into her big green eyes. “You’re not from Omaha then?”
“Nope, not even from Nebraska. I grew up in a little town called Bliss, Kansas.”
“Bliss? Sounds like it should be a happy place.”
“It is for the most part. It’s a pretty typical Midwestern small town. Everybody knows your business, you’ve known everybody there since you’ve been born.”
“Everybody takes care of one another and pulls together?” Zeke asked.
“Yeah. For sure.”
“You miss home?”
“Sometimes. But I couldn’t do my dream job there and that’s always been more important than anything else. I go home to visit a few times a year.”
“Dream job as a zoo veterinarian?”
“Dream job working with penguins. Veterinary school was a good way to get credentials for that job. And Omaha was the first position that opened up that would give me direct contact with them.”
“You don’t like working with the bears and monkeys and giraffes?”
Jill shrugged. “Sure, they’re great.”
“But if it weren’t for the penguins, you wouldn’t have been there?”
“Nope.”
She didn’t seem apologetic about it, or even like she had to think about the question for more than a second.
“But when you inherited all this money and you could move the penguins anywhere, why not take them back to Kansas?”
“Griffin,” she said, thinking about that question for only about three seconds. “It’ll be nice to have another veterinarian around who has the level of passion for animals that I do.”
“Moving back home didn’t even occur to you?”
She was no longer looking him in the eye. “It really didn’t. If I was back in Bliss, I would be caught up in all of the family stuff, the community stuff, my old friends. I love them all and going home to visit at the holidays or for events, like anniversaries and babies being born, is great. But living there full-time would definitely cut into my work. My family doesn’t fully understand what I do or why. So they would be constantly harping on me to leave work at a decent hour and come over for dinner and to be available for picnics on the weekends or to help take my grandmother to appointments.”
Her eyes flew back to Zeke’s face. “It’s not that I don’t want to be around them or to help out. It’s more that it’s really hard for me to juggle everything and it’s easier when I’m further away and not just around the corner for them to drop in on.”
She frowned. “That sounds terrible, I know.”
It did sound a little terrible. Zeke had no idea what it would be like to live far away from his family and friends. It had never occurred to him.
Being around for family picnics and to help take people to appointments along with those anniversary parties and the births of babies was what life was all about in his opinion.
He loved living in the town where he’d grown up and where all of his family had stayed. He’d loved growing up fishing and running around and swimming and raising hell with his brothers and cousins, and now that they were all older and settling down and starting businesses and doing amazing things for the community and the world, he was thrilled to have a front row seat to see it all and to be part of it. Building lemur, sloth, red panda, and now penguin enclosures for his family’s new animal park was awesome. He couldn’t imagine being this happy anywhere else.
“Oh my God, you’re thinking it’s terrible,” Jill said, studying his face. “Aren’t you supposed to reassure me that I’m not a bad person for not wanting to be around my family twenty-four seven?”
He gave an exaggerated wince. “I am definitely not the guy to tell you that not wanting to be around your family is a normal thing.”
“Really? You love being around your family all the time?”
“Absolutely.”
As if on cue his watch vibrated on his wrist and he glanced down to see a text message from his brother asking if he was going to be up at Ellie’s for lunch.
“What’s that?”
Zeke looked up at Jill. Then down at his watch. “This is called a watch. Since you have trouble with times and appointments, you might think about investing in one.”
“It’s a good thing that you’re hot and have a big cock because you actually aren’t that funny.”
He gave a choked laugh. He was used to his brothers and cousins saying graphic and inappropriate things out of the blue, but he couldn’t say he was used to it from the women he was interested in. Except that it made him even more interested in Jill.
He leaned in close. “I’m glad my big cock made an impression.”
She didn’t lean back, or even blink. “Yeah, well, the way you bent me over the motel’s desk chair and used that big cock on me, I think I might still have some impressions of the chair on my hips.”
He felt like lightning had struck his head and streaked through his body.
“Damn, girl. I’m so glad you’re moving in next door.”
Now she did lean back. “Yep. Once a month it will be great.
“Yeah, I don’t think the once a month thing is how this is going to turn out.”
Her eyes were wide. “I think we need to go eat breakfast.”
Okay so now she was trying to put up some barriers. Well, she could try. He wasn’t going to stop her, but he also didn’t think he was going to have to. She might not care what kind of sandwiches he liked, but she wanted him as badly as he wanted her.
Of course, after he took her for breakfast at Ellie’s and she met the Landry clan and saw just how twenty-four-seven involved they all were, she might push even harder.
So it might just take him a while to get a refrigerator installed in her house. But he’d be happy to keep some milk and yogurt in his fridge for her to come over and borrow any time.
Grinning and feeling very optimistic—which was saying something considering Zeke had a pretty charmed life and felt optimistic ninety percent of the time—he leaned in to press a quick kiss to her lips before she could protest, then leaned back and shut the door.
He was actually whistling as he rounded the front bumper and got into the truck.
Jill wasn’t sure why she felt trepidation as Zeke pulled his truck up in front of a plain square building that could’ve been anything from a storage shed, albeit a big one, to a workshop of some kind.
What it did not look like, however, was a restaurant.
There were two small windows in the front and a glass door but otherwise it was the definition of nondescript. It was a rectangular building that she had literally not even noticed when driving by on her way to her new house because it was so average.
“Do they have cereal here?” Jill eyed the building, already knowing the answer was no.
Zeke shut the truck off. “Define cereal.”