She was trying to get penguins pregnant and they had no interest, but all the animals around her were getting knocked up.
Well, not all of them. Many of the animals wouldn’t mate until spring. But that seemed the only thing saving her from being completely surrounded by baby animals of all kinds.
Except penguins, of course.
But it went even beyond cats and alpacas and otters.
And it was very, very, very ironic.
Turned out her weight gain wasn’t entirely from the remoulade sauce. Or even from Ellie’s amazing pecan pie.
Nope. The five pounds, and a few other symptoms, were all Zeke Landry’s fault.
“You don’t have to knock, you know,” Zeke told Jill as he pulled his door open. “Just come on in.”
Ever since the washing machine sex—okay, the first washing machine sex—she’d been coming over to his place at least three nights a week. He knew a lot of it was the sex. And Cora and Ellie’s cooking. But he thought maybe some of it was his company.
“Hi.” Jill’s gaze traveled over him but lingered first on his glasses.
He’d needed the damned things for reading since he’d been about fifteen. He was barefoot and wearing jeans and had just shrugged into a flannel to come to the door, but he hadn’t buttoned up. Her gaze next got hung up on the ink across his chest and he leaned to brace a hand on the door frame as he let her look.
He drank in the sight of her in return. She was wearing loose gray athletic pants and a pale green t-shirt under a hunter green hoodie. Her hair was pulled back into a ponytail and she had no makeup on, as usual. Everything about her screamed girl next door, but that wasn’t unusual. The huge lantern and the long pole with the looped cable at the end she was carrying, however, were.
“What are you doing with those?”
“In case I ran into Chuck on my way over.”
“And where did you get them?”
“Zander.” She held up the pole. “It’s to loop around the alligator’s neck, and—”
Holy shit. “I know what it’s for.” There was no way in hell Jill was going to be looping that thing around any alligators. “When did you get it?” She’d been coming to his house frequently.
“A few weeks ago.”
“I haven’t seen it before.”
“I leave it out here.” She leaned to set it to the side of the door.
“You’ve been bringing that over here with you every night?”
“Yeah.”
He hadn’t noticed. Of course, he was always very focused on her when she showed up.
“Zander said maybe I’d be better off just poking him with the other end of it and being really loud to try to scare him off.”
“Do not poke an alligator with a stick, Jill.” Jesus. What was Zander talking about? “Don’t fucking get close enough to an alligator to poke it with a stick.”
“What am I supposed to do? I have an alligator who frequents my yard.”
“You avoid him. You run in the opposite direction. Or you scream really loud and I’ll take care of it.”
“What if you’re not home?”
“You put your pretty ass back in your house and call me.”
“And what if you’re in another town and can’t come over right away and I need to get out to the penguins?”
Zeke shoved a hand through his hair. “He’s not going to attack you. I keep him well fed to avoid that very scenario.”
Jill propped a hand on her hip. “You feed Chuck?”
“Yeah.”
“Did it ever occur to you that he keeps coming over because of that?”
“I’m sure he is. But the first time he came over wasn’t because I fed him and I’d rather have him eating my chicken than eating…you.” He gave her a slow grin. “I’m the only one who’s going to be doing that.”
She frowned, instead of responding to his flirty teasing. “Yeah, about that. We need to have a talk.”
Zeke didn’t like the sound of that. If they had to talk about him eating her, it was either because she wanted him to do it right now—in which case she probably wouldn’t be frowning—or she was going to ask him not to do it anymore. And that wasn’t really okay either.
He shifted away from the frame. “Come on in.”
She ducked under his arm and stepped into the house.
“Have you eaten?” He already knew the answer to that question, but felt that it was polite to ask before he loaded up a plate of leftovers from Ellie and put them down in front of her.
Jill put a hand on her stomach. “I’m not really hungry.”
That was new. She’d loved everything Ellie had sent home for her. He frowned, taking in her distressed expression. “You okay?”
She shook her head, and Zeke felt his chest tighten.
“What’s wrong?”
“We should sit down.”
He moved in toward his dining room table where he’d been working. “Okay. Have a seat.”
She looked at the table strewn with papers. “What’s all this?”
“Oh. Taxes.” He pulled out a chair and dropped into it. “What’s going on?”
“This is a lot of paperwork for taxes for one guy. And it’s not tax season.”
“Quarterly taxes.”
“This is all for your quarterly taxes for your construction company?”
“No, I do everybody’s taxes.”
“Who’s everybody?”
“Ellie and the Boys of the Bayou and now Boys of the Bayou Gone Wild. Then, besides mine for the construction company, I do Zander’s and Mitch’s and everybody’s personal stuff during tax season.”
She was looking at him, puzzled. “You do everyone’s taxes?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“It’s fun.”
She blinked at him. “Doing taxes is a hobby?”
“Kind of. I am a CPA. And I make them pay me. But it’s definitely on the side.”
“Who does accounting for fun?”
“Math geeks.”
She was looking at him as if meeting him for the first time. “You’re a math geek. Who does accounting for fun. For his whole family on the side of his construction business.”
“Yep.”
“Wow.”
“What are your hobbies?” he asked.
She gave him a look. “You already know the answer to that. I don’t have any hobbies. It’s penguins, penguins, penguins.”
He sat back in his chair and again noted how her gaze traveled over his bare chest and stomach as his shirt fell further open.
“Could you button up?”
“I could. Or I could just take it off. I guess it depends why you’re here.”
“This is definitely a button up conversation,” she told him. “Though not unrelated to the times you’ve unbuttoned and taken things off.”
Was she dumping him? That would be weird. Everything had been going great. The sex was out of this world, they were happily living next to one another, sharing his space frequently, and having fun. They were a lot alike in many ways, actually.