Well, dumb luck and an ardent love of reptiles. It wasn’t their fault that people thought they were creepy. That was just how God made them.
Elizabeth basically burst into the barn, startling the couple of workers who were there. Nova could practically feel the look she gave them as the vet cleared her throat.
“Could we have a few minutes, please?”
Well, at least if she was about to read Nova the riot act, she was choosing to do it in private. Nova was grateful for the small things in life.
But when the place was cleared and Elizabeth finally turned to her, there was no shouting. There was no reprimand even. Instead, the woman’s face split into a wide grin before she busted out laughing.
Oh.
She was… not mad?
Something wasn’t computing, but Nova waited a good two to three minutes for the vet’s peals of mirth to calm down. It wasn’t until the woman was trying to catch her breath and wiping tears from her eyes that Nova had the gumption to speak up.
“Is everything okay?” she asked finally.
“Okay? Is everything okay?” Elizabeth repeated, clapping and getting lost in another minute or so of laughing. “Are you kidding me? I thought I was going to die out there from trying to hold this in. Did you see Sal’s face? Kid looked redder than the sun!” Another chuckle, a cough, and then another chuckle. “You’ll have to excuse me, but Salvatore Miller has been giving me the stink eye ever since we met, and it was so nice to see him completely off-balance.”
Nova wasn’t sure what strange world she had woken up in, but she was pretty sure her terrible luck somehow wasn’t getting worse. “So… I’m not fired then?”
That seemed to sober Elizabeth up. “Fired? What? No! Why would you be fired?”
“I, uh, I basically hit one of the owners of the ranch. Seems like it would be a big deal.”
But Elizabeth just waved her hand as if it didn’t matter. “You stopped someone who was going to make a harmful mistake in the most expedient way you could. If worse comes to worst, I’ll have you apologize to him for the startle, but he’s a big boy. He can handle a little shove.” She snorted again and man, if that wasn’t just about the last sound that she expected to hear from Elizabeth. “I can’t believe you got that giant onto the ground. He is a big boy.”
“Yeah, really is amazing, isn’t it?” Nova said with her own half-laugh. She was still in shock from what she had done and clearly not nearly as amused as Elizabeth was.
“Yup. I cannot wait to tell Sterling about this. Let me check the time.” She pulled her phone out and frowned. “Oh, I thought we were past lunch. He’s probably still asleep.”
“He a late riser?”
“Kind of,” she said with a shrug. “He has trouble sleeping more than four hours at a time, so he usually passes out around ten, wakes up at two, then putters around until six or seven and sleeps until noon-adjacent. He’s always up and dressed in time for our lunch dates, of course.”
“Lunch dates?” Nova repeated, the switch in the conversation making her head do a one-eighty.
“Oh right, Sterling and I are dating. It’s a long story, just know that it doesn’t conflict with the job in any way, and you shouldn’t expect any special treatment.” Her full lips quirked into a smile. “Well, special treatment beyond getting away with shoving a billionaire around.”
Another nervous laugh from Nova. “Good to know.” But there was that nagging feeling inside of her that it couldn’t be that easy. “Are you sure that we won’t get into trouble?”
“We’ll be fine. If you were stealing, hurting the animals, or purposefully harming anyone here, I’d have you out the door faster than you could say the Lord’s prayer. But that’s not the case, so you don’t have anything to worry about. Although…” The vet seemed to consider something, and Nova’s heart jumped. She knew it was too good to be true. “You know what, maybe you should lay low for a tiny bit. Why don’t you head home for the rest of the day? Full pay, of course.”
“Uh, sure. If you don’t think I should do the onboarding stuff…”
“Well, ideally you would, but I’m pretty sure there’s about to be a fight at the big house, so Solomon probably won’t be free to do much of anything but deal with his brother. I’m sure that will all blow over by tomorrow, and we can get the paperwork done then.”
“Alright then. I’ll bring my tax information tomorrow too.”
“Oh! And before you go, hold on, I have something for you.” She reached into her pocket then offered Nova up a business card. “This is a mechanic I know in the city. She’s great and worked on my own car. Have her look at your junker, since it’s a long drive back and forth.”
“Oh, uh, okay.” Nova took it, looking down at the clean and simple card. Andre’s Mechanic Service. Huh. Andre didn’t sound like a woman’s name.
“Alright, well, since that’s all taken care of, let me escort you to your car so you can get home and digest everything that just happened. Because, lemme tell you, this is probably the most exciting first day of work that I’ve experienced in a long while. Whoo, I can’t wait to tell my dad about this, he’ll get a real kick out of it.”
“Glad that I could be entertaining.”
“Better than being boring.”
“Right, so—” the vet stopped short. “Nova, are you aware that your shirt is wiggling?”
“What? Oh. Right.” Pulling her shirt away from her body, she carefully pulled the mud snake out from under her shirt. It was not happy, but she bent down and let it wiggle out of her hand to disappear across the floor. There were enough exits and hidey-holes that she wasn’t overly worried about it being bothered.
“You’re kidding me,” Elizabeth said, laughing again. “We’re gonna get along just fine.”
Nova sensed that there was a story there, but she didn’t ask. Instead, she just nodded along as they walked back to her car. Elizabeth seemed as happy as a clam, but Nova’s stomach was twisting with nerves. She almost felt like Salvatore was going to pop out at any moment, but thankfully he didn’t, and soon she was on the road.
Elizabeth was right about it being a long drive. Nova had been leery about the job at first for that very reason, but then the pay had been real convincing. And it wasn’t like she was going to be bored. She had podcasts on her phone, plenty of music as well as a language learning app for German and French. And naturally a car charger to make sure her old-as-dirt phone didn’t die. She knew she should get a newer smartphone, but it was just so expensive. Her battery lasted about a solid two hours before needing to be charged or connected to an external battery, but she made do.
In fact, she was only a quarter through her driving playlist when she pulled up to her apartment complex. Sure, it wasn’t the nicest place, but it was cheap, and she managed to land a pretty okay studio apartment. Sure, it only had a shower, and sure, there was barely enough room for her hips in the tiny kitchenette, but there was no mold, no critters, and they only asked for a half a security deposit plus rent.
Putting her important documents into the glove compartment, she headed up the stairs to her place. She wasn’t a huge fan of the number of steps between the ground floor and her front door, but it wasn’t like she could exactly complain. Especially since it was her first time not living in a room for rent since she’d moved out on her own.