Page 54 of Business Casual
I shut the door behind him. “Don’t push it.”
13
CHARLIE
“I think you’retrying to kill me,” I wheeze.
I bend at the waist, my hands on my knees. The shovel I’m supposed to be using is discarded at my feet.
Beckett knows. He has to. There’s no other explanation for why I’m standing in the middle of his backyard shoveling dirt just as dawn is breaking over the horizon. I didn’t think he saw me when I drove back to the farm the other morning, but maybe he did. Maybe something about me currently says,I had life-altering, mind-blowing sex with your sister two nights ago, and I don’t regret it.
And now he’s brought me to the field behind his house to slowly kill me with aggressive manual labor.
I shouldn’t have slept over at her house, but she rendered me unconscious after our last go. I couldn’t have moved if someone paid me to do it.
Beckett snorts. “I’m not trying to kill you.” He drives his shovel into the ground at his side and crosses his arms over his chest. He’s not even sweating. “You’re just digging weird.”
“How could I possibly be digging weird?”
“You’re lifting with your back.”
“I’m not,” I answer automatically, but the gasp in my words saps some of the strength from the statement. I’m digging weird becauseI’m still sore from everything Nova and I did to each other. I walked with a limp for half the day yesterday.
I lean back up and look around the wide, open field. Everything is cotton candy pink, a furious orange burning closest to the tops of the trees. And I can’t even enjoy it because Beckett is trying to kill me. “What are we—do you even need a fence here? Is this some sort of hazing ritual?”
“No.” He drags his knuckles against his jaw and squints into the distance. “I told you, I’m not fucking with you. I need to build a fence.”
“For what?”
“For the cows,” he says simply, like the answer is obvious. He called me at five in the morning while I was working on the financial projections for one of my clients and told me he needed me in the field behind his house. When I arrived, he handed me a shovel, pointed to a spot on the ground, and told me to dig. For a while there, I thought he had me digging my own grave.
“Clarabelle is getting a fence?”
He nods. “Clarabelle and Diego.”
“Who is Diego?”
“Another cow.”
“You’re getting another cow? I thought Evie put a hold on the animal adoption.”
She had to. Beckett was getting out of control. He adopted an entire family of cats, two ducks, and a cow in the span of a single year. Evie told him he had to stop or build them a bigger house. He pivoted to gifting rescue animals to his friends instead. Caleb got a dog and Layla has an entire coop full of rescue chickens. He tried to get me to adopt a fox last summer, New York apartment be damned. I’m not sure how Luka and Stella have avoided it, though Beckett has seen the state of Stella’s cluttered house. She’d lose an animal in there.
“Wedding gift,” he explains. Right. The cow. “Evie found him on a farm outside of Durham when she was down there for work. Little guy is a miniature and was being starved half to death at some roguepetting zoo. He’s at a rescue now, but we’re going to drive down in a week or so to pick him up.”
Evelyn travels frequently for her work with the American Small Business Coalition, lending a hand to start-up businesses all over the country. And apparently…finding miniature rescue cows for her husband.
“That’s nice.” I glance around the field. By the looks of it, we have about forty-two thousand fence posts left to dig. God help me. “If he’s a miniature, does he need a yard this big?”
Beckett shrugs at me. “I figured we’d mark out the space whether he needs it or not. Clarabelle ended up in Layla’s backyard a couple of weeks ago and almost gave Caleb a heart attack. Best to have the fence, I think.”
I wipe my hand across my forehead. “All right.”
Beckett’s eyes narrow. “You okay?”
“I’m fine.” Chronically overworked and stressed out about Beckett finding out I had a one-night stand with his youngest sister, but I’m fine.
“Is it your dad?” he presses.
