Page 43 of Love Off-Limits
Olivia quickly introduced us, and I shifted to hand her the goat, but she held her hands up to stop me. “Oh, no, you keep her. I’ve got to mix up a bottle, and she looks content enough in your arms.”
I looked down. Sure enough, the goat looked as though she’d fallen asleep.
Olivia reached out and scratched her tiny, floppy ears.
“What happened to the mama goat?” I said softly.
Olivia shrugged. “There’s no saying, at this point. Mom will head out and look for her as soon as she’s done with the bottle.”
Mrs. Hawthorne appeared moments later, a bottle with an elongated nipple in her hand. “Sometimes these things just happen,” she said. “My hunch is that her mama wandered off and had another baby or two, only to forget she’d left the first one behind. Sometimes that happens when a mama is kidding for the first time. I don’t like them to labor when they’re out to pasture for that reason.”
“Do you know which one it was?” Olivia asked.
“There were a few that were close to delivering.” Mrs. Hawthorne extended the bottle to me. “You want to feed her?”
“Me? Really?”
She smiled warmly. “Sure. You found her.”
I looked to Olivia, and she nodded her encouragement.
I settled down on a hay bale a few feet behind me, grateful when Olivia sat down next to me to help. It took a little prodding, but eventually, the goat started eating with surprising fervor.
“There you go. Good girl,” Olivia said softly. I looked up and caught her eye. She’d changed out of her work clothes and wore jeans and a Kansas Jayhawks t-shirt. It was the most dressed down I’d ever seen her, and it was my new favorite look.
“If y’all will be all right, I’m going to head out and see if I can find that little one’s mama,” Mrs. Hawthorne said, her hands on her hips. The similarities between Olivia and her mother were striking. They had the same red hair, the same vibrant green eyes. Mrs. Hawthorne’s hair was sprinkled with white, but otherwise, the two could be sisters.
“Do you need me to come?” Olivia asked.
My eyes widened. She wouldn’t leave me, would she? The bottle was already half gone, and then what would I do?
Mrs. Hawthorne chuckled. “I’d say by the look on Tyler’s face, you’d better stay here. I’ll call you if I need you. Once she’s done eating, clean her up and get her good and dry. If you need to, grab the hairdryer out of the supply closet and use that.”
Olivia nodded. “I remember. We’ll be good.”
There was something magical about feeding a newborn baby goat. Her eyes were big and brown and fixed right on me as she finished off her bottle with a satisfied “me-eh-eh.”
“I think we’re having a moment,” I said to Olivia, not breaking eye contact with the goat. “Do you see the way she’s looking at me?”
“Uh-huh,” Olivia said, laughter in her tone. “She’s looking at you like you’re her new mama.” She gave the goat another good scratch. “I think she looks like a Penelope.”
“How are you sure it’s a girl?”
“Good point.” After a quick inspection, Olivia nodded. “Penelope it is.”
“Penelope,” I repeated.
Penelope bleated.
“Come on.” Olivia stood. “Let’s get her cleaned up. And see if we can find you something to wear.”
Chapter Thirteen
Olivia
Was it not enough that I’d had to see Tyler in all his shirtless glory once today? Now I had to handle his half-naked no-longer-secret buffness while he was holdinga newborn baby goat?
The universe was not being kind to me.
