Otterly Into You

  Erin Nicholas

  Contents

  Otterly Into You

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Kiss My Giraffe Chapter One

  The Series

  About Erin

  Otterly Into You

  a prequel to Kiss My Giraffe

  They’re not-quite enemies. They’re not-really friends. They’re definitely not lovers.

  But they’re absolutely going to be…one of those things.

  He really doesn’t want to want this woman.

  Or her otters.

  * * *

  And no, “otters” is not a euphemism.

  * * *

  She has otters. And she wants him to take care of them. And he’s going to say yes.

  * * *

  Is that going to get him laid?

  Probably.

  * * *

  Is that a good idea?

  Definitely not.

  * * *

  Is he going to do it anyway?

  Absolutely yes.

  * * *

  And he isn’t at all surprised to find that’s just the start of all the chaos…

  * * *

  previously seen in the Christmas Anthology Small Town Christmas (as The Most Otterful Time Of the Year) and at the end of Say It Like You Mane it, Otterly Into You is the prequel to the full-length, HEA, romance novel Kiss My Giraffe!

  1

  I need a favor.

  Knox had two simultaneous reactions to seeing Fiona Grady's name flash across his phone screen as the text came in.

  One, he sighed. The woman was a lot of work. She made his life much more chaotic. Something he did not welcome.

  Two, his body tightened. Particularly one part right behind his fly.

  Dammit.

  Hearing or seeing her name made his body respond like he was a fourteen-year-old boy with a crush.

  The woman had him twisted up. And worse, she knew it.

  He picked up his phone and studied the message.

  He was a twenty-eight-year-old man. And not just any man. He was a fucking grump. On purpose. And Fiona knew that as well. In fact, he was especially grumpy with her. She was an animal rights activist who had never met a furry or feathered creature she didn't want to cuddle and coo at.

  It wasn’t her love for animals that annoyed him, of course. It was the fact that she’d started bringing many of her rescues to Autre, Louisiana to live over the past eighteen months in the petting zoo that had slowly turned into an animal park that had slowly turned into a sanctuary for abused, abandoned, and neglected animals.

  As Autre’s city manager and right-hand man to the mayor, Knox’s job had become more difficult because of those changes. There were more people underfoot now—visitors to the park, media, school groups, animal rights groups. There was also more paperwork crossing his desk with permits and licensing. There were more events too. Fundraisers, holiday parties, even a couple of protests from groups that believed all animals needed to be free in the wild. Hell, he even had more potholes to deal with now because of the increase in traffic.

  And it was all Fiona Grady’s fault.

  She was so not his type.

  So why did she turn him on more than he ever had been before?

  Hello???????

  He felt the corner of his mouth tip up as her next text came across his screen.

  She turned him on because she had three very important things going for her.

  One, she was fucking gorgeous. She had long, dark hair, sparkling blue eyes, and a smile that was quick, bright, and full of mischief. Which he shouldn’t like but worked on him like a drug.

  Two, she was fierce. She was petite and barely stood five-foot-one, but her personality and attitude were huge. She never backed down from his growls. He could bitch and bark at her and she hardly blinked.

  For some reason he liked that.

  She could always back her shit up. She might kick down a door to get to an abused animal and go toe to toe with the abuser, but she also knew the law, would have the correct permits, and would always win if someone tried to take her on.

  Fuck, her boldness and her brain got him going.

  Three, she lived almost seven hundred miles away. That was good. However twisted up she made him, most of the time she was too far away for him to do anything stupid about it.

  I have a scar from the last time I did you a favor, he finally typed into his phone.

  That was not entirely accurate. He had dirty fucking dreams from the last time he’d done her a favor.

  And the favor before that.

  It was the one before that where he’d been scarred.

  Fiona Grady's favors had, so far, ranged from helping her unload a camel from the back of a truck, to tossing a hunk of meat over a fence to a hungry tiger, to helping bandage a gash on her lower back where a pissed off ostrich had tried to take a bite out of her, to letting her nap in his bed.

  The first two, where he’d interacted with the animals directly, had been crazy—and definitely new additions to his resume—but it was those last two that had been haunting him.

  To do first aid on the ostrich bite, she'd had to lower her jeans and show him a good portion of her sweet, well-toned left butt cheek. Not to mention the tattoo that curved over her left hip bone and read, All great changes are preceded by chaos.

  He thought about that fucking tattoo every damned day.

  She absolutely made him feel chaotic. When she was around, he felt it swirling in his head, his gut…his chest.

  Then there’d been the day she’d napped in his bed.

  Whenever Fiona came to town, she stayed with Griffin Foster and Charlie Landry but, in Fiona's own words, Landrys couldn't even take their shoes off quietly. She'd been wiped out from a huge animal rescue and then the long road trip from Georgia and she'd asked if she could sack out on his couch for a couple of hours. He'd said she should absolutely use a bed.

  He hadn’t specifically mentioned the guestroom, because he’d assumed she’d figure out that was where the guests slept at his house.

  But no. He’d found her four hours later in his king-sized bed with the blackout drapes pulled over the windows. Under his sheets. Bare naked. Sound asleep the way only someone who felt completely comfortable and safe could sleep.

  His pillowcase had smelled like her for a week. Sure, he could've washed it, but… then it wouldn’t have smelled like her.

  He hadn't jerked off that much in a week since he'd been a teenager.

  Mine's bigger than yours, she replied in her next text.

  He felt his whole mouth smile. It was true that the scar she had on her lower back from that ostrich was bigger than the one on Knox’s hand from snagging it on the fence when he’d thrown twelve pounds of meat to the tiger.

  His smile died a moment later as he realized that there was no way he was saying no to whatever Fiona was texting him about right now.

  Which was a huge red flag. He had no problem saying no to anyone.

  That included his boss, the mayor, Kennedy Landry. And his mother. And his grandmother. And the mayor’s grandmother.

  And he truly might be the only person to ever say no to Ellie Landry.

  It wasn’t an easy thing to do, he would admit, but he could do it.

  Of course, whenever he did, he had to go without gumbo for a week or so. That meant he carefully chose his battles. Still, once in a while even Ellie Landry needed to have someone put his foot down.

  So did Fiona Grady.

  The fact that he had difficulty doing that made her living in Florida and him living in Louisiana a very, very good thing.

  He liked her. He wanted her. And he absolutely did not want to be involved with her. Or anyone. But especially her.

  Fiona Grady was…a lot. And Knox didn’t want a lot. He very stubbornly and very purposely kept his life as simple as he possibly could. Fiona was gorgeous, funny, fascinating, smart, bold, and feisty. But she was not simple.

  What do you need? he reluctantly asked.

  It's probably easier if I show you.

  He braced himself. She was going to send him a photo and God only knew what might flash across his screen next.

  She’d never sent him naked photos, but a man could hope.

  No, he meant a man could hope she wouldn't. He did not need a photo of Fiona naked. He had plenty of ideas in his head about what that looked like as it was.

  And why did his mind keep going to dirty thoughts? She wasn't sexting him. They had a working relationship. Kind of. She had a partnership with the animal park and sanctuary in town (i.e., she was the one behind most of the animals that now called Autre home) and he was the city manager who got to deal with all the consequences of Autre now having an animal park and sanctuary.

  Increased traffic problems. And road damage. And garbage. And noise and odor complaints from the locals.

  Still, no, Fiona didn’t work for him. Or with him. He would bitch at her because he blamed her directly for the fact that they had red pandas, a sloth, and lemurs in Autre. Because she’d literally brought them here herself. But she always had the paperwork in order, and if he complained about the traffic, the next day his phone would be ringing off the hook with all of the local businesspeople calling to let him know how much their bottom lines had improved as the animal park had grown and how happy they were with the increase in tourism.

  He knew Fiona lobbied them to make those ca

lls.

  So, yes, their professional lives definitely overlapped—or, more accurately, butted up against one another—but this was definitely, probably not sexting. They'd never done that. They flirted in person, and over the phone, and via text once in a while, sure. But it had never gotten that serious. Why was he thinking it would now?

  Because you’ve missed her, dumbass.

  It had been a couple of months since Fiona had been to Autre. Which was unusual. For a while there, she’d come monthly or more to bring animals to the Boys of the Bayou Gone Wild. She had quickly realized that the Landrys, who owned and ran the petting zoo, were exactly the kind of people to welcome and care for abused and neglected animals that needed a place to live quietly and happily after what they'd been through.

  Initially, they'd been building the business as a moneymaker, of course, but Fiona had recognized bighearted animal lovers and had not-so-slowly introduced them to animals in need.

  At first, the petting zoo had been fairly simple. Goats, a potbellied pig, alpacas, the usual. It had been a straightforward attraction. But they'd quickly added lemurs, a sloth, a colony of endangered Galapagos penguins, flamingos, a harbor seal, and various other animals ranging from hedgehogs to peacocks.

  Yes, the animal park had been a headache for him nearly from the start, but when he’d realized that some of the animals—donkeys, camels, and some horses—had been rescued and were coming here as an escape from their previous abusive situations, he’d realized what Fiona was really up to.

  He’d made her tell him about what she actually did at her animal park in Florida. She had giraffes and a few other interesting animals people came out to see, but at its core, it was a sanctuary. And when she’d told him about the rescues she conducted, about the conditions they sometimes found, and the physical and emotional rehab they were able to do with the animals when they rehomed them in the right places…he’d fallen a little in love with her.

  Fiona Grady was a force to be reckoned with.

  And she was fucking gorgeous when she was passionate and riled up about something. Which was most of the time.

  He was still waiting a minute later for a photo to ping his phone when his office door opened.

  “Hey, Fitzwilliam.”

  God, he wanted her.

  That was his first thought when he looked up and saw Fiona standing in his office doorway.

  2

  “Nope.” He set his phone on his desk and strove to look nonchalant about the fact that she was in Autre and not seven hundred safe, can’t-touch miles away.

  Since they’d met and she’d found out that he went only by his last name and that no one knew what his first initial—F—stood for, she’d been trying to guess his first name. She hadn’t landed on it yet and no one here in Autre knew. He’d always just gone by Knox, even in high school. Or F. Knox if it was something official.

  He had no intention of telling her what his first name was. Simply because the more he got to know Fiona, the more he thought it was good to keep some secrets. He already had the very uncomfortable sensation of being wrapped around her tiny, sexy, pinky finger.

  He purposely leaned back in his chair and laced his fingers together, resting them on his stomach. Calm. Cool. Unaffected.

  As far as she knew.

  He wasn't going to let her know that his pulse had kicked up the moment he saw her smile, or that his fingers were itching to slide into her hair, or that his cock was hard and ready to go. How could she affect him this much with a simple greeting, standing twenty feet away?

  "You're in town," he commented unnecessarily.

  She spread her arms. “It’s Christmas."

  She wore ankle-high black leather boots and black leggings that molded to her legs, with a long red and black plaid shirt that just covered her hips and ass. Over that, she had a quilted black vest that gave a nod to the fact that it was cool outside but certainly not cold. Her hair was down and loose and she looked…gorgeous.

  “Didn’t know you were in town,” he said.

  “I like keeping you on your toes.”

  It seemed she was very, very good at that.

  He glanced toward his office window. Sure enough, her gigantic purple truck was parked in front of City Hall.

  And he was like one of Pavlov's dogs. That damn truck made his cock ache. They hadn't even slept together. But his body craved her and he got hard at the sight of her Ford F-150 XLT that was the color of grape soda and far too big for the woman he could have easily thrown over his shoulder and carried up the sixteen steps to his bedroom without even breathing hard.

  Today, though, the pickup had reindeer antlers on top of the cab and a huge red ball for a nose between the headlights, that he assumed were supposed to be the eyes.

  “You’re a few days early for Christmas,” he pointed out, turning back to face her, glad his desk was between them and blocking what was going on behind his fly.

  Was she staying through the holiday? She usually only hung around for a day or so after delivering animals and saying hi to her friends in Autre. She had her own animals and life to get back to in another state. But it was only the twentieth. If she stayed through the holiday that would be nearly a week…

  “No, we’re heading home the day after tomorrow. So I wanted to come and give everyone their gifts before we left.”

  He frowned. She was heading home to Florida the day after tomorrow? “Where have you been?”

  He was very aware that Fiona did a lot of things he wasn’t privy too. Why should he be? And why should he care?

  That was a question he always shut down as soon as he started to think it.

  Well, usually as soon as he started to think it. When he’d found out that she threw herself into rescuing animals in the aftermath of natural disasters like hurricanes and earthquakes and wildfires, he hadn’t quite been able to hold back. And he might have picked her up and carried her out of Ellie’s bar and backed her up against his truck and demanded she tell him all about those rescues and her training and how she kept safe.

  And he might have come within a centimeter of kissing her.

  Even right now he had to consciously make himself take a deep breath.

  He had no idea what she did on a typical Thursday night, either. He didn’t know if she was safe or if she even thought about keeping herself safe or if the animals always came first…

  Actually he did know. That’s what made him crazy. She always put the animals, and other people, before herself. He worried. And he didn’t like it.

  He didn’t need to know everything about her and what she did. He didn’t want to know. What they had was…fuck if he knew. They weren’t co-workers. They weren’t friends. They weren’t…anything.

  She was a woman he was semi-obsessed with and trying very hard to not be even remotely interested in.

  He should be glad she wasn’t going to be here for the holidays. Every time he saw her around their mutual friends, he liked her more. She was warm and funny and smart and someone he could get very, very wrapped up in.

  Fuck.

  “I’ve been in Florida,” she said.

  “So how are you heading home?” he asked. “I’m confused.”

  “Oh, we’re heading home home. To…Europe.”

  He blinked at her. Europe? What? “You’re from Europe?”

  “That’s where my family is. My mom and my grandparents.”

  “I—” He’d had no idea. “You’re not an American?”

  “Nope.”

  “You…don’t have an accent.” That was a stupid thing to say. But this was just one more fucking thing he didn’t know about her and it made him just as crazy as everything else he didn’t know and he didn’t fucking want to be crazy. About her or anything else.

  She gave him a little smile. “I got rid of it.”

 

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