Heiress for Hire (Cuttersville #2)(37)
Author: Erin McCarthy

A wild flapping and squawking commenced, and when the dust settled, Amanda saw a puny little chicken had taken a choice spot in the middle of the pack. The others cut a wide swath around the bird, and it pecked the ground arrogantly, grabbing a piece of roll, holding the food in its beak, and checking out the crowd. With a strut, it swallowed the food and took three steps to the next crumb.

"Who is that little bitch?"

"Actually, not a bitch at all. That’s a cock."

"Excuse me?" Amanda widened her eyes at Danny.

"A boy chicken. The rooster."

Right. Of course. Cocks. Bitches. Slightly different meaning on a farm than they had in a nightclub in Chicago.

"That’s Rudy. He’s the only male. The rest are hens."

"He’s like half their size! Doesn’t he find that intimidating?" She was getting weirded out just thinking about it. Chicken sexuality had never occurred to her before, and she was getting a visual she could do without.

"Rudy isn’t intimidated by much."

Obviously, given the chicken strut he was doing around the yard. Male arrogance wasn’t unique to humans. "Typical. The smallest c**k has the biggest swagger."

Danny laughed and tossed more food in a wide arc. "He has thirty girlfriends. I guess that would make any guy feel like bragging."

"Yuck. Thank you for ruining chicken for me forever. Here I had myself convinced chicken just appears on the table with a nice lemon sauce on it, and you had to go and shatter my intentional delusions."

"While they’re eating, let’s duck into their coop and scoop out the eggs."

"I’ll wait here, but thank you for asking."

Danny grinned at her. "You really want me to leave you out here by yourself with all these chickens?"

There was a very valid point. "Okay, I’m coming."

At the door of the squalid shack, Danny pulled a pair of rubber boots off a hook. "Just slip your feet in these."

"Why?" Not that she wanted to hear this answer, because she was pretty sure it was going to have to do with something gross.

"Trust me. Put the boots on."

They were huge and they were gray. They went above her knees. "You know, if these were orange with some polka dots this wouldn’t be a bad outfit. Farm fashion. It could be the newest market."

"I don’t think there’d be much of a market for that. But you do look pretty damn cute."

Danny ducked and disappeared into the chicken house. Cute. She was cute. Chicks were cute. Puppies were cute. She wanted to be sexy, sultry, classy, elegant. Choose one of the above. Not cute. Ugh.

The chicken house was a house of horrors. Starting with the smell. "Ugh, nasty! It smells like the restroom at Wrigley Field in here."

"Watch the droppings." Danny pointed to a pile of…

Sick. No wonder it reeked.

Danny had a bucket in his hand, and he started digging through a row of nests, pulling up eggs.

"Can’t you clean this place out a little? This is a labor and delivery room, you know. I’m sure the hens would appreciate some cleanliness." Maybe an air freshener for starters.

Danny didn’t glance up, though he did shake his head and swear under his breath. "Start grabbing eggs before the food is all gone and they storm back in here."

That would be bad. Amanda shot a nervous glance out the door. They were still pecking like mad at the ground, but who knew how long the food would hold. She clomped to the opposite side of the shack from Danny and almost lost a boot.

"Damn!" Amanda just about pitched over into chicken poo-poo trying to maintain her balance with her legs spread three feet apart, mid-stride. She didn’t spend enough time with her legs apart to be good at it, and really almost never standing up.

"You okay?"

"Yes," she said, flicking her hair off her face and bringing her feet back together. "But I dropped Baby’s leash. She’s over in the corner sniffing something—something nasty, I’m sure—but don’t step on her."

The first nest had two eggs sitting in it. Amanda reached out gingerly and lifted them out. Her conscience pricked at her. "Ooh, I’m not sure I can do this, Danny. That poor hen is going to come back, and her nest is going to be empty."

"It’s empty every day. I’m sure she’s used to it."

"Even worse. She lays each egg, hopeful, and then they’re gone. We’re kidnapping her chicks. We’re thieves, we’re scum."

"We’re capitalists." Danny moved to her side of the chicken coop and took the two eggs out of her hand. He held each one up to the window and glanced at it before putting it in his bucket.

"What are you looking for? What separates a good egg from a bad egg?" Amanda reluctantly moved to the next nest. "Major producer here. Six eggs, wow. She must have taken fertility drugs."

Danny laughed. "I’m making sure none of the eggs have been fertilized. We can’t eat those."

"Why not?" She was trying to keep up, but animal husbandry courses hadn’t been offered at her boarding school.

"Because they will have embryos in them if they’ve been fertilized. The ones we eat don’t. If they’ve been fertilized, we let them hatch into chicks."

She didn’t really care, honestly she didn’t. But she couldn’t help but be curious. "Sooo, how come some are fertilized and some aren’t?"

Danny stopped and looked over at her. His ruddy cheeks split into a grin, and his brown eyes had a sexy little glint to them. "If they’re fertilized, it means Rudy had a little midnight visit to that hen’s nest, and not to play checkers."

Amanda froze with her hand reaching for an egg. "Oh my God. You mean, rocking the nest? That’s so frightening. Chicken sex. I’m getting a whole world of information I could do without."

"There’s a lot of sex on a farm, Amanda." And he winked at her, the dork. Like a chicken coop was a place to be flirting with her.

"Spare me the details."

When she turned, she almost dropped the two eggs she was holding. Danny was right behind her, preventing her from going left or right. He always prevented her from breathing whenever he got that close to her.

"Jesus, what? Give me some room."

But he didn’t back up. "Why are you upset with me, Amanda? You’ve been avoiding me ever since…" Danny adjusted the bill of his baseball hat and cleared his throat.

"Since we kissed? Sucked face? Swapped spit? Is that what you’re referring to?" Upset was an understatement. She felt stupid. Like a big dumb blonde who had thrown herself into the strong, silent type’s arms and trembled over his touch.