It was a dismissal and Hannah turned to go, even though she really wanted to know what he thought of her creation. Dean was being pretty high-handed, if you asked her, and she wondered if his cast felt the same way. Constructive criticism, indeed! And even more important, had Dean made a pass at her? She just wasn’t sure if he had, or hadn’t.

As Hannah opened the door to go, she decided give Dean the benefit of the doubt. The trailer was wide, but not as wide as a regular office. And the area they’d been in was crowded with his massive desk and office equipment. Perhaps it had been difficult to get past a less than svelte woman in the confines of the trailer. Everything that had happened could be perfectly unintentional.

Hannah reminded herself to look on the bright side as she closed the door behind her and hurried down the stairs. Less than two minutes had elapsed since she’d heard Dean’s visitor go down the back stairs. If she were very lucky, Hannah might still catch a glimpse of her.

She hadn’t been lucky. Dean’s visitor had been gone by the time she’d stepped outside. All Hannah had found when she took a slight detour past the back of the Winnebago on her way to her truck were footsteps in the snow. The footsteps were much smaller than most men would leave and the heel mark was a dead giveaway, since the heels on men’s shoes were usually only slightly smaller than the overall width. Hannah felt safe in surmising that she’d been correct when she’d identified the laughter she’d heard as female.

When Hannah opened the back door of The Cookie Jar, she found Lisa sitting at the stainless steel work island across from Mike and Norman. Both men had coffee and cookies, and all was blessedly silent from the vicinity of Moishe’s crate.

“Moishe gave up?” she asked Lisa, shrugging out of her coat and hanging it on a hook by the back door.

“He negotiated a truce,” Norman answered, moving back on his stool so Hannah could see that he was holding Moishe on his lap. “He’s just fine as long as someone pays attention to him.”

“We tried putting him back in, but he started yowling the minute Norman got him near the cage,” Mike informed her.

“It’s a crate,” Hannah corrected. “A nice big home-away-from-home crate.”

“Technically yes, but he thinks it’s a cage. Why don’t you put on his leash and leave him out?”