She absently rubbed Potato’s soft puppy fur. “The past is the past. I just don’t want things to change now. Jana was more than willing to throw me under the bus back then, and I have no doubt she’d do it again. If doing this incubator thing is the way to keep Rohan away from Jana Suleiman, then I think it’s a worthy cause.”

“Helping refugees and newcomers is already a worthy cause.”

“Yep. That too.”

Asha laughed. “Well, I have to say, this is a new one. I’ve known you for years, Kamila. You’ve been constantly matchmaking for your friends. And now? Match-breaking. Isn’t that against some sort of matchmaking oath?”

“I’m not breaking anything. I’m match-preventing.”

“Semantics, my friend.”

Chapter 8

Chapter 8

Once they’d extracted themselves from the puppy room and cleaned off the drool, Kamila and Asha met Tim in the lobby so they could check out the new prom venue he’d sourced. They’d already reserved the space they used last year—the gym in a local community center—but Tim had been grumbling that it wasn’t memorable enough for weeks.

The venue was very close to the shelter, so they walked there for the tour. It was a former church, and had interesting mid-century modern geometric stained glass, and blond wood floors and walls. Tim oohed and aahed about the vaulted ceiling and natural light. The aesthetic would make for amazing pictures and the raised stage area was big enough for Kamila’s canine freestyle performance, but she worried untrained dogs would pee on the pulpit. After leaving the church, the three of them went to a nearby Japanese/French patisserie to discuss.

“Such a stroke of luck getting that place,” Tim said, stirring lemon into his tea. “The social media team will love it.” Tim was positively giddy about this.

He seemed to forget Kamila was the entire social media team. “I don’t know. Could be a lot of work to change everything. The prom is in four weeks.”

“Nonsense. Everything is online—it’s easy to make changes. Raj is giving the shelter the space for free as a donation. And it’s walking distance from the shelter, so people can come after leaving the Dogapalooza.”

“I’ll have to rework the decor plan. What do you think, Asha?”

“The place is stunning. But you two will have the most work if we change the venue now.”

And more work was exactly what Kamila didn’t need. Not now that she was potentially taking on extra work at Emerald.

“Imagine it,” Tim said. “A red carpet down the aisle. Photo booth in that old confessional. We need to let Raj know soon if we want it. I think it’s perfect, so my vote is to change the venue.”