She shook her head, looking so very angry and helpless that Zed wanted to take her back to his cave and keep her far away from anything that could possibly hurt her feelings. “I don’t have an answer for you. I don’t know why I didn’t feel comfortable telling you. I don’t know why I wouldn’t trust you to help me. I don’t know why I do a lot of things. I’m sorry. I know you wouldn’t judge me for it. I know you wouldn’t shy away. I’m just used to handling things on my own. That’s my first instinct, so that’s what I did.”

Zed leaned forward and kissed her. “Okay.”

“That’s it?”

He nodded. “Yep. What’s the ashram called?”

“It’s not called anything. It’s known as The Place With No Name, which is really difficult to track down, no matter how good your Google skills are—”

He pressed a solemn kiss to her lips. “Let me get this one.”

“I don’t understand?”

“I’m still annoyed at you,” Zed answered. “And we’re going to spend a lot of time talking about you taking too much on yourself. But I am very close to loving you and I’m going to take care of this one thing for you, okay? Let me get your father off of your back.”

“I don’t see how you’re going to do—”

He kissed her again.

“Stop kissing me to shut me up!” she protested.

“You got a more fun way to do it?”

Dani sighed. “Fine. You can have this one.”

“Awesome. Eat this.” Zed handed her a still-warm sandwich and a bottle of water. He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and dialed a number. Rajesh picked up on the second ring.

“Zed! How are you, my friend?”

Zed cleared his throat. “Hey, Rajesh, how’s it going?”

Winking at Dani, Zed walked out of his office and shut the door gently behind him.

“Very well! We just found out that Analah is expecting our first child,” Rajesh said, his tone proud.

Zed hooted into the phone, grateful for some good news during what had been a really shitty day. “Really? Congratulations, buddy! When’s she due?”

“Thank you. We’re very excited. And in about six months. We hope that by then, the medical staff will have moved into town. I can’t exactly take her to a human doctor’s office for an ultrasound of our baby big cat cub.”

“Any day now, Rajesh, I promise. Dr. Ramsay has had a little bit of trouble tracking down a doctor willing to move to the Bayou permanently.”

“I suppose that’s reasonable. If you’ve spent that much on medical school, you probably don’t want to end up in a town with two stoplights,” Rajesh said.