But what he’d done to Heather was her business. Outsiders never seemed to understand what it was like to live in a small town. Those people were separate even from their next-door neighbors. In Mason, no one was separate from anybody else. What he’d done to Heather was going to directly affect Caitlyn.

She had to fix this!

Outside his door, she stopped and took some deep breaths. She needed to stay calm, reserved. She knocked on his door.

No answer.

She knocked louder.

“It’s open,” came his voice.

Trying to remove her frown, she entered. The door opened into the tiny kitchen to the right, a two-seater banquette to the left. Past it was what passed for a living room with an old couch and a chipped coffee table. Beyond that was the bath and bedroom. When she was a child, her crib had been in the living room.

Coop stepped out of the bathroom, wearing only a white towel around his hips. It looked like pulling calves at 3:00 a.m. kept him in shape. “Did you run out of hiding places?”

Ignoring his question, she turned her back to him. “Everyone is angry at me! You were horrible to Heather.” She heard him moving about. Then he came to the kitchen.

“I’d offer you coffee but I don’t have any. Your uncles left me six kinds of tea. Want some?”

She turned to face him. He had on a pair of sweatpants that hung down low. No shirt. He wasn’t a very hairy man. In fact, he was just exactly as hairy as she liked. She started to tell him to put on a shirt but she could imagine his sarcastic look.

“Why did you do it?” She sat down on the plastic seat under the window. There was a tear along the back. She and Jared used to use the trailer for privacy. They tore the seat when they—

When she looked at Coop, he seemed to be waiting for her to give him her full attention. He was leaning against the counter. “Out with it.”

“What you did last night may be the way you treat people in California, but here in Kansas, we’re nice. Heather said you sulked and sneered, that you refused to even talk. Why would you do that to her?”

He filled a teakettle with water, put it on to boil, then turned back to her. “She had researched me. Like I was a prize bull she was considering buying.”

Cait shrugged.

He filled two mugs full of hot water, put them on the table, then opened a box full of assorted tea bags. “Lemon? Milk?”

She shook her head no.