And important to him meant keeping his job. He wanted to impress Kelly when she returned. “Should I paint the place?”

“I think redoing the files will do it.”

“We put them back the way they were. She won’t see anything different.”

“I’ll tell her,” Cait said. “And she’ll see the closet.”

“You did that, not me.”

“Okay, Eeyore, I’ll tell her everything you did. And I’ll make sure she hears from everyone in town about how you’ve sewn up animals and pulled them into life, and all the other things you’ve done.”

“Thanks,” he said. “I couldn’t do this without you.”

The way he smiled at her was so warm that she blinked at him. “Why do you really want me in the office?”

He just kept smiling.

“Heather?”

“And Leslie and a couple of others.”

Cait smiled back. “Just be yourself and they’ll go away.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence. What do you want for lunch? Besides DQ, that is?”

Friends, she thought. Over the weeks, that’s what they’d become. They could talk about anything.

Well, she hadn’t confided in him about her connection to the Hatten family. Hadn’t told him about her and Jared. And she’d told no one, not even her father, what had happened when she visited her mother. But then, she planned to take that secret to her grave.

One night as Cait was in bed, half-asleep, she thought, If this were a movie, this is the part where they’d play music. Some fabulous melody, composed by Carter Burwell, of course, would play while the film showed her and Coop together.

Sleepily, she went over all the scenes that would be shown.

The KC Zoo had called him and asked if he knew anything about large animals. He’d answered yes before they told him how large.

He called Cait. “KC Zoo wants me to check out an elephant. Wanna go?”

She was out the door before he finished his sentence. It was a glorious experience!

She went with him on several of his calls. She helped hold a snake that had swallowed a toy windup mouse. The motor was still running.

But it wasn’t one-sided. Coop had spent two weekends helping pick bugs off the fruit trees. They dropped them into buckets of soapy water.

“Sure you don’t want to spray these trees?” he asked.

“Be quiet!” Cait hissed. “Or I’ll sic the uncles on you. They’ll lecture you until your ears bleed.”

“I’m picking! I’m picking!”

Forey had been pleased to see them together. She wanted to unite Cait with the Hattens, but if that wasn’t to be, Coop was a good second. “He is Kelly Hatten’s partner.”

“We hope he’s hired,” Cait said.

Forey had given her a look to not be absurd. She put on a big picnic for a couple dozen people.