Akira broke off a corner of the fried shell and scooped up one morsel of ground beef. She had a very colorful thought life. Her verbal life sometimes reflected that and sometimes didn’t. Either she was overly quiet, like now, or she overshared. She struggled to find a happy medium.

“Sebastian, Natasha, Genevieve, and I,” Ben said, “are all in support of a metamorphosis for Luke. Please let me know if there’s anything we can do.”

“Thank you. I will.”

Finley was incredibly good at rehabilitation. Amazingly so. Akira had told her more than once that she should have her own TV show. If she’d let cameras record the miraculous work she did with dogs, she’d have a hit on her hands.

“In case it’s not already extremely obvious,” Finley told Ben, “I’d be delighted to have you volunteer at Furry Tails.”

“Awesome.”

“We’ll run a background check and have you undergo some training. Once you finish that, you can assist Akira with her program.”

Ben moved his attention to her. “How many kids are in the after-school program?”

Her stomach twinged with self-consciousness. “Ten. A sweet eighty-five-year-old gentleman volunteers with the program several times a week, but I’m the only staff member, so ten is as many as we can accommodate. The kids all attend East Side Elementary. I pick them up at three in the Furry Tails van. They spend part of their afternoon doing homework, part on enrichment activities, part with the dogs, and part exercising. Their parents pick them up between five thirty and six.”

“What can I do to help?” he asked.

“We can work together to organize a science unit for the kids. I’m always looking for ways to stir passion in them for the different subjects.”

“Sure,” Ben said. “When can I start?”

“Next week,” Finley answered.

On Wednesday, Luke sat at his desk trying to decide which of his co-workers he liked less.

Too close to call.

Trish was middle-aged with a soft body and a sugary face. She stuck headbands into her frizzy brown hair, which was something he’d thought only ten-year-old girls did. Green holly leaves decorated today’s red headband.

Trish’s two grown children had yet to marry and have kids, so she’d told him at least ten times that, for now, the shelter dogs were her grandbabies. She was obsessed with Christmas for unclear reasons, viewed everything as “adorable,” and her favorite word was aww. She had less backbone than a jellyfish.

Kat was probably only thirty, which hadn’t stopped her from appointing herself the boss and chaperone of Trish. She had the wiry body of a distance runner. Short red hair, light skin, orange freckles. No makeup.

Luke knew that he had the ability to drain the fun from a room, but at least he did so silently. Kat did so by one-upping everyone.