Matilda felt her whole body shiver into something like alarm.Or wariness, anyway.She wasn’t sure what he meant by that.Was he actually going to admit that he knew how she felt about him?
Did she want that?
She might have decided that her crush was actually love, no matter whether he loved her back.But that didn’t mean she wanted to have a discussion with him about it.Especially when he was looking at her as if he saw ulterior motives stamped across her forehead.
Not exactly a time for tender declarations.
“What agenda do you think I have?”she asked carefully.Very, very carefully.“Aside from saving puppies, that is?”
“You tell me,” Tennessee said.“I’ve known you for your whole life, I think I would have heard if you made a habit out of barging into people’s houses, forcing them to babysit puppies, and then coming back to haunt them—pretending that you have the burning desire toclean.”
“I wasn’t pretending anything.”
“I’ve never heard any stories, so that makes me think it hasn’t happened.”Tennessee shook his head, that blue gaze seeming to swallow her whole.“No such thing as a secret in a small town, Matilda.You know this.There’s just the countdown to it being public knowledge because everything is always public knowledge, sooner or later.”
She had the sudden, wild idea that she should just tell him.That she should… lay out all her cards on the table, because he was a Lisle after all.The Lisles always liked card games, historically speaking.
But if she told him and he turned her away—even if he did it nicely and easily—she would have her answer.And Matilda didn’t want that answer.
She preferred her crush and the possibility that something might come of it, one day.So there was no good reason to tell him about it, she decided.There was a reason she never played cards.She wasn’t one to take an unnecessary risk.
The only risks she took were necessary, as they usually involved the welfare of animals.
So instead, she smiled ruefully at him.“Well, now that you mention it, I do have an agenda.”
She sighed a little, as if he’d read her like a book, and then she went over and sat down on his sofa.Uninvited.Because this was all uninvited, so she might as well be comfortable.
“I wanted to talk to you about opening up a rescue right here in Cowboy Point,” she told him, gazing at him from the cozy leather embrace of his sofa.It wasn’t that crinkly, stiff leather, either.This leather felt warm the way she thought he likely did, too.
But she needed to focus.
The rescue thing was not a lie.Or not entirely a lie, anyway.Matilda had been thinking about formally creating a rescue or shelter of some kind for years now.Rosie had always been exasperated by the number of animals she brought home, and Matilda had to admit that as much as she loved animals of every type, she sometimes also wanted to simply go home.Like last night.
Ulterior motives notwithstanding.
And she’d thought a lot about talking to the various community leaders here to see what they thought, because everything in Cowboy Point was easier when you had the support of the heavy hitters here on the main road.The Bennetts, the Lisles, Shane Johnson, and the Sheens.These days she would add Dr.Ramona to the list, and round it out with the deputy sheriff Atticus Wayne and her own cousin, Sara Jane, since a librarian was the closest thing around here to a walking community bulletin board.
“An animal rescue,” Tennessee said.
“Or shelter, I guess,” Matilda added.Helpfully.
“Right.Or a shelter.”
That wasn’t a question either.Tennessee said it as if he should have known that was what she was after.And really, he should have.Of courseMatilda wanted to open a place where she could care for all the rescues she found or was called to handle.
It was like these people had never met her.
“Although I think a rescue might be better,” she said, as if he’d offered his immediate assistance already and was drilling down into the details.“Just in terms of how to set it up, and run it, and so on.”
“And when you thought about animal rescues and potential shelters, I was the name that came to mind?”
She frowned at him.“Yes, Tennessee.Since when does anything happen in Cowboy Point that you don’t have an opinion on?”
He looked at her as if she was unfathomable.But to Matilda that seemed like a significant step in the right direction, because it was a step away fromunhinged, which was where she thought she normally came in with him.
Tennessee looked at her for a long moment, and she thought he was going to order her to leave again.Instead, he padded toward his kitchen.
She stayed where she was, sitting on his couch, not sure if he intended to come back.
