Hailey glanced over to Taralynn. “We have Taralynn now, and she’s going to be up to speed before I have to go in October.”
Taralynn nodded, her eyes wide, as she’d only been at Feline Friends for about a week and a half now.
Lila Mae looked down at the pink paper in her hand, now slightly crumpled on the edge. It consisted of two columns: the one on the left listing the time of day, ranging from eight a.m. to five p.m., and the second column wide and open for anything that Lila Mae needed to do that day.
She had a meeting with Thad at ten-thirty out in the Veterinary Center, and a reminder to follow up with the Wildlife Division on her permit to shore up the fencing on the southern and western borders of her property. Scarlett had put that in the afternoon, because she knew Lila Mae liked to work inside during the hottest part of the day, though that task could really be done anytime.
“All right.” She took a deep breath, feeling better and…cleaner than she had in the last couple of weeks. “Who’s starting in the cat room this morning?”
“I am,” Taralynn said.
Lila Mae grinned at her. “Can I join you? Then I’ll have my meeting with Thad, and I’ll do my office work after that.”
Taralynn smiled back at her, and though she was olive skinned and dark haired, she seemed to shine with a light that Lila Mae could only describe as goodness. Trap had it too, and another powerful wave of longing rolled over her.
“Absolutely,” Taralynn said. “I was going to get them out and clean up in there, and then do the staff room.”
“Perfect,” Lila Mae said, and she followed Taralynn out of the lobby and down the hall to the cat room. That was where Lila Mae had gotten scratched last week, but a little injury didn’t keep her away, and a small argument and misunderstanding between her and Trap shouldn’t keep her away from him either.
She’d just shown gratitude and apologized to her staff, and surely she could do the same thing for Trap. As Taralynn typed in the code to unlock the door, Lila Mae pulled out her phone and started tapping out a message of her own.
34
“Here goes nothing,” Trap muttered to himself, killing the engine and dropping out of the pick-up truck. In the next moment, he eyed Lila Mae’s tiny house as he rounded the hood to the passenger side.
Surely she’d heard him pull up. She had a dirt road that led to a gravel driveway, and his truck possessed a growly engine. On the best of days, his heartbeat growled at him too, and it only got louder as the moments went by.
But Trap had taken everything he’d talked about with his father, and he’d thought through it all for the past couple of days, all while rediscovering his whittling skills.
He pulled open the passenger door and got out the flower arrangement. He’d purchased lilies and sunflowers and daisies in a variety of colors. The dyed flowers didn’t come cheap, but Trap could afford almost anything, especially if it would make Lila Mae smile.
Fine, he was trying to win some points with the flowers too, though he knew what he really needed to do was simply sit down and talk with Lila Mae.
With the black cat pot secured in his hand and all of the flowers blooming out of the back of the feline, Trap also reachedfor the potting stick he’d whittled for Lila Mae. It was really just a pointed piece of wood that she could poke down into a potted plant or the row of a garden, and he’d carved Cleo in a five-inch figurine. Then, he’d stolen into his mother’s workshop and painted the cat to look like Lila’s favored Bengal.
Trap had been praying like his life depended on being with Lila Mae, and as he faced her house now, something calm and serene flowed over him. The air became the perfect temperature, and Trap had the strangest, most wonderful feeling in the world that he was loved unconditionally.
Why he needed to know such a thing right now he didn’t know, but he pressed his eyes closed and whispered, “Thank you, Lord,” before taking the first step toward the tiny home.
It smelled like his mom’s beef roast as he approached, and Trap did what he’d always done when he arrived at a beautiful woman’s house for a date: he knocked.
He felt like a fifteen-year-old on his first date, with his momma waiting in the minivan to drive him and his prom date over to the high school for the dance. Thankfully, no matter where Lila Mae was in her house, it only took about twenty seconds to come to the door. Trap didn’t have to wait that long before the beautiful apple-blossom blonde opened the door.
She curled her fingers around the top of it and leaned her hip into the latch, a smile already etched on her face. “Well, hello there, handsome.”
Trap grinned and dropped his chin. “Howdy, ma’am.”
They’d been texting for the past couple of days, and Trap had told her that he wanted to talk and clear the air between them before he came to Feline Friends for next week’s mega construction craze.
He’d scheduled himself at the ranch all week to put up the walls and roof on Cat House Three, and he really didn’t want anything left unsaid between him and Lila Mae.
“These are for you.” He lifted the flowers as if she couldn’t see them. “They ordered in the black cat pot special from Fort Worth,” he said. “And those daisies areperiwinkle,Granny Smith green, andbubble gum, for the official record.”
When she didn’t say anything, Trap got up the nerve to lift his eyes to hers. She stared at the flower arrangement with wide eyes, and then she reached out and barely touched the top of Cleo’s head.
“Is this Cleo?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
