“All right, well, I’ll get out of your hair,” he said. “I’ve got a bunch of work to catch up on today.”
“I’ll follow you out,” she said. “I just need to find my paperwork.”
Trap stood while Lila Mae simply surveyed the papers on her desk. He took her hand in his because he could, and she looked at him instead. “Seven o’clock still okay?”
“Yes.”
“Great.” Trap leaned down and pressed his lips to hers gently, kissing her chastely for only a moment before he pulled away. “I’ll see you then.”
“Yeah,” she said, a bit of a dreamy expression on her face. Trap picked up the plastic bag with their now-empty lunch containers, smiled at her, and headed for the door. He opened it to find Cleopatra lying in the doorway, almost like a guard tiger-cat.
“Oh, hello, you.” He bent down to give the Bengal a pat. She meowed loudly at him, and he twisted to say over his shoulder, “Lila Mae, Cleo’s here.”
“Come on in, Cleo,” Lila Mae said, and the tiny tiger got up and stretched, gave Trap a disdainful look, and stalked past him into Lila Mae’s office. He chuckled, as the pair of them went so well together.
Then he left the Intake Center, tipping his hat to both Scarlett and Hailey, and blasted the AC in his truck all the way back to his house, where he’d work for the rest of the day. After all, he’d promised his momma and daddy he would, and Trap worked hard not to disappoint his parents.
Now if he could figure out how to keep Lila Mae happy too, he really might be on his way to having everything he wanted.
13
Lenore Rhinehart huffed as she climbed the steps to the house, a certain weariness deep in her bones. At least today was her last day of work out here, and with the sun halfway to setting, Lenore had decided that her farm chores were done.
Brandon was finishing the gate that their goats kept dislodging, and then he’d be in as well.
Lenore had planned an easy dinner of cheddar brats with sautéed onions and peppers using food she’d previously prepped and frozen, and she moved into the kitchen to take out the veggies she’d heat up to go with the brats. Those only took a few minutes in the pan as well, and Lenore meal-planned so that the two of them could eat an entire bag of hot dog buns in a week.
They’d already used a couple of the buns for garlic toast with their pasta night, and three buns for their sloppy joes though most people probably ate those on a hamburger bun.
They had three left, as Brandon ate twice as much as her and would eat two brats tonight, the way he’d eaten two sloppy joe sandwiches. But this way, Lenore didn’t have food going bad, and Brandon never complained about eating something in sandwich form.
She smiled at the thought of her good husband and placed one hand on her very pregnant belly. “You’re going to love your daddy when you meet him,” she whispered.
She and Brandon were due with a little girl in only eight days. Her due date had been adjusted multiple times throughout her pregnancy, moving from July thirty-first, to the twenty-first, and then to the twenty-eighth. She couldn’t wait to meet her, especially now that they’d made it so close to the due date.
She’d prayed for the little girl to wait, because Lenore didnotwant to go into labor out at the homestead.
She and Alex Baxter had been working on connecting their two properties through the woods, but that had not been completed yet, what with the dust storm that had thrown so many farms and ranches into cleanup mode, and then this summer’s extreme heat. People only did work outside that needed to be done, and the road between their homestead and Coyote Pass had been put on hold.
Therefore, to get off the homestead and down the dirt roads and around the entire town of Three Rivers to the hospital took almost an hour.
Because Lenore could have an Olympic gold medal in worrying, she’d called the hospital months ago to ask about one of the adjacent apartments reserved for families of long-term patients. They were based upon availability, and Lenore had had to call only two days ago to find out if there was somewhere for her and Brandon to stay for the week leading up to the delivery of their baby.
Thankfully, there was, as most of the cases at the hospital right now were normal surgeries and other short-term stays, or people dealing with heat stroke and heat exhaustion. Those cases were usually treated within forty-eight hours and sent home, and she and Brandon would be able to stay in a quaint,cozy, one-bedroom apartment only a half-block away from the hospital.
They’d leave in the morning, and once Lenore had the food out of the freezer that she needed for dinner, she went down the hall and into the master suite to finish packing.
Her belly tightened as she zipped up the bag, and Lenore placed both hands over it. She was used to being a little bit off since she’d gotten pregnant. She’d been violently ill in the beginning, and even now, if she ate too much, she didn’t sleep well, or if she ate the wrong thing, she’d be sick all night.
She took out her phone and typed inpajamas and toiletrieson the packing list, the last items she’d put in their bag in the morning after they’d gotten up and brushed their teeth.
They could go to the apartment anytime tomorrow, and Brandon had said he would do their morning feeding, and then they’d go.
His brothers and their friends had agreed to come do their basic farm chores while Lenore and Brandon were near the hospital, waiting for their baby to arrive. She didn’t worry about their ability to do so, but she was still getting used to asking for help and then accepting it.
But Dawson, Brandon’s older brother, had said that he could come stay in the second cabin for the entire week if they needed him to, as Duke had two grown boys now that could help on their family farm. Brandon had agreed, and all he had to do was call Dawson, and he was all set to come.
Lenore was grateful for such good people in her life. She moved into the bathroom as she felt like she always needed to go. The pressure in her abdomen now intensified, and she hurried a bit faster.
