“Fine, then it can’t be changed.” She picked up the paper and put it underneath her folder. “It’s fine.”
“It doesn’t seem fine,” Trap said.
“I was hoping for a different outcome,” she said. “But you’re right. We’ve already poured the foundation.”
“It would be expensive and very time-consuming to change.”
“We don’t need to change it.”
Trap very much felt like he was fighting a losing battle, but he nodded. “All right. What else?”
“Nothing,” she said. “You can go.”
He blinked at her, because had she really just dismissed him? He honestly didn’t know how to feel, but he got reverted back to being fourteen and in trouble with his mother.
“Are we having dinner tonight?” he asked, surprised his voice could get past the pinching hurt radiating through his chest. He’d already put the food in the fridge at her tiny house, but she lived close-by, and he could get his sad beef burrito and eat it at home.
“Yeah,” she said. “But I need a little more time here.”
“All right,” Trap said. “Well, I guess I’ll see you at your place then, whenever you’re done.”
“Yeah,” she said, and she picked up a purple notebook and pulled it on top of the stack of folders and opened it, already back to work.
Trap ran his hand over Cleo’s back on his way down the table, his own frustration building within him at how things had been going between him and Lila Mae recently.
“Lord,” he muttered as he left the building. “Give her the courage to make Feline Friends what she wants it to be. She was so excited about the octagonal buildingbeforeshe went to Three Rivers.”
He sighed and looked up into the evening sky and then headed to Lila Mae’s house, washed his hands, and pulled out a bottle of water that he’d put there earlier in the week. He sank onto her couch, wondering how long he’d have to wait for her to finish work and come eat dinner with him.
31
Lila Mae didn’t like the weeks that Hailey was in Amarillo for her vet tech training; it left her shorthanded in a major way, and though she’d hired staff for both Cat House Two and Cat House Three, she needed another person who simply worked at Feline Friends in general—like the controller at Three Rivers.
She immediately wanted to call Clancy and find out what she could title the job. Another voice played in her head, this one belonging to Scarlett, the first person she’d ever hired to work here at Feline Friends.
You used to have a clear vision of this place, Lila Mae, and now you’re letting everyone else dictate what you want. Scarlett had told her that yesterday, and it had been playing on a loop in Lila Mae’s head since.
She bumped over the dirt road between the Intake Center and her tiny house, and when she saw Trap’s truck parked in front of her house, his voice roared to life.
You can’t keep making changes, Lila Mae. You wanted an octagonal building before, and now it’s not good enough?
Of course, he hadn’t actually said those words, but they streamed through her head nonetheless.
Lila Mae honestly wasn’t sure what was good enough and what wasn’t. She’d let too many voices in, but she didn’t know how to get them back out. She’d seen good things at both Shiloh Ridge and Three Rivers, and suddenly everything she’d been doing at Feline Friends felt wrong.
Maybe I shouldn’t even be here, she thought. She pulled up beside Trap’s truck and looked over to it, almost in a stupor of thought. If she gave up this dream of Feline Friends and returned to Dixon’s Delights and the mansion in the suburbs outside of Baltimore, she’d have to give up Trap too.
She bucked against that very idea, dismissing it outright. She had so much competing for her attention, and Lila Mae simply wanted a quiet, restful evening to herself.
The spicy scent of Mexican food met her nose as she approached the front door, and she entered to find Trap sitting at her pull-down table, a half-eaten burrito on a plate in front of him.
She stopped and stared, not quite sure she understood the scene in front of her.
“Hey, there you are,” he said, but he didn’t sound enthusiastic and upbeat the way he usually did. He seemed a bit distant, and he didn’t get up to greet her the way he had multiple times in the past.
“You ate dinner without me?” she asked.
“I just started,” he said. “Lila Mae, it’s almost eight o’clock. I had no idea when you were coming in.”
