Chapter 7
Lila Mae breathed a sigh of relief as she stepped into the chilled interior of her tiny home.
She’d been playing it safe and restricting her activity outside during the heat of the day, as recommended, but she’d had to make the half-mile walk from the Intake Center to her tiny house in the afternoon temperatures.
She’d heard the growling and gurgling of construction machines all day from within the farmhouse-slash-office where she currently ran Feline Friends, but she hadn’t run into Trap or Jason or Sawyer, and she didn’t actually know which of them had come to work on the property that day.
Thankfully, someone had brought in two kittens that had been abandoned in a field, and that brought their rescue count to fifteen.
“You won’t have any problem adopting out kittens,” Lila Mae told herself as she opened her fridge and pulled out the jug of sweet tea.
Texans loved it more than Georgians, and that was a happy change from Lila Mae’s life in Baltimore.
In fact, Lila Mae missed very little about Baltimore—or Atlanta, for that matter.
She let herself think about the life she’d had back East only for the amount of time it took for her to pour herself a glass of sweet tea and sink onto her couch. The beautifully cool liquid coated her mouth and throat with all the tang of tea and lemons that she loved.
No, Lila Mae did not miss working in a corporate office or her stuffy CEO-businessman boyfriend who’d been all wrong for her. The reinvention phase of her life had been going quite well since she’d made the move to Texas, because she didn’t have to answer to anyone but herself.
She enjoyed a few minutes of simply sitting and sipping, and then she checked the time.
She had another interview in about a half-hour, first with someone for the general manager position, and then a vet tech.
Lila Mae needed someone to run intakes, answer phones, handle adoptions, and basically run the office.
She didn’t want to be completely hands-off, but she definitely needed an assistant.
She needed a certified veterinarian, and she’d like to have a house manager over each feline area, but those could come as the construction got completed and the houses got equipped with bedding, supplies, and toys.
She had emails to send to various businesses for donations, as she was a nonprofit, and she had paperwork to review for the new intakes.
She’d told Trap the hospital facility was the next priority, and they’d chosen an old stable as the location for it.
Lila Mae loved the idea of recycling buildings and making them new and functional again, and she’d helped with the demo of the stable, getting it cleared out and down to its bare bones.
Then Trap and his team could make an assessment on the building and draw up plans to renovate it.
It would only be the third structure finished here on the ranch, as they’d built Lila Mae’s tiny home from the foundation up, and they’d renovated the best structure on the property—the family farmhouse—into the administration office and Intake Center for Feline Friends.
That was where people parked and where they entered when they had cats they wanted to drop off, or if they came for adoptions.
The kitchen and dining room area functioned as a staff break room, with the front living room as their foyer and reception area, and the bedrooms along the right side of the house operating as their sanctuary for now.
They could expand up to the second floor, but Lila Mae really wanted to have separate cat houses where she could place different personalities and ages of cats, different breeds, and the felines would be able to live in smaller groups in a more natural, indoor and outdoor setting.
The property had sheds and barns, and they just needed to be cleaned out and converted.
Lila Mae wanted working heat and air conditioning in every building, as well as running water, and that required an infrastructure that Trap said the ranch didn’t currently have.
They’d worked through all of that, too, digging trenches and laying pipe, and dealing with city electricians to get the power where it needed to go.
That work was done now, and Trap claimed that renovation would hum along nicely now that the foundation had been done. She certainly hoped so.
She found herself tracing around each of her fingers—up and down into the creases—with the tip of one finger, as if she could feel Trap’s hand in hers.
Frustration filled her that they’d been interrupted that morning, though she didn’t really believe he would’ve asked her to breakfast. Neither one of them had time for that.
No, if she wanted to see Trap outside of a professional setting, Lila Mae would need to go to dinner with him.
“And dinner means a date,” she said to herself. She could admit she’d like to go on a date with Trap Walker, but only within the confines of her small house, and only silently inside her own head.
Lila Mae finished her sweet tea and set the glass in the sink before grabbing a granola bar and preparing to step out into the heat of the afternoon.
Her tiny house sat nestled back among some trees along the edge of a meadow.
She’d chosen the spot, so she would have distance between home and work, something she’d learned was very important for her.
She could’ve lived in the house on the second floor, but Lila Mae knew herself, and knew she would work sixteen hours a day and be caged inside that house forever if she didn’t have somewhere separate to carve out an existence beyond Feline Friends.
She’d burned herself out in such a way before, and she was determined not to do it again.
Still, a half-mile was a long way in one-hundred-degree heat, and Lila Mae hesitated on the doorstep of her house, unable to open the door and let the dragon’s breath wash across her face.
As she stood there, she contemplated buying a little golf cart or an ATV to make the trip, as she’d read dozens of articles about the Texas Panhandle and what the weather was like.
It certainly didn’t get the snow of New York City or the Rocky Mountains, but it got cold, and it could certainly storm.
Of course, summers weren’t usually this hot, either, and combined with the humidity, Lila Mae felt like she was suffocating even inside the air conditioning.
Three Rivers had a big motor sports dealership, and to prolong having to step back out into the heat, Lila Mae pulled out her phone to check her schedule and to see when they would be open tomorrow.
She had a video interview with a veterinarian at ten-thirty, and the dealership opened at ten, so she should be able to go after the interview. “And then you can get lunch in town too,” she told herself.
With that decided and nothing else keeping her in the house, Lila Mae bit the bullet and stepped outside.
Sure enough, the air assaulted her, practically searing in her lungs.
A breeze blew across the meadow, and that gave Lila Mae the courage to take the steps she needed out of the shade and along the journey toward the farmhouse.
She arrived at the Intake Center sweating, but at least she’d gotten there before her interviewees. She settled at the dining room table until the receptionist she’d hired, a woman named Scarlett, came to get her. “Hailey is here, ma’am.”
Lila Mae was only twenty-eight years old and certainly didn’t need to be called ma’am. But she looked up from her phone and said, “Thank you, Scarlett,” before following the woman out into the reception area.
A blonde woman stood examining the art Lila Mae had hung on the wall, and she turned when Scarlett said, “Here she is, Hailey.” She had bright blue, unassuming eyes and a hopeful look on her face as she smiled.
“Hi, Lila Mae,” she said. “I’m Hailey Winters.”
“Yes, it’s great to meet you,” Lila Mae said. “Let’s go upstairs to my office.” She led the way, glad she’d upgraded the air conditioning in this old house.
“This is a really nice place,” Hailey said from behind her. “But it’s the original house, right?”
“Yes,” Lila Mae said, glad this woman seemed to be able to start casual conversation.
“We’re just renovating as many of the buildings here as we can.
This is the original farmhouse, but we’ve upgraded the air conditioner and redone the interior.
The electrical and plumbing were all good, thankfully. ”
She entered her office and held the door for Hailey. Once she’d passed, Lila Mae closed the door and took a seat in the recliner opposite of her. “So, you’re going to go to school to be a vet tech?”
“Yes,” Hailey said. “I got into a program in Amarillo that I can do from here, but I’ll have to go to Amarillo for a week every month. I hope that won’t be a problem with the job.”
“As long as there’s notice,” Lila Mae said.
“It should be fine.” She didn’t want to admit that she needed someone with better organizational and structural skills than she had.
She didn’t want to be a pushover boss either.
But she also wanted Feline Friends to be a flexible place for people to work.
“I need veterinarians and vet techs,” she said. “But you don’t have that certification, so I see you’ve applied for our General Manager position.”
“That’s right,” Hailey said. “I used to manage a restaurant, so I’m used to a lot of different pieces and personalities. I can make schedules, and I’m really good at organizational details—calendaring, making sure shifts are covered, and I’ve even run payroll and handled tax paperwork.”
Lila Mae blinked, sure God had sent this woman to her as a pure blessing.
In fact, tears filled her eyes, and she ducked her head and quickly reached up to wipe one of them casually.
“This job would be a lot like that,” she said.
“But with cats instead of steaks.” She smiled, hopeful that her eyes weren’t too shiny.