“We’re in a kind of moratorium, I guess. We need to get this security up and running. Plus I think he’s working with the police. He has files he doesn’t want me to see. I’m leaving it alone for now.”

“Like the tiger.”

“As a metaphor for my relationship with Coop, it’s not bad. It’s fairly shaky, with the potential for a feral strike. I found two clips for his handgun in my lingerie drawer. Why the hell would he put them there?”

“I guess it’s hard to forget where you put them. Your everyday stuff, or the f**k-me stuff?”

“The f**k-me stuff. It’s mortifying. I was going to get rid of most of it. It’s weird having it around. The Jean-Paul factor. He bought most of it, and enjoyed all of it.”

“Clean it out. Buy your own.”

“Yeah, I’m just not sure I want to invest in that area right now. It sends a signal.”

“It does. I bought two extreme rip-this-off-me-big-boy nighties the other day. Online shopping is my friend. I’m still wondering why I didn’t stop myself.”

“Farley’s going to swallow his tongue.”

“I keep telling myself I’m going to break this off before it gets any deeper. Then I’m scoping out the spring line from Victoria ’s Secret. I am not well, Lil.”

“You’re in love, honey.”

“I think it’s just lust. Lust is good. No harm done. And it passes.”

“Uh-huh. Just lust. You bet.”

“All right, stop badgering me, you fiend. I know it’s more than lust. I just haven’t figured out how to handle it. So stop your insidious torture.”

“All right, since you begged. Look. Look.” Lil clamped a hand on Tansy’s knee. “She’s moving.”

As they watched, Delilah bellied forward an inch, then another. Boris growled his encouragement. When she was halfway out, she went still as a statue again, and Lil feared she’d retreat. Then she quivered, bunched, and leaped on the whole chicken left on her concrete pad.

She gripped it in her paws, her head shifting as she scanned right, left, forward. Her eyes met Lil’s.

Go on and eat, Lil thought. Go on, now.

She cocked her head, and still watching, sank her teeth into the meat.

She ripped and bolted the food. Lil squeezed her hand on Tansy. “Waiting for someone to lay into her. God, I wish I could take a cattle prod to those bastards in Sioux City.”

“Right there with you. Poor girl. She could make herself sick.”

But she kept it down. Rather than clean her paws, she slunk over to the trough, drank and drank.

On the other side of the fence, Boris rose on his hind legs, called to her. She kept low, kept subservient, but approached the fence to sniff at him. When he lowered, she scurried back to stand at the entrance to her cage.

To what, Lil knew, she thought of as safety. He called her again, insistently, until she bellied over to the fence, quivering, trembling as he sniffed her nose, her front paws.

When he licked her, Lil smiled. “We should’ve called him Romeo. Let’s get the cage away, close her in. Boris will take it from here.”

She checked her watch as she rose. “Excellent timing. I need to run into town.”

“I thought we had our supply run.”

“I’ve got to do some errands. And I want to swing by and see my parents. I’ll be back before sundown.”

SHE DIDN’T INTEND to stop by the Wilkses’ stables, but she was early, and they were right there. In any case, it was irresistible when she spotted Coop leading a little girl around the paddock on a sturdy bay pony.

The kid looked as though she’d just been given the keys to the universe’s biggest toy store. She bounced in the saddle, obviously incapable of being still, and her face under her pink cowgirl hat glowed like the summer sun.

As she stepped out of her truck, Lil heard the kid chattering away at Coop while her mother laughed and her father took pictures. Charmed, Lil walked over to the fence and leaned against it to watch.

Coop looked pretty damn pleased himself, she noted, giving the kid his attention, answering endless questions while the little horse plodded along patiently.

How old was the kid? she wondered. Four maybe? Long sunny pigtails twined down under the hat, and her jeans had colorful flowers embroidered on the hem.

Impossibly cute, Lil concluded. Then felt a hard, deep tug as Coop reached up to lift the girl out of the saddle.

She’d never really thought of him as a father. At one time she’d simply assumed they’d have a family together, but it had all been vague and silver-edged. Pretty dreams of “one day.”

She thought of all the years between. They might have had a little girl.

He let the girl stroke and pet the horse, then fished a carrot out of a sack. He showed her how to hold it, and put the frothy icing on the kid’s happy cake by allowing her to feed the pony.

Lil waited while he spoke with the parents, and saw him grin when the girl flung her arms around his legs in a hug.

“She’ll remember you for the rest of her life,” Lil commented when Coop came her way.

“The horse anyway. Nobody forgets their first.”

“I didn’t know you offered pony rides.”

“It just happened. The kid was dying for it. Anyway, I’ve been thinking about opening that area up. Low overhead, nice profit. The father insisted on giving me a ten-dollar tip.” He grinned again as he dug it out of his pocket. “Want to help me spend it?”

“Tempting, but I’m meeting somebody. You were good with the kid.”

“She made it easy. And yeah, I’ve thought about it.” When she lifted her brows in question, he laid his hands over hers on the top of the fence. “What kind of kids we might have made.” He tightened his grip when she would have pulled back. “Your eyes. I’ve always been a sucker for your eyes. I wondered what kind of a father I’d make. I think I’d be okay. Now.”

“I’m not going dewy-eyed over dream children, Coop.”

“This is a good place to raise kids, the real kind. We both know that.”

“You’re taking a lot of big leaps. I’m sleeping with you because I want to sleep with you. But I have a lot of things to resolve, a lot to think through before it can be anything more than that, and what’s turning out to be a tenuous friendship.”