“Yeah, I guess it is.”
Max nodded. “Wouldn’t it be nice to just count on the good guys to do good things, instead of worrying about the bad guys not doing bad things?”
Caroline looked over at Zander again and found him watching her. “I think that there are a lot of good guys we can count on to do good things.”
Max whistled low and shook her head. “Wow, you have it bad.”
“He's just been…great.”
“I'm glad,” Max said, turning Caroline back to face her. “But, sweetie, your standards for great are very low because of the scumbags you spend time with. I just want you to keep in mind that he doesn't really have to try that hard. Keep your wits about you and maybe even more importantly, protect your heart.”
Caroline swallowed. Max definitely had a point. Caroline was not used to guys being good, deep down, and doing the right thing. It didn't take much to impress her. She nodded. “Duly noted.”
“Now, you go in there and spend some time with your lion cub,” Max said.
“Where are you going?”
Max plucked the envelope from Caroline’s hand, but was watching the two cops. “To negotiate.”
“You're going to convince them to let you in on the story in exchange for this information?”
Max grinned. “Exactly.”
Well, at least someone had a plan. And there were three someones who could do something useful in this whole situation.
Caroline looked into the pen where the German shepherd was now lying on her stomach, her nose up next to the lion cub who was rolling on his back and batting at the dog. They both seemed completely at ease and she felt a smile stretch her mouth.
That was good. That mattered. She’d done that.
Caroline caught Donovan’s eye and he lifted a hand and waved her into the pen. She felt lighter as she unlatched the gate and stepped through.
She just needed to focus on the things she could do and trust Zander and Spencer and Max to do the rest.
Even if that left a hollow ache in her gut.
Zander and Spencer were finally doing exactly what she’d been insisting and nagging them about doing for days.
Which meant, three days after Spencer and Max had landed in Autre, Caroline was bored out of her mind.
It wasn’t just them, actually. It was everyone. Everyone was working and, as pathetic as it made her, she had nothing to do.
She had no real job. She didn’t really have any hobbies other than plotting rich men’s downfalls and actively trying to cajole a hot small-town cop into doing an investigation. And a girl could only go on so many swamp boat tours and do so much otter yoga. Mostly because otter yoga only happened at certain times of day and they needed the seats for paying customers on the swamp boats.
She'd been helping Donovan out up at the rehab center but he'd gotten a call for an animal rescue—something about armadillos and a collision with a skateboard—so he'd needed to leave. Max had gone back to the bed and breakfast because she had a deadline on another story that she had to meet and she was going to make some phone calls about the lion cub case.
Everyone else in Autre had been sweet and patient about having Caroline around. But they all had actual important jobs to do. Running a petting zoo and animal park and taking tourists out on swamp boat tours sounded like a great time, but it was also a lot of work. Feeding and caring for a bunch of animals, especially exotic—and in some cases endangered—ones, and maintaining all the equipment that went into both the animal park and the swamp boat tours was no small thing.
She could of course have returned to the bed and breakfast. But yesterday she'd helped Heather bake muffins…and had burned three dozen. It was probably no surprise to anyone in Autre that the wealthy socialite wasn't much of a domestic goddess.
Of course, she would've loved to spend the day hanging out with Zander, but Zander and Spencer were busy doing, well, exactly what she'd been hounding them to do. Besides their regular jobs, they were looking into everything she'd given them about Brantley, the lion cub, and now the list of names and numbers they’d discovered in her suitcase.
In short, Caroline was the only one who didn't have anything to do and would basically be in the way of everyone else working.
Which was why she found herself approaching the front of Ellie's bar. She honestly didn't have anywhere else to go and while, obviously, Ellie was at work, she was also the one most used to people hanging around while she did it.
Caroline took the bar stool next to where Leo was sitting and gave him a smile.
"Well, hey there," he greeted.
"Hi. Mind if I join you?"
"I never have and never will turn down the chance to have a pretty girl sit next to me," Leo said.
Ellie chuckled from across the bar. "That's for sure. And everyone here in Autre knows it. It's how we always end up with dozens of boxes of Girl Scout cookies, at least four of whatever the moms with the PTA are selling for their fundraiser, and why all the guys from all the sports teams send their girlfriends or sisters over to talk to him when they're raising money."
Caroline chuckled. "So you’re a soft touch?"
Leo nodded. "No apologies."
"What can I get you, honey?" Ellie asked.
"Coffee, I guess."
Ellie gave her a look. "You're not here to drink coffee."
"What do you mean?"
"I know all about the coffee Zander's been buying you in Bad and that you've been drinking with Charlie and Jordan. How about a Pimm’s Cup? Nobody in Bad or around Autre even tries to compete.”
“You don’t mind not having the best coffee?” Caroline asked with a grin.
Ellie waved her hand. “What you all drink isn’t coffee. It’s milk and sugar and foam and syrups with a hint of coffee flavor if you close your eyes and concentrate really hard. My coffee does what coffee’s supposed to do. It warms you up, wakes you up in under thirty seconds, and tastes like coffee.”
Caroline laughed. “But it's ten o'clock in the morning. Is that too early for a Pimm’s Cup?”
"Are you driving? Taking care of children, sick or old people, or operating heavy machinery?” Leo asked.
Nope. She wasn’t doing anything. “No to all of the above.”
“Then it sounds like Pimm’s o’clock to me,” Leo said.
Day drinking was not something she did a lot of, but what the hell?
“Well, you’ve been telling time down here longer than I have," she finally said. “I’ll go with whatever you say.”
As Ellie mixed the drink. Leo sipped from his own coffee cup. "So, I hear you're an interior decorator."
"I do interior design," Caroline said. She didn't want to lie to these people. For some reason. Probably because they were good, decent people who had been treating her very well since she'd been here. But Zander didn't want his family to know what all she was mixed up in and if she told them that she only played at interior design they might want to know why.
Leo swiveled on his stool and surveyed the room. "So we were thinkin’ to redo something in this place."
Caroline felt both her brows rise. “Really?”