Chapter Three

      “I know these animals legally aren’t supposed to be here, but there was nowhere else I could take them, especially after it started snowing,” Coco told the sheriff as he helped her clean out their cages and pens.

      Coco had slipped out of her lacy black dress, and instead donned jeans, rubber boots and an oversize red plaid shirt. She wore rubber gloves and had offered a pair of gloves to the sheriff, which he surprisingly took. She’d set up one of her many portable baby monitors, which she used for her animals, inside her bedroom, so she had baby Lily in her sights at all times.

      As for the sheriff’s part, he’d left his gun holstered and locked in a dresser drawer in the spare bedroom, his badge and cream-colored cowboy hat sat on a side table next to her sofa.

      Medium-sized cages lined one wall of the room, where sibling calico kittens played with a brown-and-white bulldog puppy, who eagerly rolled around with each of them, while a large tortoise watched the activities from the shelter of its hard shell. Fortunately, aside from the need of an occasional heat lamp and a meal of greens and maybe a strawberry or two, a tortoise was low maintenance. Unlike the rest of her critters, which required not only basic needs but some loving and human interaction. Otherwise they’d never be comfortable around people.

      The area smelled of a combination of manure, fresh hay and animal fur, a scent that had lost its impact on Coco some time ago. Since her renovation, this part of the clinic was now separated from her apartment on the second floor of the original main building. This new clinic took up most of the empty lot that had been behind her house. She’d bought this property precisely because she knew she’d be able to expand her business. The closest house on her street was at least fifty yards away.

      “I understand,” the sheriff said as he scooped up goat dung and hay from the large pen at the end of the large room.

      Those two words caught her by complete surprise as she stared at him and dumped the waste material into a big plastic trash can.

      “Thanks,” she told him, but she wanted to give him a big hug.

      “Don’t tell me you take care of all these guys by yourself?”

      The piglet and all the other critters required time and care. She could never do it alone.

      “Not exactly. One of my neighbors, Drew Gillian, helps out whenever she can. Normally she’ll take in the cats and a couple dogs if we have them, but this time, she already has two pups and a kitten. I couldn’t burden her with any more, so I’m keeping them here for a few days, at least until the weather clears up.”

      “You did what you had to do, Doctor Grant,” he said, sounding official. This new attitude of his had to stop if they were going to make it through the night without her thinking that perhaps the sheriff was redeemable.

      “Why don’t you call me Coco,” she told him, wanting to be on more friendly terms. After all, the man was helping her clean out the cages for animals that he knew being here were completely illegal.

      He gazed over at her, a smile lighting up his normally stern-looking face. “And you can call me Jet, at least for tonight.”

      “And after tonight?” She stopped cleaning and looked over at him, grinning while the two goats kept rubbing up against him, wanting the bottles of milk she’d been warming in the large bottle warmer she kept in the other room.

      “Protocol dictates the more formal name, and I wouldn’t want you to think that just because we spent the night together...er, I mean, just because we slept... Yes, Jet will be fine.”

      She chuckled under her breath at the sheriff’s—at Jet’s—obvious awkwardness with the situation. It was almost as though he’d never spent the night with a woman before, at least not on a platonic basis. The thought caused her to snicker even more.

      “Am I missing something?” he asked, obviously catching her hidden laughter.

      “It’s the llamas. They keep nipping at my shirt collar.” Which they were.

      The pen was fairly large, about fifteen by eighteen feet, but it wasn’t enough room for them to run and play in, so she was getting all their extra energy. They kept rubbing up against her, then running around in a circle only to do it again. One was chocolate brown, the male, and the other almost pure white, a female.

      “They seem kind of aggressive. Shouldn’t they be in a barn somewhere, instead of cooped up in that pen?”

      Jet was absolutely right, but she’d had no choice. They’d been left on her doorstep at a most inopportune time.

      “They’re not aggressive, more playful than anything else. Llamas are the sweetest animals you can ever have on a ranch. Plus, they’re better protectors against coyotes or hawks or even possums. They only arrived this afternoon or I would have brought them out to my parents’ ranch until I could find a home for them. Problem was, I couldn’t risk driving all the way out there and getting stuck on my way back, so instead I decided to keep them here for a bit. I should be able to move them out tomorrow or the next day at most.”

      He gave one of the goats a pat on the head before it danced off, then loved up the other one when it nudged his leg. From all that she’d seen so far that night, Sheriff Jet Wilson was not the brute she had made him out to be. Jet Wilson seemed to be as soft and cuddly underneath that hard outer shell as any of her critters. A fact she would try to remember the next time he fined her for one of her forbidden country animals.

      “No worries. Really. I understand.”

      Now she really didn’t understand him, not even remotely. Who was this guy? How could she have misread him so badly?

      “Why the change of heart? Why aren’t you writing up a ticket? What changed?”

      He turned to her and shrugged. “It’s not your fault the people of this town have decided to abandon their animals...and now their babies...on your doorstep. I guess I never understood what that meant before. These little guys deserve a break, deserve a new start, and apparently the townsfolk think you can give it to them. You’re quite the protector, Doctor...I mean Coco...and everyone seems to know that.”

      “Does that mean you’ll dismiss my pending fines?”

      Now that he’d seemed to have a change of heart, she felt hopeful about asking for those dang fines to go away.

      He stood up straight and looked directly into her eyes, wearing his official deadpan expression again. As if he could switch that authoritarian look on and off at will. “No,” he said with certainty. “It just means I won’t give you another fine for this group... That’s contingent upon your finding a place for the goats and llamas as soon as the weather clears up. A place outside city limits.”

      She stuck a fist to her hip, somewhat peeved he couldn’t let those fines go, but underneath all her hope, she was beginning to understand his tough position.

      “Well, that’s something. I guess.”

      “It’s the least I can do seeing as how you’ve taken in Lily.”

      She