With the sound of Rick Braedon’s rich, deep voice tickling her ears, Allie grinned her way into the Cowboy Hall of Fame. The building was alive with the sound of saws and hammers, sheetrock dust, and booted men in hardhats and tool belts.

See there. If she just had faith that everything would work out for the best, it always did. Not only had she not been trampled by cattle, she’d met a cute guy too. And speaking of things working out for the best, she decided she was going to ace this job interview.

That was until she followed the directional arrow signs posted along the scaffolding route through the construction zone, and walked into the makeshift office built from cubicle dividers.

A dozen people her age were crammed into the small space, clutching resumes and trying not to look desperate as they filled out applications, fidgeted, and checked their electronic devices.

There was no place to sit, barely any room to stand. The air conditioning wasn’t up to the task and the improvised room was uncomfortably warm. Several people had sweat stains ringing their armpits.

Allie slipped around the hipsters, millennials and a couple of senior citizens applying for the low wage job, excused her way up to a cheap folding table pretending to be Ikea, and slanted her cheeriest smile at the bored, Cheeto-thin young woman bouncing on a yoga ball in lieu of a chair.

“Hi,” she said, hoping she sounded like the right kind of cheerful. “I’m Allie Grainger.”

The ennui-infused woman, whose mouth was slick with vampire-red lipstick, didn’t bother glancing up from the YouTube, kittens-swatting-yarn video playing on her iPad. “Fill out an application and take a seat,” she intoned.

Allie turned on her cell phone to check the time. Yipes! Fifteen minutes until she had to be back at the Visitors’ Center. The encounter with the cowboy had taken a big chunk out of her lunch break.

“Mmm.” Allie leaned in. “I know you’re like…um…super busy, but I was wondering how long the wait is? I’ve got to get back to work.”

Ennui-woman gave Allie’s starched white skirt a fishy stare and then flicked her gaze to her four-inch stilettoes—that Allie had worn intentionally so she’d looked taller. According to statistics, tall people were more likely to get the job.

Allie lengthened her spine, held Ennui’s gaze.

A calculated look crossed the woman’s face as if she was trying to decide something important about Allie. “Do you know Lila?”

Um. No. No she did not. “Who’s Lila?”

Ennui tapped her chin with a fingernail that was the same shade of red as her lipstick, studied Allie for a long moment, opened her mouth, closed it, and then finally said, “You look like you should know Lila.”

Was this some kind of code? Was she being led to lie about knowing Lila? Allie frowned, not sure how to proceed.

“I bet you do know Lila,” Ennui said.

Huh? What was going on? Did she know someone named Lila? Allie searched her memory. Nope. Nothing. “I’m pretty sure I don’t know a Lila.”

“Maybe you know her by her middle name? Emily. You do know an Emily don’t you?” Ennui winked as if they were in on a conspiracy.

The wink made her feel included, part of a secret club. Allie liked the feeling, but

this was one of the weirdest conversations she’d ever had. She cocked her head. “I do know a couple of Emilys.”

“There you go.” The woman pushed up from her yoga ball. It bounced against the cubicle wall with a soft thwap. “Follow me.”

Allie glanced around at the other people waiting for an interview. Several of them glared at her. This wasn’t fair, cutting in line, and pretending to know Lila Emily. “I can’t…I shouldn’t…”

“Do you want a shot at this job?” Ennui hiss-whispered.

“Yes, but I don’t want to cheat anyone else out of a chance.”

Ennui straightened, her uber-red lips shining in the light dripping in through the plate glass window behind the cubicle wall. “Never mind. This was a mistake. Fill out the application and get in line.”

Allie thought of having to call her mom to tell her she needed to move back in. Imagined how happy her mom would be, hovering, cooking her meals, washing her clothes, snooping through her cell phone. Compared that loser feeling to the triumphant coup she’d feel when she took her parents out to dinner at Del Frisco’s to tell them she’d finally landed a job in her chosen field.

She didn’t understand what was going on with this weird interview, but she desperately needed the job, for her mental health if nothing else. “Please don’t write me off. I want a shot.”

“Well then, come along.” Ennui tossed her head and guided Allie past the other applicants who were shooting eye daggers at her.

Why was she getting special treatment? Had her folks pulled strings? But how could they? She hadn’t told them the details of her job interview, precisely because she didn’t want them pulling strings.

Gulping, Allie ignored the urge to slump guiltily past the other interviewees. She tossed her head like she belonged, and kept her eyes straight ahead, aloof as a runway model. Jumping ahead of the line went against every egalitarian bone in her body, but when life handed you an advantage, it was dumb not to take it.

Right?

It wasn’t like she hadn’t had her share of disadvantages. Still, guilt had an uneven weight, a thorny texture, and the pasty taste of cold oatmeal.

“This way.” Ennui turned to crook a finger, stopping briefly in front of a columned entryway leading into a vast darkened room. She switched on her cell phone, using it as a flashlight, and crossed over the threshold.

Allie hesitated at the sill where the bare concrete they’d been walking on merged into mahogany hardwood.

Shadows stretched before her, thick and mysterious. The intoxicating fragrance of oil paints on canvas dizzied her head. She curled her fingernails into her palms, giddy with the pelt of scents—the woody aroma of pencils, the ashy odor of charcoal dust, the earthy essence of clay. It smelled like art school. Felt like coming home.

Her heart beat a little faster.

“C’mon,” Ennui prodded, sounding faraway and ghostly, the beam from her cell phone bobbing several yards ahead of Allie.

This was the direction life was guiding her. She’d learned a long time ago not to fight the current, to surrender to the flow. Taking a deep breath, she exhaled slowly, and hurried to catch up with Ennui.

Lumps of things loomed on either side of the pathway cordoned off by thick velvet ropes—pallets stacked high with boxes, sheets covering exhibits, the spindly bones of metal scaffolding. An eerie, unsettled sensation crawled and wriggled down her spine. Weirdly, she was having a hard time inhaling. The darkness was too heavy, almost solid.

Breathe. Trust.

At the far end of the room shimmered a faint filter of light, coming through what appeared to be a door cracked ajar. It seemed like something from a recurrent nightmare where she was running from toothy monsters she couldn’t see and got mired in honey-slicked floors.

She knew construction workers were in the midst of setting up the makeshift museum, but you would think someone would turn on some lights, or take down the heavy curtains and let the sunshine in.

“Hurry,” Ennui’s voice snapped sharply. “I don’t have all day.”

Spurred, Allie picked up the pace, her heels clicking loudly against the hardwood floor. She reached Ennui just as the woman turned toward the thin beam of light.

Indeed, a door was propped ajar, wedged open with a thick, hardcover edition of a classic art textbook.

Ennui paused and took hold of Allie’s arm. “Piece of advice—if he thinks Lila sent you, you’re much more likely to get the job.”

Um, so keep up the lie? Allie shifted her weight, felt guilt roll up the back of her throat. What if she lied and the “he” in question called this Lila person?

Before Allie could respond, Ennui knocked on the open door. “Dr. Thorn,” Ennui called. “I have found a suitable candidate.”

The door swung all the way open, and Allie blinked against the stun of sunshine. A middle-aged, professorial man pushed a pair of leopard-print reading glasses up on a ski-slope nose. His forehead was oversized, his ears undersized. His hands were tiny, fingers stubby, but his feet were long and wide. Both tall and stout, he duck-walked toward them with an uneven gait, his knees bowed from the weight of his girth. He was oddly assembled like he’d inherited the wrong combination of ancestral DNA.

“This is Allie Grainger,” Ennui said and shot Dr. Thorn a meaningful glance. “Lila sent her.”

And then Ennui disappeared like some fairytale sprite. One second she was there, the next she was gone. It was creepy, and frankly, a little unnerving. Especially now that Allie was alone with the strange-looking man who eyed her up and down with a speculative stare.

“Hal Thorn,” he said and stuck out an extraordinarily dry palm. On his pinky finger, he wore a big gold ring.

Allie didn’t really want to shake his hand, but she did. His palm was almost as small as hers.

“Have a seat.” He waved at a folding chair surrounded by books and boxes and stacks of empty art frames. Beyond a wealth of bookcases there was no other furniture in the room.

She stepped over a pile of unopened packages, and perched on the edge of the metal chair with her knees together, her purse clutched in her lap.

“So,” he said, and squatted in front of her so they were eye level. She was surprised that he could crouch, and wondered if he was going to be able to stand up afterward. It was stuffy in the room, and far too warm, but he wore a nubby brown cardigan and he wasn’t perspiring. “Lila sent you.”

His ice water blue eyes pierced into her, his gaze a clinical laser. Exact. Sharp. Dangerous.

Allie cleared her throat, and extended her resume, which was pitifully short, toward him. “Actually, I—”

“I don’t need to see a resume,” he said. “If Lila vetted you, you’re in.”

Stomach churning a cocktail of thrill and chill, Allie cocked her head. “I’m hired?”

“Can you start tomorrow?”

Wow. Okay. Yes. “I work at the Visitors’ Center from ten to four-thirty,” she said. “But the job listing did say you were looking for evening help.”

“That’s right. From five until we close at ten p.m. If things work out, I’ll consider offering you a permanent job traveling from city to city helping me put on these popup art galleries. Would you be interested?”

“Yes!” she said, holding her purse to her chest and jumping to her feet, forgetting for a moment she had essentially lied to get the job. “Yes, I accept.”

Hal Thorn laughed, showing a row of crooked, eggshell teeth. He straightened, rising up from the squat with the amazing agility of a yogi. “While I love your enthusiasm, Ms. Grainger, I’d be remiss if I didn’t bring up salary before you accepted.”

“Oh, right.” She pressed three fingers over her mouth to keep from giggling. She wasn’t expecting much. It was an entry-level job in a competitive field.

“Twenty dollars an hour.”

That much? Was this for real? The job listing had quoted half that salary.

“The wages might be more than you were expecting,” he said, his frost-colored eyes drifting back to her face.

She nodded.

“That’s because you’ll have special duties.”

Uh-oh. Allie bit her bottom lip. Was that code for something unsavory? “What do you mean?”

His lips thinned into a shifty smile. “Besides being a guide at the museum, I’ll need you for courier duties. Driving things back and forth from the main museum to the popup. Do you have a car?”

“Yes.” She let out a soft sigh. Whew, there for a minute she thought he was going to suggest an indecent proposal.

“Would you also be available on your days off from the Visitors’ Center, and before your ten a.m. shift?”

“Yes, absolutely.”

“No other demands on your time?”

“Other than the Visitors’ Center, I’m all yours.”

“No boyfriend?”

Ick, was it getting creepy again? “No boyfriend.”

“Good. No distractions. I can see why Lila recommended you.”

Allie cringed. Did she come clean now and kill the job offer, or keep her mouth shut?

“Welcome aboard, Ms. Grainger.” Dr. Thorn shook her hand again. “We’re happy to have you. I’ll walk you out.”

Instead of taking her out the way Ennui had brought her in, Dr. Thorn ushered her to a side entrance. He leaned in close, his freaky blue eyes pinning her to the spot as he stared into her like a human lie detector. “Tell Lila I said hello.”

Allie gulped, hitched her purse up on her shoulder, nodded. “Will do.”

Dr. Thorn reached out to squeeze her wrist, gave her a curly smile. “Report to Daphne at eight a.m. tomorrow morning. She’ll get you set with Human Resources and show you the ropes.”

“Daphne?”

“The young woman who escorted you in.”

Oh, yes, Ennui. “Will do.”

He waved to her and went back inside. Allie turned to head back to the Visitors’ Center with two minutes of her lunch break to spare.

And there, leaning against the pecan tree and drinking a bottle of iced tea, was the shirtless, sweaty cowboy who’d saved her from being trampled.

His sultry gaze met hers, dark eyes shimmering black in the heat of the noonday sun as he stared at her as if he knew her most shameful secret and every lie she had ever told.