Adam pulled up to the clinic, surprised and pleased to see that the neon open sign had already been flipped on. Kylie had beat him there. Granted, he’d accidentally slept in that morning and then after feeding his horses and running over to his old farm and feeding and milking the animals there, he was more than a little bit behind, but still…

Having someone who he could rely on to show up and work hard was a giant relief, a relief he hadn’t even known he needed, but now? It was only two weeks into it, but he already couldn’t imagine living without Kylie there to rely on.

He went walking into the clinic, breathing in the pleasant scent of animal mixed with coffee. Of course – she’d already brewed up a pot. He was pretty sure she was Mary Poppins in disguise.

Kylie looked up from the front desk with a smile. “Hi, Dr. Whitaker!” she said cheerfully.

“Call me Adam,” he told her, for what was probably the 17th time.

She nodded. “Adam,” she said awkwardly. She seemed to much prefer his official title, although he couldn’t begin to guess why.

He headed into the back to grab a cup of coffee and check on the animals, and was surprised to have her trail along behind him, her ever-present scent of wildflowers trailing along too. He’d kept telling himself to inform her of his non-existent allergies to her perfume, but apparently, sheer willpower only went so far, and then…stopped.

His willpower apparently stopped right at the doorstep of doing what was smart and logical, and then disappeared without a trace.

Not the most convenient place for his willpower to conk out on him.

He waited for Kylie to say something as he poured himself a cup, but she just stood there, gnawing on her bottom lip.

“Everything going okay?” he prompted her as he began wandering around, checking in on his patients. Sniffles seemed like she wasn’t favoring her leg quite as much, which was a marked improvement. He should check her—

“Well,” she burst out, “I…I’m wondering if you have another project for me to do.”

He stopped rummaging around in the supply drawer and looked up at her, surprised. “Another project?” he echoed. She sure seemed like she was getting a lot done to him. How could she possibly have time to do anything else? She got more office work done in a day than he did in three weeks.

“Yeah. All of the appointments from your calendar are in the computer, all of the paperwork is filed, all of your bills are paid, and the phone doesn’t exactly ring every moment of every day. I can’t stand being bored. I need something else to do. Do you have cleaning supplies?”

His head spun a little from the abrupt change in topic. “Like Windex and a broom, you mean?”

She nodded enthusiastically.

“Yeah, uhhh, probably,” he mumbled, closing the supply drawer and heading over to the corner where he stashed the random shit he didn’t use very often.

Honestly, the office was fine – a little dirty in places but hell, it was a veterinarian office. What really mattered was the cleanliness of the animal cages, and those were kept in tip-top shape.

But if Kylie wanted something to do, far be it from him to keep her from entertaining herself. After all, what kind of boss complained about an employee wanting to do more work?

She was simply staring down at the broom and Windex bottle he was trying to hand her, though, refusing to take them from him, and he looked at them too, confused. Why was she staring at them like they were venomous snakes, just ready to strike?

“Ummm…would it be okay if I bought new ones from the store?” she asked tactfully.

Huh. He held the broom up to inspect it. Now that he looked at it a little closer, he did have to admit that it’d seen better days. Maybe, like, 50 years ago when this vet clinic was started and this broom was first purchased.

“Yeah, sure,” he said slowly, his stomach twisting a little at the idea of spending yet more money; his gut reaction to spending money of any kind on anything was instinctual and automatic. But, he began to reason through it, since she’d started actually billing customers on a regular basis, his bank account wasn’t quite as empty as it had been before. In fact, it could stand the onslaught of a shopping spree for cleaning supplies – not something he’d always been able to say.

Kind of a nice feeling, really. Unusual, but nice.

“Sure, just tell David down at the hardware store to put it on my account and send me a bill,” he said a little more firmly.

“Great!” she said, the brilliant smile back on her face. She headed up front and Adam got back to work on the morning check of his patients. When he’d finished, he headed up front and found that she was gone. She must’ve headed for the store already.

He shook his head, smiling to himself as he got in his truck to start making his rounds. The office was fine as it was, but if it made her happy to clean it…well shit, then it made him happy, too.

It had been a long day – but honestly, what day wasn’t a long day – and he stifled a yawn as he pulled to a stop in front of the clinic. Time to go inside, pick up his messages, do another check of the animals, and then stop out at his old place to milk the cow and goat and feed the chickens before he could, blessedly, go back to his mom’s and collapse into bed.

Was everyone this exhausted all the time? He felt like he was walking in a thick cloud, trying his damnedest to keep up with everything but slowly failing.

He forced himself out of the truck and towards the front door. One foot in front of the other. He could do this. He could totally—

He stopped.

This was his office, right?

He stepped back and looked over to the right, where WHITAKER’S VETERINARIAN CLINIC was emblazoned in big gold letters on the plate-glass windows. Yup, his office all right.

It just didn’t look like it.

Had the front glass door always been encased in aluminum? He didn’t remember it shining like that before. He had a vague recollection of it being gray before. Or black. Or some version of “grungy” anyway.

He gingerly pulled the door open, the doorbell overhead tinkling to announce his entrance, and Kylie looked up, huffing stray hairs out of her face. “Dammit!” she said, scrambling to her feet. “I was hoping to have it done before you got back. Is it really five already?”

But Adam couldn’t answer her. His eyes were too busy scanning the room. The cement-block walls, previously painted a dingy yellowish color, were now white. Shining, clean, brilliant white. “Did you paint in here?” he burst out, his nose wiggling as he tried to detect the odor of fresh paint in the air. Nothing. Just lemons and wildflowers.

She laughed. “I just scrubbed them,” she said with a huge grin and a shrug. “If I had to make a guess, I would say that was something that hadn’t been done in a while.”

The office was a disaster, to be honest. The left half of the room had been emptied, with everything shoved to the right side so she could do a thorough cleaning without anything getting in the way. It was the most orderly aftermath of a cleaning tornado he’d ever witnessed.

But the walls…and front windows…all of the nose prints from the countless dogs that’d passed through the clinic were gone. The black footprints, the hair everywhere…

It had all disappeared, like magic, under the hands of the most amazing employee he’d ever had the good luck to hire.

“Will you rent my farm from me?” he said, the words bursting from his lips impulsively. “Rent free. Just take care of the animals and the yard so I don’t have to.”

It was something he’d been telling himself that he absolutely, positively could not offer to her ever since the thought had first popped into his head, but looking around his clinic, he knew that it couldn’t be in better hands than hers. Hell, she’d probably have his hobby farm turning a profit within six months, if his clinic was anything to judge her by.

Her eyes grew wide. “Really?” she breathed, and then she threw herself at him. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!” she cried, quite literally, as tears streamed down her face.

He patted her awkwardly on the back. Gratitude he could handle, even if it was a little embarrassing. Tears, on the other hand…not his favorite.

She pulled back, snuffling and wiping at her cheeks with the backs of her hands. “I can’t even tell you how much this means to me,” she said through her tears, grinning at him. “I just…my mom last night…I…thank you!” she finally sputtered out.

He laughed a little, his cheeks red with embarrassment. “I don’t think I could find someone who’d take better care of it than you, honestly. Want to go tour it?” In for a penny, in for a pound. If he was going to offer her free rent, he might as well go show her around, right?

“Absolutely!” she said, spinning back to the desk and grabbing her purse and lunch bag from underneath it. “Is it okay if I leave the clinic like this until Monday?” she asked, coming to a stop and looking around the torn-apart office.

Adam shrugged. “If I get calls on the weekend, I normally just go out to a client’s place. I don’t have many customers come here on the weekend. It’ll be fine.”

She grinned. “Then I’m ready whenever you are.”

He started to head towards the truck so they could drive out to his farm, but he stopped short, remembering in the nick of time. “Wait, I need to go look at the patients in the back real quick and then we can go. Did Ollie come in today?”

“Yeah, he was here until just before you arrived,” Kylie said, trailing along behind him as he made an about-face to head down the hallway. “He said he needed to leave a little early tonight.”

Adam nodded, getting to work checking on the animals. It was Friday night, and Ollie was a teenager. For all Adam knew, the kid had a hot date. Hell, stranger things had happened. Maybe.

And as he worked his way around the room, he could see that Ollie had done his job perfectly, as always. Between Kylie taking care of the front and Ollie taking care of the back, life was just a little more manageable. And if Kylie could move out to the homestead and start taking care of his animals, that’d be one more huge load off his plate.

He could almost feel his shoulders relax from the relief of having so many stressors removed from them. He could breathe a little deeper, and the constant knot in his stomach loosened up just a smidge.

Damn, this was a glorious feeling. A man could get used to this.

They headed out the front door, flipping off the lights and the open sign as they went, and Kylie climbed into the passenger side of his truck, tactfully moving all of the random paraphernalia off her seat before sliding into place. “Sorry,” he said, a little embarrassed as he put his truck into reverse and backed out into the street. “I don’t have passengers very often. It’s an easy place to store things.”

She smiled over at him. “No worries,” she said. “You don’t normally act like a taxi service. It’s all good.”

The businessman inside of him was screaming and yelling at him that he was being an idiot for giving away his rental property for free – again – but even as he thought the words, he couldn’t make himself regret the offer. The 100-watt smile on Kylie’s face was all the payment he needed.

Bank account be damned.