Oliver burst through the front door and stuttered to a stop, his eyes taking in her sitting behind the desk. “Oh,” he grunted, sounding like he’d accidentally swallowed his tongue. She stood up and walked around the desk to him.

“I’m Kylie VanLueven. And you are?” she said, holding her hand out to shake his. She was pretty sure he wouldn’t follow formalities otherwise. His gaze darted this way and that as he put his hand out to shake.

“Oliver Blank,” he mumbled, “but you can call me Ollie.” And then he took off for the back like his ass was on fire.

She laughed a little to herself as she sat back down at the desk. Had she been that uncomfortable around boys when she was in school? Probably. Hell, she felt like doing just that this morning around Dr. Whitaker.

She got back to work on the calendar project. She’d finished putting everything in until the end of the year, and, for a lack of something else to do, had started back on January 1st and began working her way forward. At least this way, Dr. Whitaker would have all of his appointments in his calendar to refer back to whenever he needed.

And anyway, there was no way she was going to sit around and just wait for the minutes to tick by until five o’clock hit. There was no faster way to make her completely insane than to be stuck doing absolutely nothing.

Well, that week-long stint of hiding in bed aside, of course, but that wasn’t exactly a normal thing for her.

She’d almost caught up to May when the front doorbell jingled and in came Dr. Whitaker, shit and hay and animal hair all over his clothes…and never looking better than he did right then. How did he manage to make cow shit look good?

She shoved the thought aside and grabbed the stack of messages from the desk. “Hi, Dr. Whitaker,” she said, smiling as she walked around the front desk and over to him. “Here’s your phone calls for the day. I marked the ones that seemed urgent in the corner with a star.” She pointed those out. “I also have almost all of the calendar entries done. Did you play around with Google Calendar at all during lunch?”

He shook his head, not even looking at her as he thumbed his way through the messages. “Kylie,” he breathed, “this is…amazing!” He looked up and grinned. “Wow! You’re wonderful!”

“It’s just some phone messages,” she pointed out, but her cheeks were glowing red anyway. Her previous guess that as long as she didn’t kill a patient she’d be a step up in Dr. Whitaker’s eyes was turning out to be true. Which was embarrassing as hell, honestly.

“But I can read them all! And they make sense. And I bet you didn’t tell a single person today that they weren’t allowed to have one of my business cards.”

“What?” she said, dumbfounded, just staring up at him. Praise was nice, sure, but praise that made sense would be even better.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said, waving her off. “Listen, do you want to go down to the Muffin Man Bakery and grab a donut to eat? My treat, as a way to say thank you for–dammit!”

“What?” she said again. She rolled her eyes at herself. Her vocabulary really needed some variety. Maybe she could start adding in the word “Huh?” for shits and giggles.

“We can’t go to the Muffin Man,” he said, clearly disappointed. “There was a big fire a couple of months ago, and Gage just got the insurance check recently from what I’ve heard. It hasn’t reopened yet.”

“Oh. Damn.” Kylie was genuinely depressed right along with her boss. A donut sounded amazing to her at the moment, even though sugar was awful for a person…but hell, she was pregnant. It wasn’t like watching her figure was going to do her much good at this point. “Well, I’ll take a raincheck on the idea. We can do it later, when they reopen.”

She started to gather up her things so she could walk home when Adam asked, “Hey, do you know of anyone who’d be willing to rent a farm?”

“A farm? Like, a whole farm?” She turned to stare up at him, mouth agape. “Ummm…who’d need to rent a farm who didn’t already have one?”

“Well, it’s just a hobby farm, really. There’s acreage, but I have cows running on that. I mostly need to find someone to stay in the house and take care of the few animals I have in the barn. I keep hoping I can move back to it, but I haven’t been able to yet, and the current tenant is moving out as we speak. She got engaged to her boyfriend and is moving in with him.” He gave her a tight smile that didn’t reach his eyes, and Kylie smiled back, the wheels in her mind spinning. Whoever this tenant was, Dr. Whitaker wasn’t happy about her moving out, that much was obvious.

She wished she were more plugged into the gossip center of Sawyer. She was pretty sure there was a story here that Dr. Whitaker wasn’t sharing.

But she couldn’t say that out loud. Not to her boss, anyway. She shrugged. “I’ll keep my ears open and tell you if I hear of anything. I wish I could, but I’m staying at my mom’s for free, at least for now. I’m saving every penny I can for college and…and stuff,” she stumbled, “so I can’t splurge on something like rent. But if I hear of anyone looking for a place to stay, I’ll be sure to tell you.”

He had a funny look on his face. She paused, waiting for him to say something, anything at all, but he was just standing there, opening and closing his mouth so she finally just gave a mental shrug. “Well, I’m heading out. I’ll see you in the morning.” She grabbed her purse, slinging it over her shoulder and heading out the door.

Tonight, she needed a long, hot bath. Nothing but relaxation. Somewhere far, far away from her weird but sexy-as-hell boss.