Sarah spent the next few days locked snugly inside her house. She couldn’t risk leaving and running into someone from work—or worse yet, Finch.

Lucky tried to comfort her for the first couple of days, but his boredom soon outweighed his sympathy. She couldn’t even bring herself to look her most loyal friend in the eyes because every time she did, he wiggled his doggie eyebrows and let out a low, soulful whine.

“I’m sorry, boy,” she said, and she really did mean it. “But we have to stay here.”

Lucky would groan and then go lie down in his oversized basket where he would watch Sarah intently from across the room.

Even my dog thinks I’m messing up my life!

Finch tried calling her more than once, but she didn’t have anything to say to him. At least not yet. Maybe after she’d had more time to cool down, to think about what she really wanted, she’d come to a different conclusion. But for now, her days were better spent alone. Plus Lucky.

She’d just finished watching an episode of some new baking show on Netflix when her phone buzzed with an incoming call. What does he want now?

When she saw that the caller wasn’t, in fact, Finch, she begrudgingly picked up. A part of her liked that he kept trying, though she hated to lead him on. What if this wasn’t right for her? What if it would never be right?

“Hello?” she answered rather dispiritedly.

“What have you been up to, girly?” Carol Graves shouted into the phone. Sarah’s favorite dog breeder was in a weird place—young enough to use the newest technology but also old enough to assume she needed to scream in order to be heard through the phone line.

“Learning how to bake cake pops and unicorn cakes,” Sarah answered, rubbing her ears to stop the ringing.

“Oh, bring me some!” Carol shouted again.

Sarah just barely had time to save herself from the second onslaught by whipping the phone away from her ear. “I said I’m learning, not that I’m doing.”

“Well, someone’s smarmy today,” Carol spat, and Sarah could practically feel the moisture hit her cheek. “Does this have anything to do with that handsome billionaire boyfriend I saw you with the other day?”

Maybe she shouldn’t have picked up the phone after all. “One, he’s not my boyfriend, and two, he’s definitely not a billionaire,” she explained, though her patience was seriously wearing thin.

Carol tutted at Sarah’s denial, then finally brought her voice down to a normal speaking level. “You think I don’t recognize the founder of my favorite social network?”

Sarah sighed but decided not to correct the other woman. Doing so would likely lead to a lengthy discussion about Finch, and that was the last topic Sarah felt like discussing these days. So much so that she volunteered another uncomfortable topic of discussion. “I got suspended from work.”

“Yes, yes, I heard.” Sympathy filled her voice, though not surprise as Sarah had expected. “Such a shame.”

“Wait… you heard?” She hugged a throw pillow to her chest, feeling the weight of everything crashing down on her all over again.

“Of course I did. From that handsome billionaire of yours, no less.”

Ugh. Sarah pinched the bridge of her nose, but it was too late to fight off the tension headache that had begun to build beneath her brow.

“He’s really worried about you, you know,” Carol prodded softly.

“Yeah, okay.” Sarah tossed the pillow back onto the couch and punched it with all her might. And like everything else in her life, she hardly made a dent.

Carol began to yell again. “I’m being truthful here! What did you do to that poor boy?”

“Me? To him? No, that’s not how it went down.” She pictured Finch as he held her in his arms after that terrifying leap from the zip line, the slow, tension-filled moment when they almost kissed, and then… him moving away, rejecting her in that moment. Perhaps for all moments.

“Then what did happen?”

“He…” Sarah stopped herself, realizing how stupid the argument was. He didn’t kiss me when I wanted to.

“That’s what I thought,” Carol said with a disappointed tut-tut.

Sarah just didn’t have the strength to argue anymore. Instead, she decided to ask a question that had always plagued her about her breeder friend. “Carol?”

“Yes, dear?”

“How come you never got married?”

Carol let out a wistful sigh. One of her dogs barked in the distance, and Lucky tilted his head in response. “I’ve thought about that long and hard,” Carol answered after a lengthy pause. “And I’m not entirely sure why. I guess it’s because no one ever made me love and hate them at the same time.”

“You think love is… hate?” This was certainly a new definition, but lately Sarah had been battling so many new feelings she couldn’t decide whether or not she agreed with Carol’s assessment.

“It has to be, at least in part,” the other woman insisted. “Otherwise, how can you appreciate the good without the bad? How can you know your feelings are real if they’re never challenged?”

She had a point here, and she’d also described how Sarah felt about Finch perfectly. Of course, none of this made her any less confused. None of it changed the fact that he’d had the opportunity to kiss her and hadn’t. Ugh.

“Are you happy, Carol? Are you happy living all alone?”

“But I’m not alone. I have the dogs. And I have you and the others. You’re my family.”

A family through work. That would be nice if, one, Sarah hadn’t been suspended from her job and, two, all of her patients didn’t die within a matter of years after she met them.

“Now will you give that nice boy a call?” Carol asked, hope lighting in her voice.

“I’ll think about it,” Sarah answered before ending the call and looking back toward Lucky.

She motioned for him to join her at the couch. “Do you want to see Finch?” she asked the attentive canine.

Lucky barked, whined, wagged his tail, and spun in a circle, then grabbed his leash from the hook by the door and waited.

Well, at least his feelings were clear.

Now Sarah just had to figure out her own.

Finch listened to the phone ring on an endless loop. It didn’t even go to voicemail this time, so he hung up and tried one more time. He’d called Sarah every day that week without any luck, but he just wasn’t ready to give up on her yet. Oh, how he hoped he wasn’t irritating her!

When she actually picked up after the second ring, he felt so shocked he nearly fumbled his phone. “You’re alive!” he shouted breathlessly.

“Yeah, I’m alive… and bored.”

Lucky barked in the background, apparently agreeing with his owner’s statement.

“How can I help?” Finch asked. His cheeks hurt from smiling so hard.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about Eleanor’s mystery, and I think I have an idea.” Okay, so they wouldn’t be addressing their almost kiss or the fact she’d been avoiding him for nearly an entire week. Still, he was too happy to care.

“I told her we were done helping,” he confessed, thinking back to their confrontation in the hospital so many days ago.

Sarah sighed in frustration. “Maybe you are, but I’m not.”

“But she was awful to you!” Finch’s chest clenched. Now that he had Sarah back, he didn’t want to waste any more time helping that ungrateful old woman. He only wanted Sarah.

Her voice became soft, almost like a whisper. “Yeah, but it’s kind of all I have right now. And I just… I need something.”

“Are they still investigating you at work?” Finch hated that she’d had to face this alone when he so desperately wanted to be there to help her through this. He’d once lost everything, too. There was life on the other side, and since meeting Sarah, there might also be happiness waiting, too.

“No, I got cleared, but I took some vacation time so I could think.” How long had this been, and why had no one informed him? They’d lost so many days when they could have been together, learning about each other, figuring out where things might take them.

Oh, he was infatuated with this Sarah Campbell. The last time he’d devoted so much passion to any one thing, Reel Life had been born. What could come of him and Sarah? He didn’t know yet, but he had a feeling it would be even better.

“What have you been thinking about?” he asked, wondering how soon he could get her to agree to come see him.

But she wanted to keep the topic focused on his dearly not-departed great aunt, because she answered with “Well, Eleanor’s mystery, for one.”

“And?” Please say something else. Please give this poor, lovesick man some hope.

“One thing at a time.” Fabric swished on the other end of the line, and he pictured her pacing around the living room he’d yet to see. He wondered if her style might be more fancy or minimalist. Probably a mix of both with antiques lovingly kept in a glass curio case. She, no doubt, had a story for each one. Would he one day get to hear those stories? Get to see that living room with his own eyes?

“Look, I’m going to solve this thing with or without you,” Sarah continued. “But I would rather it be with you.”

If that’s what it took, then that’s what Finch would do. “Fair enough,” he said, hoping the extra time would help him cool off a little rather than further igniting his infatuation. The last thing he wanted to do was scare her off. He’d never cared this much about what anyone thought. The fact that he regarded Sarah so highly both delighted and terrified him in equal measure.

“So are you in?” Sarah asked, drawing his focus back to their conversation about Eleanor, of all things.

“Yeah, I guess I am.” One thing at a time—just like she’d said. This was clearly important to her, which suddenly made it important to him once more, too.

He could hear the smile in Sarah’s words when she spoke again. “Good. So I’ve been thinking. The hospital isn’t the only place that keeps records. We could try the police, too.” Her pace quickened as they dove deeper into the topic. While Sarah had become Finch’s passion, Eleanor had become hers.

Whatever it takes, he reminded himself.

“I already did,” he confessed, remembering his odd run-in with Officer Carrera. “I was going to tell you, but then…”

“I get it. What about the newspapers? Did you try them?”

“Only what I’ve found on Google, and there’s not a lot that goes that far back.”

“I have an idea,” she said, her voice hitching on that last word. “Meet me at the community college in half an hour?”

Yes, they could meet. And they would. It was exactly what he wanted but putting one thing at a time would be so much harder when they stood face-to-face. He had to know if she felt the same way he did, and so he tiptoed around the topic, hoping she’d be the one to rush at it full-on.

“Sarah, wait…” He chose each word carefully as he continued. “Shouldn’t we talk about what happened with us first?”

“Something happened with us?” she asked, but he could see through right her. She knew, and she’d been thinking about it, too.

“You know what I mean. After the zip line, we—”

“Nope, let’s just get to the college and see about accessing their archives.”

“But I want you to know that—”

“One thing at a time, remember?”

Did that mean solving Eleanor’s mystery would open up the possibility of a relationship between them at last? And what would happen if Eleanor died before they’d figured out any of her nagging secrets?

Now, more than ever, Finch felt the time ticking away.

He would not—could not—fail.