He didn't want her to stay. If he did, he would have asked her by now. He was getting a grip on the case, and that meant she would be safe. He would have everything figured out, and then it would all be over and fixed. Yes, the dragons had shown up again, but that didn't mean much. They hadn't tried to talk to her, and they hadn't tried to attack them.

"Can I come in with you today?" she asked when he was headed to work.

He was almost out the door, but he stopped to think. "Sure. It's probably smarter that you don't stay alone, anyway. Beau can keep you company today. I need to go searching through the files myself and I have a few calls to make."

He was already trying to pawn her off onto someone else. They didn't speak during the short drive to the office. At least Beau was happy to see her.

"Hey, you want to organize my desk?" he asked her after the first hour.

"Yes," she told him gratefully.

She'd been put on phone duty. Handling the phones was a drag. Mostly, she just talked with people. No one who called had any real emergencies. They just wanted to know how things were going, and a few wanted to know about the human everyone was talking about.

She got the strangest feeling that the Keeper was mostly the town gossip keeper or secret keeper. She also figured out why they were always stocked with baked goods. The older women in town loved baking for these men. It also seemed to her that they were all humans. In her experience, shifters never got that old. Not physically, anyway, and the women had older-sounding voices. One who had stopped in looked to be about ninety. Joseline wondered why there were so many humans in town and why they were so interested in these guys.

She went to Beau's desk and started surveying it. It was actually much cleaner than he had made it sound. He had a few things out of place, but mostly it was all confined to one junk drawer. She took the drawer out and dumped the contents onto the floor. Sifting through all of it was going to take her some time. She'd never been so happy to see a mess. This was loads more fun than answering more calls. She couldn't believe this was what Beau and Rhett did all day.

"Thanks for this," Beau told her. "I know I can be a bit of a mess, but I really am trying harder."

"At least you're giving me something to do. And this isn't bad at all," she told him. "I swear, Rhett isn't amusing anymore these days. I think he's grown bored of me, leaving me to waste away on the phones while he does all the cool work."

"Maybe." Beau shrugged. "He's not really used to having women around."

That stung to hear. "Why isn't he used to women? Does he not like having company at his house?"

Beau sat back in his chair. "I think he's just scared of finding love. It's kind of a myth that all shifters have a mate. I mean, shifters do all have mates, but they don't all find them or seek them out. Maybe Rhett is one of those strange ones."

"I've never heard that before. A shifter without a mate is like a hand without fingers. It works okay, but it's still incomplete."

"Maybe. But that doesn't mean there aren't any fingerless hands out there, right?"

This was a whole line of thinking that had never occurred to her. Rhett seemed so normal, but maybe that was why he wasn't asking her to stay. Maybe he was a shifter who didn't want to find his mate. Or maybe he had already found her and had decided that love and relationships were too much work. There were humans like that. It had never occurred to Joseline that shifters could be like that too. The whole shifter mate thing was such a huge deal, and she had never heard of a shifter going without a mate on purpose.

All of this was also supposing that she was his one and only. He hadn't exactly called her his mate yet, and he hadn't tried to sleep with her in two days. If she were the one for him, there was a good chance he would have told her by now, or at least hinted at it. He hadn't been shy about telling her that she was his type the very first night they met. Maybe he'd been interested in sleeping with her and nothing more.

"Special delivery." Nora entered the station, announcing herself loudly. "I tried Rhett's place, but no one was home. Didn't pick up his phone, either."

Joseline looked up, and her spirits lifted. "We get the runt."

"You sure do. Free of charge."

Beau stepped over and took the wiggly puppy from her arms. "Hey, little guy. What's your name?"

"Doesn't have one," Joseline told him. "I'm sure Rhett will come up with something clever."

"I can't believe he wanted a dog," Beau said. "You must have talked him into this. There's no way the Rhett I know would want a dog."

"Who doesn't like puppies?" Joseline asked indignantly. Rhett had loved the dog from the moment he'd picked it up. She'd loved seeing him with it and couldn't wait to see the look on his face when he found out the little guy was his.

"You don't know Rhett," Beau laughed. "Nora, did you ever think you'd be setting him up with one of your rescues?"

"No," she admitted. "But that doesn't mean he hates dogs."

Joseline took the puppy from Beau. "You two are nuts. I'm going to go and give him the dog."

Nora handed her some papers. "Give these to him too. The little guy has his shots, but he still needs to be neutered, and he needs to get his flea treatment in two weeks."

Joseline took the dog and the papers to the back room, where Rhett was sitting in a pile of files.

"Look what I got." Joseline held the dog out to him. "Looks like you're a doggy daddy."

Rhett looked up and frowned. "Could you keep him in the front with you? I don't want him getting into these papers. None of them have been digitized, so if he ruins them, they're gone for good."

"Sure," Joseline said. She waited for him to say more, but he was already reading again.

"Anything else?" He looked at the papers in her hand. "Are those from Tuck?"

"No, these are for the puppy. Have you thought of a name yet?"

"Hadn't had a chance yet. You just told me he was mine."

"You haven't thought about it at all since we first saw him? Not even after Nora said he was going to probably be yours?"

"I haven't. It can't be that hard to come up with a name. Fido? Or maybe Rover? See, that's already two suggestions, and I didn't even have to think about them."

Joseline shook her head. "That's not how you name a dog. You have to pick a name that means something to him."

Rhett laughed. "Dogs aren't that smart. As long as it has one syllable, he'll love it."

"Okay. Pick whatever you want. We should go and get dog food and stuff on the way home."

"Great idea."

She left him alone and took the puppy back to the front. Maybe she didn't know him so well after all. He wasn't even excited to get the dog. She'd been sure he was going to at least want to hold it, maybe even get a little teary-eyed. But she'd been wrong.

What else was she wrong about?