“What do you mean?” Janie repeated.
“You’ve got animals again. And here comes your sister. Times are better.”
Janie opened the passenger door and exited before he could get out of his side and assist her. Waving at her sister, she came around the SUV and met him.
“You’re right. Times are better, and I need to remember that.” To his surprise, she came close, stood on her tiptoes, and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek.
On the cheek!
But what bothered him most wasn’t the kiss. No, it was that he wanted more than a quick kiss on the cheek.
CHAPTER TWELVE
“AMANDA’S HERE, AND she’d like to talk to you.”
Janie glanced up from her work on the mural. Crisco, as if sensing he no longer had an audience, rolled over and fell asleep. Katie looked tired, and Janie felt a moment’s pang knowing she was the cause.
“Why didn’t you text me instead of walking all the way over here?”
“I was afraid you’d ignore the text. You have that habit.”
Last night Luke and Katie had ganged up on her. You can’t keep working as the lab assistant for that class. Your life’s worth more than the internship in Africa. In the end, Luke, her brother-in-law, volunteered to pay her way to Africa. She could start the residency now. Or, if she didn’t get the residency, she could create her own program.
But Janie knew he didn’t have that kind of money.
Meanwhile, Rafael Salazar had lounged on one of the armchairs in the living room, as if he belonged there, and agreed with every word her brother-in-law said. It was just like when Janie had been a teenager, with adults making decisions for her, some of them wrong, and not taking her desires into consideration.
This time, though, there was more at stake. There was a murderer lurking on the campus of Adobe Hills Community College, and Janie was sure she was his next target.
“Give me a minute to clean up,” she said, snapping her attention to the present. “I’m done on the mural for the day.”
“We’ll be upstairs in my office.” Katie rubbed her stomach, a pinched expression crossing her face.
“You all right?” Janie asked.
“Outside of ankles that look more like Cheeky’s than they should, I’m fine. It’s Amanda I’m worried about.”
Cheeky was a three-cheeked camel whose name more than summed up the personality of BAA. Amanda was Janie’s art student as well as a friend of Katie’s. Before taking over as director of BAA, Katie had been an interpreter for the deaf. A few years ago, Katie had given Amanda a private tour of the zoo just for the chance to do one of the things she loved: interpret. It turned into a win/win friendship, as Amanda herded all her friends to BAA and they helped with fund-raisers.
And Katie championed young Amanda much the way she championed Janie.
“What’s wrong with Amanda?” Janie started to stand. She could leave her supplies. Amanda was more important, and with everything that had been going on...
“It’s okay, she can wait a minute. Luke’s with her, and she’s got Tinker in her lap. He’s calming her down. He’s good at that.”