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you?”
    Angie swung around, faced the tall, slender woman. Tess Casherdon was model beautiful, with pale blond hair and golden skin, her eyes green, her smile hesitant, like a butterfly dipping from flower to flower but never landing. Angie thrust out a hand and said, “Angie Sorrento. Miriam Desantro sent me.”
    “Ah.” The woman shook her hand, her gaze curious. “You’re the artist who’s going to replicate our home.”
    Artist? That was a big no, but if the woman wanted to call her Van Gogh or Renoir, who was Angie to argue with that? “Sure. That’s me. Miriam said I could share her son’s workshop. I would have called first, but she said he doesn’t answer his phone when he’s working and it was best to try and catch him up here.”
    “Miriam said that, huh?”
    Angie nodded. “Is he here? I wanted to talk to him about where he gets his wood and how the place is set up for painting and staining.”
    A smile played about the woman’s full lips, spread until it pulled dimples from her cheeks. “Nate’s not here right now, but my husband should be back soon.” She paused, added, “He and Nate are partners, but I think you should wait for Nate to give you the grand tour of the workshop. If you like, you can come inside and when Cash gets here, he’ll show you around our house. That way, the trip won’t be a total waste of your time.”
    “Thank you.” Angie followed her into the entrance of the log cabin. “So can I meet the baby?”
    The woman’s smile faltered, slipped a second, before she tugged it back into place. “Baby?”
    “Henry, your dog.”
    “Oh. Of course.” She cleared her throat and tried to recover. “Henry’s our dog, but the way we spoil him, you’d think he was our firstborn.”
    There was pain in those words, sharp, deep, gnawing—and none of her business. She was in this town to do a job, not get all chummy with the residents and dig into their lives and the secrets that kept them awake at night. Not. Her. Business. Kate had always been better about the touchy-feely aspects of the customers. Why they used Great-Grandma Mabel’s linen tablecloth at Thanksgiving, how they kept the radio in the kitchen even though it stopped working a year ago. And why poor old Bailey’s dog collar had a permanent spot on the bedpost despite his passing six years ago. Too many stories to be told without tearing up and that was why Angie avoided those kinds of conversations and stayed with the estimates, the design, and the details. Emotional connections were not her specialty. But Kate was living in Chicago with Mr. Handsome and that left Angie on her own. Dang it all . She cleared her throat and thought about what Kate would say. “The dogs we add to our houses are like kids.” A laugh, a smile, and then, “Some have their own rooms, monogrammed sweaters, blankets, too. Can you imagine?”
    That made Tess Casherdon laugh. “Henry’s got two beds, and one’s orthopedic, but they’re not monogrammed.”
    “Ah. Well, that sounds rather neglectful, don’t you think?”
    The woman lowered her voice, said, “I’d do it in a heartbeat, but my husband wouldn’t be impressed. Or happy. You know, I almost bought Henry a yellow rain slicker for rainy days, but Cash said no dog of his was going to parade around in a yellow raincoat.” The smile crept back. “But it was so darn cute.”
    “I’ll bet.” Angie had never owned a dog growing up because her father said they were too much responsibility, too time-consuming, too expensive. Too everything. But what he really meant was that they just didn’t live long enough; they died too soon, like her mother. When Angie turned twenty-one, she brought home Oliver from the pound, a scrawny, skittish Labrador mix who ate with her, slept with her, went to work with her. And then he died. She pushed the sadness away and said, “You should see the dogs we put in our clients’ houses. They get more attention than the kids