“Hard at it, I see.” A familiar voice interrupted her thoughts five minutes later.

Felicity looked up to find an amused Sandy Cooper leaning against the door frame of her now empty clinic room as a man scurried away with a…well, some sort of reptile.

At the sight of Cooper, Felicity’s mind lurched straight into her erotic dreams of the previous night. Suddenly the woman in front of her was pressing Felicity against the back of a huge tree and sliding her fingers into her panties while saying, “Reach into my left pocket and grab my keys, will you?”

Then…

Two yeses, huh? Lucky me.

You like my look on me?

Felicity squirmed for half a second before fury at herself overrode everything. For fuck’s sake! She forced the thoughts from her mind and focused on the memory of yesterday’s miserable rottweiler getting her impacted anal glands fixed.

Well, that worked. Now she felt sick.

“You okay, Felicity?” Cooper’s lips curved. “You look twitchier than a cat on a hot tin roof. And I’d know: I’ve rescued more than a few.” She chuckled, warm and rich.

Like runny chocolate. The sort you could drip on nipples and then lick off. Arousal tickled between her legs.

Felicity’s eyes flew wide open. This was beyond unacceptable. Unprofessional. “Dr. Cooper,” she began, relieved at how normal her voice sounded. She could do this. Focus.

“So formal.” Cooper smiled adorably. “Yesterday I was just Cooper. Did I fall so far in your estimation overnight? Did I do something?”

Fucked me against a tree till I screamed?

Cheeks now scorching, Felicity cleared her throat and tried to think of anything else but that. “Was that an iguana?” she croaked, pointing toward the door the client had just exited through. “I researched animal laws extensively before I began this assignment. I know there’s a bunch of pets you can’t keep in New York.” She tapped her phone, searching for the list she’d saved days ago.

“You don’t say,” Cooper said evenly.

“It says right here, article 161: prohibited is any member of the family Iguanidae. So wasn’t that man’s pet an iguana?” Felicity asked.

“If I say yes, will you report the matter to the authorities?”

“Shouldn’t you?” Felicity gave her a perplexed look. “Don’t you have a professional obligation to call the department of health if someone is keeping an animal that’s illegal?”

“Some animals are dangerous and should be immediately reported and removed. I would absolutely call that in,” Cooper said. “A well-loved and safely kept iguana? Hypothetically speaking? Well, that’s open to debate. Unless the pet’s part of the exotic-animal trade or a threat to public safety, why would you involve authorities who’ll only seize the animal? The authorities have enough to worry about without bothering pets and owners causing no harm.”

Felicity digested that, uncertainty filling her. She was a lawyer. The laws actually mattered to her. There had to be a reason some of these animals were banned.

At her silence, a darker look crept into Cooper’s face. “Would you like to know what happens next? If you call up the department of health and report seeing an iguana leaving here? First, we’ll be issued a warning for treating illegal pets. Next, assuming they find the owner, they’ll issue him a violation order demanding his pet be surrendered. He’ll have only three days to ask the commissioner to be heard and make a plea to get his animal back. Most homeless don’t have the high-level negotiation or legal skills to navigate that hearing, so sometimes we’ll go with them. We attend the hearings, wasting hours of time that could be spent helping other animals so people like you feel good about the law being enforced. And by the way, they almost never side with the pet’s owners because the law’s the law. Is that you, too, Felicity? Are you so black-and-white that the law is always the law?”

Felicity bit her lip. And they were back to nuance again. Did Elena have a point? Felicity’s ability to see shades of gray wasn’t exactly well honed. And when put as Cooper had explained it, it did seem like a lot of time and effort for a nonproblematic animal. “So iguanas aren’t dangerous?”

“If that’s what it was,” Cooper said, eying her closely.

“You were in with it at least fifteen minutes. If I can identify an iguana, you surely can.”

“Did I?”

Oh. Cooper didn’t trust her.

“I’m not sure it was an iguana exactly,” Felicity lied.

“Good. And so you know, I treated the client’s pet and warned him it would be against the law to keep an iguana as a pet…if, hypothetically, that’s what it was. What happens next is up to him. Now”—she faced Felicity square on—“am I about to have the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene paying Living Ruff a visit?”

“No,” Felicity finally admitted. It was unsettling having her world view challenged everywhere she turned. If someone had asked her that morning whether she’d aid and abet someone breaking the law, she’d have laughed in their face. Now she wasn’t sure where she stood on so many things. At least black-and-white was simple. This was just…not.

“Felicity? What’s wrong?”

“It’s disconcerting finding things I thought for a fact may not be.”

“Well, that would be unnerving,” Cooper said with a small grin. “But remember that Maya Angelou quote about doing better when you know better?”

Felicity stared. Cooper was quoting a poet to her? Cooper? Her Paul Bunyonesque vet?

“Now what is it?” Cooper’s eyebrows lifted.

“You surprise me.”

“I’m not supposed to know Maya Angelou quotes now? Or is it my flagrant breaking of the law in front of a lawyer? Or—and this is the big one—is it you discovering you’re okay with all of the above?”

“The latter.” Felicity ran her hand down her sleeve. “I am not used to being in a situation of not clearly knowing my own mind.”

“Maybe cut yourself some slack. Growth is only possible when you’re faced with new experiences, so I wouldn’t sweat it. Anyway, you chose compassion over sticking to the rules, so I think you might actually be all right, Felicity Simmons.”

Compassion? Felicity sucked in a dismayed breath. That didn’t sound like her at all. Were company CEOs and COOs known for being compassionate? Wasn’t it weak to be compassionate?

She wished she could ask Elena, but they weren’t exactly…friends. Or even really at a point where she could ask anything so vulnerable. For the first time in years, Felicity wished she had a friend to consult.

“Why do you look so shocked,” Cooper asked, “like I just gave you bad news?”

“I like knowing where I stand. I’m not good at fuzzy areas in life. It gives me indigestion.”

Cooper chuckled. “Ah. Well, we can’t have that. Let me distract you. Ordinarily, this is a task for a vet tech”—she glanced at Mrs. Brooks, who was on the phone—“but an earlier client dropped off something I will need some spare hands to deal with. Are you free?”

Felicity rose to her feet. “How can I help?”

“I need you to hold a particularly squirmy pair of kittens I’m deworming.”

“I—” Kittens? No, no, no! “Deworming?” Felicity pulled a dismayed face.

“You’ll survive.” Cooper grinned.

“Doubtful.” Felicity took a step back.

“You’re being ridiculous.”

“Am I?” Felicity shook her head hard. “I don’t want to touch kittens.”