He came up behind her, a hand on either side of her, braced on the desk as he looked over her head at the computer screen. “Tell me something I don’t know.”
If she turned her head, her mouth could brush the inside of either of his biceps. His skin would be warm, and just beneath, the muscles would be taut with strength. She could smell his deodorant and, beneath that, the soap he’d used.
Hers.
Unable to stop herself, she did it, she turned her head in the pretense of trying to see his face and let her mouth brush his biceps.
And maybe the very tip of her tongue.
“Lilah,” he said warningly, his voice barely audible, rumbling from his chest through her back.
“It’s your turn to smell like a piña colada,” she whispered softly.
Bending his head, he put his mouth to her ear. “And does it make you as hungry for me as I always am for you?”
Yes. Yes, as a matter of fact, it did. “It’s the soap.”
“I love the scent of you,” he whispered. “I love the taste of you. And it has nothing to do with the soap.”
“The scheduling problem,” she said unsteadily as one of his hands dropped down to squeeze her hips.
“Uh-huh.” He made sure to brush his lips lightly against that spot just beneath her ear. The one he knew that melted her bones away. “I’ll start pulling files,” he said. “And taking the animals to an examining room. You man the desk.”
“No, we should switch that,” she said. “I can do the preliminaries in the exam room and speed things along for Dell.”
His eyes never left hers. “Yes, but that would leave me behind this desk.”
Which he was clearly hoping to avoid at all costs. “It would,” she agreed, and smiled.
He arched a brow. “You’d throw me to the wolves?”
She turned and eyed the waiting room. Mostly women, looking Brady over in various degrees of interest, from hunger to outright lust. “Poor baby. Must be tough, having all these women want you.”
“And how about you?” he murmured in her ear, taking a quick nip out of it. “You want me?”
Always . . .
If anyone happened to look over at them it would appear as if they were both intently studying the computer screen—which had gone into save energy mode and was running through a slide show of Belle Haven’s animal patients.
Brady’s pictures, actually, from the past month. They were great shots, but Lilah wasn’t absorbing a single one because Brady was whispering a lurid suggestion in her ear, which made her both gasp and weak at the knees.
Forcing herself out of the chair, she avoided Brady’s hot, knowing eyes. She grabbed the sign-in sheet and called the first name. “Toby?”
Shelly and Toby stood up.
Lilah turned to Brady, who wasn’t saying a word, just watching her. The lion keeping its eyes on the prize. “Pull the file and bring it into me?” she asked.
Looking both hungry and amused, he turned to the files. Her last view of him was of his fine ass when he bent to the bottom drawer.
In the exam room, Shelly fanned herself. “Damn, Dr. Death is hot.”
“That’s the general consensus,” Lilah murmured, resisting the urge to fan herself as well.
“And your consensus?” Shelly asked slyly.
Lilah sighed. “Same as yours,” she admitted, and turned to go get Dell but instead came face-to-face with Brady, who stood in the doorway, holding the file, eyes unreadable. She bit her lower lip and flashed him a quick smile.
He didn’t return it, but the very corners of his mouth quirked slightly and his eyes promised retribution. Which worked for her, because she’d learned she really liked his forms of retribution.
It was two very busy hours later before there was any sort of breather. Lilah finally dropped into a chair beside Brady at the front desk. “And I thought my life was crazy.”
“Your life is crazy.” He got to his feet.
“Where are you going?”
He gestured to the waiting room, which was blessedly empty. “Things are under control again.”
“Yes, but I have to get back to the kennels.”
“No you don’t. Cruz is there.” He let out a breath. “I have to go.”
“Seriously, you—”
“I mean I have to go, Lilah.”
Oh. Oh, damn. She’d managed to work her denial up good, almost forgetting this fact. Slowly she rose to her feet, unable to sit while facing this. “You’re leaving right now?”
His eyes said it all.
“But how can they expect you to just up and go at a phone call?”
“That’s my job, Lilah. Pilot for hire. I go when the call comes.”
Legs wobbly, she plopped back into the chair and put a hand to her aching heart. This isn’t about you, Lilah. “Tell me.”
“I’m needed in Africa by the end of the week. And I have to go to L.A. first.”
“Oh.”
“I’m sorry.”
She let out a purposeful breath and tried to shake her head, but her body felt locked up tight. “Don’t be. You were up front and honest with me. You weren’t meant for a home base or growing roots. I’ve always known that.” Listen to her, how mature. Even as she thought it, her eyes filled.
“Lilah,” he whispered softly. “Don’t.”
“I’m not.” She shook her head and was proud of her smile. She stood and went up on tiptoe to set her hand on his chest, brushing a kiss over his mouth.
His lips were set to grim, but she knew they could soften in a smile when he chose or drive her straight to heaven without passing Go!
What they couldn’t do, however, was tell her everything was going to be okay.
Because it wasn’t.
She didn’t feel like she’d ever be okay again.
Twenty-Four
Since packing wasn’t an issue—Brady had never really unpacked—he went to Smitty’s and tuned up the Bell 47 even though it was running perfectly and didn’t need to be tuned up. He didn’t want whomever Dell and Adam hired to have any problems. He was still sitting in the pilot’s seat tinkering with the Bell’s instrument panel when he heard footsteps. Something in his chest kicked hard, but as much as he’d hoped otherwise, it wasn’t Lilah coming his way.
“We’re not replacing you.”
He turned to face Dell and Adam, who boarded looking unusually serious. Well, Adam always looked serious, but there wasn’t so much as a glimmer of a smile on Dell’s usually good-humored, affable face.
Brady shook his head. “You spent a lot of money for me to fix up the Bell. You’ve had an average of three calls a week where it’s beneficial to take it up. Any of the pilots housed out of here or Coeur d’ Alene would be happy to hire on and fly for you.”
“Sure,” Adam said. “And we’ll use them as needed. But we’re not hiring anyone on full-time.”
“You guys want and need a third partner. You’re overworked, you need—”
“You,” Dell said.
Brady shoved his fingers through his hair and stared at them, frustrated at all the unexpected things he was feeling at leaving. “This was always going to be temporary.” How many times had he said that in the last day?
“It could stay temporary,” Dell said, “if that’s what your pansy ass needs. A word. A fucking word to make it okay for you to use this place as a home base. Let’s call it temporary, then.”
“He’s going to do what he has to do, Dell,” Adam said quietly. “He’s—”
Running footsteps sounded, and again Brady’s heart kicked. Because this time it was Lilah.
She came rushing up to the opened door of the Bell, her cheeks flushed, out of breath. When she saw Brady, she put her hand to her chest and sagged, out of breath. “I thought—I heard the engine start—I was afraid you’d left.”
“Not yet,” Adam said and turned to her, brushing a kiss to her jaw, giving her a quick squeeze. With one last long look at Brady, he left.
Dell came forward and hugged Brady, slapping him on the back. “I’ll miss you, you chickenshit bastard. Be safe up there.” Dell looked at Lilah, and then he was gone, too, leaving the two of them alone.
The silence was heavy. Not awkward, just . . . weighted. Unable to mistake the emotion coming from her for anything other than temper, Brady let out a breath and removed her sunglasses.
She blinked up at him from eyes that were clear and . . . not full of temper, as it turned out.
But sorrow.
And somehow that was worse, far worse. “I have to go,” he murmured, hating himself in that moment.
“Yes,” she said, crossing her arms. “You have to go.”
He hadn’t expected her easy agreement and didn’t believe it. “It’s my job,” he said carefully.
“I know that, too.”
“I—”
“Shut up, Brady.” She uncrossed her arms, grabbed his shirt, and yanked him in. The first brush of her lips was soft, gentle. Tender. As if she’d put her entire heart into it. Then she settled in and the kiss deepened, a hot, intense tangle of tongues that nearly brought him to his knees. Before he could recover, she gentled the connection again, retreating in slow degrees until her lips were nothing more than a barely there butterfly kiss. “Be careful with yourself,” she whispered huskily against his lips.
He didn’t move, his body still a breath from hers. She . . . wasn’t going to devastate him with guilt? For a moment he couldn’t quite wrap his head around that. Or the fact that she wasn’t going to even ask him to stay.
And suddenly he remembered how he’d reasoned with her when she’d had to give up Toby and then Sadie. He’d told her that if she’d found a loving place for the animals to live where they could be happy, it was okay to let them go. That haunted the hell out of him now, because apparently she’d listened and taken his words to heart.
Only she wasn’t a fraction as devastated at letting him go as she had been the animals. “I’m leaving,” he said again, just in case she hadn’t gotten the right idea.
“I know,” she said softly.
He just stared at her, and then shook his head. “Okay, wait a minute. Why is this so easy for you, letting me go?”
“What?”
“You’ve made a career out of holding on to everything, pets, people . . . You gather them all to your side, in your heart, but when it’s me, you give me a smile and a kiss and tell me to be careful?”
She opened her mouth, then closed it. Then stabbed him in the chest with her finger, hard. “Well, what would you have me do, fall at your feet and beg you not to go?”
Yeah. Actually. A little bit.
Maybe.
Christ, he was one pathetic asshole.
She let out a mirthless laugh. “I care about you. I want you. And neither of those two things change whether you go or not. Do you understand the helplessness of that? And even then, honestly, I wouldn’t change any of it if I could.” She stabbed at him again. “So don’t you tell me I’m just letting you go. I hate that you’re going, but I’d rather have the pain of that than not having had you in my life at all.” She glared at him from brilliantly shimmering eyes, breath coming hard. “You going will leave a huge gaping hole.” She pressed her open hand to her chest. “Here. You’re in my heart, and there’s no way around that. I consider you mine, Brady. Mine.” A single, devastating tear fell and she swiped it angrily away. “But you need your happy place. If it’s not here, you have to go to it. And I need to let you.” She paused, let out a soft broken breath. “You taught me that.”
While he was still absorbing her words, and the utter anguish in which she’d spoken them, she stood up on tiptoe and brushed another soft kiss across his lips. His hands went to her hips to hold her against him and he closed his eyes, burying his face in her hair. “Lilah.” His voice was raw and matched his throat and the burning in his chest.
Her arms slid around his neck and for a moment she clung, hard. He felt a tremor go through her and then she whispered against his jaw. “It’s okay to go if that’s what your heart is telling you.” She pulled back and cupped his face, staring into it as if to memorize his every feature. “I’ll take Twinkles back when you go,” she whispered. And with one last long look, she left.
Shaken to his core, he sank to the pilot seat.
He’d gotten what he wanted.
He was free to go.
Shaking his head, he hopped down out of the helicopter and whistled.
Twinkles leapt to his feet from his spot under a tree in the shade and came running. Together they walked to his truck. Brady patted the passenger’s seat and Twinkles hopped up, taking the shotgun position. Brady had been left behind enough in his life to know that it sucked. No way was he doing it to the dog—his dog. He was taking Twinkles.
So why it still felt as though he were leaving his entire life behind, never mind his fucking heart, he had no idea.
This was his choice.
It was always his choice.
Nodding, he drove, refusing to look back in his rearview mirror.
Except he did.
He kept looking into his rearview mirror the entire drive to L.A. It took him all night. At LAX, just before dawn, he parked in long-term parking and started walking with Twinkles toward the terminal where the charters flew from. Tony had booked him a ride from here. “Not sure what our choices are going to be for you,” he told the dog. “Or exactly where Tony has booked us a ride to. But there are rules for four-legged creatures, so you’ll probably be crate-bound for this next leg of the trip.”
Twinkles didn’t look concerned, he was just happy to be involved. Brady shook his head and let himself run Lilah’s words back through his head.
I consider you mine, Brady.
I need to let you go. You taught me that.
She’d set free what she loved. She’d done so without knowing that she was his happy. She was his everything.
Christ, he was a total and complete jackass. Leaving her wasn’t going to make him happy at all. It was going to make him a very sorry sack of shit with too much pride for his own damn good.
He looked down at Twinkles, who was sniffing everything in his path. “I don’t want to do this.”
Well, that wasn’t quite true. He still wanted his job flying to all corners of the earth. He just wanted something else to go along with it.
A life.
He no longer wanted to work 24/7, never stopping or slowing because he had no reason to.
He had a reason. A five-foot-four, messy-haired, mossy-green-eyed reason named Lilah Young. He stopped walking. “Dell was right,” he said to Twinkles, who stopped, too, then sat on Brady’s foot. “I am a chickenshit bastard.”
“Arf.”
He choked out a short laugh that was completely devoid of humor and pulled out his cell phone. “I can’t make this job,” he said to Tony.
“Where are you?”
“L.A., but I’m cutting out.”