watching her tongue run over her lips, hearing the sweet sounds of suction as she worked those fingers, was giving him a zing nevertheless. It was hard to tell what the rest of her body was like in those baggy clothes, but apparently it didn’t matter in the least.
He was attracted to her, and he handed her the other half of his candy bar.
She stared at it like it was a brick of gold. “I’m on a diet.” But she took it. “A see-food diet, apparently. I see food and I eat it.” She took another big bite. “I mean, I try to eat healthy, but I have a little thing for junk food. Uh-oh . . . ”
“What now?”
“Abigail, no.” She reached back and pulled the strap of Brady’s duffel bag from the duck’s beak. “She also likes to eat.” She laughed easily, and he found himself smiling at the sound with rusty facial muscles. His shoulders loosened and he realized he was feeling relaxed.
And even more odd—at ease.
“Are you here on vacation?” Lilah asked, petting the creatures in the box at her feet.
“Not exactly.”
She let that go, leaning back to watch the scenery, which was admittedly worthy of the fascination. Lush and green, the mountains loomed high thirty miles off in the distance, the exotic rock formation forming mouth-gaping canyons he’d once explored as an angry teen looking for a place to belong.
His passenger let the silence linger, which he suspected was unusual for her. When he felt her watching him instead of the landscape, he turned his head and briefly met her gaze. Yep, she was waiting patiently for him to crack the silence. A good tactic, but it wouldn’t work on him.
“Huh,” she finally said, slightly disgruntled.
He felt the corners of his mouth turn up. “Used to people caving?”
“And spilling their guts.” She eyed him again, thoughtfully. “You’re a tough one to crack, Brady Miller, pilot and photographer. Really tough.”
Not anything he hadn’t heard before. “I was thinking the same could be said of you,” he said.
That got him a two-hundred-watt smile, along with a sweet, musical laugh. “True,” she agreed.
The road ended, and he had two choices—the highway straight ahead, or left to head away from the towering peaks and out to ranching land, where as far as the eye could see was nothing but gently rolling hills and hidden lakes and rivers.
“Left,” she said, pointing to a dirt road. “And then left again.”
The road here was narrow, rutted, and far rougher. “Ah. You’re bringing me to the boondocks to off me so you don’t have to pay for the damages to my truck.”
She laughed. She really did have a great laugh, and something went through him, a long-forgotten surge of emotion. “Not going to deny it?” he asked, sliding her a look meant to intimidate.
She wasn’t. Intimidated. Not in the least. In fact, she was smiling. “Worried?” she asked, brow raised, face lit with humor.
Giving her another long look—which she simply steadily returned—he shook his head and kept driving. “I never worry.”
“No? Maybe you could teach me the trick of that sometime.”
Yeah, except he didn’t plan on being around long enough to teach anyone anything.
His enigmatic passenger shifted in her seat and crossed her legs. The hem of her Carhartts rose up, giving him a good look at her scuffed work boots and the cute little black and pink polka-dotted socks peeking over the top of them. Which of course made him wonder what else she was hiding beneath those work clothes.
The growth thickened on either side of the road, which narrowed, commanding his attention. He caught glimpses of a sprawling ranch, and then a glistening body of water, flashes of brilliance in a color that changed the definition of blue. The road narrowed again, and at the hairpin turn, two of his four tires caught air.
“Not bad,” she said in admiration. “So how does a pilot get such mad driving skills, anyway? Because you’re not just a pilot and photographer.”
“No?”
“No. You’ve got a quiet intensity about you, an edge. It’s why I thought cop or military.”
She was good. “Army.”
“Ah,” she murmured, saying nothing more, which both surprised him and left him grateful at the same time. People were naturally curious, and his life choices and experiences tended to bring that curiosity out, but he didn’t like talking about himself.
“Here we are,” Lilah said a minute later. “Home sweet home.”
The road ended in a small clearing, at the top of which sat a tiny cabin next to what looked like a large barn. The sign on the barn read SUNSHINE KENNELS.
Peeking behind the property was a small lake, shining brightly, surrounded by a meadow radiant with flowers, and lined by the not-so-distant jagged ridges stabbing into the sky.
Actually, Brady knew this land fairly well, though it’d been a long time. Emotions tangled with the need to reach for the beauty wherever he could find it, and he soaked it all in, letting it bring him something that had been sorely lacking in his life.
Pleasure.
Lilah unhooked her seat belt. “It’s special.”
“Yeah.”
“The Coeur d’Alene Indians found it,” she said. “They lived here.” She paused. “The myth goes that the water has healing powers.”
He slid his gaze her way, wondering if she believed it.
“They based their lives around the legend.” She paused and bit her lower lip, like she knew damn well he didn’t buy it. “Don’t laugh when I tell you the rest.”
He wasn’t feeling much like laughing. Not while watching her abuse that lush lower lip that he suddenly wanted to soothe. With his tongue. No, laughing was the last thing on his mind.
“Legend says that if you take a moonlight dip, you’ll supposedly find your one true love.”
“Of course.” He nodded. “It’s always midnight. So, do you swim often?”
“Never at midnight.”
He couldn’t help it, he laughed.
With a slow shake of her head and a smile curving her mouth, she reached out and touched a finger to his curved lips. “You’re a cynic,” she chided.
It’d been a long time since someone had touched him, unexpected or otherwise. A very long time, and he wrapped his finger around her wrist to hold her to him, letting his eyes drift closed.
“For how big and tough you are,” she said very softly, “you have a kind mouth.”
He opened his eyes and met her gaze. “You should know it’s not kindness I’m feeling at the moment.”
“No?” A brow arched, and the light in her eyes spoke of amusement, along with a flash of heat. “What do you feel?”
Dangerous territory there. Nothing new for him. He did some of his best work in dangerous territory. “Guess.”
Still smiling, she leaned in so that their lips were nothing but a whisper apart. Even surrounded by a duck, two puppies, and a potbellied piglet, she still smelled amazing. He wanted to yank her in and smell her some more, but he held very still, absorbing her closeness, letting her take the lead.
When she spoke, every word had her lips ghosting against his, her breath all warm, chocolately goodness. “I’m more of a doer,” she whispered, and kissed him.
She tasted as good as she smelled. Then almost before it’d even begun, she pulled back. “Thank you.”
He had no idea what exactly she was thanking him for now but he was all for more of it. Their connection, light as it’d been, had still carried enough spark to jump-start his engines. “For . . . ?”
“For driving me all the way out here.” Again she was letting her lips brush his with every word. “And for not being a serial killer.” She was staring at his mouth. “And for . . . everything.”
Not wholly in charge of his faculties, he took over the lead, pulling her in until she was straining over the console before covering her mouth with his.
With a low murmur of acquiescence, she wrapped her arms around his neck, angling her head for the best fit, deepening the kiss.
Which worked for him.
He lost track of time, but when she pulled back, breathless and panting for air, she licked her bottom lip as if she needed that last little taste of him.
He knew the feeling. He was more than a little flummoxed by the loss of blood to his brain. She’d felt good. Good and soft and willing. He had one hand low at her back, the tips of his fingers tucked into the waistband of her pants, against warm, satiny skin while his other hand cupped her jaw.
“Gotta go,” she whispered, and pulled free. Twice she tried to grab the door and missed. Leaning past her, he pushed it open for her.
“And we’re still at least a hundred yards from the water,” she muttered. “Imagine if we got in it.”
He heard himself laugh. “It’s not the water.” He wasn’t sure what it was, but he was positive it wasn’t the water.
“Cynic,” she repeated without heat, looking both flustered, and aroused.
An incredibly appealing combination that made him want to haul her onto his lap and show her cynic. “True enough,” he agreed. “But it takes one to know one.”
She snorted and it was the craziest thing, but hell if he didn’t feel the tug of attraction for her all the way to his toes.
Yeah. Definitely dangerous territory.
“Wait here.” She slipped out of the truck and vanished inside the kennels. Twenty seconds later she was back with her insurance card. “Keep it, I have another.” She wrapped Abigail’s leash around her wrist and grabbed the box. “Thanks for the ride, stranger.” Then, with a flash of a smile, she sauntered off in those baggy Carhartts toward the kennels, looking for all the world like a princess going into her palace.
Three
Lilah Young forced herself to cross the yard and get all the way to the front door of the kennels before allowing herself to glance back at the truck.
He was still there: Brady Miller, pilot, photographer, kisser extraordinaire, slouched behind the wheel, hair still messed up from her fingers, watching her.
Letting out a low breath, she pressed a hand low to her abdomen. “Sweet baby Jesus,” she whispered.
“Quack,” Abigail said.
With a low laugh, Lilah opened the door and managed a smile at her business partner, Cruz Delgado. “I’m back. Again.”
Cruz’s perfectly toned hard body was still where it had been two minutes ago when she’d come running in—sprawled flat on his back in the center of their greeting room, with Lulu on top of him.
Lulu was a lamb that thought she was a puppy. She belonged to one of their clients who was out of town for a few days, and she sometimes needed a little extra TLC in the middle of her day. Okay, all of the time she needed a little extra TLC. Lulu was a ’ho for TLC. “How many times do I have to tell you,” Lilah said to the lamb. “Cruz is mine.”
From the floor, Cruz grinned, then pushed Lulu off of him and sat up. His silky dark hair fell into his face, but he shoved it back, flashing laughing melted-chocolate eyes Lilah’s way. “She was feeling lonely. We were playing tag. She won.” He rose to his feet, scooped Abigail up, and disappeared into the back. When he returned without the duck, he took the box from Lilah’s arms next and smiled down at the three sleeping babies. “They were good for you?”
“Not even close, the little heathens. Don’t get me started.”
Cruz looked out the window at the truck turning around in the front yard. “So where’s your Jeep?”
She didn’t really want to talk about it, not when she could still hear Brady’s truck’s motor, just the sound making her nipples hard. “The Jeep’s on Main. Don’t ask. Today’s crazy enough. We have a full house, and I have a message that there’s a new rescue at Belle Haven.”
She and Cruz had rotating shifts that allowed the kennel to be open for enough hours in the day to be effective. They traded off between two shifts—six A.M. to two P.M., and noon to eight P.M.—with part-time help from high school kids on the weekends and as needed.
Lilah typically took the early shift because Cruz didn’t do early. But he had a gig tonight in Coeur d’ Alene, where he moonlighted as a bass guitarist in a cover rock band, so he’d come in at six o’clock.
Along with the kennels, Lilah was the go-to person in town when there was an abandoned animal. There was no official humane society in the area, so if an animal needed temporary shelter, she was it. This came mostly from her inability to bear seeing anything suffer and the fact that she got far too attached to every animal she met. The rescue part of the business was extremely nonprofit and depended on grants and donations, so Lilah—along with Cruz—worked hard to keep the kennels afloat.
Their only source of income. A typical workday began at the crack of dawn with the day’s client files spread out in front of her. She reviewed all the pets coming in or going out and decided where they would be kept. The facility had several sections: the outside pens, the inside pens, and the inside playroom, where the friendly, well-adjusted animals could hang out together under careful supervision. The not-so-friendly and grumpy older clients, were separated out from the pack and dealt with individually. It was usually those animals that claimed Lilah’s heart the fastest.
Part of the morning’s record-keeping process always involved reviewing any other important events such as vet appointments, client visits, and employee notes. In today’s case, there’d been an abandoned dog dumped off at Belle Haven, the veterinary center a half mile down the road.
Belle Haven was run by her two closest friends, Adam and Dell. They were holding the dog for her. She’d pick him up and care for him until she placed him in a foster home. But first she looked herself over. “I got up too late to grab a shower. I’m going to go take a quick one now before I head to Belle Haven.”
“Need me to soap your back?”
She slid Cruz a long look. “Been there, done that, remember?”
“I remember it was good.”
“Uh-huh.” They’d dated for approximately two weeks several years back, until they’d realized they were far more suited for this, for a friendship. “Except for the part where we drove each other crazy,” she reminded him.
“Yeah.” He blew out a sigh. “Maybe you could work on not driving me crazy.”
She laughed. Living in a small town had made it hard for her to find a guy she meshed with. There weren’t all that many to choose from in the first place, and the few that there were, she’d known a long time. Forever.
She loved Cruz, but they were day and night when it came right down to it. And the biggie: she wasn’t in love with him, and she never would be.
Ditto for him. He liked to be the center of a woman’s universe, and she had too many things in her orbit to give herself wholly. Luckily, they’d both survived the attempt, and so had their business. “Let me guess—Marie dumped your sorry ass again?”
He shrugged. “Little bit, yeah.”
Lulu bumped her head into Lilah’s thighs until Lilah bent and stroked the lamb’s ears. “What did you do this time?”
He sighed. “I forgot our anniversary.”
“What anniversary? You’ve only been dating a few months.”
“Not that kind of anniversary.” When he waggled a brow, she rolled her eyes.
“TMI. And just make it up to her. I’m sure you can figure out how.”
He was thinking about that when Lilah headed out. She lived in a small cabin next door, and when she slipped inside the small cozy place, she sighed. It was neat and clean and warm, and unlike just about everything else in her life, all hers.
But.
But even with the three years that had gone by, it was still too quiet without her grandma’s cheerful voice.
“Mew.”
Lilah looked down at the three-legged black cat winding her way around her ankles. There were rescues coming in and out of her life, waiting patiently for the right home, but Sadie was her favorite. Lilah knew that wasn’t fair, but tell that to her heart. Twice she could have placed Sadie with a foster home, but she hadn’t been able to do it.
Whenever there was even a hint of an animal being fragile, she had a hard time letting it go to an adoptive family. And though Sadie wasn’t fragile, she was special.