Animal Attraction

by Jill Shalvis

  after working for them, Jade knew them well.

  Adam was his usual unsmiling, serious self. Dell was much more open, already looking like he was having a good time, but the truth was that Dell could have a good time anywhere.

  He was out of the surgical scrubs that so defined him at work, wearing a pair of jeans and a snug black T-shirt that made a woman want to drop at his knees and give him whatever he wanted.

  But not her.

  At least not in her waking hours. And what she fantasized about in the dark of the night was just that—fantasy.

  He was smiling and would have looked younger than his thirty-two years—except for his eyes. His eyes said that he’d seen far more than his affable smile showed, and it had been those eyes to tell her eighteen months ago that she could work for him and be safe.

  But safe was relative. And the fact was, she’d never seen so much male perfection grouped so closely together, and if you added Brady into the mix, it was a wonder that any woman in the place could put a thought together. These were rugged guys, built for stamina and the tough life out here that they all led. Not a single one of them were “city.” They’d never had a pedicure or worried about wrinkles or the cut of their clothes. They were real, as real as they came.

  These qualities had a universal appeal, proven when Dell and Adam passed a table of three women, one of whom reached out and snagged Dell’s arm.

  Jade recognized her as Cassie, a local rancher. Dell stopped and set a friendly hand on Cassie’s shoulder and she beamed up at him. So did the others at the table. This was because Dell could make ninety-year-old women preen and get infant girls to bat their eyelashes in his sleep.

  He was the heart and soul of Belle Haven, and the rock of all of them.

  This morning when she’d shown back up with the kitten in her carrier and informed him she was keeping her for a few days, he’d just smiled and said, “I know.” He’d known before Jade that she’d look into the strong, independent but down-on-her-luck kitten’s eyes and not be able to let her go.

  Yet.

  Lilah finally removed her lips from Brady and waved at Adam and Dell. “Over here!”

  Since Dell was currently being hugged by another woman at the table, Adam got to them first.

  “’Bout time,” Lilah said.

  Adam looked at his watch. “We late?”

  “Nope, I’m just on time for once,” Lilah said. “All my pretties got picked up on time today.”

  These “pretties” could be anything from dogs and cats to the more exotic. Jade had seen her driving around with a duck, a pig, and a lamb, stuck on babysitting detail. The woman had more patience than anyone Jade had ever met.

  Adam nudged Jade and she obliged him, moving over in the booth, making room. He looked back to where his brother was attempting to extract himself from the woman’s arms and shook his head. “I told him, keep your head down and keep moving, but does he listen?” He glanced at Brady and Lilah and grimaced when he found them lip-locked again. “Ah, man, come on.”

  Brady lifted his head and smiled into Lilah’s eyes. “Been wanting to do that all day.”

  “You flew me around all day,” Adam said, helping himself to Jade’s wine. “We’ve been flying S&R in Eagle Canyon searching for a lost hiker.”

  Brady smiled at Lilah. “I can multitask.”

  Adam shook his head.

  Dell finally appeared, his hair looking like it’d just been tousled by a hungry female. Kicking Brady’s legs out of his way, he stepped around Adam and pushed his way into the booth on Lilah’s other side.

  Jade knew he’d spent much of his day in surgery but you couldn’t have told that by looking at him. Or smelling him. He smelled like undiluted amazingness as he bumped a broad shoulder to hers.

  “Show-off,” he said.

  She’d organized his inventory before he’d gotten out of his second surgery. “Just trying to help,” she said demurely.

  His dark warm eyes held hers for a minute. “Bullshit,” he said, letting the smile in his voice break through. “You couldn’t help yourself, Jade.”

  “That’s Goddess Jade to you.”

  He laughed, and as always, the sound did something funny low in her belly. Which was really annoying considering the fact that every other woman who came in close proximity to him felt the same way.

  “So, what is it you did in your previous life again? Run the world?” he asked.

  “Close enough.” Running her family’s medical center had been much like running a small country, complete with the politics that went with it. “I have skills. Got ’em from my grandmother Jade. I got lots of things from her.”

  “Such as?”

  “Well, she, too, was always right.”

  Dell fought a smile and lost. With his warm eyes on hers and his hard thigh pressing to her own, Jade felt a silly little flutter.

  No doubt this was how the women at the other table had felt when he’d focused his attention on them. At least she wasn’t simpering. She refused to simper.

  “Are you always right?” Adam asked. “Or do we just let you think it because it’s easier?”

  Jade took her wine back from him.

  “Oh, and after you left,” Dell told her. “I took a few phone calls and squished a few more patients in for tomorrow.” He stopped to smile at someone waving to him from across the bar.

  Jade poked him to get his attention back. Right in the biceps. Her finger bounced off him. “You didn’t have room in your schedule. It’s packed.”

  “Yeah, but Mrs. Kyle’s cat is feeling ‘peakish.’” He shrugged. “Doesn’t tell me much, but Miss Kitty’s like a hundred, so it could be anything. She needs to be seen.”

  Jade didn’t bother to sigh. It wouldn’t help. If there was an animal in need, Dell would work around the clock. “Tell me you did not even attempt to update the computer yourself.”

  “Okay, I won’t tell you.”

  “Man,” Adam muttered beneath his breath. “You never learn.”

  Dell’s eyes were lit and Jade relaxed. “You’re just messing with me.”

  A small smile crossed his face as he studied her. “How can you be sure?”

  “Because if you’d messed anything up, you’d have brought me flowers, or you’d be kissing my ass like last time.”

  “I’ll cop to the flowers, because you are one scary woman when you’re mad at me. But I’ve never kissed your ass.” He cocked his head and pretended to study said ass, even though she was sitting on it. “I’d be happy to do so, though. Anytime.”

  She reached out to shove him, but he had lightning reflexes and grabbed her hand in his much bigger, darker one. His was calloused and work-roughed, and because that gave her an odd flutter, she pulled free. “Save it for someone that those moo-moo eyes actually work on.”

  The band kicked into high gear. Lilah had pulled a reluctant Brady onto the dance floor.

  “Better Fly Boy than me,” Adam muttered, and headed to the bar for a pitcher of beer.

  Dell nudged Jade.

  “In your dreams,” she said.

  “What, is Goddess Jade afraid of something as innocuous as a dance?”

  No, what she was afraid of was getting too close and getting sucked into his Hotness Vortex. She wasn’t afraid he’d ask anything of her she wasn’t willing to give.

  She was afraid of what she was willing to give.

  But you’re leaving, said the little devil on her shoulder. Her inner slut. You’re going back, you’re better now, what would it hurt to have him, just once?

  Before Jade could thoroughly process this thought and take any action, Cassie appeared at their table. “Dell,” she said, tugging him up. “You owe me a dance.”

  His smile was light. Flirty. But he shook his head. “Actually, I was just going to dance with Jade.”

  “Go ahead,” Jade said. This was the little angel on her other shoulder. She wasn’t an inner slut.

  Beaming, Cassie pulled Dell out of
his chair. Jade shook her head at herself and headed to the bar.

  Adam was there. He eyed Dell on the dance floor and he gave her a long look.

  “What?” she asked, maybe a little snappish.

  He just shook his head.

  When Dell finally escaped the dance floor, he turned back to their table. Jade was back from the bar, and there was a guy trying to pick her up.

  Poor sucker, he thought with a good amount of sympathy, watching as Jade shook her head. As Dell moved closer, he heard the guy say, “Aw, come on, Red. I’ve seen you swing your sweet thang in class, let’s take it to the dance floor.”

  “I’m with someone,” Jade said.

  The guy admitted defeat and moved off. Dell dropped into the coveted spot right next to her, sprawling out. “Hey, Red?”

  She sipped her drink.

  “Class?”

  She shrugged.

  “Oh come on. Tell me about swinging your sweet thang.” He accepted her eat-shit-and-die look and laughed.

  She rolled her eyes. “So I take a line-dancing class once a week in the city.”

  “Which clearly you’re not doing so that you’ll get picked up by guys in bars.”

  “It’s for exercise.” She blew out a breath. “And because I sort of promised myself I’d do things for me. For fun. It’s the year of the fun for Jade.”

  “Well, I’m all for that.”

  At that, she cocked her head and looked at him. “You don’t think it’s silly?”

  “Everyone deserves fun, Jade.” He smiled at her and reached for his drink. “Their own brand of fun.”

  Jade’s eyes cut to Brady and Lilah, plastered up against each other on the dance floor. “What do you think of their brand?”

  Dell took in the expression on Brady’s face, which held warmth and love and a whole hell of a lot of lust, and shrugged. It would be nice to know there was a woman waiting on him at the end of the day. He wouldn’t mind that. It was the emotional depth and level of attachment that bothered him. The love part. Love would take trust and blind faith. It would take allowing access to parts of him that he didn’t allow himself access to. “I’m not really cut out for it.”

  “So you’ve tried it, then?”

  “Not so much. You? I’m betting you have a spreadsheet for this, for meeting the right guy to give you a white picket fence and two point four kids.”

  “Some things even my spreadsheets can’t do,” she said, and he laughed softly just as Brady and Lilah came back looking flushed and happy as they slid into the booth.

  “Okay,” Lilah said. “It’s been an hour and no one has said one freaking word about the bling.” She spread her hands on the table. “Seriously?”

  Jade’s eyes went directly to Lilah’s left ring finger, and the fat diamond there. “Holy shit!”

  Lilah grinned. “I know, right?” She flashed the ring in each of their faces. “Brady had it made for me. It’s the most sparkly thing I’ve ever owned.” Turning to Brady, she clapped her hands to either side of his face and kissed him on the mouth. “I’ve never been all that sparkly, but I am now, cuz of you.”

  Brady smiled up at her. “Sparkly, and you smell like a strawberry.”

  “It’s the margaritas.”

  Adam toasted to Brady and Lilah, and Dell added his congratulations, genuinely thrilled for them. Lilah felt like as much a sibling to him as Brady was. And though he might not quite get why two of his favorite people in the world wanted to tie themselves to each other and give up all the other possible options, it meant that Brady would be sticking around Sunshine. And Dell was all for that, so he grinned and topped off their glasses from the pitcher, giving Lilah the last of it and the most.

  Brady slid him a look.

  “What, you’re already going to have to pour her into your truck to take her home,” Dell told him. “Might as well make it a night to remember.”

  Lilah laughed and slapped Brady’s shoulder, as if he’d been the one to say it. “It will be a night to remember.” Indeed, two sheets to the wind, she blew a strand of her hair from her face and waggled a finger at her new fiancé. “But just so we’re clear—we’re still not crossing that one last thing off the taboo list. I’m not that far gone.”

  Adam looked pained.

  Brady didn’t look concerned. He was smiling affectionately at Lilah, looking content and confident that he could talk her into anything he wanted, wasted or not.

  “You have a taboo list?” Jade asked.

  “You don’t?” Lilah asked.

  Jade bit her lower lip and Adam laughed. “Jade has a list for everything.”

  “True,” Dell said, studying her, getting nothing from her expression. She had quite the game face, his Jade. “You do, you have lists for everything.”

  “Not everything.”

  “Jade, you have a list for every situation, big or small, from when to brush your teeth, to how to handle every potential patient to cross my door. Hell, you’ve got a list on what’s in your purse and my office fridge and—”

  “And don’t forget the list on how many different ways I could kill you,” she said, sipping her drink.

  “Now that’s one I’d like to see,” Brady said.

  Adam looked intrigued. “How many ways are there really to do that?”

  “You have no idea . . .” she murmured serenely.

  Dell laughed. “Come on. There’s no doubt in my mind, you have a list of sexual taboos. Tell us.”

  “Yeah,” Lilah said, leaning forward. “Tell us! I might need to add to my list.”

  “Why are we still talking about this?” Jade wanted to know.

  “The question is,” Dell said, “why are you avoiding talking about this?” He smiled at her and though she blushed a little, she held his gaze evenly.

  He didn’t have a hard time imagining Jade as a sexual creature. She was beautiful, innately sensual, from that full bottom lip, to her glorious curves, to the way she moaned while eating her hidden stash of chocolate from her bottom desk drawer.

  What he had a hard time imagining was her having a one-night stand. Which meant that she’d have to let someone in close enough to have a relationship with before she had sex. And she wasn’t any better at that than . . . well, him. He got her, he really did. Because other than the people right here at this table, he never felt the overwhelming need to let anyone in, either. “Come on,” he coaxed, teasing. “Give us something from your taboo list.”

  She smiled at him. “You should be far more concerned with what’s on tomorrow’s to-do list.”

  “Ha,” Adam said to his brother. “You have a to-do list.”

  “So do you,” Jade said, and Brady laughed.

  “Nice deflection,” Lilah said to Jade. “You’re good at that.”

  It was a definite talent, Dell thought, and let her have the deflection. They all hung out for another hour before Brady stood and grabbed Lilah’s hand. “We’re out,” he said.

  Lilah smiled wickedly. “’Bout time.” She looked at Jade. “Can we drop you off?”

  “No, that’s okay,” Jade said, shaking her head. “Go home with Brady.”

  “You sure?”

  “Very.”