by Jill Shalvis
“Look out, incoming!”
At the warning, Brady deftly stepped out of the path of the bike barreling down at him.
“Sorry!” the kid yelled back.
Up until yesterday, a shout like that would have meant dropping to the ground, covering his head, and hoping for the best. Since there were no enemy insurgents, Brady merely raised the hand still gripping his coffee in a friendly salute. “No problem.”
But the kid was already long gone, and Brady shook his head. The quiet was amazing, and he took in the oak tree–lined sidewalks, the clean and neat little shops, galleries and cafés—all designed to bring in some tourist money to subsidize the mining and ranching community. For someone who’d spent so much time in places where grime and suffering trumped hope and joy, it felt a little bit like landing in the Twilight Zone.
“Easy now, Duchess.”
At the soft, feminine voice, Brady turned and looked into the eyes of a woman walking a…hell, he had no idea. The thing pranced around like it had a stick up its ass.
Okay, a dog. He was pretty sure.
The woman smiled at Brady. “Hello, how are you?”
“Fine, thanks,” he responded automatically, but she hadn’t slowed her pace.
Just being polite, he thought, and tried to remember the concept. Culture shock, he decided. He was suffering from a hell of a culture shock. Probably he should have given himself some time to adjust before doing this, before coming here of all places, but it was too late now.
Besides, he’d put it off long enough. He’d been asked to come, multiple times over the years. He’d employed every tactic at his disposal: avoiding, evading, ignoring, but nothing worked with the two people on the planet more stubborn than him.
His brothers.
Not blood brothers, but that didn’t appear to matter to Dell or Adam. The three of them had been in the same foster home for two years about a million years ago. Twenty-four months. A blink of an eye really. But to Dell and Adam, it’d been enough to bond the three of them for life.
Brady stuffed in another bite of his second breakfast wrap, added coffee, and squinted in the bright June sunshine. Jerking his chin down, the sunglasses on top of his head obligingly slipped to his nose.
Better.
He headed to his truck parked at the corner but stopped short just in time to watch a woman in an old Jeep rear-end it.
“Crap. Crap.” Lilah Young stared at the truck she’d just rear-ended and gave herself exactly two seconds to have a pity party. This is what her life had come to. She had to work in increments of seconds.
A wet, warm tongue laved her hand and she looked over at the three wriggling little bodies in the box on the passenger’s seat of her Jeep.
Two puppies and a potbellied pig.
As the co-owner of the sole kennel in town, she was babysitting Mrs. Swanson’s “babies” again today, which included pickup and drop-off services. This was in part because Mrs. Swanson was married to the doctor who’d delivered Lilah twenty-eight years ago, but also because Mrs. Swanson was the mother of Lilah’s favorite ex-boyfriend.
Not that Lilah had a lot of exes. Only two.
Okay, three. But one of them didn’t count, the one who after four years she still hoped all of his good parts shriveled up and fell off. And he’d had good parts, too, damn him. She’d read somewhere that every woman got a freebie stupid mistake when it came to men. She liked that. She only wished it applied to everything in life.
Because driving with Mrs. Swanson’s babies and—
“Quack-quack!” said the mallard duck loose in the backseat.
—A mallard duck loose in the backseat had been a doozy of a mistake.
Resisting the urge to thunk her head against the steering wheel, Lilah hopped out of the Jeep to check the damage she’d caused to the truck, eyes squinted because everyone knew that helped.
The truck’s bumper sported a sizable dent and crack, but thanks to the tow hitch, there was no real obvious frame damage. The realization brought a rush of relief so great her knees wobbled.
That is until she caught sight of the front of her Jeep. It was so ancient that it was hard to tell if it had ever really been red once upon a time or if it was just one big friggin’ rust bucket, but that no longer seemed important given that her front end was mashed up.
“Quack-quack.” In the backseat, Abigail was flapping her wings, getting enough lift to stick her head out the window.
Lilah put her hand on the duck’s face and gently pressed her back inside. “Stay.”
“Quack—”
“Stay.” Wanting to make sure the Jeep would start before she began the task of either looking for the truck’s owner or leaving a note, Lilah hopped behind the wheel. She never should have turned off the engine because her starter had been trying to die for several weeks now. She’d be lucky to get it running again. Beside her, the puppies and piglet were wriggling like crazy, whimpering and panting as they scrambled to stand on each other, trying to escape their box. She took a minute to pat them all, soothing them, and then with her sole thought being Please start, she turned the ignition key.
And got only an ominous click.
“Come on, baby,” she coaxed, trying again. “There’s no New Transportation budget, so please come on…”
Nothing.
“Pretty sure you killed it.”
With a gasp, she turned her head. A man stood there. Tall, broad-shouldered, with dark brown hair that was cut short and slightly spiky, like maybe he hadn’t bothered to do much with it after his last shower except run his fingers through it. His clothes were simple: cargoes and a plain shirt, both emphasizing a leanly muscled body so completely devoid of body fat that it would have made any woman sigh—if she hadn’t just rear-ended a truck.
Probably his truck.
Having clearly just come out of the convenience store, he held a large coffee and what smelled deliriously, deliciously like an egg and sausage and cheese breakfast wrap.
Be still, her hungry heart…
“Quack-quack.”
“Hush, Abigail,” Lilah murmured, flicking the duck a glance in the rearview mirror before turning back to the man.
His eyes were hidden behind reflective sunglasses, but she had no doubt they were on her. She could feel them, sharp and assessing. Everything about his carriage said military or cop. She wasn’t sure if that was good or bad. He was a stranger to her, and there weren’t that many of them in Sunshine. Or anywhere in Idaho for that matter. “Your truck?” she asked, fingers crossed that he’d say no.
“Yep.” He popped the last of the breakfast wrap in his mouth and calmly tossed the wrapper into the trash can a good ten feet away. Chewing thoughtfully, he swallowed and then sucked down some coffee.
Just the scent of it had her sighing in jealousy. Probably, she shouldn’t have skipped breakfast. And just as probably, she’d give a body part up for that coffee. Hell, she’d give up two for the candy bar sticking out of his shirt pocket. Just thinking about it had her stomach rumbling loud as thunder. She looked upward to see if she could blame the sound on an impending storm, but for the first time in two weeks there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. “I’m sorry,” she said. “About this.”
He pushed the sunglasses to the top of his head, further disheveling his hair—not that he appeared to care.
“Luckily the damage seems to be mostly to my Jeep,” she went on.
Sharp blue eyes held hers. “Karma?”
“Actually, I don’t believe in karma.” Nope, she believed in making one’s own fate—which she’d done by once again studying too late into the night, not getting enough sleep, and…crashing into his truck.
“Hmm.” He sipped some more coffee, and she told herself that leaping out of the Jeep to snatch it from his hands would be bad form.
“How about felony hit-and-run?” he asked conversationally. “You believe in that?”
“I wasn’t running off.”
“Because you ca
n’t,” he ever so helpfully pointed out. “The Jeep’s dead.”
“Yes, but…” She broke off, realizing how it must look to him. He’d found her behind her own wheel, cursing her vehicle for not starting. He couldn’t know that she’d never just leave the scene of an accident. Most likely he’d taken one look at the panic surely all over her face and assumed the worst about her.
The panic doubled. And also, her pity party was back, and for a beat, she let the despair rise from her gut and block her throat, where it threatened to choke her. With a bone-deep weary sigh, she dropped her head to the steering wheel.
“Hey. Hey.” Suddenly he was at her side. “Did you hit your head?”
“No, I—”
But before she could finish that sentence, he opened the Jeep door and crouched at her side, looking her over.
“I’m fine. Really,” she promised when he cupped and lifted her face to his, staring into her eyes, making her squirm like the babies in the box next to her.
“How many fingers am I holding up?” A quiet demand. His hand was big, the two fingers he held up long. His eyes were calmly intense, his mouth grim. He hadn’t shaved that morning she noted inanely, maybe not the day before either, but the scruff only made him seem all the more…male.
“Two,” she whispered.
Nodding, he dropped his gaze to run over her body. She had dressed for work this morning, which included cleaning out the kennels, so she wore a denim jacket over a T-shirt, baggy Carhartts, boots, and a knit cap to cover her hair.
To say she wasn’t looking ready for her close-up was the understatement of the year. “Do you think you can close the door before—”
Too late.
Sensing a means of escape, Abigail started flapping her wings, attempting to fly out past Lilah’s face.
She nearly made it, too, but the man, still hunkered at Lilah’s side, caught the duck.
By the neck.
“Gak,” said a strangled Abigail.
“Don’t hurt her!” Lilah cried.
With what might have been a very small smile playing at the corners of his mouth, the man leaned past Lilah and settled the duck on the passenger floorboard.
“Stay,” he said in a low-pitched, authoritative voice that brooked no argument.
Lilah opened her mouth to tell him that ducks didn’t follow directions, but Abigail totally did. She not only stayed, she shut up. Probably afraid she’d be roasted duck if she didn’t. Staring at the brown-headed, orange-footed duck in shock, she said, “I really am sorry about your truck. I’ll give you my number so I can pay for damages.”
“You could just give me your insurance info.”
Her insurance. Damn. The rates would go up this time, for sure. Hell, they’d gone up last quarter when she’d had that little run-in with her own mailbox.
But that one hadn’t been her fault. The snake she’d been transporting had gotten loose and startled her, and she’d accidentally aligned her front bumper with the mailbox.
But today, this one—definitely her fault.
“Let me guess,” he said dryly when she sat there nibbling on her lip. “You don’t have insurance.”
“No, I do.” To prove it, she reached for her wallet, which she kept between the two front seats. Except, of course, it wasn’t there. “Hang on, I know I have it…” Twisting, she searched the floor, beneath the box of puppies and piglet, in the backseat…
And then she remembered.
In her hurry to pick up Mrs. Swanson’s animals on time, she’d left it in her office at the kennels. “Okay, this looks bad but I left my wallet at home.”
His expression was dialed into Resignation.
“I swear,” she said. “I really do have insurance. I just got the new certificate and I put it in my wallet to stick in my glove box, but I hadn’t gotten to that yet. I’ll give you my number and you can call me for the information.”
He gazed at her steadily. “You have a name?”
“Lilah.” She scrounged around for a piece of paper. Nothing, of course. But she did find five bucks and the earring she’d thought that Abigail had eaten, and a pen.
Still crouched at her side, the man held out his cell phone. Impossibly aware of how big he was, how very good-looking, not to mention how he surrounded her still crouched at her side balanced easily on the balls of his feet, she entered her number into his phone. When it came to keying in her name, she nearly titled herself Dumbass of the Day.
“You fake numbering me, Lilah?” he asked softly, still close, so very close.
“No.” This came out as a squeak so she cleared her throat. And, when he just looked at her, she added truthfully, “I only fake-number the jerk tourists inside Crystal’s, the ones who won’t take no for an answer.”
“Crystal’s?”
“The bar down the street. Listen, you might want to wait awhile before you call me. It’s going to take me at least an hour to get home.” Carrying the mewling, wriggling babies and walking a duck.
He paused, utterly motionless in a way that she admired, since she’d never managed to sit still for longer than two minutes. Okay, thirty seconds, but who was counting. “What?” she asked.
“I’m just trying to figure out if you’re for real or if you’re a master bullshit specialist.”
That surprised a laugh out of her. “Well, I can be a master bullshit specialist,” she admitted. “But I’m not bullshitting you right now.”
He studied her face for another long moment, then nodded. “Fine, I’ll wait to call you. You going to ask my name?”
Her gaze ran over his very masculine features, then dropped traitorously to linger over his very fine body for a single beat. “I was really sort of hoping that I wasn’t going to need it.”
He laughed, the sound washing over her and making something low in her belly quiver again.
“Okay, yes,” she said. “I want to know your name.”
“Brady Miller.”
A flicker of something went through her, like the name should mean something to her, but discombobulated as she was, she couldn’t concentrate. “Well, Brady Miller, thanks for being patient with me.” She reached for Abigail’s leash, attaching it to the collar around the duck’s neck.
“Quack.”
“Shh.” Then she grabbed the box of babies. It was damn heavy, but she had her dignity to consider so she soldiered on, turning to get out of the Jeep, bumping right into Brady’s broad chest. “Excuse me.”
He straightened to his full height and backed up enough to let her out, helping her support the box with an ease that had her envying his muscles now instead of drooling over them.
Actually, that was a lie. She managed both the envying and the drooling. She was an excellent multitasker.
“You’re really going to walk?” he asked, rubbing his chin as he considered the box.
“Well, when I skip or run, Abigail’s leash gets tangled in my legs.”
“Smart-ass.” Brady peered at the two puppies and potbellied piglet. To his credit, he didn’t so much as blink. “They potty trained?”
“No.”
He grimaced. “How about the duck?”
“She’d say yes, but she’d be lying.”
He exhaled. “That’s what I was afraid of.” He took the box from her, the underside of his arms brushing the outside of hers.
He was warm. And smelled delicious. Like sexy man and something even better—breakfast wraps and coffee.
“What are you doing?”
“Giving you a ride.” He narrowed his eyes at the duck on the leash. “You,” he said, “behave.”
“Quack.”