Animal Magnetism

Stepping outside, she started walking to Belle Haven. The trail was drenched from the heavy rains of the night before, and the rough terrain gave beneath her boots like live sponges. She loved being outside after any rain, and she inhaled deeply the scent of wet nature. Her very favorite scent of all.

The lake was backed by rolling hill after rolling hill, and beyond those, the towering peaks of the Coeur d’Alene’s, the colors so deep and mesmerizing the whole setting looked like a painting.

The trail ended at the center. The building itself was a two-story sprawling place, with several pens and a large barn alongside, with several more smaller buildings for equipment. Lilah walked through the parking lot and saw Adam’s and Dell’s trucks. Adam’s was freshly washed and shiny as always, and Dell’s was covered in a fine layer of dust and filled with work equipment, sporting gear, and whatever other stuff he’d put in there and forgotten. She might have smiled. After all, just being here filled her with a warm peace. Except that right next to their trucks sat a third.

This truck’s back bumper was cracked and dented, as if someone in a Jeep—a very tired, overworked someone—had rear-ended it.

Oh God. Brady was parked in the lot next to her best friends as if he belonged in their world right alongside them.

And that’s when it hit her. Where she’d heard his name before. An odd mixture of dread and anticipation mingled in her gut along with something else that she couldn’t quite put her finger on, something that she didn’t know what to do with. She walked through the front entrance and waved at Jade, the receptionist on the phone behind the big welcome desk. There was a wide-open space that greeted both two- and four-footed clients alike, and a comfortable seating area spread out strategically to encourage people to hang out in front of the huge wall of windows overlooking the land and the animals on it.

Three horses were out in one of the paddocks, a sheep in another, and on the outskirts stood a flock of geese who’d waddled over from the lake to watch the goings-on.

Inside, several people sat in the waiting room along with their dogs and cats and, in one case, a caged bunny.

Lilah walked through, heading to the offices, stopping to take a quick look out into the glorious day, the first without rain in two weeks. What she would give to be sitting on a blanket in front of the lake, the water lapping at her feet, a good book in her hand—and not her animal biology book. But it’d been a long time since she’d had enough wriggling room to just hang out and be.

“Never gets old, does it?”

She turned at the masculine voice that was as familiar to her as her own.

Dell slung a friendly arm over her shoulder. He was an outrageous but harmless flirt and could make ninety-year-old women preen and get infant girls to bat their eyelashes. One reason was his easy good looks. He was six foot two and still built like the football quarterback that he’d once been. He had the warm mocha skin that spoke of Native heritage and the sharp eyes to match. His black hair framed a striking face. He wore his sleeves rolled up, his shirt unbuttoned at the collar and untucked over a pair of well-worn jeans, and he would have looked like a college kid except for his eyes. His eyes said he’d seen too much for his barely three decades.

But his smile was pure devil. It never failed to crack her up that he broke hearts right and left and had no clue to his own power. He was the heart and soul of Sunshine, and the rock of all of them.

“I tried calling you,” she murmured, turning into him for a hug.

“I was in surgery. I called you back—you didn’t get my message?”

“No.” She pulled out her cell, which now showed one missed call. “Must have been in the shower.”

“It’s okay.” They were out of view from the people that were waiting on him, and he smiled into her eyes. “We have news.”

“About . . . ?”

Dell turned her toward the hallway, where Adam was coming out of his office. Leaner than Dell, Adam was built more like one of those cage fighters, tough and edgy and hard—except for that face.

An angel’s face. Her angel. Dark disheveled hair, strong features, and like Dell, a devastating smile when he chose to use it.

The man with Adam had the same badass smile—as she already knew all too well. She watched Brady walk toward them and had to acknowledge their odd attraction as something low in her belly quivered. She kept herself cool on the outside, but on the inside she was thinking that a half hour ago he’d kissed her till she purred.

“Remember when Adam and I lived in that foster home on Outback Road?” Dell asked her quietly.

“Yes. With the man who eventually left you the money to buy this land.”

“Sol Anders,” Dell said. “He took on Adam and me, but he had another kid first.”

Lilah hadn’t known them then, but Dell had told her about the other boy. He’d been a few years older than Adam and he’d graduated early and gone off to the military.

Brady, Of course. She’d heard his name before, but she’d just not connected it to her gorgeous stranger. And it wasn’t as if Brady had visited—he hadn’t, not once in the past few years since she’d been close friends with Dell and Adam. “The missing foster brother.”

“Not missing,” Dell said. “He was Special Forces, then working out of the country. We’ve been trying to get him to come see our operation for a long time. Now he’s finally here.”

Brady hadn’t yet spoken; he was just now getting close enough to them to do so, but she felt the weight of his assessing gaze. And in fact, all three men were looking at her. There was so much freaking testosterone in the room that she could scarcely breathe. Brady had the same tough, sharp always-aware-of-his-surroundings demeanor as Adam and Dell, and the three of them together—good Lord.

Three magnificent peas in a pod.

She’d never really understood what had kept Brady away all this time. Neither Dell nor Adam had ever said. Guys, she’d long ago discovered, weren’t exactly forthcoming with emotions and details.

As she stood there absorbing that shock, Adam shifted close to greet her with his usual—a tug on her hair. “Hey, Trouble.”

“Hey.” She couldn’t object to the nickname. She’d earned it. Hell, she’d earned it this morning alone.

Adam ran his hand down her arm to her hand, which he squeezed, then gestured to the man whose truck she’d hit, the man who was so yummy he’d reminded her hormones that they could still indeed do a heck of a tap dance. “Lilah,” Adam said. “This is—”

“Brady Miller,” she murmured.

Brady’s mouth curved in a slight ironic smile, his eyes lit with the same. He bowed his head slightly in her direction. “Lilah.”

Dell divided a surprised look between them. “You two know each other?”

Brady lifted a brow in Lilah’s direction, clearly giving her the floor.

Great. She hated having the floor. “Well, it’s a funny story, actually.” She managed a weak smile. “We, um”—she lifted a shoulder—“had a little run-in this morning.”

Brady was hands in pockets, rolled back on his heels. He was obviously enjoying himself, the bastard, and damn if something deep within her didn’t react to all that annoying charisma and male confidence.

“You had a little run-in,” Dell repeated, and shook his head. “What does that mean exactly?”

“It means . . . ” Crap. “Okay, so it’s more like I ran into him.”

“Explain,” Adam said. No words were ever wasted when Adam spoke.

“Literally,” she said. “I ran into him. As in, I hit his truck with my Jeep.”

Brady’s mouth twitched, though his eyes remained sharp.

But not as sharp as those on the two men that Lilah thought of as her brothers as they took in both Lilah and Brady, more specifically Brady and the way he was looking at her.

Which was a little bit how a tiger might eye his prey after a long, cold, hungry winter.

Oh good Lord. She definitely hadn’t put on enough deodorant for this. And even more unsettling? Just this morning she’d have sworn she was completely happy and settled with her life. Sure she was overworked and stressed and about an inch from financial disaster at all times, and yeah, she’d been battling that vague sense of loneliness, but compared to lots of people she had things good.

So she couldn’t explain this new restlessness.

But then her gaze locked with Brady and she had to revise. She could explain.

It was all his fault.

Four

Brady had been to every continent. He could speak three languages enough to get by and could understand a handful more. Over the years he’d amassed a whole host of skills—some he was proud of, some not so much. He’d seen a lot of shit. Hell, he’d done a lot of shit.

So he knew when to back off and let a situation take its course.This was one of those times.

The reason he was here was complicated, and went back years, to old ties he hadn’t even realized he still had. He’d been given up by his too-young, drug-dependent mother when he’d been five to a distant uncle not all that keen on kids. By the time he’d gotten to his teens, he’d been downgraded to group foster homes. He’d been a puny, scrawny runt, and an easy mark.

Until he’d landed at Sol Anders’s.

Sol had been a badass cowboy and a large-animal vet. With him, Brady had been given two things he’d never had before—acceptance and an outlet for his anger. There’d been a gym in Sol’s basement, specifically a punching bag, and Sol had encouraged Brady to make good use of it.

Later, two more “lost boys” had come along to be under Sol’s care. They’d all lived together for two years before Brady graduated high school a year early and went into the army.

Adam and Dell.

By the time Sol died in a freak riding accident a few years later—on a wild mustang in Montana while gathering a herd for the government—Brady had been a pro at survival and winning his fights. He went on to serve multiple tours with the army, which is where he’d learned to fly anything with an engine, working in some college in between.

All with Sol’s solid memory guiding him.

He’d been well aware that Sol had left some money, that he’d divided it among the three lost boys; himself, Adam, and Dell. But Brady had refused to take his share. He hadn’t needed it. So he’d signed it over to Dell and Adam and had continued with his wanderlust lifestyle while they’d bought this land and built the animal center. Made a life for themselves.

They’d put Brady’s name on the deed to the land, which he hadn’t known. And now they were in the black this year and wanted Brady to be a part of it.

Brady didn’t have the same wants. He didn’t have a need for either a place to call home or the money Dell and Adam felt they owed him.

They’d known that and had come at him with a dangling carrot, something he’d found he couldn’t quite resist—a helicopter that needed restoring and the chance to, for however briefly, fly in the good old safe USA.

It was nice what they’d done to honor their brief history together from a million years ago, one that had involved stolen candy, pilfered porn, and many late nights sneaking out on their bikes . . . But there was no doubt in Brady’s mind that Lilah’s history with them went far deeper.

So he let the drama unfold, fascinated in spite of himself.

“Is that why you walked over here instead of driving?” Adam asked Lilah, voice low so that the patients and their owners, just around the corner waiting to see Dell, couldn’t hear. “Because you had an accident?”

Adam’s voice was curt and gruff. And though not as obviously dark-skinned and dark-eyed as Dell, he was dark in persona and could be as intimidating as hell.

Except Lilah didn’t seem intimidated.

At all.

“It’s a half mile,” she said. “Good exercise.”

“Uh-huh. Except you hate exercise.”

“Maybe my jeans are tight and I needed to burn the calories,” she said. “And to be honest, it wasn’t an accident so much as a little oops. It could have happened to anyone.”

Brady choked out a cough, and she sent him a dark look before turning back to Adam. “And maybe we can review my stupidity later because I’m really busy today.”

One corner of Adam’s mouth turned up. “Really? We can discuss your stupidity later? Do you promise? Because normally you hate discussing your stupidity.”

Lilah shoved him with the ease of two people extremely comfortable with each other, and extremely familiar.

Brady studied them both for hints of sexual tension, wondering if they were lovers as well as friends.

Lilah shoved Adam again. Adam didn’t budge. Instead he caught her up, wrapped an arm around her neck and hauled her in close, rubbing his knuckles against her head until she swore at him and slugged him in the gut.

Nope, Brady decided. Definitely not lovers. This was definitely a brother-sister relationship.

“Pendejo,” Lilah muttered, attempting to fix the hair Adam had ruffled.

Dumbass. She’d just called Adam, six feet of solid muscle, a dumbass.

“It’s the only bad word she knows,” Adam said, sidestepping another shove. “Probably time to learn something new, Trouble.”

Lilah straightened her shoulders and gave a little toss of her head, like she couldn’t be bothered with details. “Listen, while this is ever so much fun, I have two puppies, a piglet, two cats, a lamb, and a duck boarding today. I need to get back to it. Where’s the rescue dog?”