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 bullshit-ting 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.”
Without another word, Brady strode to his truck and put the box inside.
Lilah looked down at Abigail. “You heard him,” she whispered, having no choice but to follow. “Behave.”
Two
Brady wasn’t an impulsive guy. Years on the streets as an untethered, unwanted kid had taught him a certain innate caution—which had saved his life on more than one occasion. A stint flying for the army and then Special Forces had only hammered it home.
But it hadn’t been until he’d left the military and became a pilot for hire in places that weren’t safe for so much as a cockroach that he’d really learned to appreciate his instincts.
And yet those instincts abandoned him in a blink as he offered his Danica Patrick wannabe a ride.
Luckily, she was smarter than him.
She was still standing by her Jeep, watching him carefully, clearly unwilling to just hop into his truck.
“I don’t bite.”
She laughed a little. Nervous, he realized. He made her nervous. She walked to his truck and peered cautiously inside. He wasn’t sure what she was looking for; signs that he was a murderer or rapist maybe, and he looked into the truck as well. She straightened, gasped at how close he now was, and stumbled back a step.
Reaching out, he steadied her with a hand to her hip—which, he couldn’t help but notice, was nice and curvy and warm beneath his palm. Her eyes were a clear, deep mossy green. She had a few freckles across her pert nose and the hint of a sunburn. Beneath her blue knit cap, her straight brown hair hit her shoulders, with long bangs shoved off to the side as if in afterthought. Her mouth was full but naked. No makeup for this pretty little felon. She wasn’t model beautiful, but there was something undeniably arresting about her features, something that drew him right in . . . Probably it was the blatant mistrust she had all over her face. “I’m not a kidnapper. Or a woman-napper.”
“And yet you do have candy in your pocket.”
“If I promise not to offer it to you, or say ‘Hey, little girl’ in a really creepy voice, will you get in?”
Her gaze was locked onto the Snickers sticking out of his pocket, and into the silence her stomach once again rumbled with shocking vehemence.
He actually felt a smile curve his mouth. “Or maybe I should offer it to you. Are you hungry?” He hadn’t considered the fact that maybe she was homeless, but he took in her clothes and rust bucket Jeep and wondered. He held out the Snickers bar.
Looking away, a faint tinge colored her cheeks, she shook her head. “I couldn’t possibly—”
“I have another,” he lied.
Shielding her eyes from the bright sun, she gave him a long, serious once-over. Not playing fair, he tore open the candy bar and wafted the chocolate beneath her nose.
“You’re evil,” she said, and snatched it out of his hand. She broke it in half and then slid his part back into his pocket. Sinking her teeth into her portion with a big bite, she went still, then moaned in pleasure.
“Do you need a moment alone with that?” he asked, amused. And also a little turned on.
“Oh my God.” Her voice was thick and throaty. “Good.”
“So it’s true,” he murmured, watching her mouth avidly. It was a really great mouth, soft, with a plump lower lip. “Everyone has their price.”
“Yes, and mine is chocolate. Offer me some and probably I’d follow you anywhere,” she admitted.
“Probably?”
“Well, you’re still a stranger.”
“I told you my name.”
“I’d need more than that.”
He just looked at her, smiling. They both knew he’d had her at chocolate.
Laughing at herself, she took another bite of the Snickers, licking that lower lip of hers to get a stray strand of caramel. “Seriously, I was raised better than this. Make me feel okay about getting into a stranger’s truck.”
What could he possibly tell her that wouldn’t scare her off or deepen the mistrust? And why did he even care? “I’m a pilot,” he said.
“Okay.” She nodded. “That’s good. I’ve never heard of a pilot who murders people. Who do you fly for?”
“An international organization who hires me out to places like Doctors Without Borders, the government, whoever’s paying. So see? You’re safe enough from me. Get in.”
She looked into the back again. “What’s with the camera case?”
An observant, junk-food-loving felon. “I’m also a photographer.” Sometimes even a paid one. His photos had been in both Outsider and National Geographic this last year. Given his adrenaline-fueled life, taking pictures grounded him in a way nothing else could.
Well, except sex. Sex was always his first choice, of course. Not that that would be happening while here in Sunshine.
Lilah was watching him closely again. Mistrustful little thing, which for some reason, made him like her all the more. “It’s just a ride,” he said quietly.
“Yeah. Um, so do you ever lure women into your truck with candy bars in order to get them to pose naked for you?”
“Nah. My editor frowns on the exploitation of women. It’d have to be a side job and only if you say please.”
She rolled her eyes at him but took a step closer to the passenger door. “So does being a photographer ever get you laid?”
There was no good answer to that question, but yeah, sometimes it got him laid.
Clearly reading his face, she shook her head. “Don’t tell me. You trade on your good looks and that whole sort of badass vibe you’ve got going on, right? And women fall for it hook, line, and sinker.”
“Yes, but you’re on to me, so no falling for you. Plus you’ve got protection.” He jerked his chin toward the mallard at her feet. “A guard duck.”
They both looked at Abigail, who was busy preening and fussing with her feathers to get them just right. “Is it legal to own a duck?” he asked.
“I’m duck-sitting. Are you sure you’re not also a cop?” Lilah wanted to know.
“Why, do I look like one?” He felt the weight of her scrutiny. He knew what she saw when she looked at him. Dark hair cut short enough to be maintenance-free—when he remembered to have it cut at all. Tanned skin and a rangy, tough build from long months at a time in places where three squares a day were pure fantasy. The nondescript clothes he’d gotten used to wearing so as not to be marked as an American in places where being an American meant certain death or far worse.
“Actually,” she finally said, “you look like trouble.” Her gaze touched over his features. “The sort of trouble that women actively seek out against their better judgment. It’s sort of a fatal genetic flaw of my entire gender.”
She was right about the trouble part, but he’d never met a woman who liked it for long. “So now that we’ve established that I’m probably not a murderer, what’s it going to be? A long walk home with . . . ” He gestured to the box on the front passenger’s-side floorboards. “Two puppies and whatever that thing is, or—”
“A potbellied pig.”
He looked closer. “Are you sure?”
She laughed. “Yes!”
“Okay, I’ ll take your word for it. You getting in or what?”
She took another bite of his Snickers and studied him from those remarkable eyes. “The road out to my place needs some work,” she finally said. “It got washed out in the floods last week and hasn’t been repaired yet.”
At least she had a place. “I can handle it.”
“I don’t know . . .” Her eyes sized him up as if she were six feet tall instead of maybe five foot four in her steel-toe work boots. “In my experience, guys are rarely the drivers that they think they are.”
In the army, he’d driven in and out of hot spots that made Iraq and Afghanistan look like Disneyland. Hell, for his more recent work, piloting for hire, he’d driven on roads that didn’t officially exist. He had no doubt he could take on anything the serene mining town of Sunshine dished up.
Having apparently made a decision, Lilah slapped a hand to his chest to push him out of her way. Because it amused him that she thought she could move him at all, he let her. As she shifted past him, the scent of her hair filled his nostrils with something like . . . honey, maybe? Whatever it was, it was better than anything he’d smelled in a long time.
She climbed up into his truck, her baggy Carhartts tightening across her back end as she stretched farther to check on her box of babies. Yeah, he thought, there really is nothing on God’s green earth nicer than a woman’s ass, and he took a minute to soak in the sweet view before walking around and angling behind the wheel. “Where to?”
“North straight through town.”
Town was relatively quiet, and so was his passenger. The human one. Not the animal ones. The duck in the backseat hadn’t shut up for more than two seconds since he’d turned on the engine.
“Quack, quack, quack . . . ”
Brady finally cut his eyes to it via the rearview mirror. “Hey.”
Abigail looked at him.
“I know this great duck soup recipe,” he told her.
Lilah gasped.
Abigail shut up.
Not the animals in the box at her feet, though. The two puppies and little piglet were wrestling and rolling around each other, having a party for three.
At the end of town, the road went from smooth concrete to torn-up, pitted asphalt, and as Lilah had promised, it was a mess. He hit a pothole and got a little air.
“Uh-oh,” Lilah said.
“What?” He couldn’t look, because she’d been right—the road was bad. If he took his eyes off of it, they were going to go flying. “And Jesus, you weren’t kidding about—” He broke off when Lilah clicked out of her seat belt and dropped to her knees on the floorboard.
“It’s okay,” she cooed softly, and crawled toward Brady, touching his calf.
He went very, very still as she leaned down even farther, reaching between his legs . . .
“I’ve got you.” Her voice pure sex, and still in that erotic position, began to make kissy kissy noises that went straight to his . . .
“There,” she murmured, lifting the potbellied piglet to cuddle against her chest.
Brady let out a very long breath and realized he was jealous of a fucking pig.
Lilah flashed an apologetic smile and climbed back into her seat, rebuckling her seat belt. “Runaway.”
It took him a full sixty seconds to find his voice. “You seem to have your hands full.”
“Little bit.” She turned in her seat to face him. “And I really am sorry about all this. Not that it’s an excuse, but I stayed up too late last night studying, and I wasn’t paying close enough attention to what I was doing.”
“What are you studying?”
“Animal science. I’m trying to finish up my degree online at night. I’d like to go on to vet school after that.”
“Makes for a long day.”
“Yeah. Keep going straight here.”
On the outside of Sunshine now, the road was lined by forest, thick and unforgiving. Classic northern Idaho. After the glaciers of the last great Ice Age had melted away, they’d left meandering rivers and lakes of all sizes, most pristine, some more remote and intimate than any of the places in the far corners of the planet in which he’d been. Once upon a time, the vastness of those Bitterroot Mountains and the waters of the Coeur d’Alene had changed his life, given him a sense of self when he’d desperately needed it. He didn’t need it now. He knew who he was.
A man not quite ready to face the past that was about to be shoved in his face.
“So what brings you to Sunshine?” she asked, smiling when he glanced at her. “Maybe I just want to know more about the guy I’m going to buy a new rear bumper for. Thanks for sharing.”
“No problem.” He watched as she licked the last of the chocolate off her lips. “Still hungry?” he asked, amused.
“Yeah.” She licked her finger, scooping up a fleck of chocolate. He was certain she didn’t mean for it to be sexual, but