Ten


Dell spent Sunday deep in the Bitterroot Mountains with Brady and Adam, working volunteer S &R. Late that night they’d located the lost hiker and flown back to Sunshine.

Brady went home to Lilah. Adam had a class to give.

So Dell was on his own, and he crashed early in his own bed. Not that being exhausted helped him sleep. He woke up several times, the latest at dawn when Gertie leapt on his bed and slobbered on his face.

Her version of the good-morning kiss.

He shoved her off him and got into the shower. At Belle Haven he rode Kiwi, then let himself into the office just as Jade arrived. He’d called her several times since Saturday night, all of which she’d ignored.

Which made sense. He’d invited her over for self-defense training, promising to teach her moves to make her feel safe. And then he’d turned into a fifteen-year-old boy and gotten hard in class. “Jade.”

She had the phone headset on. She raised a finger to indicate she needed a minute. He could see now that she was accessing the center’s messages from their service, typing them into the spreadsheet that she had up on her screen. She was crazy about her spreadsheets. She’d uncovered Peanut, and the parrot was preening and humming to herself. Beans was watching Peanut with avid, narrow-eyed interest.

Gertie had found the sole sunny spot in the room and was already snoring.

Jade’s fingers were a whirl on her keyboard. She worked hard here, and she was his responsibility, as much as any of the animals were. He took that very seriously.

He wanted her to be able to count on him.

Always.

Which meant he needed to work on the self-control. The only thing that kept him coming back to the straight-andnarrow was that clearly she’d been hurt. Some fucker had put his hands on her and terrorized her, and seeing her suffer the aftereffects killed him.

That was not to say that having her sweet, curvy body so intimate with his wasn’t having a toll.

It was.

And that toll had kept him up at night. Hell, last night he’d had to get up at two in the morning to abuse himself in the shower.

He probably should have abused himself again this morning just to cover his bases.

Jade’s fingers were a blur on her keyboard, but then suddenly she stopped and pulled off her headset. “Twenty-five messages today. Must be Monday.”

“Jade, about Saturday night-”

“I never thanked you.”

This derailed him. “What?”

She lifted her head and met his gaze. “For spending so much time with me.”

“Sure, but I wanted to apologize for-”

“Nothing,” she said, shaking her head. “You have nothing to apologize for. It was my fault. I, um, put my hand… there, and then it-”

She broke off suddenly, eyes locked on something over his shoulder.

Dell turned around to find Adam standing there, brows up.

“Don’t stop on my account,” Adam said. “It’s just getting good.”

Dell blew out a breath and considered killing him but he had patients arriving. “Go away.” He turned back to Jade, but she was gone, heels churning up the big reception area as she went to the wall of files and began pulling down the day’s scheduled patients.

“So,” Adam said, “she put her hand where?”


Two days later, Jade was sitting in Lilah’s kennels. They were in Lilah’s office, surrounded by Abigail the duck, Lulu the lamb, and several dogs, all snoozing.

It was naptime in Lilah’s world.

Lilah and Jade were munching on deli sandwiches, which Jade had brought over to spend her lunch hour with some female company.

“He’s going to be back any minute,” Lilah was saying as she decimated a pickle, talking about her favorite subject.

Brady, of course.

Dell had been gone all morning with Brady, out on a ranch about a hundred miles east where Brady had flown him, taking care of a difficult high-end breeding mare’s birth.

“It didn’t go well,” Lilah said, patting one of the dogs who lifted its head and sniffed. Twinkles belonged to Brady, but Lilah considered him hers. She handed him a piece of turkey from her sandwich. “In fact, it went awful.”

“What do you mean?” Jade asked.

“They lost the mare. She’d stroked out and Dell had to put her down.”

“Oh no,” Jade breathed.

“The owners were so distraught they couldn’t sit with the horse during the euthanization.”

“They let her die alone?”

“No.” Lilah shook her head and Jade knew. Dell. Dell had stayed with the horse. Jade’s throat ached for him because she knew him. He’d have sat on the straw-covered barn floor with the horse’s head in his lap, stroking her face and talking to her until she closed her eyes for the last time.

It was who he was. “Damn.”

Lilah nodded. “Been a long week. How are you doing?”

Jade sipped her iced tea. “Good.”

“Good as in ‘I don’t want to talk about it’ or good as in ‘good.’”

Jade looked at her.

Lilah looked right back, innocent-faced.

Jade had no idea how Lilah could have heard about her kissing Dell. But she planned to play it cool just in case. “Maybe we should save some time and you should just skip to the part where you tell me exactly what you want to know.”

“Okay, well something scared you last week in the parking lot and you’ve been jumpy ever since.”

Not where Jade expected this conversation to go. “Who told you that?”

“Hell, honey, this is Sunshine.”

Right.

“And Dell’s been teaching you self-defense, and now you’re talking about going back to Chicago-which you left to come here because, as you told us, you wanted better skiing in the winter. Now I’m thinking that’s not true.” She paused, brows up. “How am I doing so far?”

Jade stared down at her turkey on multigrain. “It’s… complicated.”

“Are you okay?”

“I’m working on it.”

“Is there anything I can do?”

Again, Jade’s throat tightened. She’d lied, omitted, kept a good part of herself closed off, and Lilah didn’t care about any of that, all she wanted to know was if Jade was okay. “You’re already doing it.”

Lilah smiled and offered her some chips. “He’s a good man, you know.”

“Who?”

“You know who.”

Yeah. She did.

“A really good man.”

Jade nodded. “I know.”

“Do you?”

Jade looked at Lilah.

Lilah smiled sweetly. Expectantly.

And Jade had to laugh. “You’re fishing.”

“Yes,” Lilah admitted without shame. “I’m totally fishing.”

“Why?

“Why?” Lilah just shook her head. “You know how insatiably nosy we all are. Something’s going on. We just don’t know what, and it’s killing us.”

“There’s nothing-”

“Oh, please. If there’s nothing going on with you two, I’ll eat Abigail.”

Abigail the duck lifted her head and looked reproachfully at Lilah.

“Seriously,” Lilah said to Jade while patting Abigail on the head. “There’s no way it’s nothing.”

“Based on what?” Jade asked.

“Based on the fact that whenever you and Dell are in the same room, all these little flames flicker between you.”

“Flames.”

“It’s a metaphor,” Lilah said.

“For?”

“Sexual tension.”

Jade stared at her, then laughed.

“And Adam told Brady he interrupted the two of you in Dell’s gym.”

“What, is this high school?”

Lilah grinned. “Well, we’ve all been together that long, so yeah, in emotional years, we’re still in high school. You two doing it or what?”

“Okay, wow.” Jade shook her head. “We are so not going there.”

“Please! Oh, please, let’s go there!”

“I didn’t ask you about your… flames when you first started circling Brady,” Jade said.

“Aha!” Lilah jabbed a finger into Jade’s direction, triumphant. “You are! You’re circling Dell.”

Jade sighed. “Okay, maybe I’ll cop to the circling. But that’s no secret. We’ve always circled each other.”

“But something’s different,” Lilah insisted. “I can feel it.”

Was it? All her life Jade had been the master at compartmentalizing the people in her life. She’d put Dell in the slot for boss and left him there for eighteen months. She’d been okay with adding him to the friend slot as well, but that had taken him a good long time to earn.

And he had earned it.

He was a friend, a good one. She knew he’d give her the shirt off his back without a moment’s hesitation. That had made it easier to feel safe in Sunshine, she’d be the first to admit. And she loved Lilah. She loved Adam and the others, too, but Dell… From the start he’d been different. Somehow he’d burrowed deeper, gotten past her walls though she couldn’t have said how.

Or why.

But Lilah was right-something was happening between them. She didn’t know what exactly but whenever he was close, her senses went on high alert and she strained to get even closer. When he touched her, her entire body tingled.

She wanted him.

She, who hadn’t had sex in over a year and a half, wanted the guy who’d probably had sex last weekend.

It made no sense but in her mind he was changing, becoming something other than just her boss and her friend, something that was both safer and far less safe at the same time.

“Maybe you two can fall in love and get married, like me and Brady.”

“Lilah. You know I’m going back to Chicago.”

“So? We have the chopper. You’ll commute.”

Jade stood. “Would you look at the time? I’ve got to get back to work now.”

“Oh, come on, just give me a hint.”

“You want a hint?”

“Yes!”

“Abigail just pooped on your shoe.”

Lilah was still swearing when Jade made her escape.


The next night, Jade let herself into Dell’s house again. He’d left her an e-mail about another training session and she’d dropped everything to be here.

Everything being season one of My So-Called Life on DVD…

She found him in the gym, already stripped down to black basketball shorts and a black T-shirt, and she stared at him because he didn’t look like her boss. Or her friend.

He looked… hot.

He turned and their eyes met. Yearning flowed through her, yearning for a man. This man. She felt silly for staring, but he was staring, too.

“I’m wearing a cup,” he said, and she laughed. Tension broken, as she knew he’d intended.

But she still wanted him.

For two hours he reviewed joint manipulation and using an attacker’s own weight and momentum to bring him down. It was fascinating but involved close hand-to-hand contact.

Body-to-body contact.

In short, he was all over her, his hands on her body, maneuvering her into place and positions as he worked her hard, harder than she’d thought he would.

Finally she flopped to the mat flat on her back, gasping for air and sweating. “I can’t feel my legs.”

He crouched at her side, not breathing hard at all, the bastard.

“The least you can do,” she said, between gasps, “is pretend to be winded.”

“There’s no pretending between us, tough girl. If you want to be as good as me, you have to work for it.”

She laughed. “Conceited much?”

“No. Just good. Thanks to Brady.”

“Did he beat you up until you cried, too?”

“More than once. But you’re not crying. Get up. One more time.”

She wanted to whimper and curl into a ball. Instead she rolled to her feet.

“I’m going to come after you, right at you,” he said, warning her but not babying her. “You know what to do.”

She inhaled, accessed all the knowledge he’d given her, and let her brain select one of the judo moves he’d taught her. It was a lot like taking on a charging bull, but she managed to catch him when his weight shifted off his leading foot.

His momentum should have taken him down hard, but he was still better than her, and at the last second he brought her with him.

She landed on her back, with him on top. He lay along the entire length of her, his hands holding her wrists to the mat. Lifting his head, he looked down at her. The raw intensity of his dark gaze spoke to the woman inside of her. The sound of his deep voice was like a caress of warmth against her chilled skin. “Your move,” he said.

Thanks to his careful tutoring, she did have moves. She could pick one and be efficient because she wasn’t panicked.

Nope. She was something else entirely.

But he was braced, ready for her, and aroused as hell or not, she intended to win today. Hell, every time. So she picked an option that she knew he didn’t expect. Using her newfound confidence, she looked into his dark eyes and let all the yearning and heat that had been gathering for months now show in her eyes.

He immediately relaxed, his own eyes softening. “Jade.”

It was inevitable, really. They’d been in close quarters, touching and grappling and grabbing. Sweating. It didn’t get more personal than that, and another man might have taken advantage of it.

But he’d been careful not to. And he didn’t now, either. She waited until he rose lithely to his feet and reached down to pull her to hers. She gripped his hand hard with hers… and fell back, into a roll.

Surprised, Dell followed her completely over, and while he was still in motion, she dropped on him and set her elbow to his windpipe.

There was a long beat of silence and then Dell laughed. Jade was still enjoying the sound of that laugh when he abruptly switched their positions, rolling on top of her, once again pinned her down, his face hovering an inch from hers. “Who taught you to fight dirty?”

“You.”

He laughed again, kissed her on the tip of her nose and sprang up gracefully in one smooth motion, pulling her with him. “Just remember that all fights are dirty.” He tossed her a bottle of water and grabbed one for himself. “You did great tonight.”

“Yeah?” His praise washed through her, warming her from the inside out.

“Oh, yeah.” His eyes met and held hers. “I think you’re amazing, Jade.”

She started to look away but found she couldn’t.

“Amazing,” he repeated softly, simply, as he moved closer. “Strong as hell. Smart. Brave. Resilient.”

She opened her mouth to thank him, but her throat was too tight to speak. Once upon a time her family’s approval had meant everything to her, but though they’d always meant well, she’d arrived in Sunshine with no sense of self.

Over the last year and a half she’d started to find herself. The real Jade, and that real Jade wanted to be those very things that Dell had just said: strong, smart, brave, resilient. He didn’t use empty platitudes or pretty words, ever. He didn’t have to. So when he said something, he meant them.

And damned if she didn’t like looking at herself the way he saw her. Damned if she didn’t want to be that woman. No, he hadn’t taken advantage of their closeness. So she would. “Dell?”

“Yeah?”

She tossed her water aside and put her hands on his chest, running them northbound, winding her arms around his neck.

He went stock-still. Well, except for closing his eyes and a sexy muscle in his jaw that bunched tight. “Jade-”

“Shh,” she said, watching his lips quirk as she animal-whispered him for a change. “Just stay calm, Dell. And keep breathing. This won’t hurt, I promise.”

He let out a rough exhale that turned into a groan when she brushed her lips against his, once.

Twice.

His eyes opened, dark and intense.

Hot.

One big hand ran down her spine to rest at the small of her back; the other gripped her hip. They were inches apart from each other, sharing air.

One inch one way, Jade thought. One more inch would change everything.

Everything.

She gave a brief thought to stepping back, but it was too late.

Far too late.

So she closed the gap, absorbing the heat of him and the fact that he was so big. And hard.

Everywhere.

She let out a little hum of pleasure at that as she slid her fingers into his hair and drew his mouth back to hers.

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