Animal Magnetism Read online

  Lucky cried.

  Still stroking the trembling dog, Brady bent low to murmur to her softly.

  “Another talent of yours?” she asked. “Soothing the scared female?”

  He smiled, and she had the most ridiculous urge to pretend to be terrified so he’d hold her and murmur in that voice and hold her close, too. And maybe do other things . . . “You do this a lot on your travels?”

  Brady’s eyes were still amused, suggesting maybe he knew where her thoughts had gone. “Assist a sexy woman in the middle of the night with a dog? Almost never.” He shifted, turning so he could more comfortably hold Lucky for her, and Lilah went very still.

  Brady’s back was broad and smooth and gorgeous . . . except for his side, where a long, jagged scar ran from his armpit down to his ribs. It was a few shades lighter than his normal skin tone, signaling that it was at least a few years old. There were other scars as well, but nothing as major as that one long imperfection.

  Lifting his head, his gaze met hers without hesitation or resignation.

  Her fingers itched to touch it, to soothe him, which would be a little bit like trying to soothe a wild, untamed mountain cat. “What happened?” she asked as casually as she could, pouring vinegar over the next quill, then snip-ping it with scissors as she had the first.

  He remained quiet and she figured he had no intention of answering. “I suppose,” she finally said, “it’s one of those you-could-tell-me-but-you’d-have-to-kill-me things, right?”

  His mouth quirked but he held his silence. He was good at that.

  “I heard you spent some time in Afghanistan,” she said softly, working out the next quill.

  “I flew medical choppers.”

  “And in Iraq?”

  “Same thing. I was good at the hot spots.”

  She poured the vinegar and then snipped the quill halfway as she thought about Brady out there on the front line, right in the thick of things, bringing people in and out on a daily basis, constantly in more danger than she could possibly imagine. “Does it still hurt?” she asked as she pulled out the quill.

  “No.”

  “How—”

  “A machete.” His voice was easy enough, but she heard the steel undertone—he was done talking about this.

  She could understand that. “I’m guessing you’ve seen parts of the world that would seem like another planet to me compared to this place,” she said softly after yet another quiet moment.

  He let out a low sound of agreement.

  “You must think I’m pretty naïve and sheltered.”

  “No.”

  “But you do think I live safe.”

  He didn’t answer, and lifting her gaze, she met his, which was sharp yet warm. It seemed impossible that he could be both, but he was.

  Just outside the exam room door, the rest of the center was dark, filled with shadows. Not in the exam room, which felt . . . close. Intimate.

  “You’re right,” she said. “I do live safe. I grew up in this one-horse town with my grandma and good friends, and it’s always been a comfortable fit for me. And very safe.”

  “It suits you.”

  “It didn’t always,” she said wryly. “By the time I graduated high school, I was chomping at the bit to get out of town and find the real world.”

  He smiled, interested. “So did you?”

  “I went to UNLV. University of Las Vegas.”

  He choked out a laugh. “About as different from here as you could get.”

  “You could say so,” she agreed, and yet again wielded the pliers on poor Lucky. “I was a little out of my element.” Like a babe in the woods. Which had been the whole point.

  “Is this the part where you tell me you made your tuition by becoming a stripper?” he asked hopefully.

  “No,” she said on a laugh.

  “A showgirl?”

  “No!”

  He looked her over. “I know. You became a phone sex operator.”

  “Stop.” She rolled her shoulders, the smile fading because the truth was worse.

  His expression turned serious. Reaching up, he stroked a loose strand of hair off her jaw. “Something happened to you.”

  There was concern in his eyes, and a protectiveness that shouldn’t mean anything to her.

  But it did. “No. Not like you’re thinking. It’s really just a very boring old story.”

  “You’re in luck, then. I love boring old stories.”

  “No you don’t,” she said on a laugh. “You hardly talk at all unless I’m bugging the hell out of you with questions.”

  “True,” he said stroking poor Lucky to keep her calm. “But I like to listen to you.”

  Her heart tumbled and she sighed, again moved by him when she shouldn’t be. She supposed she could tell him a little more. “I got accepted on a scholarship into the animal science program.”

  “To become a vet?”

  “I wasn’t sure. Mostly I just wanted out to see what I was missing. Nobody wanted me to go to Vegas. They all wanted me to go to Idaho State, so of course I did the opposite.”

  “And hit the city of big lights.”

  “Yeah, I followed the scholarship, I really had no choice—I needed the money.” She hadn’t been able to keep it, unfortunately. Among other things, her grandma had gotten sick, and she’d ended up coming back and forth too much. Her grades had slipped and she lost her scholarship.

  Okay, so it hadn’t all been because of her grandma’s failing health, but that part of the story wasn’t in the short version, nor was it up to be shared. “Vegas was a culture shock,” she allowed, and smiled a little at herself, at the good memories she could summon. “But for a time, I loved it.” At least at first. “My roommate was a local girl, and she was determined to help me experience everything I’d missed by growing up in a small ranch town.”

  Lilah had been extremely determined to get out and live. Never look back.

  Well, okay she’d planned to look back a little. After all, there were her friends here, and her grandma, but in those years, she’d been an idealist, thinking her grandma—and everything else here—would remain the same, locked in time, safe in the capsule that was Sunshine.

  Which hadn’t happened.

  “I was going to make something of myself,” she said, adjusting the overhead light to the other side of Lucky’s nose and continued to work. “I was going to be the first Young in my entire family to get a college degree and do something with my life.”

  Which she’d pretty much blown on all counts.

  “So what happened?” he asked quietly when she stopped talking.

  She shrugged.

  Cocking his head, he studied her for a long moment. “You’re leaving out the juicy stuff.”

  Yes. Yes, she was. On purpose, because she was pretty sure she couldn’t tell the story without losing it and she wasn’t ready for that. There were quills to remove. “Maybe it’s your turn to tell me juicy stuff. Why did you come to Sunshine?”

  He didn’t say anything to that. Shock.

  “Oh come on, that’s easy enough.”

  “You already know why I came,” he said.

  “Because Dell badgered you. Yeah, yeah. But you don’t seem like the kind of guy to be . . . badger-able.”

  His eyes slid her way. “You think there’s some deep, dark reason?”

  She didn’t know what she thought—he was an enigma. And also, sin on a stick. “You owe me a secret,” she reminded him.

  That got her nothing but a little smile.

  “Come on,” she said. “There’s got to be something you can tell me.”

  Apparently not.

  “You and the guys grew up rough,” she said. “I know that much. Then you went in the army, which was obviously a different kind of rough altogether, and now you roam at will because you never learned to settle down in one spot.”

  Annoyance flickered across his features. “Adam and Dell can’t keep their mouths shut.”