Animal Attraction Read online

  He wasn’t kidding.

  At lunch Jade locked the front door after Dell and Adam left for their usual cholesterol overload. She looked around at the empty place and tried to rub the matching ache between her breasts.

  She couldn’t.

  She and Dell had spoken several times since their . . . what had it been, a fight? Not exactly. There’d been no raised voices, no slammed doors, no pouting or brooding.

  But things were off. He hadn’t laughed when Peanut had announced to a room full of waiting patients that she had a “crush on doc.”

  He hadn’t teased her when she’d brought him the lab reports to go over. He hadn’t let his eyes warm when he looked at her. Actually, he hadn’t looked at her.

  With a sigh, she put in her earphones, cranked her iPod and turned to the accounting.

  Her version of relaxing.

  Now that she finally had all the accounts entered, it was sheer joy to balance the numbers out every day, and she watched with great satisfaction as reports ran down her screen.

  Pink came on, her voice a gorgeous low, husky rockand-roll rasp. Jade loved Pink. Pink was strong. Invincible. “You’re fucking perfect,” Jade sang along with the song, standing up to put more paper in her printer. Fucking perfect . . .

  Dell. Dell was fucking perfect.

  She couldn’t help it, then, the song demanded it. She was already standing so her body moved with the music. It was her line dancing teacher’s fault, she used this song sometimes, the PG-rated version, of course. With a little shimmy, Jade whirled and—dammit!—came face-to-face with Dell and Adam.

  With a surprised yelp, she yanked out her earplugs and searched for her dignity.

  There was none to be found.

  “Do you think she was singing to you or me?” Dell asked Adam.

  “Me,” Adam said. “You’re nowhere close to fucking perfect.”

  Oh God. Jade put her hands to her very hot cheeks.

  “You might want to try a dance class,” Bessie said, coming through with her push broom. “You’re stiff as my broom.”

  “I’m in a dance class,” Jade said.

  “Maybe you should get a refund.”

  “I thought she moved pretty good,” Dell said.

  Jade would have shot him a shut-up-and-die look, but she was too embarrassed to meet anyone’s gaze directly.

  “I could teach you some moves,” Bessie said, planting her broom right in the middle of the room and giving a little hip shaking boogey that had some parts of her jiggling more than others. Since Bessie was five foot two, both vertically and horizontally, she nearly gave herself a black eye, but she looked pleased with herself. “Yeah,” she said. “I still got it. I’d show you my never-fail-to-get-me-some move, but the last time I tried it out for Mr. Southwick, I pulled something in my hindquarters. Had to go to the doctor and everything.”

  Dell grinned.

  Even Adam was smiling.

  Jade sank to her chair and stared at the phone. Why did it never ring when she needed it to? She did her best to look busy. Busy while sweaty and out of breath. She heard footsteps move away from her and she sighed in relief.

  They’d left her alone.

  “I like your moves,” came Dell’s low voice near her ear, making her jump. He put his hands on the armrests of her chair and whipped her around to face him.

  “Everyone should dance on their lunch break.”

  She tried to glare at him but he wasn’t laughing at her. His eyes were dark. And warm. “Don’t be mad. Seeing you so comfortable here is the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen.”

  She gave him a push but she might as well have tried to move a brick wall. “You think everything’s sexy.”

  He shook his head. “I’m pretty sure it’s just you.”

  She hesitated. “Dell, are we okay?”

  “You mean because of this morning?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I don’t know. Why did you leave like that, like I was your dirty little secret?”

  There was something in his voice now. Same tone, but there was definitely something new. Temper, she realized. He was always so careful to show the world nothing but easygoing and laid-back no matter what the circumstances. For some crazy reason, seeing the extra depth went a long way toward defusing her.

  Maybe because she knew that if he was showing her his feelings, she meant something to him. “I had to get to work,” she said. “That’s all.”

  “Or . . .”

  “There’s no ‘or,’” she said, not sounding nearly as calm as him. She was good at hiding in a very different way than he was.

  “There’s definitely an ‘or,’” he said. “You didn’t trust yourself with me.”

  Okay, now that was annoying. Mostly because it was true. “I stayed all night. I trusted you right through what, a half box of condoms?”

  He nodded agreeably, but she had his number now. He was feeling anything but agreeable. “So this is just sex,” he said.

  She stared at him, unable to believe that this had gotten so off track. “Is it ever anything else for you?”

  For a moment there was a sort of horrible beat of weighted, awkward silence, and she’d have given just about anything to take back the words, but Dell let out a mirthless laugh. “Okay, let me get this straight,” he said. “You tiptoeing off in the middle of the night is my fault?”

  “It was dawn, Dell.”

  “Fuck, Jade.” He pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes. “Uncle. I give up. I can’t guess anymore. You’re going to have to come right out and tell me.”

  “Tell you what?” She knew what, she knew exactly what, but she needed to buy herself a second. Or a bunch of seconds.

  He dropped his hands to his sides. “What the hell I have to do so that you’ll feel safe with me.”

  “I do!”

  “With your body, maybe.” He gave a slow shake of his head. “When I’m buried deep inside you and you’re panting out my name, wrapped tight around me . . . yeah, you know you’re safe with me, then, that I’ll take you where you want to go. But any other time it’s like pulling teeth to get you to tell me things about you.”

  Panic licked at her. “You know me.”

  “Some things, like you snub your nose at almost all crap food—except ice cream. Ice cream you hoard like it’s your crack. You like your clothes and yet you don’t mind getting animal hair on them. You have to have things in careful order because it makes you feel in control, and yet there’s one area you like to be just a little bit messy and unorganized.”

  “Uh—”

  “In bed,” he said bluntly. “In bed you don’t mind giving up control.”

  She blushed. “See that? You do know me.”

  He was already shaking his head. “It’s not enough.”

  “What could you possibly want to know that you think you don’t?” she asked.

  “Why you’re really here. What your life was like in Chicago. What happened to you to make you leave. Why you slowly came to life here, and yet you’re still going back.”

  The little ball of anxiety in her chest, the one that had been there since she’d slept with him and then done something even worse, started to fall for him, grew and spread so that she couldn’t breathe. “You say that like you’re an open book,” she managed.

  His eyes never left hers. “I am an open book, Jade. For you. I may be a little slow on the uptake in the emotion department, but you can ask me anything and I’ll answer.”

  Would he? His expression was intent. Focused.

  And wrenchingly, bluntly open.

  He meant it. She could ask him anything. Like . . . was he falling, too?

  Except...

  Except she wasn’t ready for the answer.

  “Only you won’t ask me anything, will you, Jade? Because you’re good with this, just as it is. And hell, why not? It’s all I ever do, right?”

  “Dell,” she said softly in regret. She’d hurt him. She’d never even known she