Animal Attraction Read online

  She turned back with a bottle of wine, which she poured into a glass before handing over to him.

  “I’ve already had mine,” she said. “You might want to catch up.”

  She didn’t look completely toasted so he tossed back some wine.

  “You want to talk,” she said.

  Actually, he wanted to strip off that robe and lift her up to the counter so he could have his merry way with her. But first things first. “I want you to talk.”

  “About?”

  “Come on now, Jade. This has gone on too long. It’s time.”

  She played with the tie of her robe a moment before lifting her gaze to his. “As you know, before I came here, I ran a large medical center.” She paused. “One night we were held up in the Urgent Care for drugs. I was the one who let the intruders into the lockup to get those drugs.”

  Dell set down his wine, thinking he probably needed something stronger for this, much stronger.

  “The following week,” she went on, “against my family’s and doctor’s wishes, I got into my car and drove west for a few days and ended up in Sunshine.”

  Dell took a careful breath but otherwise didn’t react. He didn’t want her to stop talking. “Doctor?”

  “I needed something to eat,” she said. “So I went into the bakery on Main and heard the woman behind the counter talking to another woman about Belle Haven. It was Lilah, and she was saying how the animal center needed a receptionist to man the desk and answer the phones because your old receptionist had left to have a baby and you guys were trying to do it on your own. I didn’t need a job, but I needed a job, you know?”

  No. No he didn’t know. “Jade, the robbery. Previously, you’d said you were attacked. How badly were you—”

  “After Lilah paid and left, I asked the lady behind the counter how to find the animal center. And then I drove out there. Got lost twice. Adam found me in the middle of the road trying to get my GPS to work, and he led me to Belle Haven. You were sitting in the middle of the waiting room floor wearing scrubs and a doctor’s coat, playing with Mrs. Nelson’s eight-week-old pug puppies. They were climbing all over you, and the phone was ringing and your computer was frozen, and you were just sitting there, calm as can be. Laughing. You were laughing at the puppy trying to climb up your chest to lick your face.”

  Dell remembered that. Adam had opened the door for her and she’d walked in, eyes hidden behind her big mirrored sunglasses, wearing white jeans and an aneurysm-inducing pink fuzzy sweater that somehow went with her red hair, looking as if she’d walked off a movie set.

  He’d been a little dazzled.

  And more than a little head over heels in lust.

  But then she’d dropped to her knees and had loved up one of the puppies, letting it crawl all over her fancy clothes, not caring about hair or slobber.

  She’d wanted to sit behind his desk and answer his phones, and he’d had to change gears because he’d needed someone to do those things. He’d conducted a real interview, and they’d hit their first problem—in spite of the intelligence and wit blaring from those green eyes, she couldn’t provide references. Or proof she could indeed handle the job.

  He’d known she wasn’t from Sunshine, or anywhere close. That was obvious. Everything about her, from her clothes to her speech to her mannerisms, spoke of a big city and big money.

  “Belle Haven was so . . .” Jade searched for the words. “Warm. Open. Inviting. Not at all like the uptight medical center I’d come from. There was no tension, no angry, sick, frustrated people waiting for hours, no harried office staff fighting insurance companies for approval. Just you. And you looked so easygoing,” she said softly. “So . . . laid-back. Fun. I wanted to work for you.”

  “So you did,” he said. “And it’s been great. But Jade, you’ve got to tell me. Tell me what happened to you.”

  “It was late.” She let out a long breath. “I’d stayed because it was month’s end and the accounts payable and receivable clerks had gotten behind, not sending me their reports until the very end of the day. We were closed and I was just leaving, walking through the parking lot when someone ran at me. It looked like a teenager in a hoodie, so I stopped. I thought he was hurt, but”—here she squeezed her eyes shut—“he lifted his head and straightened. He wasn’t a teen. He was a full-grown man, wearing a Halloween mask.”

  Dell heard the sound escape him, a low murmur of regret and horror for her, remembering how she’d fallen apart in the parking lot at Belle Haven when she’d faced yet another Halloween mask.

  “Before I could react,” she went on, “he’d shoved me and I fell to the asphalt. And then . . .” She cut herself off and shook her head.

  “Jade.” Dell pulled her close and wrapped her arms around him. “Stay with me.”

  “I am.” But she burrowed in, pressing her face into his neck. “He had a gun. He pulled me up and yanked me close, holding his arm over my windpipe so I couldn’t breathe. I could feel blood running down from hands and knees where I’d gotten scraped, and he kept tightening his grip and . . . and I couldn’t breathe.”

  With another low sound of empathy and fury mixed, Dell pulled her in even tighter, as if he could fight her eighteen-month-old demons for her.

  “He made me unlock the front door and dragged me through the reception area, demanding to know where the meds were kept. He wanted OxyContin, Vicodin, morphine, whatever we had. He needed a fix, he was shaking bad. I should have—I should have . . .”

  “You did what you had to,” Dell said, stroking a hand up and down her back to remind her that she was here, safe. “And you survived.” Her robe and body were damp, and she was trembling. He tried to wrap himself around her to give her his body heat. “That’s all that matters now.”

  Face still pressed to his throat, she shook her head. “That’s just it, I didn’t do all I could. I did nothing.”

  “Jade—”

  “No, it’s true. When I was on the ground, I could have kicked at him standing over me. I could have tried to fight back and I didn’t.”

  “He had a fucking gun,” Dell said, hating that she’d ever felt so helpless. “You didn’t have the tools to fight back. It wasn’t your fault.”

  “But what happened next was.” She gulped in more air. “I wouldn’t tell him where the meds were, so he dragged me through to the back. Karen was still there, one of our nurses. She was working late, too, cleaning up. She came out of the small kitchen area and he—”

  Dell was already hating this story. Hating it with everything he had. “He what, Jade?”

  “He pointed the gun at her and said if I didn’t tell him where the meds were, he’d shoot her.”

  Dell closed his eyes and rested his cheek on the top of her head, wishing he could take it all away.

  “I told him,” Jade said. “I told him what he wanted to know, but he hit her, anyway, in the face with his gun. He made me tie her up to a chair and then dragged me down the hall. I fell and nearly took him down with me, which really pissed him off. He kicked me in the ribs and I couldn’t breathe again. I still couldn’t breathe when we got to lockup. Corey was in the room, we surprised him.”

  “Corey?”

  “A lab tech. He was studying for his exams. We startled him. When he saw me, all the blood startled him. I looked much worse than I was.”

  “Jade.” Dell could barely speak. “God, Jade.”

  “Corey jumped up and . . .” She tightened her grip on him, both hands at his chest, grabbing his shirt and a few chest hairs to boot. “He shot him,” she whispered. “In the thigh. I screamed, and he shoved me up against the meds lockup and demanded the key or he was going to shoot Corey again. But the key wasn’t on my ring, I didn’t have it there because it’s too dangerous. But when I refused to get it, he—”

  God, he didn’t want to hear this. “Jade.”

  “He touched me. With his gun. He rubbed it over my breast and when my nipple got hard, he laughed and said we were going to