Animal Attraction

the politics that went with it. “I have skills. Got ’em from my grandmother Jade. I got lots of things from her.”

“Such as?”

“Well, she, too, was always right.”

Dell fought a smile and lost. With his warm eyes on hers and his hard thigh pressing to her own, Jade felt a silly little flutter.

No doubt this was how the women at the other table had felt when he’d focused his attention on them. At least she wasn’t simpering. She refused to simper.

“Are you always right?” Adam asked. “Or do we just let you think it because it’s easier?”

Jade took her wine back from him.

“Oh, and after you left,” Dell told her. “I took a few phone calls and squished a few more patients in for tomorrow.” He stopped to smile at someone waving to him from across the bar.

Jade poked him to get his attention back. Right in the biceps. Her finger bounced off him. “You didn’t have room in your schedule. It’s packed.”

“Yeah, but Mrs. Kyle’s cat is feeling ‘peakish.’” He shrugged. “Doesn’t tell me much, but Miss Kitty’s like a hundred, so it could be anything. She needs to be seen.”

Jade didn’t bother to sigh. It wouldn’t help. If there was an animal in need, Dell would work around the clock. “Tell me you did not even attempt to update the computer yourself.”

“Okay, I won’t tell you.”

“Man,” Adam muttered beneath his breath. “You never learn.”

Dell’s eyes were lit and Jade relaxed. “You’re just messing with me.”

A small smile crossed his face as he studied her. “How can you be sure?”

“Because if you’d messed anything up, you’d have brought me flowers, or you’d be kissing my ass like last time.”

“I’ll cop to the flowers, because you are one scary woman when you’re mad at me. But I’ve never kissed your ass.” He cocked his head and pretended to study said ass, even though she was sitting on it. “I’d be happy to do so, though. Anytime.”

She reached out to shove him, but he had lightning reflexes and grabbed her hand in his much bigger, darker one. His was calloused and work-roughed, and because that gave her an odd flutter, she pulled free. “Save it for someone that those moo-moo eyes actually work on.”

The band kicked into high gear. Lilah had pulled a reluctant Brady onto the dance floor.

“Better Fly Boy than me,” Adam muttered, and headed to the bar for a pitcher of beer.

Dell nudged Jade.

“In your dreams,” she said.

“What, is Goddess Jade afraid of something as innocuous as a dance?”

No, what she was afraid of was getting too close and getting sucked into his Hotness Vortex. She wasn’t afraid he’d ask anything of her she wasn’t willing to give.

She was afraid of what she was willing to give.

But you’re leaving, said the little devil on her shoulder. Her inner slut. You’re going back, you’re better now, what would it hurt to have him, just once?

Before Jade could thoroughly process this thought and take any action, Cassie appeared at their table. “Dell,” she said, tugging him up. “You owe me a dance.”

His smile was light. Flirty. But he shook his head. “Actually, I was just going to dance with Jade.”

“Go ahead,” Jade said. This was the little angel on her other shoulder. She wasn’t an inner slut.

Beaming, Cassie pulled Dell out of his chair. Jade shook her head at herself and headed to the bar.

Adam was there. He eyed Dell on the dance floor and he gave her a long look.

“What?” she asked, maybe a little snappish.

He just shook his head.

When Dell finally escaped the dance floor, he turned back to their table. Jade was back from the bar, and there was a guy trying to pick her up.

Poor sucker, he thought with a good amount of sympathy, watching as Jade shook her head. As Dell moved closer, he heard the guy say, “Aw, come on, Red. I’ve seen you swing your sweet thang in class, let’s take it to the dance floor.”

“I’m with someone,” Jade said.

The guy admitted defeat and moved off. Dell dropped into the coveted spot right next to her, sprawling out. “Hey, Red?”

She sipped her drink.

“Class?”

She shrugged.

“Oh come on. Tell me about swinging your sweet thang.” He accepted her eat-shit-and-die look and laughed.

She rolled her eyes. “So I take a line-dancing class once a week in the city.”

“Which clearly you’re not doing so that you’ll get picked up by guys in bars.”

“It’s for exercise.” She blew out a breath. “And because I sort of promised myself I’d do things for me. For fun. It’s the year of the fun for Jade.”

“Well, I’m all for that.”

At that, she cocked her head and looked at him. “You don’t think it’s silly?”

“Everyone deserves fun, Jade.” He smiled at her and reached for his drink. “Their own brand of fun.”

Jade’s eyes cut to Brady and Lilah, plastered up against each other on the dance floor. “What do you think of their brand?”

Dell took in the expression on Brady’s face, which held warmth and love and a whole hell of a lot of lust, and shrugged. It would be nice to know there was a woman waiting on him at the end of the day. He wouldn’t mind that. It was the emotional depth and level of attachment that bothered him. The love part. Love would take trust and blind faith. It would take allowing access to parts of him that he didn’t allow himself access to. “I’m not really cut out for it.”

“So you’ve tried it, then?”

“Not so much. You? I’m betting you have a spreadsheet for this, for meeting the right guy to give you a white picket fence and two point four kids.”

“Some things even my spreadsheets can’t do,” she said, and he laughed softly just as Brady and Lilah came back looking flushed and happy as they slid into the booth.

“Okay,” Lilah said. “It’s been an hour and no one has said one freaking word about the bling.” She spread her hands on the table. “Seriously?”

Jade’s eyes went directly to Lilah’s left ring finger, and the fat diamond there. “Holy shit!”

Lilah grinned. “I know, right?” She flashed the ring in each of their faces. “Brady had it made for me. It’s the most sparkly thing I’ve ever owned.” Turning to Brady, she clapped her hands to either side of his face and kissed him on the mouth. “I’ve never been all that sparkly, but I am now, cuz of you.”

Brady smiled up at her. “Sparkly, and you smell like a strawberry.”

“It’s the margaritas.”

Adam toasted to Brady and Lilah, and Dell added his congratulations, genuinely thrilled for them. Lilah felt like as much a sibling to him as Brady was. And though he might not quite get why two of his favorite people in the world wanted to tie themselves to each other and give up all the other possible options, it meant that Brady would be sticking around Sunshine. And Dell was all for that, so he grinned and topped off their glasses from the pitcher, giving Lilah the last of it and the most.

Brady slid him a look.

“What, you’re already going to have to pour her into your truck to take her home,” Dell told him. “Might as well make it a night to remember.”

Lilah laughed and slapped Brady’s shoulder, as if he’d been the one to say it. “It will be a night to remember.” Indeed, two sheets to the wind, she blew a strand of her hair from her face and waggled a finger at her new fiance. “But just so we’re clear-we’re still not crossing that one last thing off the taboo list. I’m