She’d set free what she loved. She’d done so without knowing that she was his happy. She was his everything.
Christ, he was a total and complete jackass. Leaving her wasn’t going to make him happy at all. It was going to make him a very sorry sack of shit with too much pride for his own damn good.
He looked down at Twinkles, who was sniffing everything in his path. “I don’t want to do this.”
Well, that wasn’t quite true. He still wanted his job flying to all corners of the earth. He just wanted something else to go along with it.
A life.
He no longer wanted to work 24/7, never stopping or slowing because he had no reason to.
He had a reason. A five-foot-four, messy-haired, mossy-green-eyed reason named Lilah Young. He stopped walking. “Dell was right,” he said to Twinkles, who stopped, too, then sat on Brady’s foot. “I am a chickenshit bastard.”
“Arf.”
He choked out a short laugh that was completely devoid of humor and pulled out his cell phone. “I can’t make this job,” he said to Tony.
“Where are you?”
“L.A., but I’m cutting out.”
“Again? Christ.” He gave a big sigh. “And the next job?”
“Maybe, but I’m going offline for a few days.”
“You’ve been offline for a month.”
“I need a little bit more time.”
“And then?”
“I’ll get back to you.”
Brady and Twinkles got a hotel room to catch up on some desperately needed sleep, then got up at dusk and once more drove straight through the night. As Sunshine came into view around dawn the next morning, Brady stopped at the 7-Eleven to fortify his nerves for what he was about to do. “Breakfast?” he asked the dog.
“Arf.”
“Something with sausage. Got it.” He went inside and loaded up with breakfast burritos, bagels, and donuts.
“Looks like you’re buying breakfast for a crowd today,” the young woman said. She was the same woman who’d been manning the cash register his very first day in town, when she’d asked him if men really thought of sex 24/7.
“It’s actually more of a bribe than breakfast,” he said.
She popped a bubble with her gum and adjusted her purple and black polka-dotted glasses frames. “For Lilah?”
He’d almost forgotten that there were no secrets in this town.
“Honey,” she said, leaning on the counter, “I’m going to help you out.” She added a package of donuts and two bags of chips to the stack. “Trust me.” She patted his hand and gave him his total.
“That can’t be right. It’s not enough,” he said, looking over all the loot in front of him.
“Oh, the donuts and chips are on the house,” she said, bagging it all up. “You make our Lilah happy, and that’s worth more than the snack food.”
He didn’t know what to say. He wasn’t used to people knowing his business, but the reality was that here in Sunshine, Lilah was everyone’s business. “Thank you.”
She nodded and handed him his bag. “But you should know, screw up with her and I’ll never sell you another piece of crap food. Ever. And let me tell you, from one junk-food addict to another? Ever is a damn long time.”
“Understood,” he said, not telling her he’d already screwed up. Because he was going to do whatever it took to rectify the situation. As he turned to walk out, she tossed in an extra package of donuts.
“Just in case,” she said.
In case of what, he wasn’t sure, but he’d take all the help he could get.
Twenty-Five
L ilah stood in front of her outside kennels, hose in hand. The duck and the lamb she’d been boarding had left a mess. She was literally elbow deep in things that she didn’t want to think about. It was a very attractive look for her.
Not.
Adding to the stress level was the fact that today was the first Saturday of the month. She had only a few minutes before she was due to work at Belle Haven’s monthly animal adoption clinic.
“My life,” she said to no one in particular, “completely sucks.”
Because he’d done it.
He’d left.
Brady had taken him and Twinkles and her shattered heart, and without even realizing that he had pieces of her with him, he’d gone.
She hadn’t slept, she hadn’t eaten, and it was all so ridiculous. She’d known he would go.
But she’d hoped…
The tears that she’d managed to hold at bay clogged her throat and, dammit, fogged up her sunglasses.
Stupid sunglasses.
And perfect, now her nose was running.
She tried to shove her sunglasses to the top of her head with her forearm but succeeded only in making them crooked on her face and she sighed deeply.
And maybe a tear slipped.
This was all her own fault. She hadn’t told him she loved him. She hadn’t told him what it would mean for him to stay. She hadn’t let him know.
The thought brought a few more unwanted tears and further fogged her lens. She couldn’t see a thing. So when the hose hit a corner of one of the kennels and splashed up, it thoroughly drenched her with icy water and God knew what else.
“Crap!” She dropped the hose and reached out blindly for the towel she’d set on the railing behind her. Except her feet landed in something slippery and down she went.
For a stunned beat she just sat there on the ground, absorbing how bad every inch of her felt.
A truck rumbled up the road and she went still because she knew the sound of that truck. Great, and now her mind was playing tricks on her. It had to be Adam or Dell. Or maybe a customer. She sneaked a peek and gasped out loud.
It was Brady. He’d forgotten something. Dammit. She couldn’t take another good-bye. Keeping her back to the direction of the clearing where he was parking and-oh God-turning off his truck, she scrambled to her feet and grabbed the hose.
Even when covered in dirt and gunk.
No, scratch that. She hosed herself down as fast as she could because no way was she going to let the last view he had of her be like this. Because looking like she’d just been in a wet T-shirt contest was ever so much preferable. Damn, why hadn’t she put on a black T-shirt instead of a white one this morning? Now she looked like she was on spring break in Florida. Or on
Shading her eyes from the sun, she aimed the hose at the kennels to look busy, refusing to turn and look at him as he got out of the truck.
She heard Twinkles’s little paws pounding the ground as he bounded through the open gate to her, butt wriggling happily along with his tail.
