Rumor Has It, Page 32

  kissed her just beneath her ear. The feel of him, the scent of him, everything about his nearness made her weak in the knees. Her eyes drifted shut, and she very nearly tilted her head to give him better access, but she controlled herself. Still, there was no holding in her moan. She’d missed him so much, too much. “Griffin.”

  “Missed you, Kate,” he murmured.

  For a moment she closed her eyes, allowing herself to savor the sensation of his embrace, but she couldn’t let him do this to her, refused to let him destroy her again. Lifting her head, she met his gaze in the mirror. “Why aren’t you in DC?”

  “Decided against the bitch of a commute,” he said lightly.

  She wasn’t amused. “I don’t understand.” And she wanted to understand. She needed to understand.

  “I didn’t take the job,” he said. “I don’t care about it. You’re the only thing I care about, Kate.” He smiled a bit wryly. “I’d move to the moon to be with you. Or, as it turns out, San Diego.”

  They were surrounded by the complications of her new life, and yet he still managed to make it all sound so simple. She closed her eyes again, but Griffin cupped her face, waiting her out.

  “You caught me off guard,” he said when she opened them again. “Knocked my sorry ass for a loop the way you reeled me in.”

  “I reeled you in?”

  He laughed. “In the best way. You embraced me, compromised me . . . loved me.”

  Kate couldn’t speak. She could scarcely breathe. “I also seduced you.”

  “My favorite part,” he said. “When I got hurt, I went to Sunshine because it was ‘home,’ but I was wrong. Home is wherever you are, Kate.”

  Her heart squeezed tight, so damn tight that she couldn’t talk, and Griffin studied her for a long beat. “If you’re not ready for this,” he said quietly, braced for something. “Just tell me.”

  Rejection. He was putting on a good show, but he wasn’t sure about his reception here in her world. “There’s no ranch here to run,” she said. “What will you do?”

  He shrugged. “I like the beach. Always did think I’d make a great lifeguard.”

  She stared at him. He remained utterly still for her inspection, his eyes unwavering and intense, and . . . vulnerable.

  No, he was nowhere near as laid-back as he wanted her to believe. In fact, she was pretty sure he wasn’t breathing, waiting on a response from her. “You’d move here for me,” she said cautiously, needing this spelled out.

  He gestured to a pack on the floor near the love seat. “Already did.”

  “Just for me,” she murmured, marveling at the truth of it. Turning to face him, she sighed in pleasure as his warm, strong arms closed tightly around her. “For my dream . . . Oh, Griffin.”

  “Is that ‘oh, Griffin, how romantic’ or ‘oh, Griffin, you’re an idiot’?”

  “Both, but mostly the first.”

  He chuckled, the sound raw with relief as he rubbed his jaw against hers. Then he buried his face in her hair, letting out a long, ragged breath that seemed to come from the very bottom of his heart and soul. “About your dream,” he said. “I was hoping it might include me.”

  She slid her fingers into his silky hair and lifted his head so she could see his face. “It always has.”

  He stared into her eyes as the tension seemed to drain from him. “Always,” he breathed. “I like the sound of that word from you.” He stroked a hand down her back and then up again, fingers spread wide as if he needed to touch as much of her as possible.

  “Griffin,” she said softly, having the exact same need. “Tell me you love me now.”

  “I love you now,” he said, never taking his gaze from hers, giving her a promise, a vow. Giving her everything she’d ever wanted. “I love you always.”

  Epilogue

  One Year Later

  Kate came back to Sunshine with a lot less fanfare than she’d left. She stood at the top of the dam, a light wind blowing her hair back from her face as she stared down at the lake far below.

  A big, warm, callused palm slid into hers. With a smile she entwined her fingers with Griffin’s. They’d just spent the past few days driving back from San Diego. Wanting one last moment to themselves before they met up with both of their families waiting for them at the ranch, they’d stopped here at Kate’s place.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  She drew in a deep breath and smiled up into his tanned face. It had been the best year of her life. “I don’t remember ever being better.”

  He gave her a smile. “It was a good year,” he said. “But I’m thinking it’s time to change things up a bit.”

  “We’re moving back to Sunshine,” she said. “I’ve got my job at the school, and you were just hired on at the local ATF office. How much more can we change things up?”

  He stroked the hair from her face. “Well, for starters, you could be my wife.”

  She went utterly still. “Are you asking me to marry you?”

  “Too soon?” he asked.

  The lump got bigger, and her heart swelled up against her ribcage. “No,” she said, pulling his mouth to hers. “It’s perfect.”

  Dear Reader,

  Did you know Rumor Has It isn’t the only book in the Animal Magnetism series? It all started with Animal Magnetism. The idea for that book hit me one day when I was grocery shopping. I was trying to figure out what I wanted to write next when I ran into a guy in army gear in the cookie aisle. Be still my heart. He had on dark sunglasses, absolutely no smile, and testosterone was pouring off him.

  He ultimately chose two packages of granola bars instead of cookies, which nearly killed the fantasy, but I recovered. By the time I’d gotten to my car, I’d concocted a whole backstory for him. And just like that, Animal Magnetism was born.

  Brady Miller doesn’t smile much because he hasn’t had anything to smile about in a very long time. He’s an ex–army ranger, now a pilot for hire for organizations like Doctors Without Borders, back in the States at the request of his foster brothers. They run a large animal center in the middle of Nowhere, Idaho, and need his help.

  He agrees to stick around for unusually complicated reasons, even though he’s lived his life as purposely uncomplicated as possible. Fact is, he’s not much of a family guy. He’s always been a wanderer, no roots, no home base.

  Maybe even a guy who can’t be saved.

  It takes a village to show him the truth, including one silly little puppy and one sharp-tongued, sharp-witted heroine willing to knock him flat on his ass to make sure he gets it—that he was never lost at all, and as the saying goes, home is where the heart is . . .

  Turn the page to read the first chapter of Animal Magnetism. And after Brady’s story, read his foster brothers’ stories in Animal Attraction and Rescue My Heart. And the series isn’t over. More coming in 2014, so stay tuned. Meanwhile, I’m back in the grocery store looking for more inspiration.

  Happy reading!

  Jill Shalvis

  Brady Miller’s ideal Saturday was pretty simple—sleep in, be woken by a hot, naked woman for sex, followed by a breakfast that he didn’t have to cook.

  On this particularly early June Saturday, he consoled himself with one out of the three, stopping at 7-Eleven for coffee, two egg-and-sausage breakfast wraps, and a Snickers bar.

  Breakfast of champions.

  Heading to the counter to check out, he nodded to the convenience store clerk.

  She had her Bluetooth in her ear, presumably connected to the cell phone glowing in her pocket as she rang him up. “He can’t help it, Kim,” she was saying. “He’s a guy.” At this, she sent Brady a half-apologetic, half-commiserating smile. She was twentysomething, wearing spray-painted-on skinny jeans, a white wife-beater tank top revealing black lacy bra straps, and so much mascara that Brady had no idea how she kept her eyes open.

  “You know what they say,” she went on as she scanned his items. “A guy thinks about sex once every eight seconds. No, it
’s true, I read it in Cosmo. Uh-huh, hang on.” She glanced at Brady, pursing her glossy lips. “Hey, cutie, you’re a guy.”

  “Last I checked.”

  She popped her gum and grinned at him. “Would you say you think about sex every eight seconds?”

  “Nah.” Every ten, tops. He fished through his pocket for cash.

  “My customer says no,” she said into her phone, sounding disappointed. “But Cosmo said a man might deny it out of self-preservation. And in any case, how can you trust a guy who has sex on the brain 24/7?”

  Brady nodded to the truth of that statement and accepted his change. Gathering his breakfast, he stepped outside where he was hit by the fresh morning air of the rugged, majestic Idaho Bitterroot mountain range. Quite a change from the stifling airlessness of the Middle East or the bitter desolation and frigid temps of Afghanistan. But being back on friendly soil was new enough that his eyes still automatically swept his immediate surroundings.

  Always a soldier, his last girlfriend had complained.

  And that was probably true. It was who he was, the discipline and carefulness deeply engrained, and he didn’t see that changing anytime soon. Noting nothing that required his immediate attention, he went back to mainlining his caffeine. Sighing in sheer pleasure, he took a big bite of the first breakfast wrap, then hissed out a sharp breath because damn. Hot. This didn’t slow him down much. He was so hungry his legs felt hollow. In spite of the threat of scalding his tongue to the roof of his mouth, he sucked down nearly the entire thing before he began to relax.

  Traffic was nonexistent, but Sunshine, Idaho, wasn’t exactly hopping. It had been a damn long time since he’d been here, years in fact. And longer still since he’d wanted to be here. He took another drag of fresh air. Hard to believe, but he’d actually missed the good old US of A. He’d missed the sports. He’d missed the women. He’d missed the price of gas. He’d missed free will.

  But mostly he’d missed the food. He tossed the wrapper from the first breakfast wrap into a trash bin and started in on his second, feeling almost . . . content. Yeah, damn it was good to be back, even if he was only here temporarily, as a favor. Hell, anything without third-world starvation, terrorists, or snipers and bombs would be a five-star vacation.

  “Look out, incoming!”

  At the warning, Brady deftly stepped out of the path of the bike barreling down at him.

  “Sorry!” the kid yelled back.

  Up until yesterday, a shout like that would have meant dropping to the ground, covering his head, and hoping for the best. Since there were no enemy insurgents, Brady merely raised the hand still gripping his coffee in a friendly salute. “No problem.”

  But the kid was already long gone, and Brady shook his head. The quiet was amazing, and he took in the oak tree–lined sidewalks, the clean and neat little shops, galleries and cafés—all designed to bring in some tourist money to subsidize the mining and ranching community. For someone who’d spent so much time in places where grime and suffering trumped hope and joy, it felt a little bit like landing in the Twilight Zone.

  “Easy now, Duchess.”

  At the soft, feminine voice, Brady turned and looked into the eyes of a woman walking a . . . hell, he had no idea. The thing pranced around like it had a stick up its ass.

  Okay, a dog. He was pretty sure.

  The woman smiled at Brady. “Hello, how are you?”

  “Fine, thanks,” he responded automatically, but she hadn’t slowed her pace.

  Just being polite, he thought, and tried to remember the concept. Culture shock, he decided. He was suffering from a hell of a culture shock. Probably he should have given himself some time to adjust before doing this, before coming here of all places, but it was too late now.

  Besides, he’d put it off long enough. He’d been asked to come, multiple times over the years. He’d employed every tactic at his disposal: avoiding, evading, ignoring, but nothing worked with the two people on the planet more stubborn than him.

  His brothers.

  Not blood brothers, but that didn’t appear to matter to Dell or Adam. The three of them had been in the same foster home for two years about a million years ago. Twenty-four months. A blink of an eye really. But to Dell and Adam, it had been enough to bond the three of them for life.

  Brady stuffed in another bite of his second breakfast wrap, added coffee, and squinted in the bright June sunshine. Jerking his chin down, the sunglasses on top of his head obligingly slipped to his nose.

  Better.

  He headed to his truck parked at the corner but stopped short just in time to watch a woman in an old Jeep rear-end it.

  * * *

  “Crap. Crap.” Lilah Young stared at the truck she’d just rear-ended and gave herself exactly two seconds to have a pity party. This is what her life had come to. She had to work in increments of seconds.

  A wet, warm tongue laved her hand and she looked over at the three wriggling little bodies in the box on the passenger’s seat of her Jeep.

  Two puppies and a potbellied pig.

  As the co-owner of the sole kennel in town, she was babysitting Mrs. Swanson’s “babies” again today, which included pickup and drop-off services. This was in part because Mrs. Swanson was married to the doctor who’d delivered Lilah twenty-eight years ago, but also because Mrs. Swanson was the mother of Lilah’s favorite ex-boyfriend.

  Not that Lilah had a lot of exes. Only two.

  Okay, three. But one of them didn’t count, the one who after four years she still hoped all of his good parts shriveled up and fell off. And he’d had good parts, too, damn him. She’d read somewhere that every woman got a freebie stupid mistake when it came to men. She liked that. She only wished it applied to everything in life.

  Because driving with Mrs. Swanson’s babies and—

  “Quack-quack!” said the mallard duck loose in the backseat.

  A mallard duck loose in the backseat had been a doozy of a mistake.

  Resisting the urge to thunk her head against the steering wheel, Lilah hopped out of the Jeep to check the damage she’d caused to the truck, eyes squinted because everyone knew that helped.

  The truck’s bumper sported a sizable dent and crack, but thanks to the tow hitch, there was no real obvious frame damage. The realization brought a rush of relief so great her knees wobbled.

  That is until she caught sight of the front of her Jeep. It was so ancient that it was hard to tell if it had ever really been red once upon a time or if it was just one big friggin’ rust bucket, but that no longer seemed important given that her front end was mashed up.

  “Quack-quack.” In the backseat, Abigail was flapping her wings, getting enough lift to stick her head out the window.

  Lilah put her hand on the duck’s face and gently pressed her back inside. “Stay.”

  “Quack—”

  “Stay.” Wanting to make sure the Jeep would start before she began the task of either looking for the truck’s owner or leaving a note, Lilah hopped behind the wheel. She never should have turned off the engine because her starter had been trying to die for several weeks now. She’d be lucky to get it running again. Beside her, the puppies and piglet were wriggling like crazy, whimpering and panting as they scrambled to stand on each other, trying to escape their box. She took a minute to pat them all, soothing them, and then with her sole thought being Please start, she turned the ignition key.

  And got only an ominous click.

  “Come on, baby,” she coaxed, trying again. “There’s no New Transportation budget, so please come on . . .”

  Nothing.

  “Pretty sure you killed it.”

  With a gasp, she turned her head. A man stood there. Tall,