Her version of the good-morning kiss.

He shoved her off him and got into the shower. At Belle Haven he rode Kiwi, then let himself into the office just as Jade arrived. He'd called her several times since Saturday night, all of which she'd ignored.

Which made sense. He'd invited her over for self-defense training, promising to teach her moves to make her feel safe. And then he'd turned into a fifteen-year-old boy and gotten hard in class. "Jade."

She had the phone headset on. She raised a finger to indicate she needed a minute. He could see now that she was accessing the center's messages from their service, typing them into the spreadsheet that she had up on her screen. She was crazy about her spreadsheets. She'd uncovered Peanut, and the parrot was preening and humming to herself. Beans was watching Peanut with avid, narrow-eyed interest.

Gertie had found the sole sunny spot in the room and was already snoring.

Jade's fingers were a whirl on her keyboard. She worked hard here, and she was his responsibility, as much as any of the animals were. He took that very seriously.

He wanted her to be able to count on him.

Always.

Which meant he needed to work on the self-control. The only thing that kept him coming back to the straight-andnarrow was that clearly she'd been hurt. Some fucker had put his hands on her and terrorized her, and seeing her suffer the aftereffects killed him.

That was not to say that having her sweet, curvy body so intimate with his wasn't having a toll.

It was.

And that toll had kept him up at night. Hell, last night he'd had to get up at two in the morning to abuse himself in the shower.

He probably should have abused himself again this morning just to cover his bases.

Jade's fingers were a blur on her keyboard, but then suddenly she stopped and pulled off her headset. "Twenty-five messages today. Must be Monday."

"Jade, about Saturday night-"

"I never thanked you."

This derailed him. "What?"

She lifted her head and met his gaze. "For spending so much time with me."

"Sure, but I wanted to apologize for-"

"Nothing," she said, shaking her head. "You have nothing to apologize for. It was my fault. I, um, put my hand . . . there, and then it-"

She broke off suddenly, eyes locked on something over his shoulder.

Dell turned around to find Adam standing there, brows up.

"Don't stop on my account," Adam said. "It's just getting good."

Dell blew out a breath and considered killing him but he had patients arriving. "Go away." He turned back to Jade, but she was gone, heels churning up the big reception area as she went to the wall of files and began pulling down the day's scheduled patients.

"So," Adam said, "she put her hand where?"

Two days later, Jade was sitting in Lilah's kennels. They were in Lilah's office, surrounded by Abigail the duck, Lulu the lamb, and several dogs, all snoozing.

It was naptime in Lilah's world.

Lilah and Jade were munching on deli sandwiches, which Jade had brought over to spend her lunch hour with some female company.

"He's going to be back any minute," Lilah was saying as she decimated a pickle, talking about her favorite subject.

Brady, of course.

Dell had been gone all morning with Brady, out on a ranch about a hundred miles east where Brady had flown him, taking care of a difficult high-end breeding mare's birth.

"It didn't go well," Lilah said, patting one of the dogs who lifted its head and sniffed. Twinkles belonged to Brady, but Lilah considered him hers. She handed him a piece of turkey from her sandwich. "In fact, it went awful."

"What do you mean?" Jade asked.

"They lost the mare. She'd stroked out and Dell had to put her down."

"Oh no," Jade breathed.

"The owners were so distraught they couldn't sit with the horse during the euthanization."

"They let her die alone?"

"No." Lilah shook her head and Jade knew. Dell. Dell had stayed with the horse. Jade's throat ached for him because she knew him. He'd have sat on the straw-covered barn floor with the horse's head in his lap, stroking her face and talking to her until she closed her eyes for the last time.

It was who he was. "Damn."

Lilah nodded. "Been a long week. How are you doing?"

Jade sipped her iced tea. "Good."

"Good as in I don't want to talk about it' or good as in good.'"

Jade looked at her.

Lilah looked right back, innocent-faced.

Jade had no idea how Lilah could have heard about her kissing Dell. But she planned to play it cool just in case. "Maybe we should save some time and you should just skip to the part where you tell me exactly what you want to know."

"Okay, well something scared you last week in the parking lot and you've been jumpy ever since."

Not where Jade expected this conversation to go. "Who told you that?"

"Hell, honey, this is Sunshine."

Right.

"And Dell's been teaching you self-defense, and now you're talking about going back to Chicago-which you left to come here because, as you told us, you wanted better skiing in the winter. Now I'm thinking that's not true." She paused, brows up. "How am I doing so far?"

Jade stared down at her turkey on multigrain. "It's . . . complicated."

"Are you okay?"

"I'm working on it."

"Is there anything I can do?"

Again, Jade's throat tightened. She'd lied, omitted, kept a good part of herself closed off, and Lilah didn't care about any of that, all she wanted to know was if Jade was okay. "You're already doing it."

Lilah smiled and offered her some chips. "He's a good man, you know."

"Who?"

"You know who."

Yeah. She did.

"A really good man."

Jade nodded. "I know."

"Do you?"

Jade looked at Lilah.

Lilah smiled sweetly. Expectantly.

And Jade had to laugh. "You're fishing."

"Yes," Lilah admitted without shame. "I'm totally fishing."

"Why?

"Why?" Lilah just shook her head. "You know how insatiably nosy we all are. Something's going on. We just don't know what, and it's killing us."

"There's nothing-"

"Oh, please. If there's nothing going on with you two, I'll eat Abigail."

Abigail the duck lifted her head and looked reproachfully at Lilah.

"Seriously," Lilah said to Jade while patting Abigail on the head. "There's no way it's nothing."

"Based on what?" Jade asked.

"Based on the fact that whenever you and Dell are in the same room, all these little flames flicker between you."

"Flames."

"It's a metaphor," Lilah said.

"For?"

"Sexual tension."

Jade stared at her, then laughed.

"And Adam told Brady he interrupted the two of you in Dell's gym."

"What, is this high school?"

Lilah grinned. "Well, we've all been together that long, so yeah, in emotional years, we're still in high school. You two doing it or what?"

"Okay, wow." Jade shook her head. "We are so not going there."

"Please! Oh, please, let's go there!"

"I didn't ask you about your . . . flames when you first started circling Brady," Jade said.

"Aha!" Lilah jabbed a finger into Jade's direction, triumphant. "You are! You're circling Dell."

Jade sighed. "Okay, maybe I'll cop to the circling. But that's no secret. We've always circled each other."

"But something's different," Lilah insisted. "I can feel it."

Was it? All her life Jade had been the master at compartmentalizing the people in her life. She'd put Dell in the slot for boss and left him there for eighteen months. She'd been okay with adding him to the friend slot as well, but that had taken him a good long time to earn.

And he had earned it.

He was a friend, a good one. She knew he'd give her the shirt off his back without a moment's hesitation. That had made it easier to feel safe in Sunshine, she'd be the first to admit. And she loved Lilah. She loved Adam and the others, too, but Dell . . . From the start he'd been different. Somehow he'd burrowed deeper, gotten past her walls though she couldn't have said how.

Or why.

But Lilah was right-something was happening between them. She didn't know what exactly but whenever he was close, her senses went on high alert and she strained to get even closer. When he touched her, her entire body tingled.

She wanted him.

She, who hadn't had sex in over a year and a half, wanted the guy who'd probably had sex last weekend.

It made no sense but in her mind he was changing, becoming something other than just her boss and her friend, something that was both safer and far less safe at the same time.

"Maybe you two can fall in love and get married, like me and Brady."

"Lilah. You know I'm going back to Chicago."

"So? We have the chopper. You'll commute."

Jade stood. "Would you look at the time? I've got to get back to work now."