Only she wasn’t a fraction as devastated at letting him go as she had been the animals. “I’m leaving,” he said again, just in case she hadn’t gotten the right idea.

“I know,” she said softly.

He just stared at her, and then shook his head. “Okay, wait a minute. Why is this so easy for you, letting me go?”

“What?”

“You’ve made a career out of holding on to everything, pets, people… You gather them all to your side, in your heart, but when it’s me, you give me a smile and a kiss and tell me to be careful?”

She opened her mouth, then closed it. Then stabbed him in the chest with her finger, hard. “Well, what would you have me do, fall at your feet and beg you not to go?”

Yeah. Actually. A little bit.

Maybe.

Christ, he was one pathetic asshole.

She let out a mirthless laugh. “I care about you. I want you. And neither of those two things change whether you go or not. Do you understand the helplessness of that? And even then, honestly, I wouldn’t change any of it if I could.” She stabbed at him again. “So don’t you tell me I’m just letting you go. I hate that you’re going, but I’d rather have the pain of that than not having had you in my life at all.” She glared at him from brilliantly shimmering eyes, breath coming hard. “You going will leave a huge gaping hole.” She pressed her open hand to her chest. “Here. You’re in my heart, and there’s no way around that. I consider you mine, Brady. Mine.” A single, devastating tear fell and she swiped it angrily away. “But you need your happy place. If it’s not here, you have to go to it. And I need to let you.” She paused, let out a soft broken breath. “You taught me that.”

While he was still absorbing her words, and the utter anguish in which she’d spoken them, she stood up on tiptoe and brushed another soft kiss across his lips. His hands went to her hips to hold her against him and he closed his eyes, burying his face in her hair. “Lilah.” His voice was raw and matched his throat and the burning in his chest.

Her arms slid around his neck and for a moment she clung, hard. He felt a tremor go through her and then she whispered against his jaw. “It’s okay to go if that’s what your heart is telling you.” She pulled back and cupped his face, staring into it as if to memorize his every feature. “I’ll take Twinkles back when you go,” she whispered. And with one last long look, she left.

Shaken to his core, he sank to the pilot seat.

He’d gotten what he wanted.

He was free to go.

Shaking his head, he hopped down out of the helicopter and whistled.

Twinkles leapt to his feet from his spot under a tree in the shade and came running. Together they walked to his truck. Brady patted the passenger’s seat and Twinkles hopped up, taking the shotgun position. Brady had been left behind enough in his life to know that it sucked. No way was he doing it to the dog-his dog. He was taking Twinkles.

So why it still felt as though he were leaving his entire life behind, never mind his fucking heart, he had no idea.

This was his choice.

It was always his choice.

Nodding, he drove, refusing to look back in his rearview mirror.

Except he did.

He kept looking into his rearview mirror the entire drive to L.A. It took him all night. At LAX, just before dawn, he parked in long-term parking and started walking with Twinkles toward the terminal where the charters flew from. Tony had booked him a ride from here. “Not sure what our choices are going to be for you,” he told the dog. “Or exactly where Tony has booked us a ride to. But there are rules for four-legged creatures, so you’ll probably be crate-bound for this next leg of the trip.”

Twinkles didn’t look concerned, he was just happy to be involved. Brady shook his head and let himself run Lilah’s words back through his head.

I consider you mine, Brady.

I need to let you go. You taught me that.

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.