“Ack!” she screeched when the water went suddenly icy, as it did every day thanks to her ancient water heater. Shivering, she stepped out of the shower and onto the mat of her teeny bathroom, banging her knee on the toilet, which was the last straw. “Shit!”

Sadie, sitting in the sink prissy as could be, smirked.

“ Shit doesn’t really count as a bad word,” Lilah said in her own defense as she grabbed a towel. “It’s practically a legitimate adjective.”

Sadie lifted her back leg to wash her lady town.

“Yeah, yeah.” Lilah bent for her clothes and shoved her hand into the front pocket to pull out a dollar. She walked it to the kitchen and dropped into her swear jar on the counter. The jar had been Mrs. Morrison’s idea, the owner of a parrot who’d stayed with Lilah for a week last month when Mrs. Morrison had gone on a Mexican cruise. When she’d come home, her parrot had a new vocabulary made up of “crap,” “shit,” and “Dammit, Cruz!”

The jar had at least fifty bucks in it.

When it reached two hundred, Lilah was going to splurge on a spa day. At this rate, she’d have it by next week.

She pulled on fresh jeans and a scooped-necked T-shirt, then dropped two pieces of bread into her toaster, one of them being the heel because she needed to go grocery shopping, a chore she put up there with cleaning out the crates at the kennels. When the toast popped up, the lights in the kitchen flickered and went out. She’d blown the fuse again. She swallowed the very bad four-letter word on the tip of her tongue because she was broke and grabbed a new fuse from the stack in the drawer.

The cabin needed work more than she needed her next breath of air, but for now, with business loans hanging over her head and school debt looming, Lilah was like a drowning victim going down for the last count. She replaced the fuses as they blew-which was all the time-because it was still cheaper than trying to redo the entire electrical in the place, something that needed to be done sooner than later. Just thinking about it had her chest tightening.

Save the stress, she told herself, for when you have a spare pint of double-fudge ice cream to go with it. Sighing, she looked at the toast. She had to skip the butter because it was healthier that way-and also because then she could justify the ice cream later. But she did add strawberry jelly, because hey, that was a fruit.

Stepping outside, she started walking to Belle Haven. The trail was drenched from the heavy rains of the night before, and the rough terrain gave beneath her boots like live sponges. She loved being outside after any rain, and she inhaled deeply the scent of wet nature. Her very favorite scent of all.

The lake was backed by rolling hill after rolling hill, and beyond those, the towering peaks of the Coeur d’Alene’s, the colors so deep and mesmerizing the whole setting looked like a painting.

The trail ended at the center. The building itself was a two-story sprawling place, with several pens and a large barn alongside, with several more smaller buildings for equipment. Lilah walked through the parking lot and saw Adam’s and Dell’s trucks. Adam’s was freshly washed and shiny as always, and Dell’s was covered in a fine layer of dust and filled with work equipment, sporting gear, and whatever other stuff he’d put in there and forgotten. She might have smiled. After all, just being here filled her with a warm peace. Except that right next to their trucks sat a third.

This truck’s back bumper was cracked and dented, as if someone in a Jeep-a very tired, overworked someone-had rear-ended it.

Oh God. Brady was parked in the lot next to her best friends as if he belonged in their world right alongside them.

And that’s when it hit her. Where she’d heard his name before. An odd mixture of dread and anticipation mingled in her gut along with something else that she couldn’t quite put her finger on, something that she didn’t know what to do with. She walked through the front entrance and waved at Jade, the receptionist on the phone behind the big welcome desk. There was a wide-open space that greeted both two- and four-footed clients alike, and a comfortable seating area spread out strategically to encourage people to hang out in front of the huge wall of windows overlooking the land and the animals on it.

Three horses were out in one of the paddocks, a sheep in another, and on the outskirts stood a flock of geese who’d waddled over from the lake to watch the goings-on.

Inside, several people sat in the waiting room along with their dogs and cats and, in one case, a caged bunny.

Lilah walked through, heading to the offices, stopping to take a quick look out into the glorious day, the first without rain in two weeks. What she would give to be sitting on a blanket in front of the lake, the water lapping at her feet, a good book in her hand-and not her animal biology book. But it’d been a long time since she’d had enough wriggling room to just hang out and be.

“Never gets old, does it?”

She turned at the masculine voice that was as familiar to her as her own.

Dell slung a friendly arm over her shoulder. He was an outrageous but harmless flirt and could make ninety-year-old women preen and get infant girls to bat their eyelashes. One reason was his easy good looks. He was six foot two and still built like the football quarterback that he’d once been. He had the warm mocha skin that spoke of Native heritage and the sharp eyes to match. His black hair framed a striking face. He wore his sleeves rolled up, his shirt unbuttoned at the collar and untucked over a pair of well-worn jeans, and he would have looked like a college kid except for his eyes. His eyes said he’d seen too much for his barely three decades.

But his smile was pure devil. It never failed to crack her up that he broke hearts right and left and had no clue to his own power. He was the heart and soul of Sunshine, and the rock of all of them.

“I tried calling you,” she murmured, turning into him for a hug.

“I was in surgery. I called you back-you didn’t get my message?”

“No.” She pulled out her cell, which now showed one missed call. “Must have been in the shower.”

“It’s okay.” They were out of view from the people that were waiting on him, and he smiled into her eyes. “We have news.”

“About…?”

Dell turned her toward the hallway, where Adam was coming out of his office. Leaner than Dell, Adam was built more like one of those cage fighters, tough and edgy and hard-except for that face.

An angel’s face. Her angel. Dark disheveled hair, strong features, and like Dell, a devastating smile when he chose to use it.

The man with Adam had the same badass smile-as she already knew all too well. She watched Brady walk toward them and had to acknowledge their odd attraction as something low in her belly quivered. She kept herself cool on the outside, but on the inside she was thinking that a half hour ago he’d kissed her till she purred.

“Remember when Adam and I lived in that foster home on Outback Road?” Dell asked her quietly.

“Yes. With the man who eventually left you the money to buy this land.”

“Sol Anders,” Dell said. “He took on Adam and me, but he had another kid first.”

Lilah hadn’t known them then, but Dell had told her about the other boy. He’d been a few years older than Adam and he’d graduated early and gone off to the military.

Brady, Of course. She’d heard his name before, but she’d just not connected it to her gorgeous stranger. And it wasn’t as if Brady had visited-he hadn’t, not once in the past few years since she’d been close friends with Dell and Adam. “The missing foster brother.”

“Not missing,” Dell said. “He was Special Forces, then working out of the country. We’ve been trying to get him to come see our operation for a long time. Now he’s finally here.”

Brady hadn’t yet spoken; he was just now getting close enough to them to do so, but she felt the weight of his assessing gaze. And in fact, all three men were looking at her. There was so much freaking testosterone in the room that she could scarcely breathe. Brady had the same tough, sharp always-aware-of-his-surroundings demeanor as Adam and Dell, and the three of them together-good Lord.

Three magnificent peas in a pod.

She’d never really understood what had kept Brady away all this time. Neither Dell nor Adam had ever said. Guys, she’d long ago discovered, weren’t exactly forthcoming with emotions and details.

As she stood there absorbing that shock, Adam shifted close to greet her with his usual-a tug on her hair. “Hey, Trouble.”

“Hey.” She couldn’t object to the nickname. She’d earned it. Hell, she’d earned it this morning alone.

Adam ran his hand down her arm to her hand, which he squeezed, then gestured to the man whose truck she’d hit, the man who was so yummy he’d reminded her hormones that they could still indeed do a heck of a tap dance. “Lilah,” Adam said. “This is-”

“Brady Miller,” she murmured.

Brady’s mouth curved in a slight ironic smile, his eyes lit with the same. He bowed his head slightly in her direction. “Lilah.”

Dell divided a surprised look between them. “You two know each other?”

Brady lifted a brow in Lilah’s direction, clearly giving her the floor.

Great. She hated having the floor. “Well, it’s a funny story, actually.” She managed a weak smile. “We, um”-she lifted a shoulder-“had a little run-in this morning.”

Brady was hands in pockets, rolled back on his heels. He was obviously enjoying himself, the bastard, and damn if something deep within her didn’t react to all that annoying charisma and male confidence.

“You had a little run-in,” Dell repeated, and shook his head. “What does that mean exactly?”