Well, except sex. Sex was always his first choice, of course. Not that that would be happening while here in Sunshine.

Lilah was watching him closely again. Mistrustful little thing, which for some reason, made him like her all the more. “It’s just a ride,” he said quietly.

“Yeah. Um, so do you ever lure women into your truck with candy bars in order to get them to pose naked for you?”

“Nah. My editor frowns on the exploitation of women. It’d have to be a side job and only if you say please.”

She rolled her eyes at him but took a step closer to the passenger door. “So does being a photographer ever get you laid?”

There was no good answer to that question, but yeah, sometimes it got him laid.

Clearly reading his face, she shook her head. “Don’t tell me. You trade on your good looks and that whole sort of badass vibe you’ve got going on, right? And women fall for it hook, line, and sinker.”

“Yes, but you’re on to me, so no falling for you. Plus you’ve got protection.” He jerked his chin toward the mallard at her feet. “A guard duck.”

They both looked at Abigail, who was busy preening and fussing with her feathers to get them just right. “Is it legal to own a duck?” he asked.

“I’m duck-sitting. Are you sure you’re not also a cop?” Lilah wanted to know.

“Why, do I look like one?” He felt the weight of her scrutiny. He knew what she saw when she looked at him. Dark hair cut short enough to be maintenance-free-when he remembered to have it cut at all. Tanned skin and a rangy, tough build from long months at a time in places where three squares a day were pure fantasy. The nondescript clothes he’d gotten used to wearing so as not to be marked as an American in places where being an American meant certain death or far worse.

“Actually,” she finally said, “you look like trouble.” Her gaze touched over his features. “The sort of trouble that women actively seek out against their better judgment. It’s sort of a fatal genetic flaw of my entire gender.”

She was right about the trouble part, but he’d never met a woman who liked it for long. “So now that we’ve established that I’m probably not a murderer, what’s it going to be? A long walk home with… ” He gestured to the box on the front passenger’s-side floorboards. “Two puppies and whatever that thing is, or-”

“A potbellied pig.”

He looked closer. “Are you sure?”

She laughed. “Yes!”

“Okay, I’ ll take your word for it. You getting in or what?”

She took another bite of his Snickers and studied him from those remarkable eyes. “The road out to my place needs some work,” she finally said. “It got washed out in the floods last week and hasn’t been repaired yet.”

At least she had a place. “I can handle it.”

“I don’t know…” Her eyes sized him up as if she were six feet tall instead of maybe five foot four in her steel-toe work boots. “In my experience, guys are rarely the drivers that they think they are.”

In the army, he’d driven in and out of hot spots that made Iraq and Afghanistan look like Disneyland. Hell, for his more recent work, piloting for hire, he’d driven on roads that didn’t officially exist. He had no doubt he could take on anything the serene mining town of Sunshine dished up.

Having apparently made a decision, Lilah slapped a hand to his chest to push him out of her way. Because it amused him that she thought she could move him at all, he let her. As she shifted past him, the scent of her hair filled his nostrils with something like… honey, maybe? Whatever it was, it was better than anything he’d smelled in a long time.

She climbed up into his truck, her baggy Carhartts tightening across her back end as she stretched farther to check on her box of babies. Yeah, he thought, there really is nothing on God’s green earth nicer than a woman’s ass, and he took a minute to soak in the sweet view before walking around and angling behind the wheel. “Where to?”

“North straight through town.”

Town was relatively quiet, and so was his passenger. The human one. Not the animal ones. The duck in the backseat hadn’t shut up for more than two seconds since he’d turned on the engine.

“Quack, quack, quack… ”

Brady finally cut his eyes to it via the rearview mirror. “Hey.”

Abigail looked at him.

“I know this great duck soup recipe,” he told her.

Lilah gasped.

Abigail shut up.

Not the animals in the box at her feet, though. The two puppies and little piglet were wrestling and rolling around each other, having a party for three.

At the end of town, the road went from smooth concrete to torn-up, pitted asphalt, and as Lilah had promised, it was a mess. He hit a pothole and got a little air.

“Uh-oh,” Lilah said.

“What?” He couldn’t look, because she’d been right-the road was bad. If he took his eyes off of it, they were going to go flying. “And Jesus, you weren’t kidding about-” He broke off when Lilah clicked out of her seat belt and dropped to her knees on the floorboard.

“It’s okay,” she cooed softly, and crawled toward Brady, touching his calf.

He went very, very still as she leaned down even farther, reaching between his legs…

“I’ve got you.” Her voice pure sex, and still in that erotic position, began to make kissy kissy noises that went straight to his…

“There,” she murmured, lifting the potbellied piglet to cuddle against her chest.

Brady let out a very long breath and realized he was jealous of a fucking pig.

Lilah flashed an apologetic smile and climbed back into her seat, rebuckling her seat belt. “Runaway.”

It took him a full sixty seconds to find his voice. “You seem to have your hands full.”

“Little bit.” She turned in her seat to face him. “And I really am sorry about all this. Not that it’s an excuse, but I stayed up too late last night studying, and I wasn’t paying close enough attention to what I was doing.”

“What are you studying?”

“Animal science. I’m trying to finish up my degree online at night. I’d like to go on to vet school after that.”

“Makes for a long day.”

“Yeah. Keep going straight here.”

On the outside of Sunshine now, the road was lined by forest, thick and unforgiving. Classic northern Idaho. After the glaciers of the last great Ice Age had melted away, they’d left meandering rivers and lakes of all sizes, most pristine, some more remote and intimate than any of the places in the far corners of the planet in which he’d been. Once upon a time, the vastness of those Bitterroot Mountains and the waters of the Coeur d’Alene had changed his life, given him a sense of self when he’d desperately needed it. He didn’t need it now. He knew who he was.

A man not quite ready to face the past that was about to be shoved in his face.

“So what brings you to Sunshine?” she asked, smiling when he glanced at her. “Maybe I just want to know more about the guy I’m going to buy a new rear bumper for. Thanks for sharing.”

“No problem.” He watched as she licked the last of the chocolate off her lips. “Still hungry?” he asked, amused.

“Yeah.” She licked her finger, scooping up a fleck of chocolate. He was certain she didn’t mean for it to be sexual, but watching her tongue run over her lips, hearing the sweet sounds of suction as she worked those fingers, was giving him a zing nevertheless. It was hard to tell what the rest of her body was like in those baggy clothes, but apparently it didn’t matter in the least.

He was attracted to her, and he handed her the other half of his candy bar.

She stared at it like it was a brick of gold. “I’m on a diet.” But she took it. “A see-food diet, apparently. I see food and I eat it.” She took another big bite. “I mean, I try to eat healthy, but I have a little thing for junk food. Uh-oh… ”

“What now?”

“Abigail, no.” She reached back and pulled the strap of Brady’s duffel bag from the duck’s beak. “She also likes to eat.” She laughed easily, and he found himself smiling at the sound with rusty facial muscles. His shoulders loosened and he realized he was feeling relaxed.