Something in his voice had her taking a closer look at him. “Your parents forget your birthday and never tell you they love you, too?” she asked.

  He let out a low laugh. “They don’t forget my birthday, but yeah, love isn’t a word they throw around very often. My dad’s a miner to the very bone, which is synonymous with tough and impenetrable. Talking about his feelings isn’t his strong suit—unless he’s disagreeing with you on something. Then he doesn’t hold back.”

  She’d talked herself into believing that she didn’t want to know about him, what made him tick, what had molded him into the man he’d become, but she really did. She wanted to know more. Hell, she wanted to know everything. “And your mom?”

  “She worked in the elementary school’s cafeteria before she retired a few years back,” he said. “She’s very proud of my dad and all his years of hard work. Having a son who not only didn’t want to do the same but yearned for an entirely different life confused her.”

  “Did she try to understand?” Zoe asked.

  He shrugged. “Not a lot of communication went on. I didn’t want to hurt them, but I knew I had to go. I owed it to myself to at least explore the life I wanted.”

  “Were they okay with that?” she asked.

  He laughed. “No.”

  Her heart squeezed. Five minutes ago she’d had her thighs wrapped tight around his head and been close to singing the Hallelujah chorus, but now all she wanted was to have him keep talking to her forever. “Do you have any siblings?”

  “A sister,” he said. “She’s twelve years younger than me.” He smiled grimly. “An ‘oops’ baby that turned into my parents’ entire world.”

  “Tell me she didn’t go into the mines,” Zoe said, hoping not.

  Parker was quiet for a long beat. “No,” he finally said. “She didn’t.”

  Zoe could tell there was a lot more that he wasn’t saying, but he had on that blank face of his, the one that said he didn’t want to discuss it further, and she didn’t know how to push without butting in where she didn’t belong. She clutched the blanket to her, thinking that by now they should’ve been naked on her kitchen floor. The image was hot as hell, because though she wasn’t used to these feelings, there’d been something so freeing about having his hands on her, knowing that they were both in the same place and looking for the same endgame.

  An orgasm.

  Period. Well, in her case it was more of a comma, with a whole bunch after that, but it didn’t matter. The moment had passed and she knew it. “I should get ready for work,” she said reluctantly. “I’ve got a long day ahead. I won’t be back until late tonight.”

  He nodded and gave her a little smile, and damn if she wasn’t sorry that she’d ever answered her phone.

  Seventeen

  Parker sat at the kitchen table with his laptop, the tabby kitten asleep on his lap and Oreo on his feet. The kitchen floor was in shambles thanks to the crazy gray wild-woman kitten who had attacked a roll of paper towels and spilled Oreo’s food and was currently batting a pen across the floor.

  Parker supposed it was fitting. He had a certain brown-eyed brunette currently wreaking such havoc on his life and heart as well. The kitten was just taking after the best.

  She batted the pen past the dog.

  Oreo, trying to sleep, sighed for the fifth time.

  Taking pity on him, Parker grabbed the little terrorist and lifted her to his face to look at her eye to eye.

  She batted at his nose.

  He laughed. “Nap time, Destructo.” And he dropped her next to her much quieter brother in his lap.

  She immediately pounced on her brother with great glee, who opened one eye, gave a mew, and pushed her away.

  Not intimidated, she plopped herself down on top of her brother again and began to knead him with her paws like she was making biscuits.

  The quiet tabby tolerated the abuse and finally she fell asleep, allowing Parker to work. An hour ago he’d been alerted that the motion detector cams had caught something. He’d accessed the feeds and couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

  One minute there was a Humvee and the next minute it vanished. Just disappeared into thin air. Parker rewound and slowed things down. This time he could see that the Humvee, colored to blend in, carrying what looked like four men, drove onto the ranch. It was followed by a similarly painted truck, the kind that carries livestock, large livestock, and not all that different from the one that had clipped him with Carver behind the wheel.

  Parker couldn’t see much else as the rest of the daylight faded away. None of them used any lights.

  He called Wyatt.

  “Yo,” Wyatt said. “I’ve got two minutes before emergency surgery. A lab ate its owner’s lace thong and it’s all tangled up in his intestines. She needs to switch to edible undies.”

  And Parker thought his job was interesting. “You ever hear of Cat’s Paw?”

  “No, but hang on, I’m putting you on speaker. Dell,” Wyatt said, and Parker knew he was talking to the owner and head vet of Belle Haven, whom he’d met the day he’d shoveled shit for two hours. “Parker wants to know what we know about Cat’s Paw.”

  “The town or ranch?” Dell asked.

  “There’s a ranch called Cat’s Paw?” Parker asked.

  “Yeah,” Dell said, “it’s an isolated place out at the base of Rocky Falls.”

  “We don’t service it?” Wyatt asked.

  “It’s not in business anymore,” Dell said. “They lost their livestock not too long after the economy took a shit and they couldn’t recover. The place is deserted.”

  “As in the owners just walked away?” Parker asked.

  “Supposedly. The bank took the land back, but like thousands of other properties across the country, the banks are in over their head. Most of those out-of-the-way places are on the back burner.”

  “So no livestock,” Parker said.

  “Not unless it’s wild and squatting on the land.”

  The tabby kitten rolled over and his sister, sleepy now, mewed in protest.

  “You have a furbaby?” Dell asked.

  “I’ve got two kittens for next week’s adoption day.”

  Wyatt laughed. “Zoe know?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then you don’t have shit for adoption day. She won’t be able to let them go by then.”

  After they’d disconnected, Parker stared at the feeds some more. So if there was no livestock, what the hell was in that truck? If he’d located Carver and the militia he was using to protect himself, the likely answer was that he’d possibly found the storage site for Carver’s illegal gains, his holding place before it was sold.

  He got up, unintentionally disturbing the kittens, who let him know with their soft mews how unhappy he’d made them. He set them down on Oreo’s bed. “Sleep,” he commanded.

  The kittens climbed all over Oreo.

  Oreo gave Parker a baleful look.

  “Like you don’t love them,” Parker said.

  And indeed, Oreo licked each kitten from chin to forehead and then, after turning in a very careful circle—three times—plopped down. His hind end caught the gray kitten, who gave a muffled “mew!”, crawled out from beneath Oreo’s ass, and settled with her brother between Oreo’s two front paws.

  Oreo smiled down at his babies.

  Parker paced for a few moments, brooding over the action he was missing out on. He tried calling Sharon, but either his boss was over him or she was still pissed because she didn’t pick up.

  When his phone finally buzzed, he answered immediately, thinking it was Sharon getting back to him.

  It was AJ. “How are your ribs?”

  “Great,” Parker said, touching them to check. Maybe great was a slight exaggeration, but it would do.

  “We’re short a guy tonight for our rec league football game,” AJ said. “Wyatt says you’re the guy we need. You in?”

  Parker looked around him, soaking in Zoe’s kitchen. It was a great kitchen, warm and cozy and comfortable. And in it, he was shockingly content for a guy who’d always believed he had to be on the go 24/7 to be happy.

  But laying low for work was driving him straight up a wall and he had a lot of pent-up energy to burn. He’d like to burn some of that energy off with Zoe.

  Naked.

  But she was part of his problem. He didn’t want to sit around here and think about her, and without her, he didn’t have much to do except check the camera feeds. “Who’s on your team?” he asked.

  AJ laughed shortly. “Worried?”

  “I want to win.”

  AJ laughed again. “Then show up. You won’t be sorry, trust me. We kick ass.”

  Perfect. Just what he was in the mood for.

  Several hours later, he was at the park, meeting the rest of the guys on his team. Wyatt. Dell, whom he already knew. Dell’s brothers Adam and Brady, both of whom looked very capable of kicking ass. A guy named Grif, whom Parker wouldn’t bet against. And Joe, who was filling in for someone, too. They were playing a team of first responders, which included Kel.

  Kel grinned at the sight of Parker. “You here for me to wipe the floor with?”

  Parker grinned back. “Try it.”

  In the first huddle, Joe looked over at Parker. “You the reason she hasn’t made a decision?”

  He assumed the “she” in question was Zoe. “Decision?” he asked.

  “I offered Zoe an equal partnership in the FBO,” Joe said. “She said she needed to think about it for a while.” He paused. “She didn’t mention it?”

  “No.”

  Joe grinned. “Maybe you’re not the reason after all, then.”

  Parker wondered about that, about why she wouldn’t take such an offer. Assuming the offer was good, it seemed right up her alley, having a stake in the business she loved.

  He’d have thought about it some more, but the game was an immediate distraction. It was supposed to be touch football, but Parker learned in the first quarter that touch was more like tackle, and apparently there were no refs and no pussies allowed.

  “Jesus,” he said, swiping the blood from his cut lip at their first time out. They were tied fourteen to fourteen. “What about personal fouls?”

  “No blood, no foul,” Wyatt said.

  “There’s blood,” Parker said, jabbing a finger at his own lip, then at Dell’s bloody nose, and finally at Grif’s arm, which had blood running down it from an elbow gash.

  “Nah,” Brady said, grinning. “Has to be arterial blood.”

  Zoe had exactly one hour to herself in between two flights. She’d figured she’d go home and find some excuse to banter with Parker, but when she’d landed, she had a text from her brother.

  Recruited Parker for football tonight, thought you’d want to know.

  Hell yeah, she wanted to know. Rec league football in Sunshine meant sitting with her girlfriends on the stands, eating hot dogs and popcorn, heckling the players—and who in their right mind didn’t want to stare at a bunch of hot guys tackling each other for a couple of hours?

  She got to the park during the second quarter and found she had a seat waiting for her next to Darcy and the gang, who included Dell’s wife, Jade; Dell’s brother Brady’s wife, Lilah; and two other dear friends, Holly and Kate, all of whom had a significant other on the field.

  “How’s everyone’s man doing?” she asked, biting into the big, juicy hot dog that Darcy handed her.

  “Great,” Darcy said. “Including yours.”

  Zoe choked on her hot dog.

  Darcy grinned and patted her on the back. “Yeah, and not only does Parker fill out a pair of jeans almost as good as AJ, he can run faster than anyone out there.”

  “He’s not my man,” Zoe said distractedly.

  “Uh-huh,” Darcy said. “Just watch.”

  “He’s not.” But Zoe did just that, her eyes drawn to Parker on the field like a moth to a flame.

  And holy mother of mercy, Darcy was right.

  He did fill out a pair of jeans.

  And he was faster than anyone else out there.

  And . . . damn. She wanted him to be her man. Bad.

  At the half, Parker had found his stride, but they were down twenty-one to fourteen. Dell threw long and Parker went for it with Kel breathing down his neck for an interception. Parker went airborne in the touchdown zone, Kel with him, and by the very tips of his fingers Parker angled Kel out and got the catch.

  They landed hard, Parker on the bottom.

  A bunch of people landed on top of them both, some cheering, some yelling denials.

  Under all of it, Parker, with elbows and knees pummeling him, shoved free and sat up, revealing he still held the ball.

  The crowd went nuts and he glanced over at the stands, surprised to find them filled.

  “Sunshine takes its football seriously,” Kel said, offering him a hand up. “Nice catch. There won’t be a second one.”

  Parker grinned and as he turned away, his gaze caught on a woman in the top row of the stands.

  Zoe.

  She was surrounded by other women, all of them clearly together because they each had whiteboards and had written various signs:

  Go Grif!

  Dell Does It Best!

  Your mama plays better than you do!

  The Other Team Sucks!

  Brady’s game is tighter than your spandex!

  Parker went brows up.

  Zoe grinned and wrote on her board and then lifted it:

  You’ve Got This.

  Shaking his head, laughing, he joined the huddle.

  “New plan,” Brady said. “We gotta get the new guy the ball. He knows what to do with it.”

  Parker listened to the rest of them all agree and realized with some surprise that he was the new guy.

  The rest of the game was a blur. By the end, they won by one safety—his.

  Someone had beer in a cooler and they all sat around after, switching out their cleats, pulling on sweatshirts as the sun sank. Parker felt happily exhausted and realized drinking a beer as the sky slowly filled with more stars than he’d ever seen was a pretty damn nice way to start the evening.

  The crowd moved off the stands, dispersing. A group of women moved in. The girlfriends and wives, Parker realized. Giving out hugs and kisses. And for one beat he felt like an outsider all over again.

  And then he saw Zoe standing in front of him. She smiled. “For tradition,” she said, and as she had that very first time they’d met on her porch, she went up on tiptoe and brushed her soft, warm lips across his.

  Just as quickly, she stepped back. “Going back up tonight,” she said, and gave him a finger wave. “Nice game.”

  And he found himself grinning like an idiot. That was the best way to start an evening.

  Parker walked out of the shower and into his bedroom, sore in a bunch of new places thanks to the game. But it was a good kind of sore and he felt more relaxed than he had in days.

  And then, as he moved toward his duffel bag, pain suddenly shot up his leg from his foot. Hopping, swearing the air blue, he looked down to find he’d stepped on a small wire cat brush.

  Zoe had brought it home to groom the kittens, but their resident gray hellion loved to trot it around the house.

  Which made him realize the house was quiet.

  Too quiet.

  He looked around and found her curled up on his pillow, fast asleep. Guess Destructo had finally worn herself out. And of course she had to be on his pillow. Her brother and Oreo were on Oreo’s bed, but not her. Figured. It was him she was fond of attacking in her sleep, his ear she purred in when she decided to sleep instead of play, and him she sat on if a calm mood struck her.

  He stalked over to the bed and scooped her up off his pillow. She sleepily opened her eyes and at the sight of him, her favorite new toy, she got happy.

  And wild.

  “Oh no,” he said. “It’s bedtime. Behave or you’ll sleep in the bathroom.” That was where she’d started out sleeping, until her offended howling at being shut off from the house-sized jungle gym had kept everyone up.

  He dumped her onto Oreo’s bed. “Your turn to babysit,” he said to Oreo.

  Oreo sighed.

  Parker slid into bed and sighed, too. Exhausted, he started to drift off.

  And . . . heard the kitten climbing her way back onto the bed. “No,” he said to the dark.

  The kitten bumped her head affectionately to his chin and then tilted her face to his, staring down at him adoringly.

  Shit.

  He dropped her over the edge of the bed twice before giving up, letting her fall asleep where she wanted, in the crook of his neck. He grumbled about it, but he wasn’t fooling the cat and he certainly wasn’t fooling himself. He adored her right back. Just like he did the owner of this house.

  The truth was he didn’t look forward to the day it was time to leave. He was going to miss this damn hellion. He was going to miss Oreo. The house. Playing football.

  And most of all, being with Zoe.

  Eighteen

  The next morning, Parker was again at the kitchen table with his laptop while on his cell phone, through which Sharon had been chewing out his ass for the past five minutes.

  He’d used the time to text two pics of Oreo being attacked by the kittens to Amory and was working on a third.

  “And now, thanks to you,” Sharon went on, “I have to go to the director and—”

  “Give him the proof I sent you that Carver’s got stuff on the move?” he asked, voice even.

  “That’s if this place is even the right place, and if the trucks you saw were carrying the cargo we’re looking for, and if that even matters because this is out of my hands now and on a different pay grade entirely.”

  “You ever going to tell me about the deal?” Parker asked.

  She was quiet so long he wasn’t sure she was still there. “Hello?” he asked.

  “You always know what I know,” she finally said. “Or you’ve guessed.”

  “He’s going to give up the militia,” Parker said.

  “The big cheeses. All of them, and some of these guys have been wanted for years.”