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They’d never had a pedicure or worried about wrinkles or the cut of their clothes. They were real, as real as they came.
    These qualities had a universal appeal, proven when Dell and Adam passed a table of three women, one of whom reached out and snagged Dell’s arm.
    Jade recognized her as Cassie, a local rancher. Dell stopped and set a friendly hand on Cassie’s shoulder and she beamed up at him. So did the others at the table. This was because Dell could make ninety-year-old women preen and get infant girls to bat their eyelashes in his sleep.
    He was the heart and soul of Belle Haven, and the rock of all of them.
    This morning when she’d shown back up with the kitten in her carrier and informed him she was keeping her for a few days, he’d just smiled and said, “I know.” He’d known before Jade that she’d look into the strong, independent but down-on-her-luck kitten’s eyes and not be able to let her go.
    Yet.
    Lilah finally removed her lips from Brady and waved at Adam and Dell. “Over here!”
    Since Dell was currently being hugged by another woman at the table, Adam got to them first.
    “’Bout time,” Lilah said.
    Adam looked at his watch. “We late?”
    “Nope, I’m just on time for once,” Lilah said. “All my pretties got picked up on time today.”
    These “pretties” could be anything from dogs and cats to the more exotic. Jade had seen her driving around with a duck, a pig, and a lamb, stuck on babysitting detail. The woman had more patience than anyone Jade had ever met.
    Adam nudged Jade and she obliged him, moving over in the booth, making room. He looked back to where his brother was attempting to extract himself from the woman’s arms and shook his head. “I told him, keep your head down and keep moving, but does he listen?” He glanced at Brady and Lilah and grimaced when he found them lip-locked again. “Ah, man, come on.”
    Brady lifted his head and smiled into Lilah’s eyes. “Been wanting to do that all day.”
    “You flew me around all day,” Adam said, helping himself to Jade’s wine. “We’ve been flying S&R in Eagle Canyon searching for a lost hiker.”
    Brady smiled at Lilah. “I can multitask.”
    Adam shook his head.
    Dell finally appeared, his hair looking like it’d just been tousled by a hungry female. Kicking Brady’s legs out of his way, he stepped around Adam and pushed his way into the booth on Lilah’s other side.
    Jade knew he’d spent much of his day in surgery but you couldn’t have told that by looking at him. Or smelling him. He smelled like undiluted amazingness as he bumped a broad shoulder to hers.
    “Show-off,” he said.
    She’d organized his inventory before he’d gotten out of his second surgery. “Just trying to help,” she said demurely.
    His dark warm eyes held hers for a minute. “Bullshit,” he said, letting the smile in his voice break through. “You couldn’t help yourself, Jade.”
    “That’s Goddess Jade to you.”
    He laughed, and as always, the sound did something funny low in her belly. Which was really annoying considering the fact that every other woman who came in close proximity to him felt the same way.
    “So, what is it you did in your previous life again? Run the world?” he asked.
    “Close enough.” Running her family’s medical center had been much like running a small country, complete with the politics that went with it. “I have skills. Got ’em from my grandmother Jade. I got lots of things from her.”
    “Such as?”
    “Well, she, too, was always right.”
    Dell fought a smile and lost. With his warm eyes on hers and his hard thigh pressing to her own, Jade felt a silly little flutter.
    No doubt this was how the women at the other table had felt when he’d focused his attention on them. At least she wasn’t simpering. She refused to simper.
    “Are you always right?” Adam asked. “Or do we just let you think it because it’s easier?”
    Jade took her wine back from him.
    “Oh, and