Cherry Adair - T-flac 06 (3 page)

"It's complicated—"

"Yes. Things with you and Sean usually are—were." She shook her head and stared up at him.

There was good reason not to tell Derek what she'd learned about Sean over the years. She'd like to
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believe she didn't want Derek to know about his friend out of a sense of loyalty to the man she'd married.

But the reality was, she didn't want anyone else to know because she couldn't take the pity—or the humiliation of having everyone know what an idiot she'd been. And even if it didn't matter to Sean anymore, Lily wanted to hold on to whatever tattered threads of dignity were left to her. Sean might've been a philandering jackass, but he had been her husband.

The other, even more powerful deterrent was that as long as she could convince Derek that she still cared about Sean, there was a faint possibility he'd eventually take a hint and stop flirting with her.

Unfortunately, he had a skin like a rhinoceros. It didn't matter how many times she told him she wasn't interested, he just loved to flirt.

It had been an ego-bashing realization—that to
Derek
the flirting wasn't personal. He just… did it. It was in his DNA to flirt.

The first time she'd met him, six years ago, she'd taken one look and it had been as if a bomb had exploded. His impact was total, and complete. His looks first, then his charm, but the physical impact, that chemical reaction that said
I can't wait to get my clothes off and feel you skin to skin
, had shocked Lily to her toes. Shocked and, God help her, scared her to death. Anything that powerful, that intense, had to be dangerous.

Anything a person wanted
that
desperately could be taken away. A person could go from euphoria to despair in a heartbeat.

Unfortunately she'd wanted to sink her teeth into him, she'd wanted to lick and taste his skin, she'd wanted to grab great fistfuls of his long dark hair in both fists and draw his mouth down to hers. She wanted to throw caution and common sense to the winds.

After one date with him she'd wanted a whole lot of things, Lily thought crossly. All of them bad for her.

So she'd run from Derek, straight into his best friend's open arms, and found herself in a whole different sort of mess. And if that wasn't a sad, sorry statement for a widow to make, she couldn't think of one.

And the reality, the ego-bruising reality, was that Derek had let her go. He'd done nothing to make her change her mind. He'd toasted them charmingly at their engagement dinner, and he'd been Sean's best man at their wedding, laughing and joking, flirting with every woman present.

So that heat, that fire, had been completely one-sided. Fool me once, she thought ruefully.

He'd never by so much as word or deed, or glance, done anything while she'd been married. But afterward… the heat had been back, like a smoldering fire under dry leaves in the fall. Just waiting to ignite into a gigantic bonfire. If she stuck around, she'd be burned to a cinder in no time flat.

"Do me a favor," Lily said quietly, yanking off the apron and tossing it with her things in the corner.

"Don't run the race this year." The grueling, thousand-plus-mile Iditarod race from Anchorage to Nome was brutal and challenging enough without having Derek along. She already had too many questions, and too little information circling around in her mind. She wanted to sort the wheat from the chaff without Derek around clouding the issue.

He raised a brow. "Why the hell not? Scared I'll beat you again?"

Lily had trained him and sold him his dogs. He was an excellent musher and had actually beaten her race time twice. A powerful adversary, he was determined, competitive and focused. Before, she'd enjoyed

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the competition. But for some reason this year was different. "I'd like to run the race without having to watch my back."

"Don't flatter yourself, Doc," Derek said smoothly, a glint in his eyes. "As attractive as you are, when I'm in the race, I'm there to win. Hard to watch your
back
when I'm way ahead of you on the trail."

"In your dreams," Lily scoffed, torn between amusement and irritation. "I want to run the race with my full concentration. If you're there—"

"Well, bless your heart, are you saying I distract you?" He gave her a slow, lazy smile that touched off a response somewhere in her aching body. This was why, she thought, this was
exactly
why she didn't want him on the trail this year.

She could handle Derek Wright just fine. Didn't mean she
wanted
to. She twisted her wedding ring deliberately around her finger. As soon as she noticed his gaze there, she stuffed her hands back into her jean pockets. She could be as subtle as Mata Hari. Sean's wedding ring was her body armor, and she used it ruthlessly to hold back the enemy at the gate.

"Don't you have a serious bone in your body?" she asked crossly.

"Oh yes," Derek assured her, blue eyes alight with wicked humor, apparently not in the least put off. "I have several bones that are very serious."

Two

The bitch hadn't told him.

Yet.

He'd been up here in the loft for hours, sweating like a pig, and dying of thirst. The hay prickled him through his sweatshirt and made his skin fucking itch. Good thing he'd taken his allergy meds. Christ only knew the hay made him sneeze. And just thinking about the bugs and shit that might be
in
the hay made him desperate to scratch.

Maybe he'd get a bonus for his troubles and the doc and Wright would fuck. At least it'd be something interesting to watch. Had to make for better spying than the revolting spectacle of a cow giving birth.

Maybe he could pick up some tips, he thought, getting hornier, but also angrier by the second. Casanova had nothing on Wright, and he hated him. Hated his easy familiarity with women, his charm, his good looks and all his fucking money.

Wright deserved a fucking bullet in the brain just because.
Because
was good enough reason to blow the asshole's brain from here to hell.

He grinned in the half dark of the hayloft. Now wouldn't they be surprised if he fell down and landed at
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their feet, guns blazing?

Of course, he mused, stroking the barrel of his H & K and half listening to the conversation below him, he
could
take them
both
out now. No muss, no fuss. From this angle, a shot to the top of the head would be pretty damn immediate and final. He had the silencer screwed on…

But a bullet was a bullet. And two gunshot deaths would mean the big redneck cop in town would be all over the place like a fly on shit. Hard to explain the deaths as an accident.

No. This wasn't the time to be overt. Subtlety was called for, he reminded himself firmly. Subtlety.

In a couple of days they'd all be up in Anchorage with thousands of other people at the start of the race.

There'd be miles and miles of pristine forest and open land.

Strangers all over the place. There'd be lakes and rivers, opportunities for death by avalanche, by drowning, by… The possibilities were endless and appealing.

So varied, so creative. So
accidental
.

"I'm going to check some of the other mom's," Lily told him. Sounding a lot more brisk than she looked.

"See you whenever."

Derek leaned back against the rail and crossed his ankles. "I'm in no hurry. Take your time." He bit back a grin at her exasperated glance.

"Whatever."

She looked beat, and he frowned with concern as she went into the next stall and murmured to her bovine patient there. He wanted to wrap his arms about her and let her rest her head against his chest as she slept. But Lily being Lily would be more apt to beat him about the head with a blunt instrument, or that sharp little tongue of hers, than let him touch her right now.

Soon…

He heard her soft murmurings to one of the new babies nearby.

Every cow bred with their prize bull had had problems giving birth. Diablo was two thousand pounds of prime Red Brangus. The bull had weighed almost a hundred pounds at birth himself, and his calves were chips off the old block. Good for Derek's breeding program, but hell on the veterinarian who had to assist Diablo's extensive harem with every difficult birth.

The lights in the building combined with a heater made the interior of the birthing shed downright balmy.

Outside the temperatures had plunged to well below freezing. Lily had stripped off her outer clothing and tossed a sweater here and a shirt there as she'd worked, leaving her in jeans, cowboy boots, and a thin, much-washed pale blue T-shirt. While she checked on her patients, Derek shrugged out of his own shearling coat, tossing it over the picnic hamper he'd brought in with him.

She'd ignore him until the job was done.

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All he had to do was wait.

God only knew, he was a master at
that
game.

In a few weeks he'd have her undivided attention, and she'd have to deal with him, whether she liked it or not. Instead of bulldozing through her resistance as he'd very much like to do, this time he was going to take it slow and easy.

His flirting made her slightly uncomfortable, Derek knew. But damned if he'd stop. She needed to lighten up. Needed to relax and not take life so seriously. God only knew, the last few years had been hell for her. No humor there.

But this was a new beginning. And he was here to make sure she got what she wanted. What she deserved. Even if Lily herself didn't know what that was, he thought with dark humor.

With Lily he was never quite sure what was a smokescreen and what she truly believed. He suspected a lot of what she spouted about Sean was a shield to keep him at bay. The thought that she found it necessary to erect a buffer of any sort between them made him smile a tiger smile of satisfaction. It meant she wasn't immune.

He'd deal with whatever rhetoric she threw at him until he could show her that that particular barrier was unnecessary. Hell.
Any
barrier between them was unnecessary. Like a kitten batting away a pesky bee, Lily either took swipes at him or tried to ignore him.

One thing she wasn't was immune. Bless her sweet, stubborn little heart, she fought herself as hard as she fought him.

She would have to learn that this time he wouldn't let her go without a fight.

The only reason he'd let her go before was because he'd believed Lily loved Sean, and he'd been fooled into believing that Sean truly loved her in return.

They'd all been wrong.

He turned the delicate carving of the bull over and over in his hand, enjoying the feel of the smooth, cool wood beneath his fingers. She was so worried about pleasing the people she loved, that Derek wondered when last she'd done something for herself, just for the sheer pleasure of making
herself
happy.