Wyatt watched as she ended the call without taking her gaze off the screen. He was still watching when she blew out a breath and hovered her mouse over the bidding block.
And then clicked.
“Dammit,” she muttered to herself, typing in a new bid. “You have no will power.”
“Sounds promising,” he said.
She jumped about five feet in the air at the sound of his voice and whipped around. “What are you doing?” she demanded.
“I think the question is what are you doing?”
“Nothing.” Her gaze skittered away. “Just . . . making a shopping list. You know, cat food, cookies, Mace for people who read over my shoulder . . .” She hit a key on the keyboard, clearly intending to put the screen to sleep.
Instead, it brightened again, revealing the auction site.
Wyatt smiled and leaned over her shoulder. “I thought you said you let the bid go.”
“I . . . meant to.”
“Uh-huh. Let’s see how much I’m worth to you . . .” He felt his brows raise. “Five hundred and one dollars?”
“That’s a typo,” she said, and hit another button. This time the screen went black. “And it’s for charity.”
“So I’m a . . . pity bid?” he asked.
“Yes.” She sucked in a breath. “Exactly.”
He burst out laughing, and she frowned. “It’s true,” she said. “Brady and Dell and Adam are all getting up there in the bidding. I didn’t want you to feel bad.”
He was still grinning. “Look at you, digging yourself deeper.”
She flushed, but lifted her chin. Heaven forbid she cave on anything. “Hey,” she said. “I’ll have you know that your Casserole Brigade has divided into factions. Some of them are now pooling their funds to take the bid on you up to one thousand bucks so that Cassandra can’t get you. I’m just helping them get there, is all.”
He bent low so that his jaw pressed against the side of hers as together they looked at the screen. “Such a pretty liar,” he chided, and turned his head, letting his lips graze the sweet spot just beneath her ear.
She sucked in a breath and shuddered, and when he touched the spot with his tongue, a soft moan escaped her.
“So it has nothing to do with missing me in your bed?” he asked in her ear.
“N-no, of course not. I don’t miss you in my bed.”
“How about my truck? You miss me in the driver’s seat of my truck?” he asked, sucking her skin into his mouth. Christ, he wanted to eat her up.
She moaned again, and he set his hands on the arm of her chair to spin her around to face him. He was just able to haul her out of the chair and show her exactly what she was missing when they heard footsteps coming down the hall.
Emily shoved free of him and was doing her best to look casual as Dell strode in. He snatched a bottle of water from the refrigerator and smiled at her.
She smiled back.
“You got some sun out there today taking care of those geese that were brought in,” he said. “You’re all flushed. Wear sunscreen tomorrow.”
Emily’s gaze slid to Wyatt’s. “Will do.”
“Did I tell you?” Dell asked her. “The head vet from the Beverly Hills center called me. Their intern isn’t enamored with L.A. Her family lives in Coeur d’Alene, and she misses them.”
Emily blinked. “No,” she said a little faintly. “You didn’t mention that.”
Her smile had slipped so briefly, Wyatt would have said he’d imagined it if he didn’t know her.
“I told him we were damned lucky to have you,” Dell said. “Since you’re so happy here.”
Yeah, her smile was definitely a little short of her usual wattage, but Dell was oblivious as he turned to go. As he did, he slid Wyatt a brief glance.
Not oblivious at all, Wyatt realized. Just respecting her privacy.
When they were alone, Emily also turned to leave.
Wyatt caught her hand and pulled her back around, giving her a long, searching look.
“What?” she said.
“You tell me.”
She pulled free. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“So I just imagined that quick flash of horror as you realized you could have switched places with that other intern and gone back to L.A. early?”
Again she tried to go.
And again he held her to him. “How many days left?”
“Three hundred and thirty-six,” she said without hesitation.
Shit. He took a deep breath. “You’re still not happy here,” he stated flatly.
She closed her eyes.
He didn’t know what he expected. That she’d have miraculously given up on her plan just because they’d slept together a few times?
But that wasn’t what pissed him off. It was that he’d been hoping for more.
And she’d been hoping to be sent home.
“You should have told him,” Wyatt said.
“He’d just said how much he valued me as a vet,” Emily said. “Do you know what he’s given me? Everything. I’m not going to tell him I’d rather be in L.A.”
Wyatt drew a careful breath, trying to leave his personal feelings out of the mix. He was good at that. Hell, he f**king rocked at that. “He would’ve understood.”
She turned back to him, with heartbreaking sincerity. “You think so?”
Christ. “Yeah,” he said. “I think so.”
And then, because what he really wanted to do was push her up against the wall and kiss the living shit out of her, until she was panting his name and tearing at his clothes to get him inside her, he shoved his hands in his pockets to keep them off her.
He walked out.
Lilah came by after work and dragged Emily off for “some fun.” Turned out Lilah’s husband, Brady, was on a team with—among others—Dell, Adam, Adam’s BFF Griffin, AJ, and a player who ran onto the field at the very last minute.
Wyatt.
The guys were all in athletic shorts, T-shirts, and cleats, and since it had rained until about five minutes ago, they were also drenched. And muddy.
Nobody wore drenched and muddy better than Wyatt, a fact Emily did her best to take in while pretending not to . . .
Sitting in the stands around her were other wives and girlfriends. She also figured out, when one pretty twentysomething struggled to the stands using a walker and stopped to yell at Wyatt through the fence, “You need to kick ass, Wyatt Stone, to make up for last week’s suckage!” that sisters were welcome as well.
Lilah waved her over to sit with them.
“Aw,” Darcy said, sizing Emily up. “The new vet.”
“You’re one of Wyatt’s two sisters,” Emily said.
“How did you know?” Darcy asked.
Emily smiled. “I recognize the hostility and intolerance and deeply seated resentment.” She held out a hand to Darcy. “I’m Emily, the intern vet.”
“The one bidding on my brother.”
“He didn’t have as many bids as Dell and Adam, and I felt sorry for him,” Emily said in automatic self-defense.
Darcy’s smile went real as she shook Emily’s hand. “I like you already.”
“I’m really quite likeable,” Emily said, and for the next hour watched Dell, Adam, Grif, and Wyatt, not to mention a whole host of other hot guys, run through a muddy, grass field tackling each other.
The guys all had red tags hanging off their hips, which were supposed to be pulled by their opponents instead of anyone getting tackled. But, though the flags were yanked and thrust triumphantly into the air, there was still enough body contact—and bone crunching and taunting and heckling—that Emily found herself both holding her breath in terror, and shaking her head in bafflement.
When Wyatt was grabbed and taken down from behind by not one or two, but three men, she clasped a hand to her heart until he spit out some dirt and grass and pushed up to his feet.
“I thought it was flag football,” she said, “not tackle the shit out of each other football.”
Lilah shrugged. “It’s a guy thing.”
Emily didn’t take her eyes off Wyatt. He looked okay, but she didn’t breathe until Brady came over and high-fived him, and Wyatt flashed a triumphant grin.
And then, while she was sucking in a lungful of relief, he turned his head and laid his gaze right on her. The relief swimming through her veins turned to something else entirely, something she wasn’t even close to ready to accept.
At the half, Wyatt took shit for being late to the game from all the guys
“We almost forfeited,” Dell said.
“Hey,” Wyatt said in his defense, “I had an emergency.”
His entire team gave him the stink eye.
“What emergency?” AJ wanted to know. “Because if anyone has an excuse to be late, it’s me, since my last patient was your sister, and I’m not sure who got more worked over, her or me.”
“You slept with one of your patients?” Adam asked.
“Forget that,” Brady said. “You slept with your best friend’s sister?”
“What?” AJ looked at both of them in horror and then turned to Wyatt. “No! God. I wouldn’t—”
“You don’t think she’s hot enough?” Grif asked.
“She is hot,” AJ said, and then grimaced at Wyatt. “No, I mean— She’s my patient, and—” He broke off when Dell, Adam, Brady, and Grif started laughing. Narrowing his eyes, he crossed his arms over his beefy chest. “You think that’s funny?”
“Yeah,” Dell said, straightening, still grinning. “You should see the look on your face, man.”
“Jesus, I’m sweating,” AJ said, and swiped his forearm over his brow. “You made me sweat.” He looked at Wyatt. “I’m not.”
“I know,” Wyatt said as they moved together to the side of the spectator stands for the huge water jug placed there just for them. Wyatt knew Darcy wasn’t sleeping with anyone right now, she was far too pissed off at the world to have been getting any. “But it got the attention off me being late, so thanks,” he said, and downed a cup of water.
“No it didn’t,” Dell said. “All the patients were gone when I left. Who came in?”
“Skylar Houghton.”
“With her hamster?” Dell asked. “I treated the abscess yesterday, all was well.”
“Yeah.” Wyatt ran a hand through his hair. “She brought by a lasagna dish.”
“Score,” Dell said. “Since it’s my night to cook.”
“She made it for me,” Wyatt said.
Dell stared at him. “You suck.”
“Hey, I earned that lasagna the hard way, trust me.”
Dell grinned.
“Not like that!” Wyatt said. “Jesus. You guys all need a life.”
“Sucks, doesn’t it?” AJ muttered.
“I’m confused,” Dell said. “Skylar’s got a normal job at the post office, and she’s not crazy. You could do worse.”
Wyatt was saved having to answer by his nosy older sister who interfered from the front row. “Hey, so where’s this lasagna?” Zoe wanted to know. He should have known the women could hear their converstation.
Beside her was Darcy. She looked at AJ, and his expression went blank.
Darcy’s did the same.
Wyatt would have to wonder later what the hell had happened during physical therapy, because he locked eyes with Emily and like he was some stupid high school kid, he forgot everything else.
Next to Emily, Lilah waved at her husband, and blew him kisses. Brady grinned at her, the badass ex-special ops soldier looking soft as mush.
“Yeah, yeah,” Zoe said, nudging Lilah. “Save it for later. I want to hear more about the lasagna. What kind? Her usual meat and cheese?”
“Next time tell her whatshername brought you lobster ravioli,” Darcy said. “Tell her that’s our fave.”
“Or homemade mac and cheese,” Zoe said. “I wouldn’t mind some more of that. Who made it? Kathy Anderson, right? We need her cat to get sick again.”
Wyatt looked at Emily. I’m not cooking you homemade mac and cheese, her gaze said.
He didn’t want or need her to cook him a damn thing. Yeah, Skylar was sweet and gentle and kind, and she could really cook.
But he wasn’t attracted.
Not like he was to the not-so-sweet, not-so-gentle, curvy brunette watching him right now . . .
Zoe stared at Wyatt, then followed his gaze to Emily. She blinked, then looked back at Wyatt. “Or maybe we could just get takeout,” she said.
Sixteen
As always, Emily woke up to Q-Tip sitting on her chest demanding food. One look at the bedside clock had Emily groaning. “It’s only five. I’ve got another half hour.”
“Meow”
“Fine. I get it. You’re starving to death slowly.” She staggered out of bed and tripped over the cat.
Q-Tip yowled at her in reproach, and ran ahead to the kitchen, her belly doing its usual swing back and forth.
Emily filled her bowl and had to smile at the rumbling purr of thanks. She sat at the table and opened her laptop. As a matter of habit, she went to her calendar.
Another week had gone by. Three hundred thirty days . . .
Could’ve been less if you’d spoken up to Dell . . . She closed the calendar and checked Lilah’s charity auction page. Shockingly, there were bids for dinner out with “Sunshine’s newest, cutest, prettiest vet.”