Текст книги "Then Came You"

Автор книги: Jill Shalvis

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Five

Wyatt got up before dawn. Normally this wasn’t a problem, but he’d stayed up late the night before working on the roof over the back patio, number three on Zoe’s to-do list.

Number one was supposed to be the leaky kitchen sink, and number two a misfiring smoke alarm, but the patio roof had been relegated to numero uno when it had collapsed after dinner.

Using a halogen light he’d worked late into the night. He still wasn’t finished, but he’d gotten the framing fixed, so at the very least no one was going to die if they walked through the patio. He considered that a success.

Ass dragging even before his day got started, he showered—which involved trying to fit into a bathroom filled with his sisters’ lingerie hanging on every surface to dry—dressed, put on coffee for Zoe—a necessity as it turned her from evil witch to somewhat human—started the water for Darcy’s oatmeal, and then made his way back down the hallway. He knocked on Zoe’s door, shoved it open, and flipped on her light.

“You are such an asshole!” she yelled at him.

Yep. “Coffee’s on,” he said, ducking out of the way of the pillow she sent sailing in his direction. He moved to the next bedroom. Wash and repeat with the knock, opening the door, and flipping on the light.

But Darcy’s bed was empty.

“Shit,” he said, knowing this meant that once again, she’d been unable to sleep.

“What?” Zoe called from her bedroom, still sounding morning rough. “What’s wrong?”

“Wild Girl’s gone,” he said. “Again.”

Zoe’s sigh said it all. She appeared in the hallway in her pj’s with crazy bed hair. “It’s my turn to track her down,” she said. “You get to work.”

“Text me when you’ve got a status,” he said, feeling more than a little grim as headed to work. Darcy was a lifelong problem that neither he nor Zoe had yet figured out how to handle. She was smart, and ever since her car accident, lost. So damn lost.

Maybe if either of their parents had given her the time of day instead of being baffled by their own offspring, but they’d been—and still were—too busy saving the world. What he did know was that he and Zoe were all Darcy had, and they were stuck with one another, for better or worse. And hell if Darcy was going to go off the deep end on his watch.

He stopped in town for a donut and coffee, breakfast of champions, and to his utter shock, found Darcy’s beat-up Toyota in the lot.

But when he didn’t find her in the bakery, he stepped outside again. To the right of the bakery was a preschool. No way in hell was Darcy in there, though at the moment she had the right mental capacity for the age level.

To his left was the old general store. That had been turned into a bookstore, and then, most recently, a marijuana dispensary. Fuck. He strode inside and there she was at the counter, talking to a guy in a medical lab coat over a Hawaiian print shirt and board shorts slipping off his scrawny ass. His hair was in a do-rag and he wore round, wire-rimmed sunglasses with pale purple lens.

“All you need is a card, man,” he was saying to Darcy. “And then I can get you—”

“Oh, hell no,” Wyatt said.

Darcy turned, eyed her brother, and sighed.

He grabbed her walker in one hand and lifted her in the other, carrying her out of the store.

“Seriously?” she asked when he’d set her down on the sidewalk and shoved her walker at her. She glared up at him, steam coming out of the top of her head.

“Seriously,” he said at a much lower decibel than she. “You’re on the mend, Zoe. Don’t fuck it up now.”

She blew out a sigh and stared down the sidewalk. “You’re a pain in my ass.”

“Ditto, Wild Girl.” He paused, softened his voice. “You’re getting so much stronger,” he said. “You got out of the wheelchair when they said you wouldn’t. You’re off the pain meds—”

“But I still have pain.”

He knew it, he hated it. “Your PT says you’re doing better every day.”

“My PT’s evil.”

Her physical therapist happened to be AJ Colten, one of Wyatt’s oldest friends. AJ owned and operated Sunshine Wellness Center, both a gym and a physical therapy facility. He was a big bear of a guy who’d been through his own hell, and one of the best men Wyatt knew. “That’s bullshit, Darcy. And so’s this.” He gestured to the dispensary behind them. “I know it sucks, but—”

“Do you?” she challenged. “Do you know what it’s like?” She rolled her eyes again and lifted a hand when he would’ve spoken. “Forget it,” she said, and blew out a sigh. “How about donuts? You going to object to donuts for breakfast?”

“No,” he said, aware that he’d won the sprint but not the race. “I’ll even buy.”

Belle Haven was still quiet when Wyatt arrived for work. The sun’s sleepy rays were just peeking over the rugged, majestic mountains at the other end of the valley as he strode around the back of the building to the barn.

As a kid, he’d never owned more than could fit into a backpack. He’d been ten the year he’d attempted to stow away a lizard. It had died on a train in Africa, and he’d learned a valuable but painful lesson.

No pets.

He’d spent years aching for that to change, rescuing injured animals, begging to keep them.

It had never happened.

He walked up to the first pen and greeted the horses. Reno and Kiki, who belonged to Adam and Dell. And Blue.

His. He and Adam had rescued her from a shitty hell-hole of a horse ranch about two hundred miles south of here, and after doctoring her up, he’d fallen in love.

Blue nickered at him and pressed against the fence to get closer, blowing in his face, fogging his glasses. Wyatt wasn’t sure if the show of affection was because she loved him back, or because he carried treats.

“Miss me?” he asked, stroking her.

She snorted, and he couldn’t help but smile. The thrill of owning something that didn’t fit into a backpack hadn’t faded one little bit. Like the land he’d bought himself, Blue represented another tie to Sunshine. He was growing roots, and he wasn’t done.

He saddled up Blue while she frisked him for the treats, prancing in place with anticipation.

She loved to run.

So did he.

They took the hills, and only when they were both satisfied with themselves did Wyatt turn them back to Belle Haven.

By the time he’d cooled her down, put away the riding gear and entered the animal center, it was nearly seven. They didn’t open the doors until eight, but the place was showing signs of life. Dell was there, prepping for the morning’s surgeries. Mike hadn’t arrived yet, but he would soon.

Same with Jade. And, presumably, the new fiercely determined intern that he was going to do his damnedest to ignore, as dictated by the fiercely determined intern herself. It made good sense, for both of them. Problem was, he’d never been all that down with being good.

Emily parked in Belle Haven’s lot and gave herself day two’s pep talk. “You can do this.” Yesterday she’d been thrown off her game by one sexy Dr. Wyatt Stone, but not today. Today she was prepared. No matter how hot he looked with his rumpled hair, glasses, and cargo pants filled with goodies—not all of which were in his pockets—she was sticking to The Plan.

Totally doable. Of course, it would be a heck of a lot easier if she hadn’t dreamed about him last night and how he looked without the cargoes. Tall. Broad. Built . . .

“Oh boy,” she whispered and banged her head on the steering wheel a few times. She lifted her head and stared at herself in the rearview mirror. “You can do this.”

Her reflection didn’t look as sure as she’d like.

Blowing out a breath, she got out of the car and headed inside. Jade was at the controls, and smiled at her. “I’ve got coffee on in the staff room,” she said. “And your day’s schedule in your inbox. We had a surprise patient show up early, so Wyatt’s already at it in exam room one. Dell’s in surgery, the poor guy had to get up extra early to handle today’s insanity.”

Emily smiled. “It’s nice that you two get to work together.”

Jade laughed. “Nicer for me than him.”

“Dell doesn’t enjoy having you run his world?”

“Well . . . you’d have to ask him. But maybe don’t ask him today.” She grinned. “I had to transfer some funds, and let’s just say that sometimes I like to get creative with the label I put on the transfers. Today’s was ‘grocery money for the Guatemalan hookers.’”

Emily burst out laughing. “Because they don’t feed themselves?”

“Exactly!” Jade grinned. “You should’ve heard him when he saw it.” She lowered her voice and affected a Dell-like tone. “ ‘You know this appears on our formal bank statements, right? Our accountant sees this, Jade.’ ”

Emily was still smiling when she entered exam room one, momentarily forgetting her nerves about seeing Wyatt again.

Until her eyes landed on him.

He was sitting on the floor, long legs stretched out in front of him. Between them was an opened crate, and he was sweet-talking a terrified, pissed-off tabby at the back of the crate, who, given her long, howls of protest, absolutely did not want to be sweet-talked.

“Where’s her owner?” Emily asked.

He pushed up his glasses and glanced up at her. “Missy can’t handle this.”

“I can see that.”

“No, Missy’s the owner. Sweetie’s the cat.” He was wearing another pair of cargo pants, battered steel-toed work boots, at least a size twelve, and today’s shirt under his open lab coat read: Vets Do It With a Lot of Heavy Petting.

He should’ve looked ridiculous sitting on the floor, leaning into the crate making kissy-kiss noises at the cat, but he didn’t. He looked . . . mouthwatering.

“Hey, sweet thing,” he said in a low cajoling voice. “Come on out. I’m gonna love you up, I promise. You know you want some of that.”

“Oh, please,” Emily said on a laugh to cover up the fact that her bones melted at the sound of him. “That’s never going to work—”

But hell if the cat didn’t shift ever so slightly closer to Wyatt and sniff at him.

Wyatt flashed both Sweetie and Emily a smile. “Aw, that’s it,” he crooned to the suspicious, wary cat. “Come on, baby girl, all the way. I’ll be good to you, I promise.”

Emily laughed again, even as she felt her nipples tighten. She crossed her arms over her chest. “Honestly, Wyatt, no self-respecting female—cat or woman—is going to—”

But Sweetie walked out of the crate and into Wyatt’s lap. He cuddled the cat in close and eyed Emily over its head. “All females react to that.”

“Not all,” Emily said. “I wouldn’t.”

He just smiled at her.

“I don’t,” she repeated. Liar, liar . . . “I’m . . . seeing someone.” Holy crap. Where had that come from?

Wyatt raised a brow at her.

“It’s true,” she said.

He totally didn’t believe her, she could tell. “We met in college. John,” she said, clarifying. Good Lord, stop talking! But her brain receptors refused to carry the message to her mouth. “He’s concentrating on his career right now, but . . . yeah.” She bit her tongue, hard, to keep from saying anything else. She’d bite it off if she had to.

Wyatt had gone back to checking out the cat in his lap, feeling her lymph nodes, looking in her ears and eyes. Somehow he got Sweetie to open her mouth for him. Emily would’ve sworn Sweetie was actually purring.

“So . . .” Wyatt said, continuing the conversation from hell. “You and your boyfriend are on a break. So he can concentrate on his career.”

“Um . . .” Emily wasn’t sure how John Number Two had gone from boyfriend fantasy to fake boyfriend but she wanted off this subject. “Yeah.” The. End.

“In the meantime, who’s concentrating on you?” Wyatt asked.

Not the end. “Me?” she asked, trying to sound bored.

Wyatt looked up from his exam of Sweetie. “Yes. You.”

“I . . . don’t know what you mean.”

“Say you need something,” he said. “A spider removal, someone to hold you after a bad dream, help with your car. Or maybe just some company, seeing as you’re new to town.”

She stared at him. “I handle my own spiders. And I don’t have very many bad dreams, but when I do, I turn on all the lights and watch Say Yes to the Dress on Netflix. My car’s in okay shape but if I need help, I’ll call a mechanic. And I don’t get lonely.”

Again with the liar, liar thing. Because the truth was, sometimes, she did get lonely.

But hell if she was going to admit to it.

Wyatt’s gaze said he knew she was full of shit, but he didn’t call her on it. Instead, he shocked the hell out of her by responding seriously.

“If you were mine,” he said. “I’d want to do those things for you. Just for future reference.”

“Well . . .” Gulp. “Good to know.” Something in the way he’d said mine had her taking a second look at him. He had that whole laid-back look going, but he had a good amount of protective alpha in him. “Are you with someone?” Oh, please don’t let her have slept with someone else’s man.

A small smile twitched at the corners of his mouth as he read her expression through those hot smart-guy glasses. “Worried?” he asked, stroking Sweetie into a puddle of goo in his lap.

“It’s a legitimate question,” she said.

His smile faded. “I wouldn’t sleep around if I was with someone.”

She nodded and then squirmed a little at the implication. “Listen, regarding my . . . boyfriend.” Oh boy. She squirmed some more. “The truth is, the relationship is sort of . . .” Nonexistent. “Silent.”

“Silent.”

“Yeah. Like the K on knight. Actually, to be honest, it’s more of an implied thing.”

Wyatt was looking amused again. “As in made-up?”

She sighed.

And he laughed. “You’re a nut.”

Yes. Yes, she was. A complete nut. “Let’s go back to ignoring each other,” she said a little desperately. “Can we?”

“Absolutely,” he said. “I’m good at ignoring nuts.”

She sighed again.

Six

Emily worked hard over the next few days to maintain some sort of professional distance with Wyatt, to varying degrees of success.

Or failure, depending on how she looked at it.

On Monday of week two—three hundred and fifty-eight days left—Emily and Wyatt went over their schedule and got right into it. Their first patient was a female boxer, approximately one-year-old, with a runny nose.

“’Morning, Martha,” Wyatt said to the dog’s owner. “This is Dr. Stevens, our new intern. What’s up with Gracie today?”

“She’s sick,” Martha said, wringing her hands. “So sick. She whistles when she breathes.”

Emily took a look at Gracie, who weighed around fifty pounds. Solid girl. Currently she was rolling in ecstasy in Wyatt’s lap, loving up all over him.

And she did indeed whistle when she breathed.

“Gracie’s new to Martha’s family,” Wyatt told Emily. “Which includes four kids and two other dogs. She’s very playful and obsessed with all the toys she can get her mouth around, as we learned last month when she swallowed Martha’s son’s coin collection,” he said, stroking Gracie. “She came from a shelter, so I think she’s just trying to make up for lost time, aren’t you, girl?”

Gracie licked his jaw, whistling with each inhale.

“Why don’t you do the assessment for us, Dr. Stevens,” Wyatt said, voice calm. She knew that was to keep both patient and owner calm. He always spoke calmly, even through the tough ones, like Friday’s tricky feline birth, or the extremely pissed-off pit bull who hadn’t wanted his shots, or extracting a nickel from the back of a yellow Lab’s throat.

But Emily knew that his casual ’tude had nothing on his sharp intelligence. No doubt he already knew exactly what was wrong with Gracie. But happy to learn and gain new experiences, she moved closer. Gracie sniffed her hand before turning back to Wyatt.

Wyatt smiled and held Gracie for her, taking on the role that she’d taken for him her first week. First thing she did was look at the dog’s extreme runny nose. Interestingly enough, it was only dripping down one side. This was a blatant clue that either something was anatomically incorrect, or there was a physical blockage. She turned to Wyatt and found him watching her.

Yeah. He was way ahead of her.

Her first thought was maybe the dog had broken a tooth, and she looked into Gracie’s mouth. Nope, not a broken tooth. But it was something she’d never seen before and again met Wyatt’s gaze.

“Yeah,” he said. “It’s a new one for me, too.”

“What? What is it?” Martha asked, crowding in.

“Well,” Emily said after Wyatt nodded at her. “It appears Gracie swallowed a Kong toy whole.” She turned Gracie’s head to face her worried human mama so that she could see down the dog’s throat. The length of the Kong lined up along Gracie’s throat, the larger end nearest her nose.

“Oh my goodness,” Mrs. Coleburn said. “I suppose that’s why she whistles.”

Emily slid a look at Wyatt.

His eyes were flashing good humor. “Yep, that’s why she whistles.”

“But why the runny nose?”

“Because she can’t swallow,” he said.

“Oh my—Is she going to die?”

Had the Kong gone down sideways, Gracie most certainly could have, but Wyatt gently patted Martha’s hand. “No, we can get the Kong out. Emily here will take real good care of her, I promise.”

“But . . .” Martha glanced at Emily, gave her a nervous smile, then turned back to Wyatt. “She’s new,” she whispered, like Emily didn’t have ears.

“She’s also good,” Wyatt whispered back, and patted her again.

Martha melted for him the way Gracie had.

Dr. Wyatt Stone, animal whisperer, woman whisperer.

An hour later, Gracie had been sedated and the toy removed from her throat. Emily was washing up when both Dell and Wyatt walked into the staff room.

“Nice job,” Wyatt told her. “Really nice job.” He turned to Dell. “She’s got a good touch.”

“Glad to hear it,” Dell said.

“Because it means your money was well spent?” Emily asked.

Dell laughed. “Well, that, too. But it’s nice to have you on board. I’m hearing great things from the staff.”

Emily slid a look at Wyatt, who was watching her with that easy, calm confidence he exuded in spades.

“She handled herself with Blackie earlier,” he said. “Without getting nipped.”

Dell laughed, and at Emily’s confusion, he said, “Everyone gets nipped by Blackie the first time.”

“And some of us, the second time as well,” Wyatt said wryly, rubbing his thigh as if in memory.

Dell just grinned. “Man, that last time she just about ate your pants right off of you.”

“Which was the last time I kept a carrot in my front pocket, I can tell you that,” Wyatt said. “But Emily had her eating out of the palm of her hand in five seconds.”

Emily felt her face heat with embarrassment as she soaked up the praise she hadn’t realized she’d been desperate to hear.

Dell reached up into a cabinet and pulled out a box of cookies. Jade walked into the room and without missing a beat, took the cookies from his hand and replaced them with an apple.

“How the hell do you know?” Dell asked, baffled.

Jade smiled, kissed his jaw, and left.

Dell sighed and bit into the apple.

That must be love, Emily thought.

“We need a welcome to Belle Haven dinner,” Dell said to Emily. “How about tomorrow after work, Wyatt?”

“No go,” Wyatt said. “Adam’s running an S&R class, and we’re both working with him. You promised.”

“Yeah. And then Jade’s got me signed up for a couple’s cooking class for the next three nights after that.” His face was carefully neutral as he said this, and Emily loved that, though he was clearly not thrilled about this, he kept it to himself, not discrediting his wife in any way.

“Friday then,” he said.

“Sounds good to me,” Wyatt said, and both men looked at Emily.

No socializing, she’d told herself. Just ignoring. Wyatt, his back to Dell, smirked at her clear internal battle. It was the smirk, she decided, that disconnected her mouth from her brain. “Dinner would be great.”

Dell left and she stared at Wyatt. “Does he know about us?”

“Know what?”

She felt herself flush again. “You know.”

He laughed, low in his throat.

“You think this is funny?” she asked in shock.

“What’s funny is that you can’t say ‘sex’ but you could put your mouth on my—”

“We can’t have dinner!”

“Hey,” he said, lifting his hands. “Not my idea.”

“No, but you could’ve told him you were busy.”

“I wasn’t.”

“And you never lie?” she asked in disbelief.

“Only when it suits me.”

She absorbed that for a moment, thought about their night together, specifically their good-bye, and then sucked in a breath. “Did you—”

“Like when I told you as you left my hotel room that it’d been the best night I’d had in a long time?” he asked.

Actually, he’d pressed her against the hotel room door, cupped her face, given her a wow good-bye kiss, and then whispered in her ear. You’re going to be hard to get over, sweetness. That was a night I won’t forget. She cleared her throat. “Yeah,” she said. “That.”

He was still smiling, but there was more to his gaze, a sudden intensity. “No,” he said. “That was one hundred percent honesty.” He met her gaze. “You’re not the only one thrown off their axis here, Emily. We never intended to see each other again. Hell we didn’t even know each other’s last names. And that worked for me.”

She absorbed the unexpected jab, and then shook it off. If she was being honest it worked for her, too. After her internship, she was going to leave Sunshine and go back to her real life. She had a whole lot of plans, none of which included a sexy but laid-back vet who apparently had his own secrets. “Which is why we need to really work at ignoring our sordid past.”

His lips quirked. “Especially since you have an almost sort of boyfriend. The . . . silent kind.”

She refused to let him bait her. “And how about your reason for not wanting to be with someone. Let’s hear about that.”

He didn’t answer. Just flat out said nothing.

If she hadn’t been so flipping curious about him in spite of herself, she’d have taken the time to admire his ability to do that so effectively. Only a man, she thought. “I suppose this is your charming way of saying none of my business?”

He shrugged.

“Got to tell you,” she finally said. “It’s a little annoying, not being able to read you, and you not speaking in full sentences. Or in any sentences.”

He smiled at that. “When you first started here. I wondered how a cute little thing like yourself had ever been pushy enough to make it through the world of animal medicine, but you’ve got grit, sweetness. You were born for this job.”

“And you should’ve become a politician for your ability to dodge a question.”

He tipped back his head and laughed. It was a good laugh, and did something to her belly. Not good.

“I’m not opposed to being with a woman,” he said. “As you very well know.” He met her gaze, and she felt yet another blush rise up her cheeks.

“As for settling down with one woman,” he went on. “I work morning to night, I live the job, and on top of that, I’ve got two bossy, nosy sisters, and we share a large ancestral home that’s falling apart. It all requires a lot of my time and attention. A woman would be crazy to want me right now.”

Emily thought maybe that was unfair to the woman who fell for him—which absolutely would not be her. But surely, whoever did could see through his schedule to the man beneath, and just as surely get that he was worth working around his busy life.

“Now you,” he said.

“Me what?” she asked warily.

“When I complimented you in front of Dell, you just about fell over in shock and embarrassment. Why?”

“I didn’t.” But she had, and they both knew it.

Wyatt waited her out with the same calm patience he’d shown every animal they’d seen together.

“I guess I didn’t expect you to notice how hard I was working, because you were working just as hard,” she finally said.

He looked at her for an eternal beat, during which time it felt like he was seeing all her inner thoughts. And as some of these inner thoughts involved him naked on a platter, this wasn’t a comfortable feeling. But she also had a lot of insecurities and self-doubts, and wasn’t used to the kudos.

“Why did you become a vet?” he finally asked, voice quiet.

And just like his patients, she fell right into his eyes and tried to please him. “I’m a third generation,” she said. “My grandpa was an army sergeant turned vet.” She smiled at the memories of him. “There wasn’t an ounce of gentleness to him for people, but he had endless vats of it for an injured or sick animal. He inspired me.”

Wyatt smiled. “Was it your mom or dad to follow the tradition?”

“My dad. He’s not army,” she said. “But he’s just as pragmatic and stoic as my grandpa was. He’s a rescuer, always was. He spent most of his career working for the local shelters, doing whatever needed to be done without much thought or care to anything else.” Like his personal life.

Including his family.

“Makes sense,” Wyatt said. “He was raised by a military man.” He paused. “It’s not easy to make a living working just the shelters.”

“No.” Though they’d always had the bare necessities, there’d definitely been a lack of comfort. “He doesn’t practice much anymore,” she said. “Hasn’t since my mom died.”

Wyatt was quiet a moment, and she was extremely aware of his gaze on her face, and the fact that she’d given him a lot more than he’d given her.

“Broken heart?” he asked.

“More like a lack of interest,” she said. “She was his drive. He still rescues animals though.”

“I meant what I told Dell, you know,” Wyatt said. “You’re good. And it’s nice that you’re following your father’s footsteps. Nicer still that you’re taking the less obvious route by coming to Idaho instead of the Beverly Hills gig.”

She could have just not said anything, but unlike him, she didn’t have a tier for acceptable lies. “I wanted the Beverly Hills gig.”

Something changed in his eyes, but he didn’t say a word about her choices or the reasons for them. He merely gave her another smile. “Maybe things work out for a reason. Maybe you’ll like it out here.”

“Maybe,” she said.

And look at that. Apparently she had a tier for lies, after all.