Then Came You

Two

Wyatt was exactly as Emily remembered—flat-out, dead sexy.

Dammit.

He was built all big and rugged and tough. Great eyes, great smile, both of which advertised that he was up for anything, especially trouble.

While he squinted those mesmerizing eyes at her, Dell snorted and shook his head. “You lost your glasses again? Man, Jade’s gonna staple them onto your nose.”

“They’re in my coat pocket,” Wyatt said, his voice sliding with smooth heat over Emily’s every single female nerve ending. She hadn’t forgotten the gruff huskiness of it in her ear, whispering all sorts of naughty promises of what he planned to do to her next.

And he’d kept every promise.

Every.

Single.

One.

All night long . . . She must have made some sound because both men raised their brows. She bit her lip and shook her head. Nothing. Or at least nothing she wanted to share with the class. Especially since she was remembering how her supervisor felt buried deep inside her body.

Dell reached forward and patted Wyatt’s pec, pulling out a pair of glasses, shoving them on for him, adding a face shove while he was at it. It was a guy thing to do and spoke volumes about how well they knew each other.

Wyatt blinked, presumably putting his world into sharp focus. Then he took another long, careful look at Emily and his mouth went grim.

He could join her club. This was the stuff nightmares were made of. Going to school in your Spiderman pj’s. Giving a public speech naked.

And discovering you’d accidentally slept with your boss.

She got to her feet and backed up, right into the fence. Yep, graceful to the end, that was her.

Dell rose to his full height. “You okay?”

“Yes, I just have to . . .” She put her hands out, letting the two men—one a little confused, the other completely flummoxed—assume she needed to wash up.

Which she did.

And then she needed a quick escape out of here and a one-way ticket to Timbuktu.

She hustled into the clinic and straight into the first room she came to.

A small bathroom. Perfect. There she scrubbed up, staring at herself in the mirror over the sink. “Good going, Doc. You slept with a perfect stranger for the first time in your entire life and now you have to look at him every day for a year.” Not that that was going to be a hardship.

She tapped a second round of soap out of the dispenser and scrubbed up some more. It was Reno, Nevada’s fault, she decided. It had been her first vet conference, and she’d loved it. She’d just graduated, been high on that and the joy of her future, and for the first time since her mom had died, she’d decided to let her hair down.

And oh boy had she done just that.

She’d had the night of her entire life; hot, torrid, amazing sex, but the next morning when she’d left his hotel room and made the walk of shame back to hers, wearing her clothes from the night before, heels in hand, she’d been embarrassed at her lack of control.

She, the woman who had to interview dentists before choosing one, she who couldn’t buy a new pair of shoes or an outfit without thinking about it at least overnight, had slept with a perfect stranger. Except now he wasn’t going to be a stranger at all.

Karma was such a bitch.

Behind her, the bathroom door opened. With a surprised squeak, she quickly whirled around. “I’m in here—”

“I know,” Wyatt said. The room was so small that his body bumped into hers when he closed the door. The last time this had happened, she’d ended up in his bed. Naked.

“Step back,” she said in a voice that wasn’t nearly strong enough.

He didn’t step back. To be fair to him, he couldn’t. But he didn’t have to get closer—which is exactly what he did. So much closer that she could have taken his pulse. With her mouth.

He was wearing glasses and though she’d never given it an ounce of thought before, a guy in glasses was sexy as hell.

Or maybe it was just this guy.

He dropped his birthing gloves in the trash, and then washed and dried his hands, his gaze holding hers prisoner in the mirror the entire time. Then he turned to face her and backed her into the wall. One of his hands settled beside her head, the other by her hip, trapping her in. “It’s really you.”

She gave him a little push, but did the big lug move? No. “I’m using the facilities here, Wyatt.”

“Good to know.”

“That I’m using the facilities?”

“That you remember my name.”

It was just about the only thing she did know about him, and that he’d pointed it out only emphasized how big a mistake she’d made. And if she was regretting it, sleeping with him, how must he feel? She knew why she’d done it, but why had he? What kind of a guy picked up a woman in a hotel bar at a vet conference?

Okay, so just about every guy on the planet would be up for that. But still . . .

She was close enough that when she tilted her head up to stare at him, a strand of her hair stuck to the stubble on his jaw. She stared at it, at the way his mouth quirked slightly, revealing an easy humor.

And she realized maybe she knew a little bit more about him than just his name. Thanks to the past hour, she also knew he was a vet like her, and a really good one at that. He was early thirties-ish, definitely young enough that the faint lines fanning out from his eyes were clearly from the sun and laughter, not age.

This wasn’t the problem. The problem was the other stuff she knew about him, things no one should know about people they worked with. Like the fact that he kissed amazingly. And he did . . . other things amazingly too. He liked to talk when he was in bed. Dirty talk that had shockingly turned her on. With nothing more than his voice, he’d been able to coax her into forgetting everything except what he’d been doing to her. And she’d liked what he’d done to her.

A lot.

He’d been an intuitive, giving, demanding, fantastic lover, and now she worked for him. Good sweet baby Jesus.

Those whisky eyes on hers, he hit the bathroom lock, the sound of the bolt sliding into place as loud as her accelerated breathing. “Oh, no,” she said, shaking her head. “No way.” They weren’t going to have a second one-night stand no matter how hard her nipples had gone. He’d already wielded his magic over her, with nothing more than that low-pitched voice and sex-on-a-stick smile. They were over and done.

Done. Done. Done. “Absolutely not doing it again.”

He grinned. “It?”

“You know what I mean.” She poked him in the pec, momentarily distracted by how firm it was. “And how is it you work here? Are you stalking me?” She gasped as another thought occurred to her. “Did you guys take me on because of—Oh my God. Is it because I”—she lowered her voice into a horrified whisper—”got naked with you on the first date?”

His lips twitched. “Sweetness, that wasn’t a date.” His voice went a little dry. “But yeah, I found you so irresistible in Reno that I hired a PI, got your last name and where your internship would be, and then applied to the same place to have a job as your supervisor all in order to continue having sex with you.”

“Okay,” she said slowly, staring up at him. “You’re right. I’m being ridiculous.” Now that she was thinking again, logic thankfully took over. She’d accepted this internship long before she’d ever gone to Reno. “Sorry about that.”

“Yeah, you almost overreacted there for a minute,” he said on a smile.

“Ha.” But she was overreacting to his smile, holy cow. He hadn’t shaved that morning, and she had good reason to know that the stubble on his sexy jaw wasn’t too soft or too rough, but juuuust right. She closed her eyes and tried to shake off that memory, but it was far more difficult than she’d have thought possible. “I have a plan,” she said. “A life plan. And this isn’t on it. You aren’t on it.”

Getting back home to L.A. was on it. Marrying her college study partner John was on it—though probably it would help if she was actually dating him for real instead of their vague promise to “maybe” reconnect in Los Angeles once he’d passed the bar exam. Paying off her college debt and buying her dad a house was also on her plan. As was getting herself a nice, comfortable, stress-free life. The only thing regarding Idaho on the plan was the three-hundred-and-sixty-four-day countdown she had going.

Wyatt had been watching her think too hard and his smile faded at whatever he saw on her face. “Your academics and work ethic earned you this internship, Emily. What happened in Reno—”

“—stays in Reno?” she asked hopefully.

He stared down at her for a long beat, and then nodded slowly. “If that’s how you want to play it.”

“So . . . it’s my call?” she asked, needing the verification.

“Your call.”

“Really?”

“I’m a lot of things,” he said. “Not all of them good, but if I give my word, then it’s gold.”

She nodded, and some of her relief must have shown because he cocked his head at her, looking genuinely surprised. “What did you think I was going to do?” he wanted to know. “Take out an ad in the newspaper about our night?”

Oh God. “Sunshine has a newspaper?”

“Well, no,” he said. “But there’s a bulletin board outside the Stop And Go. Good as gospel.”

She dropped her head and laughed a little, and then realized her forehead was on his chest. His hard chest. She quickly lifted her face. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have touched you.”

His eyes darkened a little bit, and she knew he was remembering the other things she’d touched that night.

And kissed . . .

Oh this was bad. Very, very bad. “We have to go back to being strangers,” she said.

He just stared at her.

“We are strangers,” she said.

“Yeah. Strangers who know what each other’s O-face looks like—”

She covered his mouth but it was too late. And great, now she was sweating again. “We wouldn’t know that,” she said through her teeth, “except someone insisted on keeping the lights on!”

He smiled, wrapped his fingers around her wrist and pulled her hand from his mouth. “I like the visuals.”

And there went the bones in her legs. “Okay,” she said shakily. “We’re going to need rules.”

He grinned. “Like?”

“No. No smiling! These aren’t fun rules.”

“Damn.”

She forgot about the no touching, and poked him in the sinewy pec again. Her finger practically bounced back. “One of the rules is that you can’t look at me like that,” she said. “We aren’t going to repeat what happened in Reno.”

He laughed softly. “It’d be hard to repeat it since you can’t even say what ‘it’ is.”

“I’m serious! I work under you, that’s it—” She broke off at his wicked expression and realized that she’d sounded . . . dirty. “You know what I mean!” She said this in no uncertain terms, firmly, and she meant it. Or, more accurately, she wanted to mean it. She’d have to work on that. “So you can just keep those sexy looks to yourself.”

“Sexy looks?”

Like he didn’t know. “Yes!”

“All right,” he said in his slow, warm voice. “I’ll stop giving you sexy looks. Anything else?”

“We ignore what happened in Reno. It never happened. We stay professional because Belle Haven is my job, my livelihood.”

His smile faded. “We’re in accord there.”

She let out a breath of relief. They could do this. “Okay, good. I’ll go out there first.” She started to turn to go around him, but there wasn’t room.

“Here,” he said, and his hands went to her hips as he turned, too, trying to make space.

Now they were sandwiched up against each other and she sucked in a breath.

“We’re going to have to stop meeting like this,” he said, good humor in his voice.

“If you weren’t so big, it wouldn’t be a problem.”

He gave another sexy low laugh and she replayed her words, heard the unintentional innuendo, and blushed. Well, hell. He was big. Everywhere. And in spite of being knees deep in muck not fifteen minutes ago, he smelled good. Really good. Warm and sexy good, which was just damn unfair. “Are you doing this on purpose?” she asked.

He gave her a look of utter innocence. “Doing what?”

“Blocking the door!”

“Why would I do that?” he asked.

She closed her eyes, sucked in a breath, and squeezed past him, brushing her breasts against his chest, her thighs to his, and everything in between—all of which contracted hopefully—as she finally got to the door.

“Emily.”

She didn’t look back. “I think we’ve said everything there is to be said, Dr. Stone. I really think it’s best if we completely ignore each other for now.”

“I get that, but you’ve got a . . .”

She felt the brush of his fingers at her ass, and she craned her neck and glared at him in disbelief. “Are you serious? We just agreed that this”—she waggled a finger between them—”never happened.” God help her but she couldn’t do this without his cooperation. “That’s the plan. Remember the plan. Stick to the plan.”

He stared at her for a beat through those sexy glasses, then lifted his hands in surrender.

Turning away, she peeked out the door. Seeing no one, she stealthily slid out and took a deep breath. Shook it off. Just a minor setback on The Plan she told herself. Just a little hiccup, and a huge mark in the con column of Sunshine. About six-feet-two-inches huge.

Trying to be cool, she walked down the hallway, and had just passed the staff room when the woman from the front desk stuck her head out.

“Hey there,” she said. “I didn’t get to introduce myself before. I’m Jade Connelly.”

Emily shook her hand. “Are you related to Dr. Connelly?”

“Married him. Did you know you have a birthing glove stuck to your ass?”