Jill Shalvis - Then Came You

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?”

Bemused, feeling a little bit like he’d been hit by a tornado—a cute, feisty, sexy-as-hell tornado named Emily, Wyatt stepped into the hallway. He was just in time to catch sight of Jade pointing out what he’d tried to tell Emily—that she had a birthing glove stuck to her very sweet ass.

Her own hands on that sweet ass, she was twisting around to try to see herself. She went still, and then yanked off the glove. She stared down at it, and then, from the length of the hallway, lifted her head and caught his gaze.

He raised a brow.

She blushed.

Someone should probably point out to her that in order to ignore someone properly, you didn’t blush every time you caught sight of that someone. But it wouldn’t be him¸ since they weren’t going to talk. Not about their personal lives, and certainly not about that night.

And yet he remembered it, every detail. Sometimes he’d flash to the feel of her lips on his skin, her breath warm on his neck, her bare legs wrapped low and tight around his back, hardened nipples pressed to his chest as she arched up into him. And the sound of her sweet, needy gasp in his ear on that first thrust . . .

He blew out a breath and shook it off. He knew what she wanted from him, and he agreed. They needed to ignore what’d happened in Reno, for lots of reasons, not the least of which was that like her, working at Belle Haven was everything to him. No way in hell would he put it in jeopardy. He knew how to be professional, and for both of their sakes, that’s exactly what he’d be.

The center’s tech, Mike, came down the hall, his eyes going to Emily. “Pretty,” he said to Wyatt.

“A good vet,” Wyatt said.

Mike smiled. “Even better.” He handed over a file. “Exam room two. First timer. Has a . . . unique problem.”

Wyatt slid him a look. “Care to share?”

From exam room one came the sounds of a scuffle, and then Dell’s voice calling out for Mike.

“Oh shit,” Mike said. “Gotta go.”

“Hey, what’s the unique problem?”

But Mike was gone.

Instead, Emily was moving back toward him. Someone, probably Jade, ruler of their universe here at Belle Haven, had given her a lab coat to put on over her suit. He wasn’t sure why she’d been in a suit in the first place when her job was wading knee deep in questionable shit all day, but hell, he had sisters, two of them, both bat-shit crazy, so he knew better than to question a woman’s clothing choice.

Besides, she’d looked sexy as hell in her fancy suit, with her pretty blazer offering peek-a-boo hints of some lace thing beneath, as she helped Lulu give birth.

In general, Wyatt didn’t have a “type” of woman. For him it was about a certain gleam in her eye, a spark that said she knew life was hard as hell but that it could also be fun as hell, and she could make it work in either scenario.

Right now the look in Emily’s eyes was bring it on, and damn if he didn’t like that, too. He tore his eyes off her and opened the patient file in his hands. He read Mike’s prereport and smiled.

“What is it?” she asked as he came to a stop before her.

“Gonna be fun.” He handed her the file and walked into the exam room, hearing Emily’s sharp intake of air behind him.

She was a fast reader.

Lady was a year-old Tibetan mastiff. She was sitting next to her owner, Sally Feinstein, humping Sally’s leg.

Sally was calmly ignoring this behavior, thumbing through Facebook on her phone. At the sight of Wyatt and Emily, Sally put her phone aside and gestured to her hundred-pound dog—who looked twice that at least, thanks to her crazy, thick fur. “I’m on a road trip to my parents’ house down south. I’ve only had Lady about two weeks. They’ve never met her before, and I can’t take her there while she’s doing this to . . . everything.”