Biting her lower lip, she reached out and snagged the gloves from the back pocket of his cargoes, doing her best not to cop an accidental feel while she was at it.
“Good,” he said. “Now get ready to help catch.”
She pulled on the birthing gloves as the sheep emitted another bleat, this one sounding so pain filled that she winced in commiseration with mama sheep.
“Hurry up, New Girl,” the guy said. “Find your sea legs. Poor Lulu here isn’t going to wait for you.”
Emily eyed the muck in the pen, and then her new pants suit, which had been bought with the Beverly Hills clinic in mind, where she’d envisioned herself treating the pets to the stars and looking glam while doing it.
Shit happened.
He moved over to make room for her and she kneeled at his side in time to literally catch the baby sheep and lower it to the ground.
The next half hour was a bit of a blur. The second lamb arrived in the wrong position, so she found herself up to her elbow in sheep. Literally.
“Close your eyes,” her mentor instructed.
She did, and he was right. It was much easier to “see” with her hands when her eyes were closed. The uterus tamped down hard on her arm, hard enough to bruise for certain, but she managed to guide the baby out. She stared down at the wiggly mass of goop and felt her heart stutter with the miracle of birth.
They helped Mama get her babies cleaned up, helped the babies get on all four wobbly, stick-thin legs, watching as they took their first sips from Mama. Covered in hay and muck, and sweating like crazy, Emily’s eyes misted with the beauty of it all.
Then she became aware that the man next to her had gone still. She felt the weight of his gaze. Yeah. At some point in the past half hour he’d figured it out, too.
Taking a deep breath, she looked up and met his familiar whiskey-colored eyes, which were narrowed at her in a squint. He was as filthy as she, but somehow he still looked hot as hell.
He opened his mouth to say something just as someone joined them. Dr. Connelly crouched low at her other side, grinning at the sheep. “Nicely done, Lulu.”
No longer in pain, Lulu bleated happily at the praise.
He turned to Emily next. “Sorry we didn’t get acquainted before we threw you to the wolves. I’m Dell Connelly.”
Extremely aware of the man still on his knees next to her, staring openly at her now, Emily started to thrust out her very messy, still-gloved hand to Dell. “Oops—Sorry.”
Dell smiled. “No worries.”
“I wanted to thank you for having me here, Dr. Connelly,” she said, struggling to remove the gloves. She was about as graceful as Gertie.
“Dell,” he corrected, and eyed her new and now filthy business suit with a quirk of his lips. “We’re pretty casual here. Try jeans tomorrow.” He nodded to the man on the other side of her, the one who’d carefully settled the new lambs with their mother. Emily could see his T-shirt beneath the opened doctor coat now, stretched over his broad chest, loose over his abs. The shirt said: Trust Me, I’m a Vet.
“So you met Dr. Wyatt Stone,” Dell said. “He’s going to be your immediate supervisor for the duration of your internship, and you’ll be shadowing him. I’d trust him with my life, and certainly to have my back in any situation that arises here, and you can, too.”
Oh boy. With no choice but to actually finally face this head-on, she looked Wyatt in the eyes. Oh yeah, it was him. Her one and only one-night stand from her one and only vet conference three months ago in Reno.
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?”