Then Came You Read online

  She started to balk because she wanted to help, but the look on Wyatt’s face was steel.

  So she stayed, watching in horror, at the horse stuck in the mud and barbed wire, fighting itself and the men already in place trying to help. With every movement, Aurora only succeeded in embedding the wire deeper and deeper in her flesh.

  Wyatt, Adam, and Brady waded right in, not a single one of them hesitating in any way or dodging the possibility of getting caught beneath those wild hooves or the weight of the horse. She watched Adam take charge of the rescue while Wyatt did something with a syringe. Then he was adding his hands and voice to the mix. Calm. Sure. Absolutely one hundred percent in charge as he worked to soothe Aurora.

  The horse thrashed and fought, not going down easy.

  “The wire’s beneath her,” Wyatt clipped out to Adam.

  “Get her up,” Adam said.

  Heedless of the danger to himself, Wyatt dug his feet into the mud and added his bulk to the efforts of getting Aurora upright. Meanwhile Adam tried to work around the flailing horse to cut the wire free, all while Aurora did her best to trample the shit out of all of them.

  Wyatt grabbed Aurora’s face and spoke right into her ear with calm authority, and Aurora’s ears flattened. She was listening. Not necessarily liking, but listening.

  And Emily was transfixed. Watching Wyatt in action was like watching a rock star. A vet rock star.

  Like Adam, like Brady, like Dell—all men she’d come to admire—Wyatt never rattled, was always willing and ready to be in charge of any given situation.

  Just as they got the horse free of the wire, Aurora finally began to succumb to the sedative. The poor, exhausted thing dropped her head and huffed, pressing close to Wyatt, knocking him back a step.

  Wyatt just spread his legs for better balance and wrapped his arms around her, stroking her face, murmuring something low that Emily couldn’t hear, while the other men pulled the rest of the wire as far from them as they could get it.

  Wyatt gestured Emily in. “She’s good now,” he said, eyes locked on to Aurora’s. “Aren’t you, sweetheart?” He stroked her, loving her up, and the horse tossed her head. “I know,” he murmured softly. “You’re still beautiful.”

  The horse, bleeding from a dozen deep cuts, snorted her agreement and gave Wyatt a not-so-gentle head butt to the chest that once again knocked him back a step.

  He just grinned at her. “Still feisty. I can understand that. You’ve had a rough morning. Emily, you ready?”

  She was ready, and side by side they began treating her wounds.

  “Stay sharp,” Wyatt told Emily quietly as they worked. “She’s still looking for someone’s ass to kick after her ordeal.”

  And indeed, when Emily shifted too suddenly, Aurora whipped her head around, teeth bared.

  She might have taken a nice bite right out of Emily’s shoulder if Wyatt hadn’t given Emily a shove, a move that sent her flying back.

  To her ass in the mud.

  Aurora bit Wyatt instead, getting him on the forearm. Emily scrambled up to her feet and reached for him.

  “I’m fine,” he said.

  Great. He was fine and her ass was covered in mud and smarting from the fall. But this was the job. She knew this. She accepted this. So she pushed her own discomfort aside and dove into the work.

  Wyatt showed her some quick bandaging techniques for temperamental, still pissed-off and frightened horses so that she didn’t get almost bit again.

  It was the sort of experience she never would have gotten in the Beverly Hills vet office, and she knew it. By the time they all got back on the helicopter an hour later, she was exhilarated, but aching everywhere and starving.

  Brady was there ahead of them, ready and waiting with—God bless him—food. Hot pastrami sandwiches loaded with cheese and spicy mustard. The exact perfect food. She stuffed in her first bite and moaned. “I could kiss you,” she told Brady.

  Brady smiled. “That’s what all the women say.”

  Adam gestured to her leg. “What’s wrong?”

  He’d seen her limping. “Nothing,” she said quickly. Too quickly because Wyatt’s gaze narrowed in on her. “I’m fine,” she told them both. Sure, her butt hurt from the fall, but she’d probably just hit a rock or something. “I slipped in the mud—”

  “You didn’t slip,” Wyatt said. “I pushed you.”

  “Yes, well, I was trying to be polite.”

  “You pushed her into the mud?” Adam asked him, voice low but a whisper of disbelief in the tone.

  “To keep me from getting bit,” Emily said. “That, or for the whole mud effect.”

  “I did it for the save-Emily’s-arm effect,” Wyatt said. “But checking out your bruise later might make it worthwhile.”

  She choked on the bite she’d just taken. He was checking out her bruise never.

  The light of intent in his gaze said otherwise, and her inner slut sighed in pleasure.

  She shut it up with the rest of her sandwich.

  Nineteen

  They made it back to Sunshine in one piece. Emily exited the helicopter and walked across the street toward Belle Haven ahead of Wyatt and Adam, who’d stayed behind to talk to Brady for a moment.

  She was glad. She’d joked about the mud incident, but sitting in the chopper had made her muscles tighten up. The back of her leg, between her butt cheek and upper thigh, hurt like hell.

  Intending to go straight to the bathroom to take a peek, she started to walk into the front door of Belle Haven, but a hand clamped on her wrist.

  Wyatt.

  Without a word, he pulled her around the side of the building, through the back, and then nudged her into his office.

  “Um,” she said, when he shut and locked the door behind him.

  Leaning against it, his crossed his arms. “Strip.”

  She choked out a laugh. “Excuse me?”

  “I want to see your leg,” he said.

  “What leg?”

  “The one you’re rubbing.”

  Dammit. She dropped her hand from the back of her thigh, which she’d indeed been unconsciously rubbing. “I’m fine.”

  “No doubt of that,” he said and reached for the button on her pants.

  She squeaked and danced back, right into his desk. She winced at the contact.

  “Okay, that’s it.” His big hands settled at her hips and her belly quivered.

  The good kind of quiver.

  Before she could give that any thought, he turned her away from him, sandwiching her, her back to his front, between his body and the desk. Again, he reached around her for the button on her pants.

  She sputtered. “You can’t just—”

  He could, and did. Before she could finish her statement, he had her pants down to her thighs.

  She tried to turn, but he put a hand between her shoulder blades and pushed her flat to his desk.

  “Hold still,” he said.

  She opened her mouth to tell him she’d hold still when he was good and dead, which would be as soon as she managed to get her hands around his neck, but then he stroked his fingers very gently, very lightly high up on the back of her thigh.

  “Wyatt—”

  “Shh,” he said, and then his fingers spread a little, and she was thinking she couldn’t be as hurt as she thought because those fingers felt shockingly good.

  His thumb slid beneath her panties and scooped the material aside, giving her a first-class wedgie. Once again she started to squirm but then he set his whole palm on her butt.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, his voice low and gruff.

  “For bending me over your desk?” She tried to inject a pissed-off tone into the words, and a sense that his life was on borrowed time, but she sounded annoyingly breathless.

  “You’re bruised,” he said. He pressed between her shoulder blades again. “Stay right there.”

  “Like hell—”

  “Stay.”

  * * *

  W