On Thin Ice

by Cherry Adair

  "It's just a hobby, and I already have a fortune," she reminded him dryly. Despite Sean's failings, he'd left her a very wealthy woman, which was why she'd been taken by surprise at the news that he hadn't had even part ownership of the ranch. "So the ranch was the secret Sean was keeping, huh?"

  Derek's eyes narrowed. "The—what?"

  And maybe it wasn't. Damn. "Nothing." Suddenly, the barn, the ranch, hell, Montana felt crowded. Lily couldn't wait to leave for the Iditarod trail. Alone. Just her and the dogs. Miles from anywhere and anyone who had the power to hurt her. She was sick and tired of pretending to everyone, including herself, that things were hunky-dory. She wanted honest emotions and no more pretenses. She needed to be away from the ranch, from memories of Sean and from the discomforting presence of Derek Wright.

  What she needed was solitude, miles of it. She'd get that in the next few weeks.

  "I knew Sean was up to something before he died." Lily folded the damp towel and draped it over the edge of the sink, looked around for something else to occupy her hands. She could toss the wood carvings into her bag—but Derek stood between her and the little group. "I guess this business with the ranch was it. Thanks for saving his pride by pretending it was half his. But I really have no interest in being part owner of a ranch." She put out a hand. "Here, give me those."

  "I'll buy this carving of Diablo from you," Derek said easily, his thumb moving back and forth over the tiny bull's back. "You should have a showing in New York or somewhere. Seriously, Lily, these carvings are magnificent. People would clamor at your door to have your work. It'd be a viable source of income for you."

  Lily dropped her hand, and jerked her gaze from his long, tanned fingers, and that slowly moving thumb, back to his face. "You can have it." Nobody had anything she'd made over the years. Not even her father. She tried to tamp down the little glow inside at the thought of Derek owning something she'd made. Silly. It's just a piece of wood. She had dozens, hundreds of them at home.

  "Flattering, but no thanks. It's just a hobby and I like it that way. Besides, I could retire tomorrow if I wanted to. Which I don't." She suspected the obscene amount of money in her name in a Cayman bank had been illegally obtained by her husband. She'd give it back as soon as she figured out who it really belonged to. "I love what I do, thank you very much. And I have my dog-training income. By the time I get back from the Iditarod, if I come back, Barry will—"

  He stopped stroking the little carving to stare at her. "What do you mean if you come back?"

  "I might stay in Alaska, open a practice there. Train sled dogs on the side." Okay. Not something she'd thought through yet. But a possibility. She had to learn to become more proactive about her own life, damn it. She'd spent most of her twenty-seven years blowing in someone else's wind. Her father was a vet. She became a vet. Sean—

  "You do that here."

  "Maybe I need a change of scenery." The idea was gaining momentum like a snowball rolling downhill.

  "For God's sake, Lily." He shoved the little carving into his pocket. Heat poured off his large body as he stepped closer and, typically Derek, invaded her personal space. "You're overreacting. What does it matter how the split of the estate happened? Half is yours, legally, fair and square. It's a done deal. You can't just pack up and leave." He looked around, as if looking for someone to agree with him. But the cows couldn't care less. And the calf's little sides heaved as he nursed, oblivious to the humans.

  "You've lived here your entire life." He scanned her face for—what? "You have friends here. Family. Hell, what about your father?"

  Lily shrugged. "I'll call him often. Besides, he has Paula and Matt." Her dad had married Paula Kruger eleven years ago. Her son, Matt, was Lily's father's veterinarian assistant and partner.

  In the last few years Lily seemed to have been squeezed out of everybody's life with no regrets. Even her own dad had moved on, building a new life that didn't include his daughter. It didn't matter how adult she was, she missed the closeness she and her father had shared since her mom's death in a plane crash almost nineteen years ago.

  She had nothing against Paula and Matt. They were lovely people. They were just lovely people who'd unintentionally driven an ever-widening wedge between Lily and her father. But she had to admit, if only to herself, that she'd allowed it to happen. All part of that "getting blown around by other people" thing she was so determined to fight her way out of. It wasn't too late to salvage a relationship with her father, and Lily was determined to find her way back to herself, too.

  "Not the same as working with his daughter," Derek muttered.

  Lily smiled, a part of her appreciating the knight-errant comment. "They manage the practice fine without me. Look, Derek. This is a waste of time. I don't understand the legalities of what you did or how it even came about. That said, I won't accept charity from you. You and Barry will have to work this out."

  "It's complicated—"

  "Yes. Things with you and Sean usually are—were." She shook her head and stared up at him.

  There was good reason not to tell Derek what she'd learned about Sean over the years. She'd like to believe she didn't want Derek to know about his friend out of a sense of loyalty to the man she'd married. But the reality was, she didn't want anyone else to know because she couldn't take the pity—or the humiliation of having everyone know what an idiot she'd been. And even if it didn't matter to Sean anymore, Lily wanted to hold on to whatever tattered threads of dignity were left to her. Sean might've been a philandering jackass, but he had been her husband.

  The other, even more powerful deterrent was that as long as she could convince Derek that she still cared about Sean, there was a faint possibility he'd eventually take a hint and stop flirting with her. Unfortunately, he had a skin like a rhinoceros. It didn't matter how many times she told him she wasn't interested, he just loved to flirt.

  It had been an ego-bashing realization—that to Derek the flirting wasn't personal. He just… did it. It was in his DNA to flirt.

  The first time she'd met him, six years ago, she'd taken one look and it had been as if a bomb had exploded. His impact was total, and complete. His looks first, then his charm, but the physical impact, that chemical reaction that said I can't wait to get my clothes off and feel you skin to skin, had shocked Lily to her toes. Shocked and, God help her, scared her to death. Anything that powerful, that intense, had to be dangerous.

  Anything a person wanted that desperately could be taken away. A person could go from euphoria to despair in a heartbeat.

  Unfortunately she'd wanted to sink her teeth into him, she'd wanted to lick and taste his skin, she'd wanted to grab great fistfuls of his long dark hair in both fists and draw his mouth down to hers. She wanted to throw caution and common sense to the winds.

  After one date with him she'd wanted a whole lot of things, Lily thought crossly. All of them bad for her. So she'd run from Derek, straight into his best friend's open arms, and found herself in a whole different sort of mess. And if that wasn't a sad, sorry statement for a widow to make, she couldn't think of one.

  And the reality, the ego-bruising reality, was that Derek had let her go. He'd done nothing to make her change her mind. He'd toasted them charmingly at their engagement dinner, and he'd been Sean's best man at their wedding, laughing and joking, flirting with every woman present.

  So that heat, that fire, had been completely one-sided. Fool me once, she thought ruefully.

  He'd never by so much as word or deed, or glance, done anything while she'd been married. But afterward… the heat had been back, like a smoldering fire under dry leaves in the fall. Just waiting to ignite into a gigantic bonfire. If she stuck around, she'd be burned to a cinder in no time flat.

  "Do me a favor," Lily said quietly, yanking off the apron and tossing it with her things in the corner. "Don't run the race this year." The grueling, thousand-plus-mile Iditarod race from Anchorage to Nome was brutal and challenging enough without having Derek alo
ng. She already had too many questions, and too little information circling around in her mind. She wanted to sort the wheat from the chaff without Derek around clouding the issue.

  He raised a brow. "Why the hell not? Scared I'll beat you again?"

  Lily had trained him and sold him his dogs. He was an excellent musher and had actually beaten her race time twice. A powerful adversary, he was determined, competitive and focused. Before, she'd enjoyed the competition. But for some reason this year was different. "I'd like to run the race without having to watch my back."

  "Don't flatter yourself, Doc," Derek said smoothly, a glint in his eyes. "As attractive as you are, when I'm in the race, I'm there to win. Hard to watch your back when I'm way ahead of you on the trail."

  "In your dreams," Lily scoffed, torn between amusement and irritation. "I want to run the race with my full concentration. If you're there—"

  "Well, bless your heart, are you saying I distract you?" He gave her a slow, lazy smile that touched off a response somewhere in her aching body. This was why, she thought, this was exactly why she didn't want him on the trail this year.

  She could handle Derek Wright just fine. Didn't mean she wanted to. She twisted her wedding ring deliberately around her finger. As soon as she noticed his gaze there, she stuffed her hands back into her jean pockets. She could be as subtle as Mata Hari. Sean's wedding ring was her body armor, and she used it ruthlessly to hold back the enemy at the gate.

  "Don't you have a serious bone in your body?" she asked crossly.

  "Oh yes," Derek assured her, blue eyes alight with wicked humor, apparently not in the least put off. "I have several bones that are very serious."

  Two

  The bitch hadn't told him.

  Yet.

  He'd been up here in the loft for hours, sweating like a pig, and dying of thirst. The hay prickled him through his sweatshirt and made his skin fucking itch. Good thing he'd taken his allergy meds. Christ only knew the hay made him sneeze. And just thinking about the bugs and shit that might be in the hay made him desperate to scratch.

  Maybe he'd get a bonus for his troubles and the doc and Wright would fuck. At least it'd be something interesting to watch. Had to make for better spying than the revolting spectacle of a cow giving birth.

  Maybe he could pick up some tips, he thought, getting hornier, but also angrier by the second. Casanova had nothing on Wright, and he hated him. Hated his easy familiarity with women, his charm, his good looks and all his fucking money.

  Wright deserved a fucking bullet in the brain just because. Because was good enough reason to blow the asshole's brain from here to hell.

  He grinned in the half dark of the hayloft. Now wouldn't they be surprised if he fell down and landed at their feet, guns blazing?

  Of course, he mused, stroking the barrel of his H & K and half listening to the conversation below him, he could take them both out now. No muss, no fuss. From this angle, a shot to the top of the head would be pretty damn immediate and final. He had the silencer screwed on…

  But a bullet was a bullet. And two gunshot deaths would mean the big redneck cop in town would be all over the place like a fly on shit. Hard to explain the deaths as an accident.

  No. This wasn't the time to be overt. Subtlety was called for, he reminded himself firmly. Subtlety.

  In a couple of days they'd all be up in Anchorage with thousands of other people at the start of the race. There'd be miles and miles of pristine forest and open land.

  Strangers all over the place. There'd be lakes and rivers, opportunities for death by avalanche, by drowning, by… The possibilities were endless and appealing.

  So varied, so creative. So accidental.

  "I'm going to check some of the other mom's," Lily told him. Sounding a lot more brisk than she looked. "See you whenever."

  Derek leaned back against the rail and crossed his ankles. "I'm in no hurry. Take your time." He bit back a grin at her exasperated glance.

  "Whatever."

  She looked beat, and he frowned with concern as she went into the next stall and murmured to her bovine patient there. He wanted to wrap his arms about her and let her rest her head against his chest as she slept. But Lily being Lily would be more apt to beat him about the head with a blunt instrument, or that sharp little tongue of hers, than let him touch her right now.

  Soon…

  He heard her soft murmurings to one of the new babies nearby.

  Every cow bred with their prize bull had had problems giving birth. Diablo was two thousand pounds of prime Red Brangus. The bull had weighed almost a hundred pounds at birth himself, and his calves were chips off the old block. Good for Derek's breeding program, but hell on the veterinarian who had to assist Diablo's extensive harem with every difficult birth.

  The lights in the building combined with a heater made the interior of the birthing shed downright balmy. Outside the temperatures had plunged to well below freezing. Lily had stripped off her outer clothing and tossed a sweater here and a shirt there as she'd worked, leaving her in jeans, cowboy boots, and a thin, much-washed pale blue T-shirt. While she checked on her patients, Derek shrugged out of his own shearling coat, tossing it over the picnic hamper he'd brought in with him.

  She'd ignore him until the job was done.

  All he had to do was wait.

  God only knew, he was a master at that game.

  In a few weeks he'd have her undivided attention, and she'd have to deal with him, whether she liked it or not. Instead of bulldozing through her resistance as he'd very much like to do, this time he was going to take it slow and easy.

  His flirting made her slightly uncomfortable, Derek knew. But damned if he'd stop. She needed to lighten up. Needed to relax and not take life so seriously. God only knew, the last few years had been hell for her. No humor there.

  But this was a new beginning. And he was here to make sure she got what she wanted. What she deserved. Even if Lily herself didn't know what that was, he thought with dark humor.

  With Lily he was never quite sure what was a smokescreen and what she truly believed. He suspected a lot of what she spouted about Sean was a shield to keep him at bay. The thought that she found it necessary to erect a buffer of any sort between them made him smile a tiger smile of satisfaction. It meant she wasn't immune.

  He'd deal with whatever rhetoric she threw at him until he could show her that that particular barrier was unnecessary. Hell. Any barrier between them was unnecessary. Like a kitten batting away a pesky bee, Lily either took swipes at him or tried to ignore him.

  One thing she wasn't was immune. Bless her sweet, stubborn little heart, she fought herself as hard as she fought him.

  She would have to learn that this time he wouldn't let her go without a fight.

  The only reason he'd let her go before was because he'd believed Lily loved Sean, and he'd been fooled into believing that Sean truly loved her in return.

  They'd all been wrong.

  He turned the delicate carving of the bull over and over in his hand, enjoying the feel of the smooth, cool wood beneath his fingers. She was so worried about pleasing the people she loved, that Derek wondered when last she'd done something for herself, just for the sheer pleasure of making herself happy.

  In a few weeks she'd be a very happy woman. He'd make sure of it.

  He'd bet she'd taken her sweet time checking on the new mamas, but there was only so much she needed to do now that the babies were born. Within ten minutes she was back.

  "Still here?" she asked pointedly, picking up her flannel shirt and shaking it out.

  "Nowhere I'd rather be," he told her honestly, admiring the muscles in her slender arms, and the way the soft fabric of her T-shirt molded to the gentle swell of her breasts. Her silky, light brown hair was a mess. Half in the braid and half out. Her bangs brushed her eyelashes. Unself-conscious and sexy as hell. She looked as though she'd just climbed out of bed, sleepy-eyed and tousled.

  "How about Tahiti?"
<
br />   He imagined Lily, golden and naked, spread out on a sun-bleached beach. "I can have us there in ten hours."

  She shook her head. "Some of us work for a living." She absently twisted her wedding ring as she looked around to see what else needed doing before she left. "Why don't you go on ahead," she told him, shrugging into her shirt and shooting him a wicked glance. "I'll meet you there."

  "When hell freezes over?"

  "When pigs fly," she said at the same time.

  "Your loss," he told her, smiling.

  "I'll sob into my pillow tonight," she assured him.

  Light glanced off the plain gold band on her left hand as she buttoned her shirt. Inside it, Sean had had engraved 4 ever. Derek knew, because he'd gone with Sean to pick out the ring, then stood beside him as it had been engraved. And all the while Sean had regaled him, and the three salespeople nearby, with the story of a waitress he'd picked up and spent the night with only the day before.

  Derek'd realized then that Sean's judgment was screwed. He could never trust this man. But by then it was already too late. Derek was by no means a prude. If his friend wanted to screw every woman in Montana and beyond, that was his business. But the fact that he was screwing everything that moved and sliding a ring onto Lily's finger was enough to make Derek want to pound his lying face into the ground.

  "Flip the lights, would you?" Lily told him, clearly ready to leave. The overhead lights in the birthing shed were brilliant enough for him to count the freckles across her flushed cheeks. He hit the main switch, and the cavernous barn was plunged into a soft amber glow.

  "Now that we got that out of the way, I brought you dinner." He moved his coat and picked up the basket he'd brought in with him.