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Fletcher shrugged, his emotions as tightly under wraps as hers were on the surface. “My guess is the canine equivalent of severe food poisoning. I think he’d been eating out of garbage cans while he was on the lam and got something particularly nasty, which isn’t surprising in the summer heat. Bacteria grows like wildfire. Anyway, he’s on the mend now, and I’ve got to find a new home for him.” The playful grin was back on Fletcher’s face as their eyes meshed again. “I spoke to him about it this morning and he told me he kind of fancied the pretty blonde who had been in here hassling me yesterday, so I promised N.L. I’d propose pet adoption to you.”
Very funny. And designed to pull on my heartstrings. “He can’t talk,” Lily pointed out.
“Come on.” Fletcher assumed the boldly enthusiastic tone of an aggressive salesperson. “Look at those big brown eyes and tell me you don’t know what he’s thinking.”
That was the problem—Lily did. And it was breaking her heart to admit she was not the person for the job. A dog like Spartacus needed someone knowledgeable in canine care. Telling herself it was for the best, Lily turned away. “Have you talked to his previous neighbors?” she asked.
Frustration tightened the corners of Fletcher’s mouth. “They’re all in their golden years. None of them can handle a three-year-old Labrador retriever who is going to have plenty of energy as soon as he recovers all the way.”
Lily nodded in understanding, even as she forced herself to harden her heart. “I’m sorry about his owner,” she said sincerely.
“So is N.L.” Fletcher knelt down and opened the cage. The Lab struggled to his feet, and clamored out on wobbly legs. Spartacus’s tail wagged, then stopped as he caught the wary expression on Lily’s face.
“But I can’t help you with this, Fletcher,” Lily continued firmly as the Lab sat down in front of them and looked up. “But maybe you could take him,” Lily suggested as Spartacus continued to gaze at them woefully.
“Can’t,” Fletcher said, his attitude every bit as stubbornly resistant as her own. “I live in an apartment. This dog needs a house and a yard.”
Lily crossed her arms in front of her. Spartacus’s well-being aside, she resented the way Fletcher was trying to make this her problem. “Like the one I live in, I suppose,” she said dryly.
Fletcher’s golden-brown eyes gleamed. “It is big.”
“It’s huge.” And way too much for one person, Lily thought. But the property, which had been in her family for generations, had been entrusted to her, so she couldn’t sell it any more than she could get rid of Madsen’s Flower Shoppe. But none of that had anything whatsoever to do with what was going on here. “And I still don’t buy your excuse for not taking him since there are walking trails that lead to the park that start right across the square.” Fletcher could manage if he wanted.
“Only one problem with that,” Fletcher shot back while Spartacus sat patiently at their feet, his head moving back and forth like that of a person watching a tennis game. “When I’m not here at the clinic working, I’m out on ranches and farms, taking care of large animals.”
“So get Spartacus obedience trained to the highest level by your cousin Susan Hart—” who was famous for her work with search-and-rescue dogs “—and take him literally everywhere you go. You’re certainly in a business conducive to it.”
Fletcher rejected her suggestion with the same fervor he attached to her desire to date Carson McRue. “A good vet knows better than to get emotionally attached to his patients.”
“So, adopt Spartacus and get another vet to take care of him,” Lily said.
“N.L. is relying on me to get him well.” Fletcher reached down to pet his head, and was rewarded with a single but heartfelt thump of tail. Fletcher straightened and stepped forward slightly, further invading her space. “Besides, there is no room in my life for a dog,” he told her, looking deep into her eyes, his smile widening once again. “You, on the other hand, could use the company and protection a big handsome dog like Spartacus offers. He’s been through a lot, losing his owner and all. So he’s going to need a lot of TLC, especially for the first few weeks.”
Lily stepped back a pace, putting a necessary distance between them. “Thereby putting the kibosh on my pursuit of Carson McRue?” she volleyed right back.
Fletcher nodded solemnly. “You know what they say. For all worthwhile endeavors, sacrifices must be made.”
Lily rolled her eyes. “You’re shameless. You know that?”
Fletcher grinned but didn’t deny it as the phone rang in the other room. Abruptly sobering, he said, “Look, just stay with him for a few minutes, will you?” Fletcher rushed off to answer it.
Spartacus scooted closer. He looked up at Lily with those big sad eyes, silently beseeching her, and wreaking havoc on her tender heart.
“I really have to go,” Lily called after him. She was not going to do this. She was not….
Hadn’t she promised herself she wouldn’t let anyone or anything else tie her down, or distract her from having fun, fun, fun? She did not need to be sitting home babysitting a traumatized dog, no matter how lovable…. She needed to be out, fancy-free, kicking up her heels, recovering her lost youth….
“I mean it, Fletcher Hart!” Lily continued.
Fletcher stuck his head back in the room, the still ringing cordless clutched in his hand, his expression reproving. “Really, Lily. What’s two minutes petting Spartacus going to cost you?”
“I KNOW WHAT he’s doing,” Lily told Spartacus as the door shut behind Fletcher, and she heard him start talking on the phone. Unable to help herself, she bent down and gently petted the silky soft back of Spartacus’s blond head. “He’s trying to get me to bond with you so I’ll want to adopt you and take you home with me. That might be a good idea in theory because the old mausoleum I live in could use a little livening up. But the truth is that I’m not sure I still have any love left to give.”
Lily swallowed hard around the ache that rose in her throat. “Losing Grandmother Rose was so hard. I kept thinking I’d feel better.” But instead she had remained so numb inside. So depressed and alone and hopeless, all at once. Lily stroked him behind the ears, and heard him give a little moan in the back of his throat, not so very different from a cat’s purr. But unlike a cat, a species known for its aloofness, Spartacus seemed to want desperately to attach himself to her. And Lily understood that, too. She desperately missed having a family to call her own; the party at Helen Hart’s the night before had reminded her of that. “But then I guess you know a lot about that, too, don’t you?” Lily continued softly, still petting the extremely gentle-natured dog. “Having lost the only family in your own life.”
“Okay—” Fletcher burst back in, abruptly all business “—you can go now.”
The only problem, Lily thought, was that she didn’t want to go, since she and Spartacus were just starting to get acquainted.
“I mean it.” Fletcher shooed her toward the door. “Hasta la vista, baby. Vamoose. See you around.”
Lily straightened with as much dignity as she could manage, wishing she were a lot taller than five foot five inches. She propped both her hands on her hips and demanded indignantly, “Where did you learn your manners?”
“Didn’t,” Fletcher retorted briskly. “Can’t you tell?”
Lily blew out an exasperated breath, unsure whether she wanted to kiss him again or kick him in the shin. “Some things are glaringly apparent.” To her frustration, he looked pleased—instead of annoyed—by her insult, as if there was nothing he would rather do than work her into a temper and stand there trading insults with her. Spartacus, however, just looked upset to see her leaving. Her heart clenching, despite her efforts to stay emotionally uninvolved, Lily paused at the door. She swallowed hard around the ache in her throat. “Seriously, Fletcher, what is going to happen to N. L. Spartacus?”
The mirth left Fletcher’s expression. “I can keep him here another day or so.”
Lily’s heartbeat sped up another notch. “And then what?” she demanded.
He regarded her steadily. “Like you said, it’s really not your problem, Lily.”
Silence fell between them, more poignant than ever.
“I’m hoping to find a family for him,” Fletcher continued seriously.
“And if you don’t?”
He regarded her brusquely. “That’s not something you need to worry about.”
“Then why did you introduce me to him, bring me over here, have me pet him?” Lily demanded.
Abruptly, the artifice, the teasing fell away. Lily thought she got a glimpse of the real, unguarded man behind his customary mask of cynicism and what-the-hell playfulness. “Because I thought—” A shadow passed over Fletcher’s eyes. His expression tightened as he swept a hand through his hair. “It doesn’t matter what I thought,” he told her in a gruff voice, as Spartacus went back to sit on Fletcher’s foot. “I was wrong.”
AN HOUR AND A HALF later, Lily discussed the situation with the other bridesmaids as they congregated at a department store in Crabtree Mall in Raleigh, trying on shoes for Janey’s wedding. “He’s trying to get me to fall in love with N. L. Spartacus.”
Janey eyed her. “Seems to be working.”
“He thinks if I have a dog I can’t continue to try and win my bet with you-all.” Lily turned to Susan Hart, Janey’s cousin. “Which is why I was thinking…maybe you could take him?” Susan not only operated her own kennels on her farm outside Holly Springs, she headed up the North Carolina Labrador Retriever Rescue Association.
Susan, a voluptuous thirtysomething with champagne blond hair, shook her head wistfully. “I wish I could. But I’m at capacity and then some right now, with dogs that are coming into Labrador Retriever Rescue. You know how it is. Everyone wants their kid to have a puppy at Christmas. Six to nine months later they realize maybe this is too much work after all, and they just take the dog to the pound.”
Emma sucked in a breath. “That’s terrible.”
“I know,” Susan agreed. “But a lot of the dogs I get are able to be either adopted out to good homes, or trained to work with police and fire departments around the state. But it takes time to make a placement. Dogs that have been abandoned—like Spartacus—have issues, and require an awful lot of tender loving care, to feel secure again. That’s why Fletcher won’t take him—he doesn’t have the time to give Spartacus the TLC he needs.”
“Or so he says,” Lily grumbled, wishing Fletcher hadn’t made it seem to her like she was N. L. Spartacus’s only hope. He had to know—from the way she had let her own needs and desires go unmet when she was taking care of her grandmother—what a soft touch she was. And how very hard it was for her to say no to someone who asked for her help, even when it was for the best. She also wished Spartacus hadn’t looked at her with such sad, lonely eyes.
Misunderstanding the depth of her dilemma, Janey murmured, “You know, you don’t have to go through with the bet you made with us on your birthday, Lily. If you didn’t we would all understand.”
Lily saw the pity in their eyes. She’d had enough of that, too.
“You really didn’t know what you were saying that night,” Emma continued, gently giving Lily the out they all seemed to feel she needed.
What none of them understood was that the night of her birthday was the first time in years she had felt really and truly vibrantly alive. The only other time was when she’d been arguing with—or kissing—Fletcher, and that was just because he was so darn difficult and made her so hot under the collar.
Lily looked at the young women gathered around her as she tried on a pair of strappy black-and-white sandals. “So I wasn’t just foolish, I was stupid, too? Is that it?”
They all frowned in a way that let her know she was overreacting. “Reckless, maybe,” Hannah conceded, as she put the correct-size shoes back in the box for purchase. “That was quite a loser’s penalty you cooked up for yourself.”
“One none of us would ever expect you to follow through with,” Emma—who had made her own share of life’s mistakes—said seriously.
Lily sighed again. They thought she didn’t have it in her to be wild and crazy and fear-free. Because of the circumstances she had found herself in back in college, she’d never had the opportunity to embrace her youth the way other coeds did.
But Lily wasn’t responsible for anyone else now. It wasn’t too late. She could go back, recapture those years, that sense of heady freedom she had always yearned to experience.
“We could even substitute it with something else,” Susan Hart suggested brightly. “Like another bar or an event where you buy us all nachos and margaritas.”
And didn’t that sound dull, Lily thought, even as she absolutely dreaded what lay ahead if she didn’t win her bet. “I’m not going to welsh on my wager,” Lily said stubbornly, refusing to back down on the audacious claims she had made. As the looks of sympathy around her deepened, she continued with a devil-may-care-air she couldn’t begin to really feel. “Besides, it’s not as if I’m going to have to do what I swore I would do if I lost. Because I am going to get a date with Carson McRue before this week is up.” She just knew it.
Hannah Reid looked worried again. “Has he even spoken to you?”
“No,” Lily admitted reluctantly. “But he was eyeing me this morning. And I know that look.”
It was the same look that guys always gave her before they worked up the courage to ask her out on a date. It was only later, when they found out how dull, how prim-and-proper she really was at heart, that they lost interest in her. Just as Carson eventually would. But that wasn’t the point. The point was to do something daring and unexpected that would expand her horizons, herald a new much more interesting way of life. It was an effort to break completely with the heartache of five years that had been filled with illness and grief, as well as the boredom and depression of the last year. It was a way to recast her as sexy and exciting, instead of sweet and hopelessly angelic.
“What’s it to Fletcher anyway who you want to date?” Hannah asked curiously.
Lily shook her head, glad to talk about something other than reconfiguring the bet. Lord only knew. She had been trying to figure out that one herself.
“Could he be jealous?” Janey frowned.
Lily shook her head, protesting, “There’s nothing between Fletcher and me.”
Susan grinned as she slipped off one pair of sandals and tried on another. “The kiss last night says otherwise.”
The heat of embarrassment climbed from Lily’s cheeks. “Nothing besides that,” Lily amended hastily. “And that kiss didn’t mean anything.” Even if it felt like it had, at the time….
“Maybe he wishes the kiss did mean something,” Emma said sagely.
Lily stiffened her shoulders, trying hard not to remember how movie-star handsome Fletcher had looked standing shoulder to shoulder with Carson McRue in the town square that morning. As if Fletcher were the to-die-for sexy celebrity, and Carson McRue, merely average in comparison. It wasn’t as if she had to make a choice between the two of them, anyway. “Don’t be ridiculous.” She scowled at Emma and the others.
Just because Fletcher looked at her as if he wanted to bed her did not mean he ever would. “Fletcher is just being contrary.” Lily continued her argument that nothing was going on between them. “Proving all over again that he is no Sir Galahad. And that romance, or even the hope of it, is for fools.”
Silence fell between them. Fletcher had such a reputation as a mischief-loving cynic, no one could dispute that.
Lily looked at Janey. “Why is your brother like that, anyway?”
Janey’s lips took on a troubled curve. “I don’t know. At some point after our dad died, he just became really cynical and kind of only out for himself, his own ambitions and goals.” She paused, shaking her head in bewilderment and regret. “None of us have been able to get close to him emotionally. I mean, I know Fletcher loves us and would—when it came right down to it—do anything for us. But on a day-to-day basis? He’s definitely got his own agenda and not a one of us is privy to what that might be.”
THE NEXT MORNING, Lily picked up an assortment of fresh doughnuts, four cups of hot coffee and headed over to the barricades. Very little filming had been done the previous day and, judging by the amount of activity going on in front of one of the buildings being used as a backdrop, the cast and crew seemed anxious to make it up.
She had her cover story all prepared—that she was bringing this order by for Carson. But as it turned out, it wasn’t necessary to use hijinks for an introduction. The moment Carson McRue laid eyes on Lily, he headed her way, telling the guard standing watch over the barricades to let Lily on through. As she closed the distance between them, he flashed her the cocky grin he used on TV, gallantly took the breakfast she offered and led her toward his trailer.
“I was hoping I’d get the chance to meet you,” he told her warmly as someone rushed to open the door for them. “I noticed you yesterday.”
He led her inside the incredibly outfitted trailer. It had a living room, a well-equipped kitchen and a bedroom with a king-size bed.
“I wanted to meet you, too, but I couldn’t get close to you,” Lily said shyly. Although she was momentarily mesmerized by Carson’s drop-dead handsomeness, it surprised her that he was just five inches taller than she was and rather slight in build when compared to, say, the six-foot-one, two-hundred-pound, Fletcher Hart.
“I apologize.” Ignoring the breakfast she had brought, Carson went to the fridge and got out bottles of imported spring water. “Our producers are a little nuts about the possibility of anyone getting hurt, and with all the cords, power sources and booms—”
“I understand,” Lily said with a smile, sitting down on the butter-soft leather sofa. She moved over slightly when he sat down a little too close to her. “It’s very responsible of you.”
Okay, she was here. This was her dream come true. So why wasn’t she more excited? Why didn’t she feel the butterflies in her tummy that she felt when she was around Fletcher Hart?
Carson looked her over from head to toe, before returning to laser in on her eyes once again. “So what are you doing tonight?” he asked, drinking deeply.
Cut straight to the chase, why don’t you? Lily thought. But why are you complaining? This will help you win your bet. And you won’t have to… Aware Carson was waiting for her answer, while she was sitting there arguing with herself, Lily said, “I’ve got a fitting for a bridesmaid dress.”
“What about tomorrow night?” he asked, gulping down some more of that designer bottled water.
Lily knew what she would like to be doing—kissing Fletcher Hart again. But since that wasn’t about to happen… She shrugged. “I don’t have anything planned.”
“Perfect, then. It’s a date.” Carson pursed his lips together thoughtfully. “I’d take you out on the town,” he said after a moment, “but we’d be mobbed with my fans.”
Lily didn’t mind. As long as she accomplished what she had set out to do….
“Tell you what. Why don’t you come to my hotel tomorrow evening—the Regency, in Raleigh—and have dinner with me there? Say around nine-thirty?”
Lily was surprised to find she really didn’t want to go, at least not as much as she had initially thought she would if she were ever to get herself in this situation. But a bet was a bet and it would serve Fletcher Hart right if she were to win after all he had done to waylay her. “Sounds great,” Lily fibbed, still coming to terms with the fact she was about to have dinner with a TV star.
A rap sounded on the trailer door. Carson’s young and pretty female assistant stepped in. “Carson? There’s a Dr. Fletcher Hart—”
She didn’t have a chance to finish as Fletcher shouldered his way in. Fletcher looked at Lily and saw her sitting next to Carson on the leather sofa. He was not pleased.
“How are you doing in finding me a horse to use?” Carson demanded.
“No luck—yet. At least not in the hue you want. But that’s not why I’m here. I’m here to collect my woman,” Fletcher announced with all the audacity of a big-screen hero.
Lily blinked. And just as audaciously tossed a glance behind, to the left and right of her. Nope. No one else standing there.
Hands braced on his hips, Fletcher regarded Lily with exaggerated patience. “What have I told you about chasing other guys?” he demanded, as unamused by her antics as she was by his.
“Nothing,” Lily said, enunciating slowly, as if he were a dunce. And truly Fletcher was behaving like one.
Fletcher gave Carson a man-to-man glance. “What can I say? This is all a game to her. She likes the chase—” Fletcher reached out, grabbed Lily’s hand and tugged her off the sofa “—and I like giving her one.” Behaving as if he had some right to be going all possessive on her, Fletcher tucked one muscular arm behind her knees, the other behind her back.
