The Secret Seduction. Cathy Thacker Gillen

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      “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, СКАЧАТЬ