The Secret Seduction

Fletcher kicked off one boot, then the other. “Carson McRue plays a character, Lily. What you see on TV is all an act, albeit a highly polished one.”

“I know that,” Lily retorted drolly as she heard a zip and a whoosh of fabric…and was that the shower starting? Telling herself she was not going to see Fletcher naked, no matter how brazenly he was behaving, she closed her eyes and rubbed at the tense spot just above her nose.

“But no one who isn’t that nice could actually pretend to be that caring and compassionate.” At least Lily hoped that was the case. Otherwise, her goose was cooked. She would never be able to live down this drunken boast. Never be able to get up the nerve to do what she had to do to make good on her lost wager…

“Don’t count on it,” Fletcher argued right back. “And anyway, it doesn’t matter.” The shower curtain opened and closed. Water pelted in an entirely different rhythm and the aroma of soap and shampoo and…man…wafted out on the steamy air as Fletcher scrubbed himself clean. “I’m still not introducing you to him.” He spoke above the din of running water.

At Fletcher’s stubbornness, it was all Lily could do not to stomp her foot. “But he and the rest of the show’s cast and crew will be here tomorrow,” she protested hotly as he shut the water off, pulled open the shower curtain with a telltale whoosh and ripped a towel off the rack with equal carelessness. “And you’re the only one in town who has met him.”

Six heavy male footsteps later, Fletcher was standing in the hall. Knowing she would be a coward if she didn’t look, Lily opened her eyes. Fletcher was standing there, regarding her curiously and unabashedly. He had a towel slung low around his waist. He was using another on his hair. And, she noticed disconcertingly, he looked every bit as deliciously sexy wet as he did dry.

“I found the guy a horse to ride while he’s here. That’s it. And all that required was a phone call and video-conference,” Fletcher told Lily in disdain.

That was far more contact than anyone else in town had had, Lily thought enviously. Why didn’t anything that exciting ever happen to her? And if it didn’t, how was she ever going to leave her Ice Princess of Holly Springs reputation far behind?

“You’re also going to be working at the set, as the animal-rights consultant.” She diligently made her case for him to help her.

Fletcher shrugged his broad shoulders, and Lily’s pulse picked up as she saw the loosely knotted towel around his waist slip a little bit.

Fletcher frowned, unimpressed. “It’s a glorified title. I only took the position because of the hefty paycheck attached to it. It doesn’t mean I really have any say in what goes on there. Unless of course they try to do some stunt that would actually harm any of the animals on the set. And right now, the only animal I know about is the horse Carson McRue will be riding when he takes off after the bad guys.”

“Fine. Whatever.” Lily did not care if Fletcher ended up being bored out of his mind. “The point is, the film crew is only going to be here for one week and you’ve got entrée. And I do have a bet going…”

Fletcher met her eyes, this time in all seriousness. “One that is bound to guarantee you getting hurt.”

Lily’s spine stiffened. She wished like heck that he would behave more modestly or put some clothes on. Not that she could actually see anything she shouldn’t be seeing…or wouldn’t see if he were, say, swimming.

“You don’t know that,” she retorted defensively in an attempt to get her mind off of what was under that towel. Was that as gloriously male and wonderfully attractive as the rest of him? And how would she—the woman of literally no worldly experience—know anyway, even if she were to see? She’d never encountered a naked man! Except on the big screen and in the movies she’d seen. And it was always a rear view, never ever the front.

“Don’t I?” Fletcher let go of the towel he had looped around his neck. He flattened a hand on the wall next to her and leaned in close, deliberately invading her space. “Let’s recap for a moment here, shall we?” he said softly. “Small-town girl—that would be you—who has never been out of Holly Springs, except for that one half semester she went to college in Winston-Salem before returning to finish up her studies at nearby N.C. State, tries to hook up with a Hollywood hunk who has a reputation for breaking hearts all over the world.”

Lily did not need reminding how stifling her life to date had been. “First of all, Fletcher,” she retorted, lifting her chin, “it was never my decision to live my whole life in North Carolina or live at home while I finished my business degree. But I had no choice. My grandmother was ill—and someone had to be there to drive her to medical appointments and see her through the surgeries, radiation and chemotherapy treatments.” Lily gulped around the sudden tightness in her throat. “So I did it, and furthermore—” her voice quavered even more as she thought about the heartbreak of that awful time “—I was glad to do it.”

Fletcher’s eyes softened and he touched a gentle hand to her quivering chin. “I know that,” he told her compassionately. “I’m sorry you lost her. You know how much I cared about Grandmother Rose. And the pets she had over the years.”

Lily did know. An animal lover from birth, Fletcher knew everyone in town, and their pets. His future as a veterinarian had seemed as predetermined as Lily’s, who had been tapped to continue the florist business that had been in the Madsen family for generations. The difference being Fletcher had gone into his career by choice. Lily had been forced into hers by duty. And at twenty-five, after years of sacrifice, she was getting pretty darned tired of doing what everyone else felt she should.

“Which is why, Lily, I and everyone else in this town who care about you do not want to see you make a fool out of yourself over an arrogant thespian.”

“Don’t you think that should be my choice?” Lily tapped him on the chest before she could think—then withdrew her index finger from that warm, hard chest and leaned back as far as she could into the wall.

Fletcher’s eyes grew dark, as he stayed right where he was. “Not if you’re going to make the wrong decision, no,” he said flatly. “I don’t.”

“WHAT IN THE TARNATION did you do to that little filly?” Fletcher’s brother Dylan asked, tongue in cheek, an hour later. A TV sportscaster by profession, Dylan couldn’t seem to stop observing and commenting on everything around him, even when he wasn’t working. But then, Fletcher noted, that was all Dylan had always been—a “watcher” rather than a “doer.” Whereas Fletcher could have cared less what anyone else—save the delectable Lily Madsen—was up to as long as it didn’t directly impact him.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Fletcher said, happy that his sister Janey was getting married to a man who deserved her, but wishing Janey and Thad Lantz had selected any other night for their wedding week kickoff pig pickin’ in his mother’s backyard.

Fletcher’s oldest brother Mac, looking as much a lawman out of uniform as in, edged closer, a plate of pork barbecue in his hand. “Lily Madsen hasn’t stopped glaring at you since the two of you walked in together.”

Fletcher forked up some of his own shredded pork and tangy barbecue sauce, irked because they were treating his coming in with the stubborn minx as if it were some sort of date, and it darn well wasn’t. “I didn’t ask her to the party,” Fletcher said, exasperated. “So don’t go making anything out of us coming in together.” That was just the way it had happened, thanks to Lily’s refusal to give up on her pitch right until the minute they walked in here side by side.

“Yeah, we know.” The twenty-eight-year-old Dylan winked.

Cal continued with a salacious grin. “At least she was on time.”

Fletcher shrugged his shoulders helplessly. Cal might have been the first of them to get married, but his wife Ashley’s current OB/GYN fellowship in Honolulu had him living the everyday life of a single man again. And though Cal kept insisting it wasn’t a marital separation, it looked to everyone else in the family as if it were. Particularly since it had been going on for two years now.

Not that Cal had ever looked at another woman. Ashley was—and always would be—the love of Cal’s life. For all the good it did him, Fletcher noted cynically.

“I couldn’t help being late.” Fletcher finally answered the charge against him. “A sick cow needed my attention.”

“No problem. Lily Madsen was only too happy to volunteer to go and find you and drag you over here.” Cal continued teasing, even as the beeper on his belt went off, signaling a message regarding one of his orthopedic patients.

Fletcher guzzled his icy cold beer as Cal stepped away to use his cell to phone the hospital. “Can I help it if I’m not much for parties these days?” Fletcher asked.

“Who are you kidding?” Joe razzed, looking fit as a fiddle, even in the Carolina Storm hockey team’s off-season as he chowed down on liberal amounts of coleslaw, beans and shredded pork. “You’ve never been much for parties. Always too busy tending to some sick or wounded animal.”

Fletcher wasn’t going to apologize for his devotion to his work. He plucked a golden brown hush puppy off his plate. “That’s my job.”

Thad Lantz, Janey’s fiancé, joined the group. “Not twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week,” Thad said with the same frank authority he used as coach of the Carolina Storm hockey team. “You’ve got a partner. She takes calls from time to time. Or so I’ve heard.”

“And your point is?” Fletcher asked Thad.

“It’s best to play as hard as you work.”

And all he needed, Fletcher thought sardonically, was a playmate who didn’t want hearts and flowers and marriage—or anything else he was ill equipped to give.

Even as he thought it a single woman came to mind. Beautiful, blond and all of twenty-five…

“I think we’re getting off subject here,” Dylan said, guiding the conversation back to where it began. He looked at Fletcher curiously. “We want to know what you did or said to Lily Madsen to get her so ticked off at you.”

Fletcher turned and looked at Lily. She was deep in conversation with his mother and sister, and the other bridesmaids. And she looked absolutely gorgeous. Like the cherubic angel he remembered her being as a kid, and yet…all grown up. Definitely grown up. Her five-foot-five frame was slender but curvy in all the right places, her legs stunning enough to make even the most jaded guy stop and take a second and third look. Her baby-blond curls had been cut to chin-length, but these days she wore them in a tousled, unconsciously sexy, finger-combed style that drove him wild. Her soft pink bow-shaped lips had a sensual slant and the rest of her features—the straight slender nose, high cheekbones, wide-set Carolina blue eyes—were elegance defined.

She was incredibly feminine, and it didn’t matter whether she was wearing the khaki pants and pastel T-shirts he sometimes spotted her in, or the kind of floaty, flirty tea-length floral sundress and high-heeled sandals she had on now. She always exuded a sort of purity and innocence that was amazing for someone her age, especially in this day and age. Which was why, Fletcher thought as Lily turned and sent a brief, dagger-filled look his way, he had to stay away from her. Which probably wouldn’t be hard, given all the reasons he had just given her to absolutely loathe and detest him.

Reluctantly, he broke off their staring match and turned back to Thad and his brothers. Aware they were still waiting for an explanation, he said, “She wants me to fix her up with Carson McRue when he hits town tomorrow to start filming Hollywood P.I.”

“And you refused?” Mac guessed dryly.

Hell, yes, he had refused, Fletcher thought as he took another swig of his beer. “Lily is much too innocent to be hooked up with a narcissist like McRue,” Fletcher said in the most disaffected tone he could manage.

“Let me guess. You gave her a hard time about wanting to go out with him at all,” Cal said.

“No,” Fletcher replied, beginning to feel exasperated again as Lily shot him another withering look over her shoulder, which was followed by a whole slew of withering looks from his mother and the other bridesmaids. “I simply told her the way it was,” Fletcher continued matter-of-factly, defending his actions. “And I wouldn’t have done that if she had just taken my hint and not asked for my assistance in garnering an introduction.”

The male members of the wedding party turned to look at the female participants. Especially Lily, who still looked awfully ticked off, like her temper was sky-high. “What’d you say to her?” Dylan asked curiously.

That was just it. Fletcher could hardly recall—he had been so focused on Lily and that sexy lilac perfume she was wearing.