LITMIR.BIZ

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stricter time, but he liked a willing and expressive partner in bed. Damn if Arianna Hart hadn’t awakened thoughts of what he’d been missing.

      Blessed with a waterfall of ebony hair, porcelain skin and glittering cat-green eyes, she carried herself with a poise lacking in many of the modern day females he’d met. Her clothes hadn’t been overly revealing, but her top and jeans were snug enough for him to appreciate her curves. Given the comment she’d made about an ex-boyfriend on the police force, he’d pieced together the man in question was Lucas Drake. He didn’t know Lucas, but had already pegged him as a rival.

      “All right.” His gaze tracked to Wyn as he helped himself to more coffee. “Maybe I did, unconsciously,” he was careful to stress, “exert some of my, um–”

      “Charm,” Wyn said with sarcasm.

      “Charm,” Caleb agreed. “But only to keep Arianna here so she’d be safe from Seth.”

      “And that included having me slash her tire. She’s furious with you. With both of us.”

      Caleb scowled. With all of the complications in his life, he had no room for Arianna Hart. Maybe it was chemistry, as Wyn liked to call it. She was shapely and beautiful, and he’d been without any kind of sexual release for too long. He was probably just starting to feel the strain.

      “Paging Colonel DeCardian. Some attention, please, Sir.” Wyn snapped his fingers, jarring him back to the present.

      For a doctor, the man could be annoyingly flippant. But he was also brilliant and gifted, professional to a fault when needed. And he was a friend.

      Or almost. After Seth’s betrayal, Caleb had given up on friendship.

      “Bottom line,” Wyn said. “Tone down the pheromones. Arianna’s not the kind of girl you pick up for a one night stand.”

      Unwillingly to admit it was hard to keep his mind off the shapely schoolteacher, Caleb changed tactics. “Right now I’m more interested in the dead animal the sergeant mentioned. Reilly was at Weathering Rock last night. He killed that deer to taunt me.”

      “Forget about him and concentrate on keeping your headaches under control. You were messed up last night. I think we should stop the treatments for a while.”

      “No.” On that he was adamant. “I’ll be fine, Winston. As I recall, you were going to increase the dosage today. I don’t want to go backward.”

      “Caleb.” Growing uncomfortable, Wyn glanced at his hands. “What I’m doing isn’t without risk. The drugs I’m giving you are experimental. If it weren’t for Mitch Elroy–”

      “I know.” Caleb waved the observation aside. He didn’t know much about Wyn’s friend, only that he ranked highly in some secretive government branch, and had been a close friend of Wyn’s father, David DeCardian. A scientist, David had died when Wyn was a child, leaving Elroy to fill the role as a quasi-father figure. It was Elroy who supplied the experimental drugs used in Caleb’s treatments.

      Caleb knew his nephew had placed his professional reputation at risk. Should anyone discover what he was doing, his license, his career, everything he’d worked hard to achieve would be destroyed in a heartbeat. Caleb had no right to be difficult with him.

      Except he’d forgotten how to trust.

      “I’d like to go to the library in Sagehill, Winston,” he said, deciding the matter for both of them. “I’d prefer to get the injection over with now. I’ll cope with the headaches the same as always. I believe you keep everything we need in your den?”

      Wyn sighed, signaling defeat. Discounting the centuries that separated them, he was a year older, but Caleb was a battlefield commander. He’d been leading men far older than him from the time he was twenty-three. He’d survived countless battles, suffered more than one gunshot wound, and had once fought for two hours with shrapnel lodged in his throat.

      Grimacing, he fingered the scar on the side of his neck. A few headaches didn’t amount to much after the bloodshed he’d witnessed. Wyn would have to understand–he’d do whatever was necessary to get his life back, including sacrificing his health.

      Or Wyn’s career.

       Chapter 5

      After stopping at a service garage for a new tire, Arianna swung by the grocery store for a few perishables and boxed goods. It infuriated her to think Caleb had ordered Wyn to slash her tire. He may have thought he was protecting her by keeping her at Weathering Rock, but he’d had no right to make that decision.

      According to Lucas there had been a rabid animal running around and, yes, she’d seen something outside the window, but how dangerous could it be? And how had Caleb known in the first place? She supposed she should have told one of them about what she’d seen, but she’d been too angry over the tire. Luke said there were no wolves in Pennsylvania, so it was possible she’d imagined the whole thing.

      Still fuming, she returned to her townhouse and unloaded the car. She was putting the last of the groceries away when she spied several books lying on the kitchen table. She’d been brushing up on Gettysburg, the first of her summer fieldtrips only two weeks away. It was always a challenge getting seventh grade schoolchildren interested in history, especially when they’d rather be playing ball or camped out in front of the TV with a Wii or Xbox. Arianna was determined this year would encompass more than the same humdrum recital of facts. Mentally, she added the library to her list of errands, hoping to forget about Caleb. Why the hell couldn’t she get the man out of her head? He exasperated and bewildered her, but was gorgeous, magnetic and…sexual.

      It surprised her to think of a man she’d just met in an erotic fashion but, for all his courtly grace, Caleb exuded an aura of power that was primal. All she had to do was come within a few feet of him and her skin tingled.

      The phone rang, jarring her from her thoughts.

      She snatched the handset from the counter. “Hello?”

      “Ari?” Her sister’s voice echoed over the receiver, ripe with annoyance. “It’s about time. Did you shut off your cell? I’ve been trying to reach you all morning.”

      “Oh, hi, Daph.” A high-maintenance older sister was the last thing she needed. She’d been blowing Daphne off for days, knowing her sister wanted to gush about the latest man in her life. Daphne went through men like clothes, but her crush of the moment was always the one.

      “Where have you been?” Daphne persisted. “I tried to reach you three times this morning.”

      “I was grocery shopping.”

      “At eight AM?”

      Arianna tucked the phone against her shoulder as she juggled two cans of Italian wedding soup onto the top shelf of the cupboard. “I must have been in the bathroom.” Explaining to Daphne how and where she’d spent the night would only result in an endless string of questions. “I have to run back out,” she said, hoping to hurry the conversation along. “I’m meeting Lauren later.”

      “That’s why I’m calling. I left a message for her, but figured you’d see her first. Let her know my catering company can handle her party and I’ll have menus to her this afternoon.”

      “Okay.”

      Lauren Talbot was known for her yearly summer party, a tradition she’d started while married to Rick Rothrock. A man who’d made the most of the real estate market when it was booming, Rick had bagged his first million before turning thirty. Lauren was still living off that wealth, her settlement in the divorce sizable enough to make up for his foolish infidelity. “Lauren should have used me in the first place,” Daphne pouted into the phone.

      Arianna tuned out the whine as she crossed into the family room and opened the vertical blinds on her patio door. Her sister’s catering company was small; Lauren’s party larger than anything Daphne had hosted before. She’d gotten the job at the last minute when

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