Cherry Adair - T-flac 06 (5 page)

He made a rude noise. "I'm going to win this year. Why not save yourself the embarrassment?"

It was a pleasure to see her cheeks pink and her hazel eyes sparkle as she got caught up thinking about the race, forgetting Sean for a while.

"You are so going to lose," she laughed.

"Come around here and give me your hand."

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

She narrowed her eyes. "Why?"

Derek reached across and pulled her around to his side of the table. "Sit."

Lily's butt hit the bench seat beside him. "Woof."

"It always amazes me," he said, sliding his fingers through hers and then using his thumb to deeply massage her palm, "how such small hands can be so amazingly strong." He ignored the initial pulling back of her arm, and kept massaging until he saw her eyes lose focus and her lashes flutter to her cheeks. He tamped his sigh of satisfaction down deep, and continued the spontaneous massage.

The woman worked too hard. He rotated her wrist, worked through the resistance and manipulated her fingers between his. Her skin was as pale and fine-grained as a baby's, yet she sported some serious calluses across her palm and dozens of fine white scars, presumably from the whittling knife. Her hands were as slender and strong as her body. Her nails were cut short, no polish. Lily's fingers curled against his hand and the sensation shot directly to his groin.

"God. That feels amazing. If this is what you do for your girlfriends, it's no wonder you have to beat them off with a stick."

Keep it light. "I only do hand massages for partners who've spent the night pulling a calf."

"Mmm." Lily let her eyes drift shut, then pretended to snore.

"Okay," he said, releasing her hand reluctantly. "When the lady starts falling asleep during a sensual hand massage, it's time she went home."

He was right. It was past time for her to go. But oh, she really didn't want to leave the cozy warmth of the barn for the frigid wind and the long drive back home.

"Go home and get some sleep," Derek told her quietly, hating to ruin a peaceful moment between them, but seeing the lines of exhaustion on her face.

"Um-mmm," Lily agreed, not opening her eyes. "Still going to beat you."

"Dream on, Doc."

Lily opened heavy-lidded eyes. "You're right. I need some sleep."

Derek rose when she did, snagged her heavy parka out of her hand and shook off the bits of hay before holding it out for her to slip on.

"Thanks." She pulled her braid haphazardly from the neckline and tugged up the zipper.

"Spend the night. Why waste time driving when you could be sleeping?"

"It's only five miles. I'll be fine. I'm camping out with the dogs anyway." She slanted him a look. "And so should you be."

He gave a mock shudder. "I prefer the comforts of a nice warm bed for as long as I can get it. Plenty enough time during the race to sleep with a snow blanket."

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

"You're a high-maintenance guy, Mr. Wright," Lily said with a small edge to her voice.

"I like my creature comforts," Derek told her, absently pulling one side of her collar straight, and tugging her braid all the way out of the back of her coat. The long rope felt cool to the touch, and, God—sleek, soft, sweet-smelling. His fingers lingered before he dropped the silky length.

While meticulous in her care and treatment of animals, Lily barely spared a thought for her own. There wasn't an ounce of vanity in her. No makeup, no perfume. Just the clean fragrance of her soap and the incredible texture of her skin. Her eyes gave off more bling than a thousand diamonds.

He walked beside her and pulled the door open wide enough for them both to step through. The still, frigid air hit them like an ice pick. "You sure—"

"Positive, but then…" The snow lay thick and crystalline on the ground. Icy-cold air made Lily's words visible. She frowned as she glanced round. "What happened to my truck?"

"In the garage."

His foreman, Ash, had moved it. Lily, being Lily, had arrived in a spray of snow and gravel and left the truck parked—barely—and still running outside the barn. If it had been left sitting outside, it wouldn't have started.

The snow had stopped an hour ago, and the moonlight sparkled on the banks of bright white, shimmering like diamonds.

Their boots crunched and the rhythmic beat accompanied them to the side of the house where an eight-car garage housed Derek's collection.

"Boys and their toys." Lily shook her head as he opened the side door and she preceded him inside the heated garage.

"But there's always that one toy you can't have, isn't there?" Derek said quietly behind her.

Three

Everything was perfect. Or it would've been if Derek had stayed in Montana.

Lily glanced at the crowds while a reporter and her television crew set up their cameras and equipment to interview her. She'd drawn number twenty-nine at the start line, and so far Derek was nowhere to be seen in the churning, cheering mass of humanity lining the streets.

"Ready?" the attractive blond anchorwoman asked Lily, while a gaunt-looking man followed her with a blush brush in one hand and a comb in the other. "Stan, thanks, I'm done. No—thank you. My hair's great. Lily? Could you stand near the sled? We'll pan down the line as we talk."

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

"Sure," Lily said obligingly, waving to several people she knew. She'd much rather be talking race than standing conspicuously before a camera crew from the San Francisco station. But there were relatively few women running the race, and although she wasn't comfortable with a camera pointed at her, the publicity was good for the sport.

"Seventy-three teams are gathered in Anchorage for the start of the race," the KPIX anchor said smoothly. "As you can see, excitement is pumping through the crowd." She smiled, "With us is Dr. Lily Munroe, a veterinarian from Montana who has run the race—how many times?"

"Five," Lily said obligingly.

"Dr. Munroe has won the Iditarod once, and placed in the top twenty twice. An amazing accomplishment. Historically more than half of the eager teams gathered here on Fourth Avenue today have no hope of reaching the finish line. Isn't that true, Lily?"

Lily smiled at the little red light. "It wouldn't be called a race if anyone and everyone could win, or even complete the race," she said easily. "Forget
not winning
, very few of us will even make it to the top twenty cut. For most competitors, the main goal is simply to complete the grueling race. Crossing under the famous burled arch at the finish line in Nome with our dogs will, for many of us, be victory enough."

Lily answered most of the reporter's questions by rote. The noise level made a lengthy interview almost impossible. Fans, volunteers, photographers, radio broadcasters and television crews focused on the start line beneath the fancy banner fluttering overhead. Raised voices coupled with the crush of thousands of onlookers, and the keening and barking of hundreds of dogs eager to get started, gave the whole event a circus feel. Adrenaline was the drug of choice and everybody was high on it.

The reporter and her crew went down the line of Lily's dogs while Lily identified tug lines, gang line, and parts of the sled, and introduced her dogs. Hooked up to the sled in pairs, her team stretched more than eighty feet from the noses of her leaders, Arrow and Finn, to the back of the sled. Longer than an eighteen-wheeler. They were fired up and rarin' to go.

Lily couldn't wait to test her own ability and get out there and see what her dogs could do.

The fragrance of coffee and hot chocolate floated tantalizingly on the crisp air as she walked around her dogs, murmuring encouragement and checking gear for the millionth time as the camera followed her.

While she smiled and answered the reporter, her mind was already fixed on what lay ahead.

"Tell us a little about the race. What do you think you'll encounter? Is it really as dangerous as we've heard?"

Lily smiled. "The race, from a logistical viewpoint, is practically
impossible
. Yet most of these same mushers enter year after year. A team starts here in downtown Anchorage and has to make it all the way to downtown Nome—a distance of over eleven hundred miles—in about ten days."

"That's an incredibly long way for a dog to run. And that sled weighs what? Upwards of four hundred pounds?"

"About that." Lily glanced around. Where was Derek, for goodness' sake? She'd seen him briefly last night at the banquet, and not since. Had he left? Gone on another of his mysterious trips? Good.

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

"The dogs—?"

Lily brought her attention back to the reporter. "The care of the dogs has to be constant," she said smoothly. "They have to be snacked every hour, and the musher must take frequent rest stops. The dogs have to be nurtured, have booties put on their feet, fed full meals every four hours, and the injured have to be flown back to Anchorage, where prisoners care for the dogs until their owners claim them, sometimes weeks later. Harnesses have to be fixed or replaced, the sled repaired—the list's endless."

"It sounds exhausting for the musher. When do
you
get to sleep?"

"When we can," Lily said with a smile. "Sleep deprivation is an occupational hazard on the trail.

Hallucinations are quite common."

"Have you had hallucinations?" the reporter asked eagerly. Expecting, Lily thought, that she'd reveal something salacious.

"I had a little blue puppy ahead of me last year," Lily told her, straight-faced. "He turned into a talking donkey at some point."

The woman laughed. "Say anything interesting?"

"That I needed a nice long nap." Lily's tone was dry.

They spent a few more minutes chatting about the trail and the race, and the woman and her crew went off to interview someone farther up the line.

"Are y'all a movie star now?" a man asked, coming up behind Lily. She turned with a smile, which slipped a little when she saw Don Singleton. He looked like a linebacker, with broad shoulders and no neck and a square head, dressed as he was in a heavy coat and hat. Lily turned to face him fully. She'd dated him a couple of times before Sean and Derek had bought the Flying F six years ago, but there'd been no sparks. Even though he'd tried to start up a more-than-friendly conversation last month when they'd bumped into each other at the diner.

"Hey, Don, how's it going? All ready?"

"Had to go and drop two dogs," he said dismissively. "Didn't see y'all last night after we pulled our numbers, little girl. Where'd you get to?"

"I went back to the hotel. Too much partying gives me a headache. Hi, Susan. Tom." Lily greeted friends from last year, and the four of them chatted for a while, before Don, seeing that he wasn't going to get Lily alone, ambled off.

"Snowmobiles had to come in again this year, I see," Tom McGuire, a three-time winner, said easily, glancing down at the six inches of snow covering the road. Snow-removal-equipment operators had reversed their normal operations, dumping tons of snow onto Main Street the day before.