Free Lily's Secrets [Elk Creek 1] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) by Gigi Moore Page A

behind them and Lily jerked back, pressing herself against the wall while Wyatt dragged himself away from her to look over his shoulder.
    “Sorry to interrupt. I can see you two are busy.”
    Wyatt noticed the twinkle in the doctor’s blue eyes and felt his own face heat. He couldn’t remember being this self-conscious around Doctor Hopwood. He wondered if he felt so awkward around the newcomer because Doctor Malloy was younger than Hopwood and seemed to know exactly what was on Wyatt’s mind as well as in his pants.
    He remembered how he and Lily had first met the doctor and his wife and brother and mulled over all the rumors following the trio. He felt his blush deepen.
    Lily pushed by Wyatt to stand in front of Doctor Malloy before Wyatt could let his imagination plumb run away from him.
    “How is Dakota faring, Doctor?”
    He smiled and put a tender hand on her shoulder. “It looks like you’ve been taking very good care of our patient, Lily.”
    She sighed as if in relief.
    Wyatt noticed how she nervously twisted the front of the apron she was wearing in her hands. He stepped beside her and slid his arm around her waist and almost sighed himself when she sagged against him, letting his body support hers.
    Doctor Malloy squeezed her shoulder in a reassuring motion. “He’s going to be just fine. There’s no fever, no sign of infection, and the wound is healing nicely. He should be up and around and out of your hair as soon as he’s ready.”
    “That’s good news,” Wyatt said.
    “Yes, that is good news,” Lily said, but Wyatt noticed that she didn’t seem too enthusiastic about the possibility of Dakota soon being able to leave and get “out of their hair.”
    He wondered if maybe he should be enthusiastic himself.
    It was after all always better to keep one’s friends close and one’s enemies even closer.
    Wyatt had yet to decide into which category Dakota fell.

Chapter 6
     
    Since the infamous day in the hallway with Wyatt, Lily did everything she could to avoid Dakota. Except for the times of days when she checked his bandages and brought him food and drink, she barely spoke to him or put herself in his company more than necessary.
    She needed space and time to sort out her feelings for Wyatt and Dakota, and being in the same house with the two men to whom she found herself irrevocably attracted did nothing to help her emotional equilibrium.
    Lily had never been so torn in her life. She had never been indecisive about what she wanted. From the time when she was a little girl and had discovered the joys of reading as well as growing up near Wyatt, she had been sure about three things in her life. She knew that she wanted to be a teacher and share her joy of learning with other children, quenching their thirst for knowledge as she quenched her own, and she knew that she wanted to be a wife to Wyatt and a mother to his children. She hadn’t had any more elaborate plans beyond being the best teacher, wife, and mother that she could be.
    Her attack, rescue, and time with the Kiowas had changed all that, rearranging her priorities until she didn’t know whether she was coming or going.
    Now Lily thought if she could make it from one day to the next without grieving all that she and Wyatt had lost, she was having a good day.
    She wanted more than good, though. She wanted more than just existing and moving through life, insubstantial and empty, like a ghost, as Rebel had put it.
    Lily looked out the window on the sun-soaked late-spring day as Wyatt tilled the acres of their rich fields. Even this early in the growing season, and despite the recent drought, she could see the harvest looked like it was going to be a good one and it was due to no small effort on Wyatt’s part.
    She had no complaints where that was concerned. Whether a cowboy, carpenter, farmer, or in the capacity of any other trade at which he had tried his hand, Wyatt had always been a capable, hard worker and a good provider. What he