Kiss and Run

“What about you? What did you grow up to be?”

“A CPA. But I’m good to my mother.”

She gave him an odd look. Most people, when he told them what he did, immediately told him their favorite accountant joke, which tended to illustrate the cold humorless nature of people who chose the profession. When she didn’t say anything at all, he added immodestly, “I have a law degree, too. I’m with Helpern and Ridley in Houston. I’m Gus’s tax man.”

“Ah. But you know Sally, too?”

“Sally’s my cousin.”

“All in the family.” She actually took her eyes off the road and gave him a smile. If she hadn’t, he might have gone back to worrying about Gus’s reported income.

“You can trust family,” he said, hoping it was true.

“You like your work?”

He loved his work. “It’s a living.” He patted the dashboard of the Audi. “Buys the toys. How about you? You like being a doctor?”

She hesitated briefly, then said, “Too much, apparently.”

“Meaning?”

She sighed, then took a deep breath and seemed to be gearing up to say something important. “With no social life to speak of, I’ve really let myself go. Just look at my dress. And my hair. I’m a mess. I didn’t realize it until I walked on to the rehearsal scene. This wedding is a fashion show!”

He didn’t think she was a mess at all. She looked fresh and wholesome, and he liked it. “You look just fine to me, and I don’t think patients notice what the doctor is wearing.”

“Mine are more undiscriminating than most.” It came out like a groan. “It doesn’t bother me there, but here, with Sally and all her gorgeous bridesmaids…I mean, who’d choose me unless I…” She came to a halt. “Will,” she said, “may I ask you an extremely personal question?”

He sat up a little straighter. He hoped the “extremely personal” question would turn out to be really personal. “Whose person?” he said. “Mine or yours?”

“Mine.”

“Sure.”

Her head swiveled. “What can I do to myself in the next couple of hours to make a man want to have sex with me?”

He jolted upright. His sunglasses flew off his head. The car swerved. Cecily shrieked. Will grabbed the steering wheel. He put one foot down hard on the floor of the car to keep his balance. The crunch told him that’s where his sunglasses had fallen.

It was his signal to get new sunglasses.

After he’d taken this woman to bed.

NOW THAT THE CAR WAS GOING straight again and Cecily’s were the only hands on the steering wheel, she had time to realize the enormity of the mistake she’d made. Earlier, when she’d had her epiphany while driving the endless highway toward the peculiarly distant hospital, she’d realized she needed help if she were to find a man to release the pressure inside her. Seeing Will again had caused the problem, but Will was married. He couldn’t provide the solution.

Still, for a moment she’d let herself imagine Will as The Man, imagine him looking at her. Her clothes—limp, frumpy, with no logos anywhere. Her hair—just the way God made it, somewhere between blond and brown and tied back so she wouldn’t have to look at it.

Even if he—not Will, of course, because it couldn’t be Will—were undiscriminating enough, horny enough, to get to the undressing stage with her, how would he react to her severe cotton bra, her enormous white cotton panties? They weren’t even snowy white. The water in Blue Hill was very hard and tended to turn white things gray.

He’d said she looked fine, but what would you expect a man to say? Truth was, she was clean—or had been that morning, which seemed like a lifetime ago—with the possible exception of her toenails and allowing for the grayness of her lingerie. It was the only positive thing she could say about herself. As for metamorphosing into the kind of woman one of the other men—not Will—would be interested in, she didn’t have a clue. Eyelash batting, even with mascara added, was not enough.

It required the proper external trappings, the area in which she was most clueless, always had been. While she’d lived at home, her mother had functioned as her personal dresser, bringing home trendy outfits appropriate for every occasion, dragging her to beauty salons. She’d been thrilled to be out on her own, away from all that fussing. And look what had happened to her.

But Will fit in with these friends of Sally’s, looked like them, dressed like them. He’d know. And since he was married and they weren’t total strangers, she’d decided she wouldn’t feel too embarrassed about consulting him. If she couldn’t have him, she could pick his brains, because she wanted to look like the kind of woman Will would fall hard for—if he weren’t married with a new baby. But she’d said it all wrong and she’d scared the dickens out of him.

Her face went hot with mortification. He’d thought she was asking him to have sex with her. He’d settled back into his seat, panting—from fear, undoubtedly—simply tossing the shards of his sunglasses from one hand to the other. Most men would have yelled at her for swerving like that. She thought he was probably too unnerved to yell.

“Sorry I jumped,” he said suddenly. “You surprised me, that’s all.”

“I’m the one who’s sorry,” she said, feeling miserable. “That’s another downside to being…” She’d come close to saying, “being with cows.” She’d have to tell him eventually that she was a vet. When the time was right. “…being so isolated. You forget how to express yourself. I said what I said very badly.”

“You didn’t say it badly. It was just that—”

“You’re being polite. In fact, I made you think I was asking you to have sex with me, when nothing could have been further from my mind.”

She was puzzled by his long silence, until he said, “Really.”

She forged ahead. “Of course not. That would be terrible of me. What I meant was…Well, let me start at the beginning.”

“Okay.”

Her skin prickled when she felt his fixed gaze on her cheek. “It’s just that I haven’t had sex in a while. Not by choice,” she added hastily. She still wasn’t saying it right. She didn’t want to sound sad and deprived. She wanted to sound bright and brassy, lusty and lascivious, to keep her tone breezy and confident. Most of all, she wanted to sound as if she’d planned all along to turn the wedding weekend into a sexual marathon. “What matters to me is my career. Sex is something I decided to handle with one-night stands now and then. You know, nothing serious. No strings.”

“Just casual sex.”

“That’s me, your typical slut-puppy.” Sure I am. “But I’ve hit this little snag. There aren’t a lot of men available for casual sex in Blue Hill.” Like none, and if I did find someone, the whole town would be talking about it the next morning. “So I thought this weekend would be a good time to catch up, but now that I see my competition, I can tell I don’t have the—”

“The steelo to tap anybody?” He’d grown very still.

“Have the what?”

“Never mind. Go ahead.”

“Anyway, I need to do an instant makeover, head to toe, inside and out. And since you were an old friend and married with a new baby and all that, I felt comfortable asking you where to start.” She gave him a sidelong glance.

Will froze with his mouth hanging open. She thought he and Muffy were married? That he was the father of Muffy’s baby? It was such a chilling thought that every atom in his body wanted to shout, No! It’s not true!

Except for that one atom that whispered, Maybe it’s the only reason having sex with you is the furthest thing from her mind. Because he’d felt a connection, felt a spark between them. So if he told her he wasn’t married to Muffy, wasn’t the father of the baby…

He couldn’t tell her now. He didn’t want to end this up-close-and-personal conversation. But when the right time came, he definitely wanted Cecily to know he was single. Then he’d find out if that was her only reason for rejecting him—again. Now he wanted to get to the hospital as fast as possible. As bad as her sense of direction seemed to be, she’d never figure out she was making a U-turn and going right back in the direction they’d come from. The hospital was in fact about six blocks from the church. “Start moving to the right,” he said abruptly. “There’s the Preston Road exit. I know a shortcut to the hospital.”

“What?” Cecily yelled, then sped up and began demonically shifting lanes. Will closed his eyes, seeing his life pass before him as she shot in front of a sixteen-wheeler going eighty, honking furiously and flashing its lights. And then she had them flying down the exit ramp and coasting onto the access road without looking to see if anyone was coming.

His eyes were still closed when the car came to a stop. “Left or right on Preston Road?” Cecily said in a voice as calm as an angel’s. “Will, I said left or right? Which way to the hospital? Oh, for God’s sake, Will, have you fainted again?”

3

“I THOUGHT I’D LOST ALL MY hazardous driving skills,” Cecily marveled, “but they came right back to me, just like riding a bicycle.”

“You do excel at hazardous driving.”

She shot him a glance. He hadn’t fainted, apparently, but he did look stunned. “Now if only I could remember how to clean myself up, blow-dry my hair properly, do my nails, exfoliate and moisturize regularly….”

“I’m telling you, you look fine.”

“I used to look fine,” she corrected him. “I honestly think my mother kept me at home instead of sending me to boarding school so she could have a few more years of keeping my hair trimmed and buying my clothes, hoping it would sink in. But the minute I left home—Oh, look, Will, the hospital.” Her right turn might have been a little abrupt. Will paled again. “I’m so glad we’re finally here. I’m just sorry I didn’t get to pick your brains a little more about specifics—you know, the clothes and underwear.”

“Maybe we’ll find a spare minute to discuss…clothes and underwear.”

Nothing she’d love more than a spare minute with Will, but every minute that went by was more dangerous to her psyche. The sooner she was away from him, the better. She’d take a taxi back to the hotel, go to Sutherland’s downtown and use her own best judgment to change from ugly duckling to swan.

She looked at him again, worrying that she’d already overstepped the bounds by talking to him about something as personal as bras and panties. “I hope I haven’t embarrassed you.”

“No, no, not at all. I’m…I used to be an expert in the field of sexy women.”

She was glad she’d driven up an oak-lined drive and not up a tree when Will put her in the category of “sexy women.” He directed her into a parking lot with Glen Oaks Care Center signs plastered all over the place. The neighborhood looked familiar, very like the one in which the St. Andrews church was located. The hospital was a pleasant-looking red-brick structure with white trim and many wings and outbuildings.

Cecily felt that the moment of truth had arrived. She couldn’t lie anymore about being a veterinarian and she wanted to come clean with Will first, ask him if it would come as too great a shock to Muffy. “Will,” she said, “there’s something I really must tell you before we see Muffy.”

He was unbuckling his seat belt, pocketing his keys, reaching for the door handle. He turned to her, curiosity in his gaze but something else, too, something compelling that drew her toward a promise he could never keep.

Her heart sank. He thought she was going to confess that he’d turned her on, that she’d hoped to lead him astray, distract him from total concentration on Muffy and the baby, and that’s why she’d been talking about sex. He couldn’t be more wrong. Her confession would probably make him mad. Maybe he’d be so ugly-mad she’d never want to see him again—although Will ugly-mad wasn’t something she could conjure up in her mind. Mad, maybe. But ugly? Impossible.

But she would go straight home tomorrow and never see him again and everything would be all right.

Everything except her. He’d gotten out of the car, apparently figuring she could make her confession on the run. Or maybe he wasn’t all that curious after all. So she got out, too. “Will?”

“I’m listening.” He was walking too fast. She lengthened her stride to match his.

“Will, I’m not a doctor.”

That slowed him down. “I mean, I am a doctor, but I’m an animal doctor. A vet. It’s true that I’ve gotten rather adept at difficult deliveries, but my difficult deliveries aren’t human babies.”

He paused on the ball of one foot, carefully set down his heel and moved the other foot up to match. “You’re what?” To her amazement, his eyes were dancing and a smile curved his sensuous lower lip.

“I’m a veterinarian. A large-animal vet. My patients are cows and horses, sheep and pigs, your occasional goat—”

Laughter growled in his throat. “That explains why you don’t date any of them.”

“Yes,” she said, still waiting for the ax to fall.

“Hah!” Will yelled out the word and raised his arms high above his head in a V for victory.

“See,” Cecily hurried on, “that’s why rural Vermont is a good place for me to be. Lots of dairy farms, horse breeding, sheep raising. That’s where my big patient base is—”

“All those deliveries you bragged about were baby farm animals! Muffy’s gonna trip. Wow, oh, wow, I can’t wait to see her face!”

Cecily was astounded. Astounded and upset. “Will, you’re treating it like a good joke on Muffy. You should be on her side. You should be mad at me for misrepresenting myself. You should be threatening litigation. You should—”

“Muffy’s gonna blow a gasket,” he was chanting happily. “Muffy’s gonna—”

At the hospital doors he dropped his happy act and turned to her, a new man and a suddenly dangerous one. He brought his face very close to hers, apparently oblivious to the fact that the doors had opened automatically and the women at the reception desk were staring at them. “I’m going to get you for this,” he said, but he smiled.

CECILY SHRANK BACK WHILE HE spoke briskly to the receptionist. “Muffy’s in Twenty-Four East,” he said when he came back.

“Maybe I should take a taxi home and just let you visit with her,” Cecily said. Then Will could bear the burden of Muffy’s rage alone.

“No, she’ll want to thank you, I’m sure.” Will’s smile was positively evil. “Let me have a few minutes alone with her. I’ll tell her about your, um, true life’s work and get her calmed down, then you come up.”

“If you think it’s the right thing to do.”

“Definitely. Hang around down here for ten minutes, then follow me up.”

Right. Glumly Cecily sat down in the lobby and thought that if she had a choice between facing an angry bull or a hysterical, hormonal woman, she’d take el toro any day.

“WILL! YOU’RE HERE! I’M SO glad to see you. Come look at your niece. Isn’t she beautiful? You’re going to be the greatest uncle. She’ll adore you.”

The woman cradling a baby in the crook of her arm and beaming at him from the hospital bed looked like Muffy—except for the beaming and the baby—but she didn’t sound like Muffy. He was still standing in the doorway, so to make sure this was Muffy’s room, he leaned back into the hall to read the number on the door and then the name on the chart. “Margaret Murchison Tidwell.”

Yep, it was Muffy all right, but she’d been taken over by some alien force! Where had that sweet expression come from? That affectionate voice?

Still, those were his and Muffy’s parents coming toward him, smiling as though they knew her and him both. To get in touch with reality, he strode forward to grab them in a big hug.

“Good to see you, son,” his father said, sounding embarrassed.

“Does Muffy seem changed to you?” he muttered into his mother’s ear.

“Why, no, honey, she seems like the same sweetheart she’s always been,” his mother murmured back. “I knew she’d make a wonderful mother. Just as you’ll make a wonderful father someday.”

Will looked back at Muffy with narrowed eyes. He didn’t buy her new attitude for a minute. He did need her help, though.

He walked over to the bed and bent down to look at his niece. He had to admit it, this was one cute baby. He could actually feel himself swelling with pride, imagining himself taking her to the zoo, teaching her to ride a bike….

But that would come later. He had issues now. “Gator’s not here yet?”

“No.” Muffy smiled softly. “He calls every five minutes, though. He’s on his way from Love Field right now.”

“So he’ll be here any minute,” Will said brightly, raising his voice.

“Well…”

“Any minute,” Will said, and frowned at her. “Maybe Mom and Dad should go out and wait for him, bring him right up to the room. You know Gator. He’ll be so excited, he might get lost. He’d appreciate a welcoming committee.”

She raised an eyebrow and contemplated Will for a long, scary moment. “Oh, yes, I know he would. Mom, Daddy, would you go outside and wait for Gator? He can’t be more than a couple of minutes away.”

“Gator’s parents will be along pretty soon, too, I imagine,” Will said, knowing perfectly well they’d have to drive up from Waco, a good hour and a half from the hospital.

“And,” Muffy added, “I really need some body lotion from the gift shop. I forgot mine.”

The idea of body lotion seemed to pull their mother’s trigger. “Of course, darling,” Mrs. Murchison said warmly. “Nothing more important than body lotion right now. We don’t want stretch marks. I hope they have something nice. Come on, Bill, let’s look out for Gator and his parents. Back soon, angels.”

“What are you up to?” Muffy whispered when their parents were out the door.

“The doctor,” Will said tersely. “I know her. I’ve had the hots for her since I was at Exeter. But she got the idea you and I are married.”

“Oh, my God,” Muffy said, sounding much more like the old Muffy.

“I want to keep it that way for a while.”

“Why would you want to do that?”

Why? Because he’d just realized that as long as Cecily thought he was safely married, she’d let him advise her about sexy clothes and lingerie. He might even be able to con her into letting him come shopping with her.

The idea really turned him on.

He cleared his throat. “I have my reasons. You’ll go along, right?”

Muffy gave her little daughter a lingering, loving glance. “I do have other, more important things going on in my own life right now,” she began, then looked up at Will. “But twins have a sacred trust to lie for each other.” She sighed.

“I sure kept you out of a hell of a lot of trouble,” Will said and took another look at the baby. She was a doll. Now was the time to put Muffy through the acid test, find out how far her unprecedented loving mood stretched. “Incidentally, Muff, Cecily’s actually a—”

But the door opened and Cecily’s head poked tentatively into the room.

IN THE LOBBY, CECILY HAD KEPT one eye on her watch and the other on the steady stream of visitors, home-bound patients and medical personnel who flowed through the lobby. Friday must be a popular dismissal day. At last her ten minutes were up and she started for the elevator. When the doors opened, an attractive older couple stepped out. Cecily did a double take.

The woman was slim and pretty, her hair a pale shade of blonde that suggested dark hair gone gray. The man, though, was a dead ringer for Will, or the way Will would look twenty-five or thirty years from now. Either these were Will’s parents or Muffy was one of those women who’d married her father. She thought about coming right out and asking them, but considered the complications if she introduced herself as “the doctor who delivered the baby.” So she merely smiled, went up to Twenty-Four East and shyly stuck her head through the doorway.

“Oh, look, Will, it’s the doctor!” Muffy said. “You’re so sweet to come and check on me.”

Cecily stumbled forward, feeling stunned. Was this the same Muffy? Everything she’d told Will at the delivery scene, those things about women not being themselves during labor, had been true. There was nothing terrible about Muffy. She’d merely been having a baby.

Muffy grabbed Cecily’s hand. “You were great,” she said. Her voice was warm and soft. “I can’t thank you enough.”

“She did a good job, didn’t she?” Will said, his tone nearly as warm and soft as Muffy’s, but his voice did different things to Cecily than Muffy’s did. “Wasn’t it amazing, finding a top-notch doctor in the wedding party? You know what she told me in the car, Muff? She says she’s an expert in difficult deliveries!”

Cecily was startled. He was supposed to have told Muffy already that she was a vet.

“No kidding,” Muffy said, looking wide-eyed. “What a coincidence! Gosh,” she said, looking positively saintly, “I must have a guardian angel.”

Cecily saw the look Will gave Muffy—a slanty-eyed, teasing glance—before he said, “She’s an expert, all right, an expert at delivering calves, colts and piglets, not babies.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “Your guardian angel sent you a vet. How about that, Muff?”

Cecily felt the tension in the air. Something was going on between Will and Muffy that had nothing to do with her or with her being a vet. Her stomach tightened.

Muffy stared wide-eyed at her for a moment, then at Will. Her face suddenly lit up in a gleeful smile. “That’s the funniest thing I ever heard.” She began laughing.

Will looked dumbfounded. “My God, she’s for real,” he murmured.

“What?” Muffy and Cecily said in unison.

“Uh, nothing, nothing. Come here, Cecily, and take a look at this baby.”

Cecily took a look, feeling her heart melt at the sight of the tiny hands, the long lashes, the wispy dark curls, the button nose. “She’s adorable,” she said. “She’s going to make you two so happy.” Will couldn’t be having any problems with this sweet, motherly version of Muffy, couldn’t be thinking about divorce. And he couldn’t under any circumstances be thinking of giving up this beautiful baby. Cecily was trying really hard to feel happy for both of them.

Muffy gave Will a smile that might even be called sappy. “We haven’t decided on a name yet, darling, but now I think I’d like to name her Cecily. Cecily,” Muffy said to the baby, “meet Cecily Connaught, the miracle woman who brought you into the world under the most terrible conditions—”

“Well, no,” Cecily interrupted, made intensely nervous by the conversation and the thought of Will having a baby Cecily. “Not all dairy farmers keep their barns in—oof!” Will had grabbed her in such a strenuous hug that it took the breath out of her.

“We sure will,” he said heartily. “We’ll name her Cecily. Maybe,” he continued as he released Cecily to give her a soulful look, “you would be her godmother.”

“Oh, yes,” Muffy cried. “It would mean so much to us.”

“I’m flattered,” Cecily said, her nervousness reaching the panic level, “but I—”

“Thank you,” Will and Muffy said together, giving her oddly similar grateful glances.

The telephone rang and Muffy reached for it. “Just a second,” she said, and put her hand over the mouthpiece. “It’s our friend Gator,” she said to Will.

“You talk to him,” Will said. “I’ll take Cecily home and be back as soon as possible, sweetheart.”

“Absolutely not,” Cecily said. She’d never felt as firm about anything in her life. She couldn’t stand another second in the confines of a car with Will. “I’ll call a taxi.”

“No way!” Muffy said with a quick glance at Will. “What kind of manners would that be? I insist that Will take you back to the hotel.” She went back briefly to the phone. “Hang on, Gator. We’re having a little argument here.” She smiled. “I know. What else is new?”

Cecily felt confused. Maybe they did argue a lot. Maybe Muffy was just being polite because Cecily was there. She stamped on the thought. She still couldn’t have Will. Period.

“One more thing,” Will said. “I need to buy cigars and Cecily needs to do a little shopping, and when I take Cecily to the hotel, I’ll go ahead and register. You won’t mind if I’m not back for a couple of hours.”