Kiss and Run. Barbara Daly

      “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?”