Baily's Irish Dream: Baily's Irish Dream / Czech Mate. Stephanie Doyle

keys. As soon as he had them in hand, Daniel completed his thought. “You drive like an old lady.”

      Affronted, but not really because it was more or less the truth, Baily made herself comfortable in the passenger’s seat, snuggling Theodora into her lap. Her legs bumped into her cooler, and she remembered that she had put another six-pack of Diet Pepsi on ice this morning. A cold soda sounded delicious to her while she still felt the residual heat from all that steam at Old Faithful.

      “Do you want a soda?” she asked, her hand remaining in the cooler in case he answered in the affirmative.

      “Diet?” Daniel questioned. Baily’s nod prompted his answer. “No, thank you.”

      With a shrug Baily pulled out a can for herself and cracked it open. She took long, audible gulps and sighed after she pulled the can away from her lips. She was like a commercial; she compelled Daniel to watch. Once again her actions were bolder than Daniel thought they should be, bolder than anybody else’s actions would have been. She didn’t just drink the soda, she consumed it. He couldn’t help but be distracted by the sizzle of the soda, the sound of her sigh, the sight of her neck arched back and her throat as she swallowed. Then to really drive him nuts she placed the perspiring can against her neck, her cheeks and her forehead to cool herself.

      Catching his gaze, Baily asked, “Are you sure you don’t want one?”

      “I don’t like diet soda,” he explained. “Besides, what do you need diet soda for anyway? You have a perfect figure.”

      Smiling at the compliment and blushing slightly, too, Baily replied, “I hardly have a perfect figure, but what I do have I owe to diet soda. It’s not so bad once you get used to it.”

      Another gulp oozed down her throat and Daniel crumbled. “Okay, give me a sip.”

      “Why don’t I just get you your own?”

      “I don’t know if I’ll like it, and I don’t want you to waste a whole can on me.” I want that one, he thought. I want to put my lips where yours have been and taste the sweetness of your mouth, which I’m sure, is far sweeter than any soda could ever be. He kept that opinion to himself.

      Baily seemed almost reluctant to give him the can. She, too, was thinking about where her mouth had been, and where his would be, and where hers would be after his had been there. It was practically kissing!

      Reaching his hand around the can, Daniel actually had to tug it away from her. “I don’t have cooties.”

      With a laugh that gave no hint of humor, Baily relinquished her soda. She watched him as he put his lips over the rim and craned his neck to take in the sweet, carbonated fluid. His bottom lip was fuller than his top lip and it flattened against the can, leaving a trace of moisture where his hot breath had formed dew against the cold can.

      Gulp. Baily swallowed. And she wasn’t the one drinking. Daniel handed the can back to her with a satisfied, “Ah.”

      Then he waited.

      Baily looked down at the can. She saw where his lips had been and felt him stare at her between the glimpses he shot at the road. All she had to do was wipe his presence from the can with her fingers. It would have been a clear signal to him that she meant to keep her distance from this stranger who had so suddenly entered her life.

      Instead she lifted the can to her lips and took a deep swig. What the hell, she thought. Maybe it was time to start living a little more dangerously. After all, she was headed home to Harry. Life couldn’t get any less dangerous than Harry.

      For some reason Daniel was inordinately pleased. “So are you one of those diet fanatics who always watches their fat content?” he asked, turning the conversation back to the mundane to ease the sensual tension they had just created.

      “Yes,” Baily sighed. “Sad to say I am. But I do have the occasional lapse. Actually it’s more than occasional, as you might have noticed by the way my shorts snug my rump a bit to…snugly.”

      He had noticed. But he had liked the result.

      “I have this awful craving for chocolate-chip cookies,” she admitted. “It’s like an addiction.”

      “You mean the soft gooey kind with big chunks of chocolate,” Daniel elaborated. He often suffered from similar cravings.

      Baily closed her eyes with desire. “Oh, yeah! You pull it apart and the chocolate drips from one end of the cookie to the other. Yum-mm.”

      “And walnuts,” Daniel added. “I love it when they add the walnuts.”

      Baily’s mouth popped open and she sat up a bit straighter, her expression incredulous. “You don’t really like the walnuts.”

      Taken back by her fervor, Daniel corrected her. “I love the walnuts.”

      “Nobody loves the walnuts.”

      “I love the walnuts,” Daniel insisted.

      Baily simply couldn’t believe it. “But that’s impossible. Everybody knows that the easiest way to ruin a perfectly good chocolate-chip cookie is to throw in walnuts. It’s a myth. Everybody really hates the walnuts.”

      “Not me!” Daniel retorted, irritated at her suggestion that he was a freak just for liking walnuts in his damn cookies. “I adore the walnuts. I worship the walnuts. A cookie isn’t a cookie without the walnuts!”

      “You know it’s people like you who ruin it for the rest of us. I can’t go to a bakery these days without having to specifically ask for cookies without walnuts. It should be the other way around. You freaks should simply do your walnut eating at home and let the majority enjoy their cookies the way they want them.” Baily was incensed. Just the other day she had bought a cookie only to find that it had walnuts in it. Yuck.

      Daniel wasn’t about to let up so quickly. “Ha!”

      “Again with the ‘ha.’”

      Undaunted, he continued. “Did you ever think that maybe us walnut-eating people were the majority, and that’s why all the bakeries make their cookies that way?”

      “No.”

      It lasted for hours. The great walnut debate continued long into the afternoon and into early evening. Textures, taste, fullness, richness, all were debated with one being pro walnut, the other con walnut. It wasn’t until they reached Jackson Hole and found a motel that they both realized that they had spent an entire afternoon arguing about a nut.

      Getting out of the car and stretching, they looked at each other.

      “We’re nuts, no pun intended. You do realize that? We’ve spent hours talking about cookies.”

      “Well, if you hadn’t been so insistent….”

      “I was insistent? What the hell were you?” Daniel asked as he started toward the hotel lobby to check in.

      “I wasn’t insistent. I was right,” Baily shouted over her shoulder. “And wait a minute, wait a minute! Let’s first find a place where you can rent a car, then we’ll check in.”

      “Fine,” Daniel said huffily. “Once that’s done I’ll be out of your hair forever.”

      Forever, Baily thought.

      Forever, Daniel thought.

      4

      “I CAN’T BELIEVE THIS has happened.”

      “It’s seems like par for the course for you on this trip. You haven’t broken any mirrors lately, have you?” Baily asked, hitching Theodora up over her shoulder. The cat had been cooperative so far, but if they didn’t settle her in their room soon for her nap she would be impossible to travel with the next day.

      “No, I haven’t broken any mirrors or walked under any ladders. I have spent too much time with a black