Kiss and Run

“I want to be sure the head’s coming this way, not the hooves.”

“The what?” Muffy rose up on her elbows.

“A doctor joke,” Cecily said, still struggling for calm and soothing. “I meant the feet, of course.”

A loud shriek came from Muffy. A deep moan came from Will.

“The mother is often not herself during delivery,” Cecily murmured to Will. “Don’t take it personally.”

“She is herself,” Will said. “Muffy’s a hater. Just deliver the baby, okay?”

“Righto,” Cecily said, wondering if Will’s marriage might be destined to end in divorce. Probably not. Men gravitated to bitches, confident in their ability to tame them. The worst of her lust attack was over, dimmed by the harrowing excitement of the impending birth as well as awareness of the futility of lusting after Will.

A sigh rose from deep inside her anyway. Oh, well, if she’d found Will too late to have his baby, she could sure as heck deliver it.

She didn’t have time or the equipment to do an episiotomy. But Muffy was fully dilated and the baby was crowning, Cecily noted with great relief. “Now you can push,” she told Muffy. “That’s right, push, push, almost there. Come on, you’re a trooper, you can do it—”

Simultaneously Muffy screamed at the top of her lungs and the baby came into the world with a healthy cry. “It’s a girl!” Cecily said, swiftly clamping and cutting the umbilical cord, hoping the navel would equal the bridesmaid’s in beauty and symmetry. And as the sound of sirens drowned out Muffy’s shuddering sobs of relief, Cecily added, “A beautiful little girl and a fire truck, a police car…no, three police cars and—oh, wonderful—here at last are the EMTs, just when we need them least.”

Cecily examined the baby while the paramedics gently lifted Muffy onto a stretcher and carried her toward the ambulance, ignoring the blistering she was giving them for taking so long to get there. Then Cecily handed over the child, explaining the conditions of the delivery as well as giving them a verbal checklist of what she had and hadn’t done. At long last, the ambulance doors closed and blessed silence prevailed.

Alone in the parking lot, Cecily pulled off her gloves and apron, then wiped her forehead. She hadn’t seen Will leave with Muffy, but he must have. A tear of regret dripped down her face and landed on the toe of one satin shoe, matching the splash of antiseptic on the other. Then she caught sight of another pair of shoes.

Loafers—Gucci. No socks. Her gaze traveled upward…on Will, who lay slumped against a tire.

She’d always heard this happened—new mother did fine and new father fainted—but she’d thought it was an amusing contemporary myth. Apparently not. She crouched down beside him. “Will. Will!” She grabbed his hands and began to massage his wrists with her thumbs, then took his pulse.

“What happened?” He sounded groggy, but he was apparently alive.

“The baby came.”

“Oh. Good.”

Cecily stifled an exasperated sound. “It’s a girl.”

“Mmm.”

She raised her voice. “Mother and child are doing fine.”

“I wish I were.”

She’d had it. “Look,” she said, thinking how wonderful it was not to need a verbal bedside manner in veterinary medicine, “your relationship with Muffy is none of my business, but this is one of those times you have to rise above your differences and support her. A woman who’s just given birth feels very vulnerable. She needs you now.” Cecily stood up. “So get your ass in gear. We’re going to the hospital to see her, and I mean right this second.”

She glared at him.

He stared at her.

“I’ll drive,” she said with a confidence she didn’t feel. “Last thing in the world I would have expected you to be, but it seems you’re a fainter.”

He didn’t look the least bit guilty about his disinterest, just puzzled. Still staring at her, he went around the car—Cecily noticed the distinctive Audi emblem—got in on the passenger side and maneuvered the seat so far back she couldn’t see his face out of the corner of her eye.

But she could feel his eyes on her and allowed herself one sidelong glance at him as she adjusted the rearview mirror. God, he was sexy. Everything about him said male, male, male. His mouth was full and enticing. His eyes were hot. Suddenly feeling overwhelmed, she pushed the key into the ignition.

He settled his sunglasses into place, hiding whatever message his eyes might have been sending, so she could let herself imagine that his gaze was an approving one, could feel it wash over her like warm honey.

Honey, but no crumpet. One look at Will and she’d fallen for him again. This time she was drippily, stickily in lust with a married man.

2

WILL SETTLED INTO THE LEATHER upholstery of his new car, wondering what the hell was going on. Cecily had miraculously dropped into his life again after many, many years, and all she seemed able to think about was his and Muffy’s relationship.

Maybe Sally had told her about Muffy. He’d never mentioned her at the stables, and for good reason. When they were growing up, he and Muffy had gotten along about as well as a Maine coon cat and a Yorkshire terrier, he being the terrier. It was one of the reasons their parents had sent him to Exeter. They’d thought it was time to get Will out from under her thumb.

It had worked, too. They were doing much better as adults. They hadn’t sunk to physical violence since they were twenty-seven or so, although Muffy had been telling the truth when she’d said he’d tried to smother her once. When they were kindergarten age, he’d put a plastic bag over her head and attempted to tie it around her throat while she was sleeping. He’d done it because she’d sneered at him and said he’d never be popular in the neighborhood because he was about as exciting as phonics. He’d felt like killing her.

Not really. A thinking man, even at that early age, he’d poked holes in the bag before he shoved it over her head. He’d just wanted to send the message, Make fun of me again and you’re toast.

Muffy hadn’t seen it that way.

When they were seven, their parents had taken them on a short car trip to the mountains of the Big Bend—a trial run, their mother had called it, to test whether or not the family could survive a major trip west the following year to see the Grand Canyon and Yosemite Park. Will still hadn’t seen the Grand Canyon or Yosemite.

Years later, they’d made a pact to get through the holidays at their parents’ house by not speaking to each other at all. Marrying Gator had softened Muffy some—at least toward Will, now that she had Gator to pick on—but they still didn’t get together socially or as a family except under duress.

It was a miracle he didn’t hate women.

He’d been a prince, a virtual prince, to pick her up in Waco and drive her to Dallas when Gator had to fly up to Fort Worth earlier in the week for a sports-equipment trade show. A less princely man would have chosen slow death by torture over being in a confined space with Muffy for a couple of hours.

He was doing it for Sally. Sally was their cousin and they’d lived through every second of her disastrous first marriage. Sure, she’d been a wild thing, a seriously dedicated playgirl, until she’d met Gus, fallen madly in love and sworn to change her ways. But she had a good heart. Which reminded Will that he had a family responsibility to make sure Gus was a man who would give Sally the happiness she deserved. And Will had reasons to feel concerned.

About the time Sally met Gus, he’d been looking for a new tax man and Sally had recommended Will. As was customary at his accounting firm, Helpern and Ridley in Houston, since Will did the taxes for Gus’s security business, he also filed Gus’s personal returns. In March, looking at the numbers Gus had sent him, Will saw some discrepancies in Gus’s reported income and his lifestyle. Will had put many hours of his own time into tracking down what Gus might have left out of his documentation and hadn’t come up with a thing. Since Gus had done him the honor of asking him to be a groomsman, Will felt guilty as all hell accepting, knowing he’d be doing his best to pump Gus and his friends for information. But tax was his profession, damn it, and he had a professional obligation to make sure a tax return was honest and accurate before he signed his name to it.

He couldn’t let Sally marry somebody engaged in something shady. He had twenty-four hours to satisfy himself about those discrepancies or he’d have to stop the wedding.

With no time to waste, Cecily was a distraction he didn’t need. She was the girl from his past he’d never forgotten, the girl who wouldn’t let him kiss her, a girl who still, after all these years had passed, didn’t seem the slightest bit interested in him. Seeing her wouldn’t have come as such a shock if he’d bothered to read the itinerary of events Sally and Gus had sent him. He might have prepared for it, thought up a few cool moves, a sophisticated line.

Sheltered behind his sunglasses, he gazed at her, at her straight little nose, her perfect skin, but pale now, no tan. No makeup, either. With the sun shining through her lashes, he could see they were long and light and slanted down instead of curling up. Her mouth was wide, a mouth made to smile, although she hadn’t smiled much in the few minutes since she’d sprung so unexpectedly back into his life.

She still had the thick blond hair he remembered, a little darker now, more the color of honey. When she used to come down from Boston to work at the stables, it had been in a neat bob. Now it was long and sloppily tied at the nape of her neck, as if all she wanted was to get it out of the way. At the stables, her jodhpurs had been perfect, her shirts impeccable. She’d looked like the girls who attended the private schools near Exeter. But today she was wearing a shapeless flowered sundress. He liked the look. It was natural, unlike the look of most women who wandered in and out of his life these days. Cecily’s dress left him wondering about the curves beneath it, let his imagination loose, and his imagination didn’t fit the profile of an accountant’s.

One thing hadn’t changed. Her eyes were as wide and blue as they’d always been, that monitor-screen blue of a midday sky. From the first moment she’d handed him the reins of a horse, pinning him with those eyes, she’d appealed to him in some way he couldn’t quite get a handle on. And she still did. So why the hell couldn’t he get her to feel the same way about him?

Muffy, Muffy, Muffy. All she seemed to be able to think about. He had nothing to feel guilty about where Muffy was concerned. He’d been wallowing in his own self-righteousness until Cecily, who’d apparently become a doctor, had decided that delivering his niece, a simple act of professional mercy, gave her the right to tell him he still hadn’t done enough for Muffy.

In fact, he hadn’t. Not quite. “Which hospital are they taking her to?” he asked.

“Glen Oaks Care Center. Have you heard of it?”

“Sure,” he said, already dialing Gator’s cell, where he left a terse message, then dialed the number for Gator’s plane. As he listened to the phone ring, he observed that while the doctor looked capable at the wheel—strong armed and steady—they still hadn’t made it out of the church parking lot. “It’s a small, private—Hey,” he said when Gator answered, “she’s at GOCC. Okay. Okay. O-kay, I’ll do it. Yeah, see you.”