LITMIR.BIZ

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kidding? What a coincidence for you to be right there in Sally’s wedding party just when Muffy needed you.” He considered what she’d said. “I’m surprised, though. I would have thought the big bucks would be in New York, Chicago—a big city full of career women who don’t have kids until they’re getting close to forty.”

      “Yes, but Vermont’s such a beautiful place,” she said, “and the pace is slower. No place is perfect, of course.”

      “What’s the downside?”

      “It gets lonely sometimes.” The traffic really was moving now, not quickly but steadily, and she seemed to be concentrating on it.

      “You have your patients.” He gazed at her, increasingly curious about how she lived her life.

      “Yes, but…”

      “You don’t like socializing with them?”

      A corner of her mouth quirked. A tic, probably, brought on by the car that had cut so sharply in front of them it made even him nervous. “I’m very fond of my patients,” she said, “but I have to admit they have certain limitations. Not big readers. Not particularly exciting to talk to. Very little interest in theater or movies or concerts. Unsophisticated tastes in food.”

      Damn. She was a snob. Didn’t mind treating the mountain men or delivering their women’s babies but looked down on them socially and intellectually. Too bad. Just looking at her, he wouldn’t have thought she’d feel that way.

      “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

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