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
