pounded him on the back, but the feel of her hand on him only made him cough harder. Ever since he’d discovered the wonders of sex, he’d made sure that he and Tess didn’t talk about the subject. Life was a lot safer that way, and he wished to hell she hadn’t decided to confess her situation to him this morning.
As he sat there wondering if he’d choke to death, she stood up and walked toward the river. Taking off her hat, she scooped water into it and brought it back to him. She held it in front of his nose. “Drink this.”
He drank and then he took off his hat and poured the rest of the cool water over his head. As he shook the moisture from his eyes and drew in a deep breath, he felt marginally better.
She remained crouched in front of him, and he finally found the courage to look at her. “So what?” he said hoarsely.
“I’m twenty-six years old.”
“So?” His response lacked imagination, but she’d short-circuited his brain. If he’d ever thought about this, which he’d been careful not to, he’d have figured out that she was probably still a virgin. The Blakely boys had fenced her in from the day she’d entered puberty.
“I can’t go to the big city like this. I can’t counsel girls who’ve been sexually active since they were twelve if I’ve never, ever—”
“I get the picture.” Much too graphically for his tastes. His mind had leaped ahead to a horrible possibility—that she would ask him to take care of her problem. And the horrible part was that he felt an urge stirring in him to grant her request. He pushed away the traitorous thought. “I think you could certainly go to New York without…experience. Chastity’s catching on these days. You could be a role model.”
“Oh, Mac! I don’t want to be a role model for chastity! I didn’t choose to be a virgin because of some deeply held belief. You know as well as I do that my brothers are the whole reason I’m in this fix.”
Her brothers. God, they would skin him alive if he so much as laid a finger on her. “Well, your brothers aren’t going to New York!” He knew the minute he said it that he’d stepped from the frying pan into the fire.
“No, they’re not. And that’s another point. I’ll be clueless about sex and unchaperoned in a city full of sophisticated men. Is that what you want for me, to be swept off my feet by some fast-talking city slicker who’ll play me for a fool because I don’t know the score?”
This was a trap made in hell. And damned if he wasn’t tempted. “Of course not, but—”
“I need a nice man, Mac. Somebody who can take care of this problem for me before I leave.”
Oh, God. She was going to ask him. His heart hammered as he wondered if he’d have the strength to refuse her. “Listen, Tess. You don’t know what you’re saying.”
“I know exactly what I’m saying. And you’re the only person I trust to help me find that man.”
2
“ARE YOU CRAZY?” Mac leaped to his feet so fast he knocked Tess over. The only thing worse than imagining him involved in this dirty deed was imagining some other guy involved. “Sorry.” He reached down and gave her a hand up. Once she was steady on her feet, he released her hand quickly.
She dusted off the seat of her jeans. “Mac, please. I can’t stay a virgin forever.”
“Why not?” So he was being unreasonable. He couldn’t help it. And dammit, now he’d caught himself watching her dust off her fanny and thinking that it was a very nice fanny. Dammit.
She sighed and lowered her head. “I was so counting on your help.”
“Aw, jeez.” Not only was he having inappropriate thoughts about her, he also felt as if he’d abandoned her. But he couldn’t imagine how in hell he could diffuse either situation. “Tess, you know I’d do anything in the world for you, but I can’t see how this would work.”
Her head came up, and hope gleamed in her gray eyes.
He backed a step away from her. “Don’t look at me like that.”
“Here’s how it will work. We’ll brainstorm the possibilities and come up with a shortlist. Then you can find out if any of the guys are seeing anyone, because I don’t want to break up any—”
“Whoa.” Panic gripped him. “I never said I’d do this.”
“You said you’d do anything for me.”
“Anything but find you a lover!” Just saying it gave him the shivers. He’d worked so hard to keep from thinking of Tess in a sexual way, and now the barriers were coming down. For the first time he acknowledged the sweet stretch of her T-shirt across her breasts and the inviting curve of her hips. “I think that’s a little more than a reasonable person should expect, don’t you?”
“This is perfectly reasonable! Why should I search around on my own and end up with some clumsy nerdling who makes my first experience a nightmare, when I can rely on your advice and have a really nice time instead?”
There had to be a good answer to that one. He just needed a moment to think of it. And he couldn’t think while he was picturing Tess having a “really nice time.”
“See?” She gave him the superior little smile that she reserved for the times she’d won either an argument or a game of Monopoly. “You have to admit it makes sense.”
“I don’t have to admit anything. And why me? Why not one of your girlfriends? I thought women exchanged notes on guys all the time.”
“They do, but you’re a better source of info.” She stuck her hands in her hip pockets. “You’ve dated more people around here than anyone I know. You’d know what women say about a guy, and you’ve had a chance to get to know the guys themselves and what they’re really like. You’d know if they brag in the locker room, for example. Besides all that, there’s not a single person, man or woman, I trust to keep my secret as much as I trust you.”
He gulped. When she put it that way, he didn’t know how he could refuse. And he wished she wouldn’t stand like that, with her hands in her hip pockets and her chest thrust forward. He didn’t like it. Okay, he liked it too much.
“Mac.” She reached out and put her hand on his arm.
He tried not to flinch. Tess had put her hand on his arm a million times. She’d grabbed him for various reasons, usually to inflict injury, and he’d grabbed her back. He’d held her hand when she was a little kid and they’d gone trick-or-treating, and they’d clutched each other and screamed when they rode the Twister at the state fair. Touching had never been a big deal. Until now.
“Listen, Mac,” she said. “You pulled out my first tooth, remember?”
“Different case.”
“And you taught me to drive.” She grinned. “You also gave me my first drink of whisky.”
“You begged me for it, and then you threw up.”
“And you held my head. You see, at all those
