“She’s having the baby! I need help. Fast.”

Cecily felt like moaning. Eros had shot an arrow straight to her crotch. One look at Will and her heart had dropped to the tips of her unpedicured toenails. God help her, had he ever aged well.

Memories flooded back. That hair, short and tousled now. His shoulders had broadened and they held up a loose-fitting, short-sleeved white polo shirt that showed off muscled arms and a spectacular tan. Stone-colored pants hung casually off tight buns.

A shiver ran down her thighs. She felt hot and wet, and couldn’t stem the sudden attack of heavy, dreamy lethargy. One look at him and she’d fallen for him again—drippily, stickily in lust with a married man.

Dear Reader,

Speaking as one who has an out-the-car-window relationship with cows, I can easily see how life as a big-animal veterinarian in rural Vermont could have its limitations, even if you had eleven cats to keep you company. So I understood why Cecily Connaught would view an obligatory wedding weekend in Dallas as her time to break out, have a fling with a stranger. Nor was it difficult to imagine that Will Murchison, no matter how much he wants to be Cecily’s weekend fling, could get a little distracted by the missing groom, his client, whom he suspects of tax evasion.

But how can these two encounter a host of problems, conflicting life goals and continual interruption and still manage to fall in love, all in twenty-four hours? Read on….

Cheers!

Barbara Daly

P.S. Share your twenty-four-hour romance story with me at bdalybooks@aol.com.

Books by Barbara Daly

HARLEQUIN TEMPTATION

859—A LONG HOT CHRISTMAS

887—TOO HOT TO HANDLE

953—MISTLETOE OVER MANHATTAN

974—WHEN THE LIGHTS GO OUT…

HARLEQUIN DUETS

13—GREAT GENES!

34—NEVER SAY NEVER!

69—YOU CALL THIS ROMANCE!?

ARE YOU FOR REAL?

Kiss & Run

Barbara Daly

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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In loving memory of my own Cecily, who gave her family sixteen years of pure pleasure and unconditional love.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

1

“KEEP THE CHANGE.”

“But lady, it’s a—”

“Smallest the ATM had.” Cecily Connaught got a grip on her luggage, leaped out of the taxi and ran hell-for-leather into the church foyer, narrowly avoiding collision with a person hauling a chicken-wire structure out of a florist’s van. Once inside, she halted for a moment, dizzied by the whirlwind of activity that surrounded her.

“Cecily, is that you?” Elaine Shipley’s eyes were wide as she darted toward Cecily.

“Now is not the time for chit-chat,” said a woman wearing peach who followed closely behind Elaine. “You’re late,” she told Cecily.

“At least she’s here,” said Elaine, “which is more than I can say for—”

“Now is not the time for gossip,” said the woman in peach. “Get out of those shoes and put these on.”

“But—” Apparently now was also not the time for protests. Someone took the bags out of her hands, sat her down, stripped off her comfortable, clunky sandals and slid her feet into a pair of mother-of-pearl satin stilettos—instant Misery by Manolo.

“You must rehearse in the shoes,” Miss Peach said firmly, hauling Cecily to her feet. “We don’t want any klutziness going down the aisle tomorrow. Now that you’re here we have to get started,” she muttered. “I don’t give a damn who else is missing.”

She got a tourniquet-strength hold on Cecily’s arm and rushed her over to a group of women. Cecily took one look at them and segued from dazed to fashion-panicked. They were perfectly made up and coiffed and were wearing cute little skirts, short but not too short, that showed off endless, thin, tanned legs and were topped with belly shirts that revealed flat, tanned tummies. In the long, droopy bachelor’s-button-printed sundress she’d bought at the Blue Hill Thrift Shop when Vermont had an unprecedented heat wave and it got too hot for jeans, she was hands down the worst dressed among them. Her careless appearance explained Elaine Shipley’s wide eyes. If Cecily’s mother had been there, she would have died of shame.

But then, her mother had vegetated into a person who was incapable of understanding any choice Cecily made, especially her choice to be a veterinarian instead of a—fashion designer, maybe?

“The maid of honor,” Miss Peach said with a note of triumph in her voice, “is present and accounted for.”

A dark-haired beauty at the center of the group, whirled, and her eyes widened just as her mother’s had. “Cecily? Cecily!” she said and pulled Cecily into a bear hug.

The bride, Sally Shipley, daughter of Elaine, was dressed even more sedately than her entourage and even more perfectly pulled together. Cecily got as far as saying, “Sally, it’s been a long—” before Miss Peach, who had to be the wedding planner, interrupted.

“No time for reminiscence.” Much like a gravel truck, she scooped up all of them and hustled them down the aisle, shoving them into place. “Leave a space,” she said to Cecily. “The matron of honor hasn’t shown up yet. Reverend Justice,” she commanded the cleric who already stood facing an imaginary crowd, “go for it. I’ll bring in the others when they choose to grace us with their presence.” Her voice dripped annoyance.

The bride grabbed her groom by the elbow. “This is Gus,” she whispered to Cecily.

Cecily held out a hand. “Nice to meet—”

“No introductions now.” Miss Peach practically yelled the words, then sprinted up the aisle.

Sally meekly turned toward the minister, who intoned, “Dearly beloved…”

Feeling dizzy and disoriented, Cecily shifted her weight from one aching foot to the other. The rest of the wedding party might be dearly beloved by each other, but she wasn’t even dearly beloved by the bride, whose maid of honor she’d foolishly agreed to be. Barely remembered was more like it.

But however reluctant to be in the wedding of a woman she hadn’t been friends with since they were five years old, she now had a mission, one she could start on while the wedding party was…

“…gathered here today to share with Sally and Gus that most sacred moment when they join their lives in holy—”

Hell. Marriage was such a crock. It was a mistake Cecily didn’t intend to make. She’d never do what her mother had done—give up a career to marry a man who largely ignored her.

Her father. He didn’t understand Cecily’s choices, either, the only difference being that he didn’t particularly care. He loved only one thing, making…

“…that most honored of all commitments, most binding of all vows, to love, honor and cherish…”

…news in the academic world by writing brilliant papers in his field, finance. Her mother had wanted her to be a socialite. Her father had wanted her to go into marketing. No wonder she’d chosen to hang with cows.

Cecily took a deep, calming breath. She was in a bad mood because her mother had conned her into accepting Sally’s maid-of-honor position. Because she’d had to get up at four this morning in the frosty cold of May in Vermont to make it to the searing heat of May in Dallas for the rehearsal. But most of all because the four-inch heels with long, witchy toes were killing her feet. Not even a mature, professional woman, a large-animal vet, for heaven’s sake, could go from thirty degrees to ninety-plus, from Teva sandals to torture devices, and still stay grounded.

But as Sally’s maid of honor, she had to act nice. She’d always acted nice, and this was no time for a personality change. Besides, this was merely the rehearsal. Sally, who was doing the wedding two-step for the second time around—as if the disastrous first time hadn’t taught her a lesson—still had twenty-four hours to come to her senses. With any luck, Cecily might be able to kiss these shoes goodbye after one wearing.

And she had her mission to accomplish. There’d once been a boy who might have changed her mind about love and marriage, and with any luck at all, he was here right now, standing in the line of groomsmen winging out behind Gus. Through pure serendipity, this weekend might be her second chance with him. She zeroed in on the last groomsman in the line.

He had bleached light blond hair cut short and charmingly disheveled. Blue eyes. Stone-colored chinos—Hugo Boss. White polo shirt—Calvin Klein. Burgundy loafers—Gucci—no socks. She knew the designers because the logo was visible on each piece of clothing. He was cute but definitely not Will Murchison. Too bad.

It wasn’t that she was hoping she and Will would fall in love and start planning their own wedding. Now that she was a sensible, career-oriented adult, she was determined never to marry, never to make the mistake her mother had made, giving up her own career in business to follow her father from one university position to a better one. All Cecily wanted was a weekend fling with a boy—a man by now—she had, for some odd reason, never quite forgotten.

The memory had come back like the crash of waves on the shore when she had finally, on the plane this morning, looked at the wedding itinerary and seen Will’s name on the list of groomsmen. That boy’s name was Will Murchison. She’d heard him say he was from Dallas, and until the afternoon in the groundskeeper’s cottage, the most exciting thing he’d ever said to her was, “I rode her pretty hard. Give her a good rubdown, okay?”

He’d been talking about a horse. He was a senior at Exeter, the prestigious boys’ school, while she was a senior at a day school in Boston and, because she was already intrigued by the idea of being a veterinarian, worked weekends at the stables where he rode.

She hadn’t said more than two words to him. She might have opened a conversation by telling him she’d been born in Dallas, for heaven’s sake. She might have mentioned that her parents still had friends there. She might have dropped the names of those friends, looking for a connection, and they would probably have found one. But no. She was too shy, too awed by him, to do anything but goggle and occasionally stammer, “You’re welcome,” because he always said, “Thanks,” with a smile that shot heat through her from head to toe.

She eyed Groomsman Number Three, looking for that sexy smile. Blue eyes. Khaki chinos—Calvin Klein. Yellow polo shirt—Lacoste. Sandals—more Gucci. No socks, naturally. Was it possible his hair had blond highlights? But no sexy smile. He wasn’t Will, either. The odds were diminishing.

Will had usually been surrounded by a gaggle of horse-crazy, man-crazy girls, but that stormy afternoon when she’d been sent out to find him on the trail and lead him to shelter, they’d been alone, and he’d tried to kiss her. Instead of accepting a dream come true and kissing him back, whatever the cost, she’d fled out into the storm. The school year had ended and she’d never seen him again. And nobody like him—oozing with an overabundance of adolescent testosterone and still kind and mature for his age—had come along to take his place.

She looked over the second groomsman. Dirty-blond hair and green eyes. The sunglasses perched on top of his head had the Gucci logo on the earpiece. He wore running gear that was covered in logos and sweat and, like her, he wasn’t paying attention to the minister. He was too absorbed in his cool-down stretches.

All the groomsmen had fashion-victim facial hair, Numbers Three and Four with cheeks unshaven and Number Two with a manicured goatee.

They all looked alike, but none of them looked in the least like the Will she remembered. Murchison was an important Texas name. There might be dozens of Will Murchisons. Now disappointment washed through her. But in front of Groomsman Number Two was a wide, empty space. The wedding planner had said something about people missing. There was still hope.

Faint hope. Will had come into her life a gazillion years ago, but she hadn’t been able to stop herself from thinking what if. What if she’d let him kiss her? The psychiatrist her mother had forced her to see had said she was using the memory of him as an excuse not to get involved with anyone else and had suggested in a most un-Freudian way that Cecily should get over it.

Obedient as always, she had. She was happy with her life’s plan—a successful career and a succession of lovers. The career part was going fine. As for the succession of lovers, she was tanking. And that, of course, was why she’d been so excited to see Will’s name on the roster of wedding attendants.

If they connected this weekend, there was always the possibility she might be able to use the opportunity to catch up on her sex life. It wasn’t shoes, sleepiness or submission to her mother’s will after all, she decided. It was her deprived and complaining libido that had put her in a bad mood.

But what if Will did show up among the missing? Why hadn’t she spent a little time in New York checking out current fashion and then bought some of it? And some decent underwear! She shuddered just thinking about the white cotton bras and panties she bought three to a pack at the Ben Franklin store in Blue Hill, Vermont. This might be her chance to…

“…embark on that ship of love that will sail them to the shores of supreme happiness…”

…and she wasn’t prepared! She cast another glance at the beautiful bridesmaids, the gorgeous groomsmen. These were Will’s type of people. She sighed. She didn’t have a chance.

At least the church was pretty—St. Andrews, favored for weddings by Dallas brides, Cecily’s mother had told her. The early afternoon Texas sun shone through the stained-glass windows, tinting the bridesmaids’ pale shoes petal pink and bathing their sharp-featured faces with a rosy glow. The scent of vetiver-scented soaps and aftershave drifted in Cecily’s direction from the collection of groomsmen, while light, summery perfumes emanated from the bridesmaids, as though to compete with the flowers that would soon fill the church.

It was an exquisite scene, but not a serene one. The chaos continued, even increased in motion and volume. Miss Peach dispatched her army of minions hither and yon. A photographer fiddled with lights and tripods in the balcony overlooking the sanctuary. The good-looking man scribbling on a pad must be a reporter. Sally’s mother stood at the back of the church, wringing her hands. Of course, three members of the wedding party were missing the rehearsal, and Gus—tall, broad-shouldered, as heavily muscled as an ox and at the moment, looking tense—appeared capable of murdering all of them. She hoped Sally hadn’t married the Mob. Cecily supposed that was enough to make a mother of the bride wring her hands.

Listening to the minister drone on, sounding as if even he didn’t believe a word he was saying, she swallowed a yawn of the most graceless magnitude. It was too bad she’d known Sally since they were tiny, adorable babies in breathtakingly expensive dresses, Sally looking like a dark-haired devil, Cecily a blond angel—not that Cecily remembered, but her mother had sent a packet of pictures to jog her memory. It was also too bad that Sally, known to be the wild child in her group of friends—a fact sorrowfully confided by her mother to Cecily’s mother—would suddenly reveal her sentimental streak and invite her first friend rather than her best friend to be her maid of honor.

Even in an unaccustomed fit of sentimentality, how could inviting Cecily to be in the wedding have crossed Sally’s mind? By the time they were five their interests had taken them in different directions—Sally to ballet, Cecily to horseback riding. That, plus the fact that Cecily’s father had moved from Southern Methodist University to Purdue, the first of a string of moves, meant she and Sally hadn’t been close friends since they were five and hadn’t seen each other since they were sixteen.

But through all those moves, Cecily’s mother had never lost a friend. Thus it was embarrassingly possible she had suggested to Sally’s mother that since Sally was dead set on leaving her wild reputation behind when she married Gus, inviting her first friend to be her maid of honor would convey that impression—something the wedding reporter might pick up on.

Cecily had tried saying no, that she couldn’t leave Vermont during calving season. Her mother, who’d joined the Mothers in Support of Offspring Guilt Club upon moving to New York, had called to say weepily, “Don’t you care about anything but cows? Can’t you give a passing thought to your family and—”

“…friends are here to witness their vows and share their happiness as they embark upon…”

A dangerous sea in a rickety boat. That’s what marriage was. But Cecily had capitulated, although she hadn’t been happy about it.

“Do you, Gus Hargrove, take Sally Shipley to be…”

If Will appeared, if he showed even the slightest flicker of interest, she’d take him in a New York minute! As far as she could tell, an available, compatible man didn’t exist in Blue Hill or points nearby. To require the services of a large-animal vet, a man apparently had to be married, preferably a long time, therefore both married and old. She worked so hard that these were the only men she came in contact with—plus Dr. Vaughn, of course, but not only was he older and more married than any of his clients, Maddie Vaughn had become Cecily’s surrogate mother. So the part of the plan that involved having a string of casual lovers had reached desperation point. She hadn’t had a date, much less sex, for three years.

A long, steamy twenty-four hours in Dallas stretched in front of her like an invitation to wild and uninhibited behavior. No one in Blue Hill would ever know that their own Dr. Connaught, respected veterinarian, was a tightly leashed tigress inside.

“I do,” Gus said.

“Instead of the traditional vows, Sally will read a poem she wrote in honor of this, the most important event in her life.”

“Your eyes delight me,” Sally began in a Miss America voice, gazing passionately into Gus’s eyes, which shifted away uneasily. “Your lips excite me,” she continued, and Gus’s mouth tightened. “Your love ignites me…”

Oh, for chrissakes. Sally’s father should have hired somebody to write that poem. Maybe he had. A very bad poet. Mr. Shipley should ask for his money back, because—

“Sorry, sorry, sorry.” The voice came like thunder from the back of the church, and Cecily whirled against an imminent lightning bolt.

“Will!” Sally shrieked. “You’re late, you turkey. Where’s Muffy?”

“She didn’t make it. She’s having the baby. I need help. Fast.”

Mrs. Shipley’s moan was audible from the back of the church.

Cecily felt as if she might moan, too. Eros had shot an arrow straight to her crotch. One look at Will and her heart had dropped to the tips of her unpedicured, possibly not even clean, toenails. God help her, had he ever aged well.

Memories flooded back as he gave Sally a warm hug and Gus a manly slap on the shoulder. That hair, short and tousled now, the silky red-brown of a fine Santa Gertrudis bull. His shoulders had actually broadened and they held up a loose-fitting, short-sleeved white polo shirt that showed off muscled arms and a spectacular tan. Stone-colored pants hung casually off tight buns. The pants had a logo across one pocket. It said Ralph Lauren.

As he talked to Sally, Cecily got a profile view of his eyelashes, as long as the bridesmaids’ skirts. Unlike the groomsmen, his only facial hair was his thick, glossy chestnut eyebrows. Not a fashion victim, even if he was wearing pants with a logo, which she’d forgive.

A shiver ran down her thighs. She felt hot and wet, and swayed rhythmically from a sudden attack of heavy, dreamy lethargy. Here he was, the prize bull of her dreams, and she’d lassoed him too late. He wasn’t merely married, he was about to be a daddy.

She wanted to burst into loud sobs.

“Call the po-po,” chirped the bridesmaid with the perfect navel. Cecily swiveled to stare at her. She’d meant 911, surely.

Will swiveled, too. “I did that already. I’m telling you the baby’s coming right now, in my car, in the church parking lot!” He raised his voice to include everybody in the church. “Is there a doctor in the house? Anybody with medical experience or first aid—”

“Cecily,” Sally said, grabbing her arm and pushing her toward this frantic Will person. “Cecily can deliver the baby.”

“Cecily?” Will said in a suddenly hushed voice, and his gaze locked directly on her. “From the Green Trails Stable?” His hazel eyes glinted with gold and they were filled with some emotion Cecily didn’t care to explore. She hated to think what her eyes were saying to him.

It was more than she could bear. Cecily spun away from those marvelous eyes to hiss at Sally. “No, I can’t. I’m a vet, not a—”

“Don’t tell Muffy,” Sally snarled back.

“Cecily Connaught,” Will went on in that distracted voice. “I can’t believe it really is you. After all these—”

He’d remembered her name, her entire name. Cecily leaned toward Sally’s ear, anything to keep from looking at Will. “It might even be illegal.”

Sally practically spat into Cecily’s opposite ear. “Muffy’s a bitch. You’re a vet. What’s illegal?” Then she wheeled them both into positions flanking Will. “How nice you’ve already met. Get going.”

Mrs. Shipley sped forward, wringing her hands even more violently. “But Sally—”

“Chill, Mama.”

“So, you’ve become a doctor?” Will didn’t seem inclined to move.

“Catch up on old times later! Have you forgotten the baby? This is an emergency!” Sally sounded a lot like Miss Peach.

“Right,” Will said, taking his eyes off Cecily at last. “It is an emergency.” Suddenly purposeful, he grabbed Cecily while Sally—the snake—slithered back up to the altar and Mrs. Shipley shrank into a pew and sank limply onto the cushion. “All of you stay here,” Cecily said over her shoulder quite unnecessarily, since nobody seemed to be rushing forward to help, either from the wedding party or the mob in the foyer. “The fewer spectators, the better.” Her words trailed away on the breeze she and Will made as he propelled her through the foyer crowd and out the doors of the chapel into the glaring sun. “Wait a minute, wait a minute—”

“We don’t have a minute.” He sounded grim.

“My bag’s in the church foyer. I need it.”

Cecily felt the jolt when he halted. “You brought your medical bag to the wedding rehearsal?”

“Had to come here straight from the airport. I never travel without it.” She spared a second to wonder why. Had she thought a horse might turn up in first class needing a tracheotomy?

“Oh.” They reversed direction and he whizzed her back into the church, where she swooped down and gripped the bag without losing speed, and then they were off again toward the parking lot, racing past limousines, the florist’s van and enough BMWs to start up a dealership.

Her shoes weren’t made for running. She was in agony. “Has it been a normal pregnancy?” she said, thinking ahead.

“Far as I know.”

“Full term?”

“Apparently. The baby is coming.”

It was clear he hadn’t taken the proper interest in his wife’s pregnancy. Maybe he’d grown up to be one of those men who only looked good. But oh, wow, did he ever look good.

“Here she is.” He flung open the back door of a still-running luxurious gray sedan. A blast of icy air emerged along with a piercing scream.

“Where have you been? I’m about to drop a baby all by myself onto a church parking lot from the back seat of a freaking car!”

Together Cecily and Will leaned into the car. Cecily was shoulder to shoulder with the muscles, hip to hip with the tight buns, smelling the scent of a deliciously clean, very hot man. He turned to her with a desperate glance. They were nose to nose, eye to eye, and Eros was shooting arrows like a madman, zigzags that shot down through the center of her body. Move over, Muffy, I’m the one who needs the back seat of this car.

She felt the heat rise to her face. It had been an inappropriate thought, and fortunately no more than a thought. Will was looking at Muffy now, oblivious to anything other than the crisis at hand.

“Muffy.” She could tell he was trying to be firm, but his voice wasn’t totally steady. “I said let’s go to the hospital, you said it was a false alarm, you said—”

Cecily whacked him on the elbow and, wonder of wonders, he got the message.

“Here’s the doctor,” he said, calm now and very gentle. “She’ll take care of you.”

Muffy raised herself up on one elbow and left off screaming long enough to puff a few times and then say, “You don’t look like a doctor. Have you ever delivered a baby?”

“Many,” Cecily said, taking a second out to put her hand on Muffy’s flailing one, trying to make a connection with the woman before they got to the hard part. It worked with cows and horses in distress. Maybe it worked with bitches. “Keep up your breathing while I prep.”

“Forget prep. Wash your hands and get on with it!” A long, pitiful wail emerged from a wide, carnivorous mouth as another contraction consumed her.

Cecily glanced at her big, chunky, utilitarian watch, starting to time the contractions. “Breathe, that’s right, breathe. Puff, puff, puff…” She dived into her bag, wincing at the sight of the huge syringes, the Veterinary Purposes Only medications and the oversized forceps, got out the antibacterial wash, poured it over her hands and slid them into sterile gloves, then slid a sterile apron over her sundress. “I’m doing a quick exam. Don’t push.” In spite of herself, she’d said it pretty sharply, because Muffy was pushing like mad.

“Are…you…insane?” Muffy’s words came out sporadically between puffs of breath. “If I don’t push, how the hell am I going to get this thing out of me?”

Cecily reflected on the advantages of delivering calves. No cow had ever mooed at her in that tone of voice. Nor had she ever delivered a calf with the bull running around in tight little circles, clutching a cell phone to his ear. Nor had she ever lusted after the bull, but that was another story. Soothing, that was what she had to be. Calm and soothing. “If everything’s fine, I’ll tell you to push. Just hold back for a minute, okay? You,” she said to the father-to-be, “hold her hand, help her with her breathing.”

“Yeah, sure, that will do a lot of good, him holding my hand, helping me with my breathing. He tried to smother me once. Tell him to go away. He’s making me dizzy.”

“What do you mean if everything’s fine?” That was Will, looking for something else to worry about.

“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.”

“We need cigars,” he told Cecily. “We’ll stop on the way.”

She did another one of those little whooshy sounds, like the one she’d done when he’d still been trying to get the blood running back to his head. “Do you happen to know where GOCC is?” she said, sounding like patience sitting on a pressure cooker.

“Yes.”

“Would you consider sharing it with me?”

Uh-oh, a little steam was starting to show. She’d found the parking lot exit at last, and sat there poised, waiting for him to answer.

He saw a way to put off visiting Muffy indefinitely. “Left,” he instructed her and punched the number two on his phone to direct his next call to his parents.

“Now what?” Cecily had reached an intersection.

“Take the LBJ.”

“Okay.” The car didn’t move. “Where is it?”

“Take a right and follow the signs. I need to make these calls.” When his mother answered, he said “Hi. You have a granddaughter.” Interrupting the shrieks of excitement, the string of questions, he said, “Details later. She’s at GOCC. Right. See you there.”

Now he’d done everything anyone could have expected. Gator was about to take off from Meacham Field in Fort Worth. He’d be at Love Field in Dallas in the time it took a small plane to go straight up, then straight down. The proud Murchison grandparents, who lived in Highland Park, would beat Gator to the hospital. Muffy would soon be surrounded by people who actually liked her.

What he wanted to do now was renew his acquaintance with Cecily. What she wanted to do was take him straight to the hospital to see Muffy. Why was she so determined to make him visit the twin sister who, from the second he’d entered the world, had made his life a living hell?

CECILY HAD TO ADMIT THAT SHE was a little disappointed in the kind of man Will had apparently grown up to be. And she didn’t mean a married man. If he had to be a married man, she wanted him to be a good married man. It was upsetting that he’d seemed so reluctant to follow his wife and baby to the hospital. Maybe he’d been in shock, because now, making his phone calls to family or friends, he sounded pleased and excited.

Driving Will’s luxurious car made her intensely nervous. She was out of her element. Three years in the country and she’d already forgotten that in a city, even a parking lot could be hard to negotiate without a map. In Vermont, even the freeway was a gentle, comfortable, aesthetically pleasing experience. The LBJ, she feared, would be a jungle.

Seeing the first sign pointing toward it, she went into panic mode. She’d never had a sense of direction, and she’d lost her freeway fighting skills. Those two things combined with the inappropriate feelings she had toward the man she was driving were a foolproof recipe for disaster. Still, getting Will to the hospital was a job she had to do, and she always did her job.

Uh-oh, she had to make a choice—head north and east or south and west. “Will,” she said, “which direction do I go on the LBJ? Tell me quick, because northeast is the left lane and southwest is the right lane, and I don’t know how the hell I’m going to change lanes.”

Will sat back, folded his arms over his chest and said, “You’re fine where you are.”

What a relief. The traffic swarmed around her, cars cutting in front of her, sliding in behind her, but all she had to do was cling to her spot in this lane. It led her up the entrance ramp. She’d arrived. She was on the freeway. Standing still.

“Lots of traffic,” she said.

“It’s always like this,” Will said.

“But we need to hurry!” She raised her hand to slam the heel onto the horn in the center of the steering wheel.

He grabbed her wrist. “Honking won’t help.”

The touch of his fingertips sent her into total meltdown. Will had turned her on to a degree she couldn’t ignore. It was her own fault that she’d let it happen. If she’d only read on after she’d sighted Will’s name, if she’d only noticed that a Muffy Murchison was also in the wedding party, she would have assumed the worst and accepted it with spartan stoicism. But she hadn’t read on, and one look at him had her drooling on his shoes. Now she had to redirect her raging lust.

This frivolous trip to Dallas for Sally’s wedding had become a landmark in her life. She’d buried herself so completely in her work that she’d forgotten the realities of life. She needed sex just as any normal woman did.

And she needed it now. She’d find somebody else to spend a hot, steamy twenty-four hours with, and Will could help her do it.

She’d delivered Will’s baby. Now he, by golly, could deliver her into the arms of an unmarried man.

WILL WAS AFRAID HE’D MISSED his calling. He should have been a military strategist. While Cecily was hardly the enemy, his diversionary tactics had gotten her onto the LBJ going in the wrong direction, and the freeway was packed. Now that they were on it, they’d be here a while.

Which suited Will just fine because he’d be sitting beside Cecily, charming the pants off her, he hoped. It had been a long time since anybody had called him dull. In fact, from the time he’d left home for Exeter, he’d been amazed at the number of girls—now women—who wanted to go out with him. In those years away from Muffy he’d discovered he could be himself, not Muffy’s stuffy twin brother, Will.

Cecily didn’t know he’d ever been Muffy’s stuffy brother. So why, when he’d tried to kiss her, had she run like a bunny out into a violent electrical storm?

It hadn’t boosted his ego any. He’d eventually gotten over the ego part, so why hadn’t he completely gotten over Cecily?

“We should be looking for the Glen Oaks exit.” Which was actually where they’d gotten on the freeway. A full loop of Dallas in heavy traffic ought to give him time to have her eating out of his hand. Figuring it was time to set the scene for intimate conversation, he punched up a CD, turned the surround sound down low and searched for a conversation starter. “So, you came back for the wedding.” Brilliant, Will, just brilliant.

“Under duress.” The fine line of cheekbone and jaw tightened.

“You and Sally were friends somewhere along the way? I mean, obviously you were.”

“When we were too young to know better.”

“So, you lived in Dallas and then you moved away?” It was as if cracking a crab getting anything out of her. But that explained why he didn’t know her. By junior high their group had been pretty tight, a clique that grew out of sharing a neighborhood, school and country club. Some of them didn’t even like each other, but those things and family ties—their parents’ friendships or business relationships—bound them together. Sally and Muffy, for example, were always at each other’s throats, and yet Sally had asked Muffy to be her matron of honor.

To his surprise, Cecily suddenly got chatty. “My father’s a professor of economics. I was born here while he was at SMU. We’ve moved numerous times. He’s at New York University now. But my mother keeps up with Elaine Shipley. We lived next door to the Shipleys in Dallas. I don’t know why Sally asked me to be maid of honor. Will, this traffic is impossible,” she wailed. “We’ll never make it to the hospital.”

“Muffy’ll understand. She knows what the freeway is like.” Get back to you and me. Cecily had fallen silent. It was up to him again. “This is going to be a really big wedding.” That was a good one. “As far as I can tell, everybody in Dallas will be there.”

“That’s what my mother told me,” Cecily said. “Except she said ‘the most important people in Dallas.’”

“Yep, everybody from the mayor to the Dallas Grand Opera director. Oh, and Congressman Galloway and both senators. You keep up with local politics?”

“No.”

So there was no point in pursuing that tack any further. Will cleared his throat. “Where’s your practice?”

It was a simple question, but it seemed to jar her a little. “Blue Hill, Vermont.”

“Why Vermont?”

This time she hesitated even longer. Maybe it was just because the traffic had started to move. “It’s where the big bucks are in my field.”

“Yeah, you have to think about things like that.” In spite of himself, he was getting interested. “You have a specialty?”

“I’m in general medicine, but…but I’ve gotten pretty good at high-risk deliveries.”

“No 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 in a while. Not by choice,” she added hastily. She still wasn’t saying it right. She didn’t want to sound sad and deprived. She wanted to sound bright and brassy, lusty and lascivious, to keep her tone breezy and confident. Most of all, she wanted to sound as if she’d planned all along to turn the wedding weekend into a sexual marathon. “What matters to me is my career. Sex is something I decided to handle with one-night stands now and then. You know, nothing serious. No strings.”

“Just casual sex.”

“That’s me, your typical slut-puppy.” Sure I am. “But I’ve hit this little snag. There aren’t a lot of men available for casual sex in Blue Hill.” Like none, and if I did find someone, the whole town would be talking about it the next morning. “So I thought this weekend would be a good time to catch up, but now that I see my competition, I can tell I don’t have the—”

“The steelo to tap anybody?” He’d grown very still.

“Have the what?”

“Never mind. Go ahead.”

“Anyway, I need to do an instant makeover, head to toe, inside and out. And since you were an old friend and married with a new baby and all that, I felt comfortable asking you where to start.” She gave him a sidelong glance.

Will froze with his mouth hanging open. She thought he and Muffy were married? That he was the father of Muffy’s baby? It was such a chilling thought that every atom in his body wanted to shout, No! It’s not true!

Except for that one atom that whispered, Maybe it’s the only reason having sex with you is the furthest thing from her mind. Because he’d felt a connection, felt a spark between them. So if he told her he wasn’t married to Muffy, wasn’t the father of the baby…

He couldn’t tell her now. He didn’t want to end this up-close-and-personal conversation. But when the right time came, he definitely wanted Cecily to know he was single. Then he’d find out if that was her only reason for rejecting him—again. Now he wanted to get to the hospital as fast as possible. As bad as her sense of direction seemed to be, she’d never figure out she was making a U-turn and going right back in the direction they’d come from. The hospital was in fact about six blocks from the church. “Start moving to the right,” he said abruptly. “There’s the Preston Road exit. I know a shortcut to the hospital.”

“What?” Cecily yelled, then sped up and began demonically shifting lanes. Will closed his eyes, seeing his life pass before him as she shot in front of a sixteen-wheeler going eighty, honking furiously and flashing its lights. And then she had them flying 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?”

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