The F-Word

“There’s no need to curse.”

“Goddammit!” I snarl.

And then I shut up.

The next time I look over, Bailey is still sitting bolt upright, but at least she’s drawn my jacket close around her.

“Look,” I say, “this will all blow over.”

Bailey’s laugh is not a jocular sound.

It is only later, when I replay this conversation in my head for the thousandth time, that I realize how truly stupid I was to say such a thing. At this moment, however, it strikes me as a way to calm her.

Evidently not.

“I wanted to get even with Violet,” she says. “Instead, I’m never going to be able to face her again. And my mother…When she finds out we were only pretending…”

My thoughts skitter back to my mother. By the time I get to her, she’ll have rented a hall, hired a band and ordered flowers.

“Okay,” I say, “all right. This is going to be a little more complicated than we figured…Hey!” Bailey has punched me in the arm. “Watch that! You want us to skid?”

“I want never to have laid eyes on you, Matthew O’Malley. That’s what I want. We made—I made a spectacle of myself in front of all those people. How come I didn’t realize that was what would happen?”

Here we go again. She means the kissing. The touching. The being focused on each other whether we were dancing or talking or just sitting side by side.

“We didn’t do anything two people who enjoy being together wouldn’t do.”

“We appeared…intimate.”

The anger has drained from her voice. That should be a good sign. Somehow, it isn’t.

She is silent as we turn off the main road and head for our inn. In fact she is silent until we’re parked outside the place. Then she says, in a tremulous whisper, “We were intimate.”

My gut knots. I don’t want her to regret the hours we spent in bed, in each other’s arms; I don’t want her to regret our making love all through the night and through the day.

I don’t want her to regret the precious gift she gave me.

I turn off the engine and turn to her. I reach for her, but she pulls back.

“Bailey,” I say softly, “we didn’t do anything wrong. We made love, and making love is a good thing.”

She has stopped shaking. That, at least, is positive. But the way she avoids looking at me and instead studies her hands, which are folded in her lap…

Not so positive.

“We lied,” she says softly.

I almost deny that, but how can I? We did lie when we let people think we were a couple.

“I lied,” she says, even more softly.

I take her hands in mine. “We both did.”

She bends her head. Her hair, rain-soaked and tangled, falls around her face.

“My lie was worse.”

Okay. I’m sure I know what she means. She lied to her mother. She figures that makes hers the bigger lie. But it was a game. Make believe. And for a good cause.