Stephanie Doyle - Baily's Irish Dream - Baily's Irish Dream / Czech Mate

It all took exactly two seconds.

“Moooo.”

Well at least the cow made it.

“Mister! Mister! Are you all right?”

The air bag now deflated, Daniel was able to move within the car. First he took stock of his body. Both his legs and arms were okay. His chest and the rest of his body had been protected by the air bag. He bumped his head and he felt a burning sensation on his cheek from where the air bag had scraped his face. Other than that he was fine. And lucky.

His car…not so lucky.

“Answer me!”

Daniel turned his head and met the worried green eyes of his redheaded nemesis. “Why?”

Baily sat back on her haunches. That was an odd answer. “Because I want to make sure you’re okay.”

“Obviously I am, or I wouldn’t have been able to answer you, now would I?”

Good point. He was awfully calm for someone who had just gotten into a car wreck. And by the looks of it the car was totaled. The hood was practically wrapped around the thick fence post. The fence post, however, looked fine. “Didn’t you see the cow?”

No words were necessary. Daniel’s sour face said it all.

“Okay, you didn’t see the cow,” Baily concluded.

Daniel attempted to open the car door. Not an easy task since the entire frame had been pushed in. Baily saw his intent and aided him by pulling on the door while he pushed. Together they managed to create enough space for him to escape. Finding his legs a bit unsteady, he took a few calming breaths before he inspected the damage.

“You should sit down while we wait for the cops.”

“What cops?”

“You know the cops that come after you’ve been in an accident,” Baily told him naively.

Daniel raised his arms to indicate the vast space around him. The only thing for miles was Baily’s Bug, Daniel’s wreck and a cow. “And just where do expect these magical cops to sprout from?”

“Oh.” She saw his point. The road they traveled wasn’t a hotbed of activity. The semi was the only other vehicle Baily had noticed for hours and by now it was long gone. “I don’t have a cell phone or anything.”

“Who doesn’t have a cell phone in today’s world?” he asked incredulously. He didn’t know why he cared, but it seemed wrong for a woman to be on the road alone without a cell phone.

“Me. I’m a schoolteacher on a budget. It was either a cell phone or my monthly manicure.”

“Cell phones are very useful in cases of emergencies, accidents…”

“Yes, but well-painted nails are a joy every day,” she said holding out her pretty pink nails for inspection. He didn’t seem impressed. “I take it you have a cell phone.”

“Of course I have a cell phone,” he stated haughtily. He reached for his right pants’ pocket and found it empty. Then he reached for his left pocket and also found it empty. Looking down at his pants, he realized they weren’t the same ones he’d been wearing on his trip back from California. The ones with his cell phone still in the pocket. They were on the floor of his bathroom where he’d last left them. Not here. With him. In the middle of Montana.

“No cell phone?”

He almost wanted to growl at her.

“So what should we do?”

Again, Daniel was beyond words. He moved around the car slowly and carefully. The hood, the engine, the frame—the whole damn car was trashed. He began to swear with the skill of a sailor.

Baily smiled uncomfortably. It wasn’t that she hadn’t heard the words before. Growing up with five brothers, she could give vocabulary lessons in swearing. She just envied the ease with which he did it. Boy, if her mother could hear him now, she’d shove enough soap in his mouth to keep his language clean for years.

Finally, after he’d surveyed the wreck and realized that he wasn’t going anywhere, Daniel turned his attention on the woman. “You,” he accused.

“Me?” Baily asked.

“This is all your fault!” It was a lie. He’d been driving too fast, but it felt good to blame someone else for his stupidity.

“My fault! You were the one who almost hit that poor cow and drove off the road.”

“Poor cow?” Daniel searched and found the cow off to the side of the road munching on some grass. “The cow is fine! What about my car?”

Baily spared a glance at the car. “It’s pretty much totaled.”

“Ah-hh,” Daniel yelled in frustration.

Perhaps this would have been a good time for Baily to get in her car and get the hell out of Dodge. Who knew what the man would do next? Honking and yelling, he was obviously the emotional sort. But she couldn’t leave. Although she’d denied it, she did feel partly responsible for the accident. She wasn’t about to admit it to him, but he had been staring at her tongue. The tongue she’d so childishly thrust at him. It was why he hadn’t seen the cow until it was too late. For that reason, she had to at least offer her assistance.

“What am I going to do?” Daniel yelled. Now that he had regained some of his senses, he realized that he was in big trouble. Totaling his car wasn’t part of the plan. Being stuck out in the middle of nowhere with a redhead wasn’t part of the plan, either.

Baily refrained from making a comment, but she had asked a similar question only moments before. They were still all alone. Not counting the cow.

That’s when the trepidation hit. She was alone in Montana with a strange man who liked to beep his horn and swear. The smart course of action, the one the self-defense books suggested, would be to get into her car, drive to the nearest phone, and call someone to help him. That idea, however, didn’t sit well with Baily. Not while she was still feeling slightly, just slightly, guilty.

Besides that, the poor man appeared to be desperate. It was a safe bet he hadn’t staged the accident as part of some diabolical plot to kidnap, rape and murder her. Had that been the case he wouldn’t have been driving a Mercedes. No one totaled a sixty-thousand-dollar car just to commit murder. He could do that in a Ford.

“Listen, I could drive you to the nearest gas station. You could call a tow truck.”

Daniel stood there for a moment and contemplated his choices. There were none. That had already been established. It was just that he had a sinking suspicion getting into the yellow Bug with its redheaded owner was going to be a life-altering decision. He couldn’t see how, but his gut was never wrong. And it was telling him the woman was trouble.

Baily opened the driver’s side door of her car and got in, then leaned her head out the open window. “Hey! Are you coming or what?”

Daniel removed his suitcase from his trunk. He opened the hood of the ancient Bug and shoved his suitcase inside. Then he closed it and stared at her through the windshield.

She stared back and shrugged her shoulders as if to ask what was taking him so long. Sighing, he moved around the car to the passenger side and got in. Or at least tried to. It was an effort, but he managed to squeeze himself into the compact automobile, feeling the car lurch as his weight was added.

“Meeeooow!”

“What the hell was that?” Daniel bellowed.

“Poor, poor, Miss Roosevelt. Did the big bad man take your seat?” Baily held Theodora in her arms, crooning to her as if she were an overly spoiled child. Which, in fact, she was.

“A cat.” So it had been a cat she’d been singing to.

“I hope you’re not allergic,” Baily announced, “because let me tell you who is going to get the boot if you are.”

Her smile was evil. Daniel returned it with full force. “Not the cat?”

Satisfied, Baily decided to play nice. “Her name is Theodora Roosevelt. You can call her Miss Roosevelt or Theodora or, if you prefer, Madam President. She likes that name best, but I try not to encourage her delusions of grandeur too often.”