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

He was in Oz. That must be it. His car had driven off the road, a tornado had picked him up, and now he was in Oz. Either that or he had just agreed to drive the next twenty or so miles with a lunatic.

Baily introduced her cat to her new passenger. “Miss Roosevelt, this is…I don’t know your name.”

“Blake. My name is Daniel Blake.” Daniel thought about offering his hand, but he’d be damned before he shook a cat’s paw.

“Oh,” Baily commented. Starting up the car, she maneuvered herself back onto the highway. “My name is Baily Monohan.”

“Bailey, huh? Is that like the movie, It’s a Wonderful Life? George Bailey, wasn’t it?” It would be typical for her to be named after a fictional character. She, herself, was fictional-like. The red hair, the green eyes, the cat.

“No. It’s Baily as in Irish Cream.”

“The drink? Baileys Irish Cream?”

“Yes,” explained Baily, “only it’s not spelled the same. I was born around Christmastime you see, and my father…well Baileys is his favorite drink at Christmas. So he had a few when mother went into labor. I was born and he named me Bailey, but he spelled it wrong on the birth certificate. It’s sort of the family joke.”

“Good thing your dad wasn’t drinking tequila. Any brothers or sisters? Maybe a Jack Daniels or a Wild Turkey?” Daniel chuckled at his own joke.

“Very funny. And original, too. No, my brothers are Nick, Michael, Billy, Sean, and James. All very Irish and very proper. But I was the first girl, you see, so my parents were stumped. Not to mention I was number six, and they were running low on options.”

“Six children!” The thought of having more than six people in his house at the same time made Daniel nervous. Families in general made him nervous. “Big family.”

Baily shook her head, laughing. “You don’t know the half of it. Three of my brothers are married with children. One still lives at home, and one is temporarily living at home because he just got a divorce. Other than Nick and James, the family has practically quadrupled in the last ten years. It’s really a lot of fun.”

“I wouldn’t know about families and fun,” Daniel remarked grimly. His family, his sister, was the reason he was in his current predicament. It finally dawned on him the magnitude of his dilemma. “I’m never going to reach my sister in time.”

“Is your sister in trouble?”

Daniel redirected his attention back to the woman. He hadn’t realized he said his thoughts out loud. “Yes, my sister is in trouble. Thanks to the accident, I’ll never make it in time to save her.” Daniel pushed his hands through his hair in frustration and grimaced when he found a goose egg that had suddenly sprouted on his head.

Baily witnessed the grimace out of the corner of her eye. “Are you hurt?”

“Hurt?” That was the understatement of the year. “My car is totaled. My sister’s life is about to be destroyed, and to top it all off I’ve got a bump the size of Mount Rainier on my head.”

Baily had to humph a bit at that last comment. Really, the size of Mount Rainier?

“You don’t believe me?” Daniel bellowed. Reaching out he took her right hand off the steering wheel and shoved it over the lump on his forehead that had only been partially covered by his brown bangs. Baily brushed her fingers through his thick chestnut hair, trying to ignore the silky feeling of it and how it made her fingers tingle. It wasn’t too hard to find the lump. A startled gasp left her mouth before she could stop it.

“It’s really big,” she stated, as if he didn’t already have that information. “Maybe I should take you to a hospital.”

The concern in her eyes and the tremor in her voice made him realize how much his little speech had affected her. Good, he thought evilly.

“I don’t need to go to the hospital,” he assured her. Rubbing a hand over his face in an attempt to alleviate some of his frustration, he murmured, “What I need is to get to Philadelphia.”

“Philadelphia? Did you say Philadelphia?” Baily asked, thinking she hadn’t heard what she thought she’d heard. It was too much of a coincidence.

“Yeah. What about it? I don’t know what the hell I’m going to do now. It’s going to take days to fix my car, and I don’t have that long to wait. I could rent a car, but where the hell am I going to find a car rental place around here.” Daniel muttered to himself as he sorted through his options. “I’ll never make it in time.” What would happen to Sarah?

Before she could stop herself the words seemed to pop out of her mouth. “I’m going to New Jersey. South Jersey, actually, right over the Ben Franklin Bridge just a few miles from Philadelphia.” It was a ridiculous thought. Surely she wasn’t offering to drive this complete stranger across the country. It sounded like it though, didn’t it? It might not be so bad. She would have someone to split the driving time, and she wouldn’t be so defenseless. Unless of course he turned out to be a psychopathic killer. What had Janice said about not picking up hitchhikers?

The ashen color of his skin made the red bump stand out even more. He didn’t look like the average menacing hitchhiker. Besides, the company wouldn’t hurt. It would give her someone to talk to besides Miss Roosevelt. As for him being a stranger, he didn’t feel like a stranger.

He’d seen her tongue.

She’d felt his bump.

In the short time they had shared the car ride, Baily was pretty confident that she could trust this man. Of course she was sure that was what every woman had said when she’d first met Ted Bundy.

“Or,” she suggested, “I could just take you on to the next town like we originally planned.”

“What am I going to do there?”

“What am I, your guidance counselor? I don’t know. You could have a tow truck pick up your car for starters. Then see about a rental.”

“A Hertz? In the two street blocks they call towns around here? I don’t think so,” he stated sarcastically.

Baily was now beginning to get angry. He was quick to shoot down her ideas, but what was he coming up with? “Well what do you want to do?” Baily shouted back.

The shouting was beginning to get to him. His head throbbed. The best thing to do was to make peace first. “Look, I’m sorry. I’m just frustrated. I’ve got to be in Philadelphia in five days at the latest. I know this isn’t all your fault.”

“All my fault? It isn’t any of my fault!” That was her story and she was sticking to it, guilty conscience aside. “If you hadn’t beeped at me…”

“If you hadn’t put your brakes on…”

“If you hadn’t been on my bumper…”

Daniel clenched his teeth. This was getting them nowhere. “The point is, my sister’s life depends on me getting to Philadelphia.”

“If it was that important, why didn’t you fly?” It seemed like the obvious solution. “You can probably get an airline ticket at Billings. That isn’t so far. I could drive you there.”

“I don’t fly,” Daniel replied without explanation.

This man could try the patience of Mother Teresa. “Your sister’s life is on the line, and you can’t get over your fear of flying?”

If he clenched his teeth any tighter, he knew they would break. “I didn’t say I was afraid of flying. I said I don’t fly. There is a very big difference. The end result is still the same though. I don’t fly. I won’t fly. Now let’s move on to the next suggestion.”

It should have dawned on him then the way he had so casually brought her into his decision-making process that this wasn’t any ordinary woman who had entered his life.

“I offered to drive you to Philadelphia,” she pointed out, feeling as if they had wasted a long time just to get back to the point from which they’d started.