A Date with the Other Side (Cuttersville #1)(29)
Author: Erin McCarthy

“So here’s what I’m thinking. You go and have your little summer affair with Fancy Pants, get it out of your system, and then when he dumps you, we’ll talk again.”

Shelby was surprised when her jaw didn’t actually make contact with her plate. It certainly felt like it had free-fallen. “Danny Tucker!”

“What? It’s a good plan.” He used his free hand, the one that wasn’t holding her hostage, to unbutton his top shirt button. “Damn thing’s strangling me.”

Better his shirt than her. “So you’re saying you don’t mind if I go off and have a wild sexually experimental affair with a Samson executive.” Shelby didn’t bother to contain the sarcasm in her voice, but Danny didn’t seem to notice.

His eyebrow twitched a little, and his jaw locked, but he shook his head. “I don’t like the idea, but I can live with it, if we get back together in the end. I’m trying to be mature about the whole thing, and I don’t want you to feel stifled or have any regrets. Especially since I’d like to work on getting you pregnant right away.”

Mature wasn’t what she called the whole idea. It was preposterous, insulting, bizarre, doomed to failure. And on some level, appealing.

Shelby stuffed a forkful of potato into her mouth so she wouldn’t voice that little psychotic thought out loud. What was the matter with her? Sane women didn’t go around contemplating reuniting with the husband they’d left. Certainly not after indulging in a decadent sexual fling with a man all wrong for them, allowing them to cling to the memories for the rest of their long, happy, loving, calm, and sexless lives.

Obviously she wasn’t sane, because she was considering just that.

Danny raised some good points, damn him. She could never have a relationship with Boston, wasn’t even sure she wanted one. He was a controlling workaholic who’d rather be anywhere than Cuttersville. Even if he did suddenly lose his mind and decide she was more interesting than all the skinny career women he knew, she couldn’t leave Cuttersville.

But if she had an affair with him, and he left, she’d be worse off than before. Alone and sexually awakened, to boot. Unless she fell in with Danny’s nuttier-than-a-fruit-cake plan and married him again. Hadn’t she just been feeling nostalgic for the farm?

It was a great place to raise kids . . .

“Oh, Lord, I need some time to myself to think about this. I’ve gotta go.” Shelby stood up so fast she knocked over her white chair, and the plastic bounced on the deck.

“Shelby.” Danny came around the table but she was already cutting through the kitchen, desperate to escape.

“I’ll call you.” Right now she needed to go be alone in a dark room.

Chapter Nine

Except Gran’s car wouldn’t start.

Danny ended up having to drive her back to town, promising he’d have the Pontiac towed.

Shelby sat in the passenger seat of his pickup and tried not to feel like the Almighty was laughing at her.

Danny was using her silence to further his campaign.

“If you want to keep the Haunted Cuttersville Tour going, you could just do it on Saturdays, at least until you have a baby.”

Shelby wanted to ask if Danny had names picked out for this fictitious baby, but she didn’t. She had the funny feeling that he would take her seriously and start rolling out Abby and Adam before moving on to the B’s. So instead she asked him what had been in the back of her mind since her miscarriage at eighteen. “What if I can’t have children?”

Danny ran the truck off the edge of the road a foot before recovering. “What? You can’t have kids?”

He looked so appalled, she actually felt a little sick. Did Danny want her or a family? “Well, I did have a miscarriage. What if it happened again?”

His shoulders relaxed. “Oh, is that what you’re worried about? Hell, lots of women miscarry. You don’t know that you would again. I thought you meant the doctor had told you something.”

“No.”

“That’s alright then.”

Danny just had it all figured out as far as she could tell. Shelby leaned her head on the window and sighed. She didn’t know what she wanted.

“Just say you’ll think about it, Shel.”

“I will.” In fact, it would probably remove any possibility of getting a good night’s sleep.

“If you want to fool around with that city slicker, I’m just asking that you don’t flaunt it in public. People are going to talk anyway, but don’t make it worse.”

Shelby almost laughed at the idea of her engaging in a wild affair that the whole town was talking about. She could only hope for that much excitement. “Danny Tucker, you are not helping your case.”

“What?” He was clearly puzzled.

“Oh, never mind,” she said in irritation as they pulled down Main Street, passing the odd sight of a taxi in front of the Busy Bee.

She and Danny both looked, wondering who had paid the big bucks in cab fare for a taxi from the city. The last cab to drive into Cuttersville had probably been twenty years ago when Paxton Smith had come back to town after landing a part in a soap opera. He’d come back to brag he’d made it big, then had returned to New York and promptly gotten poisoned by his on-screen wife and bumped off the show.

A woman was emerging from the cab, all long blond hair, tanned legs, and designer sunglasses tinted pink.

“Who the hell is that?” Danny asked in astonishment as they drove past.

Shelby strained her neck, turning full around to get another look. The blonde tossed back her abundant straight hair and adjusted an enormous hot pink bag on her shoulder. She was wearing a white . . . something. Shelby guessed you could call it a dress, but it was a clingy fabric and looked something like she’d wrapped herself in a dryer sheet, or had confused her tube top with a dress.

Over the taxi, across the street, and all the way into Danny’s pickup Shelby could smell the cold hard scent of money. Lots of it.

She had no idea who that woman was.

But she was betting Boston Macnamara did.

Boston thought that on a scale of one to ten, his stay in Cuttersville was ranking about a four, which was a serious improvement over the negative twelve he’d expected. He was actually enjoying himself at the plant, and once he had approached Bob and Phil as a peer instead of an evil overseer, communication had opened up between them and they’d been receptive to some of his suggestions.

Heading out for the day after checking the clock to assure himself that he’d missed Shelby’s five o’clock tour at the White House, Boston waved to Bob. “See you, Bob. Have a good weekend.”