Something Unexpected Read Free Page A

all be puking by tonight.” Abby shook her head, depositing the book and plucking a moistened wipe from the box Rosemary kept on the counter. “My fiancé has it, too. The first twenty-four hours are sheer misery.”
    Rosemary swallowed. She detested throwing up. “Wash your hands with soap and hot water every hour for as long as it takes you to sing ‘Happy Birthday,’ and whatever you do, don’t touch your eyes, nose or mouth.”
    Abby gaped at her. “Are you phobic or something?”
    â€œGerms can live eleven hours on nonporous surfaces like door handles, steering wheels and shopping carts. I’m not phobic—I’m cautious.”
    Abby’s full lips twitched at the corners. “Cautious about everything or just germs?”
    â€œEvery—” Rosemary stopped abruptly.
    Almost three months ago, she would have completed that sentence without a second thought. I’m cautious about everything. Now she avoided her clerk’s curious gaze and muttered, “It’s still cold-and-flu season. It can’t hurt to take extra precautions.”
    Nodding, Abby moved off to return a stack of books to the large-print section. Rosemary pressed a computer key so she could check in DVDs, but her mind was a mile away.
    Make that ten miles and two and a half months away.
    As if she’d pressed a play button in her brain, her head filled with images.
    Tavern on the Highway…Faith Hill on the jukebox…a drink called a Honey Slide that she’d barely touched…and a man named Dean, whom she had touched a lot, in ways she would never, not in a million years, have imagined she could touch a stranger.
    Not that he had remained a stranger for long.
    By the time the library closed and Rosemary was able to head to her car, she had replayed that night with Dean a dozen times…and felt herself blush almost as many.
    That evening in the bar, she had intended to thank the tall, handsome man for the drinks, perhaps to chat just a bit so the girls wouldn’t rag on her later and then to say goodbye. That was all. Harmless.
    Seated in her car, alone in the library parking lot, Rosemary clapped her hands over her face and groaned.
    After dancing, Dean had escorted her back to her table and chatted amiably with her friends, but his demeanor with them had been nothing more than courteous. Brotherly. So different from the way he’d looked at her. They had returned to the dance floor again and again. At some point in the evening, leaving the bar with him had seemed perfectly sane. In her entire adult life, she could not recall feeling the sexual urgency she’d felt that night.
    Flushing anew at the memory, Rosemary flipped her visor down to check her face in the mirror. Mascara was smudged beneath her eyes. Licking a finger, she carefully wiped it away and thought that if she lived a hundred more years, she would not understand how she had morphed in one evening from the woman who never went anywhere without her AAA card, cell phone, a calling card in case the cell phone went dead and at least half a dozen quarters in the event the calling card didn’twork, to the woman who jumped into the arms and the bed of a total stranger.
    Despite her brave talk of carpe diem dating, in her heart the words casual and sex were antonyms.
    Now somewhere in the world there was a man with whom she had gotten naked and made love with the lights on, yet whose last name, age, address and occupation she still did not know.
    What kind of woman did that?
    â€œThe kind who’s finally joined the twenty-first century,” Vi had assured her approvingly the day after.
    Right. The kind who believed in carpe diem dating. No strings. No hope. And no recriminations.
    That last part was gonna take a while.
    Lifting her head, Rosemary turned the key in the ignition, gripped the steering wheel with fingers stiff from the March chill and threw the car into Reverse.
    Chicken