spun him around, not about to leave a bunch of horny idiot seniors in charge of his sex education. “Give me a minute, will you? You can’t just spring this on me without warning and expect me to start rattling off ways to get in a girl’s panties.”
“Getting in isn’t the problem,” he said, dryly. “I’m asking about what to do once it’s a go. Cripes, Katy, you’re not only a woman, you’re a paramedic. How hard can it be to give me a few pointers?”
“What’s my being a para—wait, Dr. Bentley. You should be talking to him about this.”
Welles was shaking his head before she’d finished. “I already know the mechanics. And when I sort of brought it up at the physical I took last month to join the department, all Bentley did was give me a ten-minute lecture on safe sex, along with a brochure on STDs and a pocketful of condoms.” He brightened. “So, you’re not saying you won’t help me, only that you need time to think about it?”
No, she needed time to find Jaycee and smack some sense into the girl. “Yeah, give me at least until my next shift, okay?” So I can Google books on pleasing women and give you a list of them, she refrained from adding. Because honestly? If all she had to go by was her own experience, she was afraid Jaycee was going to be equally disappointed.
“All right, then,” Welles said, grabbing the canvas bag off the table. “I can’t wait for you to meet Jaycee.” He stopped in the hallway when he realized Katy wasn’t following. “I told her how cool you are when I called and invited her to the campfire. And my dad dropped off some firewood and we stacked it between some trees near the pit.” He glanced toward the window. “The sun’s not setting for a couple of hours yet, so my mom sent a bunch of citronella torches with Dad in case it doesn’t cool off fast enough this evening. She said if we stick them in a circle outside the sitting area, they should help with the mosquitos until it gets fully dark.”
“You go ahead and start setting them up,” Katy said, waving him away. “I need to stop by my cubicle and grab a fleece, and then I’ll be right out.”
Katy listened to his running footsteps fade to rhythmic thumps down the stairwell, then pulled out a chair and sat down, propped her elbows on the table, and dropped her head into her hands with a groan. He hadn’t really just asked her how to make love, had he? She’d always thought guys talked about that kind of stuff between themselves. Heck, that was practically all she and Jane used to talk about in high school.
The two of them would sit for hours in the tiny hunting shack at the far end of the Christmas tree field, devouring articles on what boys liked in a girl, how to make them notice you, and how to keep them interested. And once she’d worked up the nerve to plop Cosmopolitan and Marie Claire on the counter, she and Jane had graduated to reading what men liked in a woman, how to make them notice you, and how to keep them interested. Then they’d spend hours discussing what traits a boyfriend needed to have to be considered for the role of husband.
They’d actually made lists. Long lists, Katy remembered with another groan.
But she’d stopped sneaking into Brody’s room and stealing his Playboy and Penthouse magazines when she’d realized that seeing all the beautiful women, airbrushed and lens-filtered to perfection, had started depressing Jane.
Katy snorted. Either Jane had forgotten she had a deformed foot and noticeable limp, the self-esteem of a salamander, and the sexual prowess of a nun, or else the man she’d saved from drowning last fall was simply more stubborn than she was. Because Miss Orphan Nobody Jane Doe Abbot was right now happily married to a real live king, making her a freaking queen and mother of a princess, and living in an honest to God palace.
What were the chances of that happening to a small-town Maine girl who had still been a virgin at twenty-eight?
Katy lifted her head and smiled. The next time she went home, she was finding their old lists and sending Jane’s to her. A sharp pang rattled her chest, reminding her that she should actually call her best friend instead of just dropping something in the