A Baby...Maybe? & How to Hunt a Husband (11 page)

“The
semen,
you mean. Get the term right.” He followed her example and whispered the word
semen,
too. “If I supply the semen, then eventually you'll have two cows anyway.”

“But mama cow feeds baby cow, and I'll be saving all my money to feed the baby when she gets older and needs to eat that special formula that Tony makes.”

“That will be great. The cow will like that.”

“Still,” she said, “I have to search the area for some land. Some pretty land with trees and flowers, and maybe a little cottage in the middle. Maybe with a stream. And ducks and chipmunks.”

“I don't recall any chipmunks around here. Squirrels, maybe.”

She waved a hand. A very lovely hand. “No matter. Chipmunks, squirrels…doesn't matter. They're both cute little rodents.”

“That's true.” The lady might be a schoolmarm, might even be very smart, but she was putting on a show for him. He didn't know why—he didn't care. He was enjoying her show as much as if he were down at the Alley Theater watching a play onstage.
He was going to go along with her, see how far she took it. He hoped she'd stay all day. He'd work around his other appointments. He didn't want her, or the show, to end. “They also carry rabies,” he said very seriously.

“I wasn't going to play with them,” she said all huffy.

“Of course not.” He knew she didn't believe what she was saying, but her imagination was incredible.

He took moment to reflect upon Cara's arrival in Pegleg. First, she'd dumped chicken wings on him. She couldn't have known him then, but when she sashayed away, swaying her butt, he knew she was making sure she'd gotten his attention. Which she had. Very, very much so. Then she'd sworn Rosey, Kate and Tony to secrecy about her name and location, and now he knew why!

Because she must have wanted to see him again. She had to know that all the mystery would have him going after her, and she'd been right. He hadn't counted on the chemistry. And there was one sizzling glass of chemicals between them waiting impatiently to boil over.

The whole story she'd woven about wanting to raise a cow in the summer was as artificial as that sugar-free powder stuff they put into coffee to cut calories. But now he knew why. She was weaving the tallest tale he'd ever heard because she wanted something out of him. Something that she hadn't wanted last night, that must have dawned on her this morning.

For a moment his eyes narrowed, but then he relaxed a little and smiled. She probably wanted to trap him into marriage, because that's what all women wanted, wasn't it? His claim to singlehood last night must have given her a challenge. She had given herself away when she told him about her mother and
the push to get married. So she couldn't find a guy in Erie, and had come to Texas to look.

It wasn't the first time someone had tried to marry Rex off, and it wouldn't be the last. The only reason he didn't call her on her game was that he enjoyed being with her. He was attracted to her.

Marriage, no. But sex with her? That was a definite sure thing.

Now that he'd wised up and established control over himself and the situation, he crossed his arms over his chest and let her go on weaving.

And weave Cara did. “And I will take my cow and let her live on that piece of land, all by herself. She won't have to share with anyone else. Until she has her baby.”

“What about the cottage?”

“That's for me.”

“Isn't that sharing the land?”

“Hmm.” Her eyebrows rose, her forehead creased in concentration. “You're right. I hadn't thought of that.”

“Cows are social creatures. It would get lonely without another cow to talk to.”

“Are you making fun of me again?”

“No,” he quickly denied. She was so easy. “I never made fun of you before, either. Remember?”

She seemed to weigh his protestations and rule in his favor, because she didn't get up and leave. “I hadn't thought of all that….” Her voice trailed off. “I kind of like the idea of having a cow as a pet. Can they be trained? Like a dog?”

“I doubt it.” He answered her question very seriously. What he doubted was that she was serious at all.

She had been fiddling with her hair, and now some of the silky strands had swung back over her shoulder and were hiding her breasts. She tossed them back. A
sight to behold. Her hair, that is, not her breasts. He wasn't looking at them at all. He wasn't noticing how rounded and soft they looked. He wasn't paying any attention to the way her nipples tightened when the air conditioner came on and the cold blast of air blew from the outlet in the ceiling and rained on top of her. Nope, he wasn't paying a bit of attention to any of that.

“This is what I'm going to do— Rex? Rex?”

“What?” He moved his gaze to her face and almost had the grace to be embarrassed for getting caught. Almost, but not quite.

“Were you listening?” He could tell she knew he hadn't been.

“Of course, you're doing something.”

She looked at him in a slanty kind of way, as if she had caught him in the act of doing something bad and she wanted to send him to the principal. Which, of course, she had. But she kept on talking, so he got a reprieve. “First I'm going to scope out the area around here, and search for a perfect piece of land to put my new little—”

“Cows are big.”

“—big cow on. It will be a perfectly lovely piece of land. She will be able to roam freely, and have her baby, and it will be a heavenly place for her.” Cara let out a big, deep breath. She couldn't believe that she was telling him this story.

Lying was one of those things she had never done before. But she was doing it pretty substantially at the moment. Funny thing was, just like the baby she wanted, this plan sounded good to her, too. Living in the country in a little cottage, a cow roaming the land, mooing for her breakfast, depending on her for sustenance and love. Maybe the whole thing wasn't out of the realm of possibility. She'd get a job teaching at Pegleg Elementary School, if they had one. The
thought terrified her for a split second. Actually it wasn't that thought, it was the thought of telling her mother she was moving away from Erie. But since the idea was only a daydream at this point, why waste time being terrified? Besides, if she wanted to do this badly enough, she could probably swing it.

A cow on the outside, her own baby on the inside, in the country, in Texas, at least for the summers and maybe even—

“Have you looked at land?”

Men had the most irritating practical streaks. Couldn't he see she was busy daydreaming? She shook her head.

“Do you know anything about artificial insemination? Raising cattle?”

Again she shook her head. “But I would love for you to show me everything, from how you get it, to how you implant it, to where you keep it. Just everything.”

“You want me to show you everything?” He lowered his voice, and she knew it was another one of his flirty come-ons. He could see right through her. For some reason, that didn't even bother her. Not one bit. Although she had the decency to be ashamed of herself. Almost.

Wait. She was a schoolteacher, living on a schoolteacher's salary. Plus, she had a mother who would make short work of a daydream involving a cow, calf, ranch, cottage. As quickly as she'd invented it, the daydream crashed and burned. As much as she'd love to live the life she'd just described, it was unrealistic. She stood up and held out her hand in a gesture that meant he should hold out his and they should shake. Only he didn't hold out his hand, so with coins clanking, she dropped hers to her waist.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

“I just realized this idea I have is totally unrealis
tic.” She stared at her toes. “I don't know what I was thinking. There's no way I can do this on my salary. And it would hurt my mother if I moved away.”

“There might be a way. How's five o'clock?”

“I don't understand.”

“I'll pick you up at five. I'll show you around. Introduce you to LuLu. The prize. Then you can decide if your idea is unrealistic.”

She had a date. She couldn't believe it. He had asked her out, and there wasn't any mother intervention involved. She gazed at him, feeling as if she'd slid back into her dream. “All right, then. I'll be ready.”

“Do you want me to come through the downstairs lobby, or should I climb the tree to get you?”

“If you climb the tree, I doubt you'll be going down to the lobby anytime soon after that.”

He grinned. Really big. She liked that grin, especially when it was directed at her.

She had almost confessed to thinking the Noble Sperm Bank was for humans and not cattle. She had been ready to tell him about her desire to have a baby, not a calf, not a cow, not a bull and not a husband, almost…but she hadn't.

Suddenly it dawned on her, instinct had made her keep her mouth shut. She wanted him, that was a basic need. She wanted a baby, that was a desire so great it almost hurt.

And here he was, offering to climb a tree and visit her in her room, which even if she didn't want a baby, she would have gladly accepted from him.

It all made such sense. It was a no-brainer. Sperm. Semen. Fresh from the source. No plastic cups required.

C
ARA LEFT
the clinic feeling excited in more ways than one. She'd get to meet LuLu, the father of her unborn child. Um, calf. Rex was so excited about showing her LuLu, she didn't have the heart to tell him there weren't going to be any unborn calves.

Anyway, she wanted to see the bull. She wanted to see the ranch. And more than anything else, she wanted to be with Rex.

She had a little bit of a problem though. What did a woman wear to meet a bull or look at cows? Or shop for land, for that matter? The closest she had ever come to a cow was reading
Mazy the Lazy Cow
to her kindergarten class. Cows had never been a part of her life.

While Cara didn't consider herself to be a snob or an affected sort of female, she didn't think of herself as unsophisticated either. She might not have traveled the world, but she had been to places in the United States people from all over the world came to visit. Places like New York, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Los Angeles and Rochester, Minnesota. Not that Rochester was a great tourist site, but it did have the Mayo Clinic. And the greatest place of all, Green Bay, Wisconsin, home of the best football team in the world, the Green Bay Packers.

So while she didn't consider herself a person who had seen the world, she felt she was a person who had seen a good portion of her own country. She
could carry on a conversation about almost anything. She felt so sure of herself right now, so confident in so many ways, that she knew she could mix in with any person from any walk of life. So why was she having this attack of inadequacy about meeting a bull?

Or was it an attack of inadequacy about going out with Rex?

Whatever it was, there was only one cure for it. Cara headed straight for the mall. She had never been much of a shopper. In Erie, her schoolteacher wardrobe had been fine, and very bland and boring. In Pegleg, at the mall, a whole new world opened up to her.

Victoria's Secret and three-for-ten-dollars thong underwear was the perfect place to start. Decadently wonderful.

She passed by the conservative slacks without a backward glance. Low-slung hip huggers, the kind whose waistband barely covered her bottom and didn't come close to reaching her belly button—that's what she tried on instead, and with a very large gulp, purchased. Her new top skimmed down to almost, but not quite, meet the jeans. A straw purse, slip-on sandals with a cork platform and a very large-brimmed hat with pretty flowers sewn into the band finished off her new outfit. Of course, it also reduced her baby-cow-semen, land-cottage-dog fund by a little bit, but it wasn't as if she really intended to have all those things. Just the baby. And if she really got her courage up, she might get the human semen free.

She wasn't sure about the reaction her new clothes would have on Rex, but for herself, she felt suddenly empowered. If her mother saw her, she'd kill her, which made her feel extremely guilty, but oh, so good.

Cara took everything back to Mandelay. She showered, put her new clothes on, then went back to the mirror and turned to see herself as someone else
would see her—namely Rex. She wanted to know if she felt the same way wearing her new clothes as she had while trying them on.

The reflection staring back at her didn't look like the same Cara who had left Erie only a few days before. Now her skin glowed. Her brown eyes had a sparkle in them. Her cheeks were bright and there was a smile on her face that she couldn't possibly wipe off. Even if she wanted to, which she didn't.

She touched the necklace. The bracelet rattled. Her knuckles grazed the bottom of an earring. The jewelry was a dilemma she would have to deal with. When she wore all the coins, she felt as if she had so much luck. As if her decisions were all right. Her confidence level high.

Then she saw something that did wipe that giddy smile off her face. She stared at her bracelet, then brought it up close to her eyes to be sure she was really seeing what she thought she saw. More coins were missing. One empty gold bracket was twisted open as if someone had taken a pair of needle-nosed pliers to it.

She must have snagged it on something. But when?

It wasn't just the loss of another coin. It was the loss of one tiny bit of the luck she was sure came her way when she wore all the jewelry at once.

Luck. How silly. Still, she believed in luck. There was so much she could control in her life. She could shop for clothes in Texas and buy what she really wanted. She could answer questions about the Green Bay Packers, tourist sights to see while traveling in the United States and anything at all about teaching little boys and girls. She felt confident about all these things.

Where her problems cropped up was in the area she had little or no expertise. Romance. That was another matter altogether. Sure, she had dated, a lot. She had
been around, a little. But she still had no idea how to make a man see her as the one and only lady to want forever. Or even to lust after for an hour.

Now that she knew she wanted Rex to donate sperm to make her a baby, she had to figure out a way to make it happen. The attraction between them was undeniable. She didn't think the sex part would be any problem. And if she should get pregnant, well… After all he'd said about not wanting to get married, and since she didn't either, she doubted her being pregnant would present much of a problem to him. Just thinking about doing it the old-fashioned way, with him deep inside her, made her knees go weak and her stomach burst with bombing butterflies.

His baby. Her baby. Their baby. A real cowboy baby.

She'd use her feminine wiles to convince him. If she had any to use. She carefully outlined her lips with a ruby pencil and filled in the color with her Red-Hot Mama lipstick. She puckered up for the mirror, leaving her eyes wide open. Her lips puckered didn't look all that bad, but not extremely sexy either. Certainly not like the puckered lips on the models in lipstick commercials.

Maybe if she sucked in her cheeks and puckered. No, all that did was make her eyes bulge out and a strange vacuuming sound come out of her mouth. Of course, in a real situation they would both have their eyes closed and be so caught up in passion Rex wouldn't notice the vacuuming sound.

For the first time in her life she wished she knew how to do the sexy kind of flirting that led up to the passionate kind of romance. Or even knew how to make her lips pucker better.

She picked up the phone, punched zero for the front desk, although there really wasn't a front desk at Mandelay, just Rosey, so it wasn't surprising that Rosey
answered. “Do you know how to make lips fuller?” she asked her.

Rosey must have been busy doing something, because she didn't answer for a while. Then she said, “Ah.” And then, “Well, I've heard hemorrhoid salve would do it. I don't think I have any around here,” she added delicately, “but if it's important to you…”

“No, no, just curious,” Cara mumbled and was about to hang up when Rosey added, “But I was about to call you. Rex is here.”

Those simple words, “Rex is here,” drove all rational thoughts out of her head. She had to tell herself that the right foot went first, then the left, and march two-three-four.

Before she left her room, she had the good sense to take one last look in the mirror. The lipstick was still on and still bright red. After a brief sweep with the brush, her hair looked wild. She had to forcibly stop herself from tying it back into its old ponytail. A tug on her top, a check on her posture, deep breath, smile on face, okay, she was ready to go. Missing some lucky coins, but ready. She placed the hat on her head, grabbed her new purse and headed to the lobby.

 

R
EX WAS HOLDING UP
a wall and talking to Rosey. “Hey,” he said, “when a guest needs something for hemorrhoids, he needs it bad. Cara and I could run up to the store first and bring some back before we—”

“No, no,” Rosey said. She had a funny sparkle in her eyes, Rex thought, for an innkeeper with a guest in pain. “It's not, I mean, she'll be, ah, he'll be…”

She babbled on for a few seconds, but then Rosey had always been inclined to babble, and he was just killing time anyway, waiting for his first glimpse of Cara.

And he got it. The first thing he glimpsed were her toes.

Toenails polished a bright red, slender feet slipped into sandals she'd be sorry she'd worn when they headed to the field but that he was mighty glad she had on now. Her stomach came into view next. Flat, her belly button a perfect inny. She wore a white crop top. The collar reached her neck, her necklace bright on top of the white material. The lower part of the shirt barely covered her breasts, and he wasn't even sure they were covered. He could swear he saw a fleshy curve peeking behind the material. If that wasn't a breast, then his body had a very male reaction for no good reason.

She made her way slowly down the stairs. He could tell she was balancing carefully on those shoes, those ridiculous sexy shoes. The shoes were the kind that made him want to grab hold of her legs, fling off the shoes, then suck on those red-painted toes.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hi,” she said.

He took her by the arm. “Bye.” She waved back at Rosey. He walked her out the door, then, having a feeling he'd forgotten something, stuck his head back in.

“Bye,” he said to Rosey. She wiggled her fingers at him. She seemed to be laughing. That didn't make any sense whatsoever. Laughing at what? Women.

“You look nice,” Rex said.

“I hope I'm dressed okay for meeting LuLu.”

“Perfect.”

“Because I really didn't know what to wear. I mean, this is sort of like meeting your father-in-law for the first time. I want to make a good impression.”

“And then we'll drive around, and I'll show you some property near my ranch that's pretty reasonable.”

“What's reasonable to you may not be to me.”

“I'm the owner. It'll be reasonable.”

She was liking him more and more. He was making everything so easy for her. But it wasn't meant to be, and she'd have to tell him she wasn't buying land or cows. Now would be a good time.

“And on the way we can look at some of the cows and calves. You can see what you're getting into.”

Maybe later would be better. She had time.

She smoothed down her already flat belly, which made his own tie into a strong knot of red-hot desire.

“You couldn't have picked anything more appropriate,” he complimented her again. She looked as if she were going to a chi-chi luncheon downtown. Not that he was complaining. Not at all. She could expose herself to LuLu anytime she wanted. As long as he was invited to tag along.

He opened the door to the truck, took her arm and guided her in. It was a big step up, and it was as if God himself had answered a prayer when her sandal slipped off, exposing a bare foot. He picked up the shoe. It looked heavier than it was, with its cork platform and thin strip of tan leather across the top. He figured it couldn't weigh more than an ounce. Instead of handing the sandal to her, he circled her ankle—a very slender one at that—and placed the shoe back where it belonged. The need to suck her toes slammed into him again. He ignored the need and slammed the truck door instead.

He headed back toward the clinic and his ranch, which was all part of the same five hundred acres he owned. All along the route he pointed out land that was for sale. “But I don't own that land,” he said. She nodded her head, the smile never leaving her face.

“Do you want to take notes?” he asked.

“I'm still weighing my options.”

“This would be a nice place to buy.”

“I thought you wanted me to look at your land.”

“I'm talking about Pegleg.” He couldn't believe he had said that. He didn't know if he wanted her to move here. Not yet. Too soon.

“I can't move here permanently. It would only be for vacations and summer.”

However, he didn't want her to tell him it wasn't a possibility. He had no choice but to argue. “Why wouldn't you want to move here? Permanently, I mean.” Not that her moving here made any difference to him. But the very idea that a person wouldn't want to live in Texas, and Pegleg in particular, seemed a bit odd to him. “After all,” he said. “This is Pegleg.”

“I'm from Erie.” She laughed at him, which didn't sit well. Not well at all. First Rosey and now Cara. What was with females lately?

“Don't you get it?” he asked. “Erie doesn't have a thing on Pegleg.”

“Have you ever been to Erie?”

“I don't have to have been there. You're not looking to buy semen from an Erie sperm bank are you?”

“No. But until I saw your billboards, I hadn't intended to buy semen at all.”

“I thought you told me you had intended to raise a cow.”

She looked out the window. “I did say that, and that's right, I did intend to buy a cow.”

“The billboards sold you?” That wasn't good. He didn't want the billboards to sell anything. He didn't want Clay to be right.

“Oh, yes, it did.” She sighed, crossing her arms over her chest, pushing her breasts upward and outward.

He could see her nipples under the white cloth, pointed, erect. Not that he was looking, because he wasn't. Much.

Cara said, “As soon as I saw the bull and the cow, I knew I had to have some.”

“Some?”

She looked almost embarrassed. Her voice became soft, thoughtful. “A baby. To raise.”

“A calf, you mean?” These city women. They had so much to learn.

“Of course that's what I mean.” She had this faraway look.

“I told my marketing man to take those billboards down.”

“I don't know why. They certainly got my attention.”

“But it's not the image I want to project.”

“What image is that?”

“One of a serious business venture. Not something like two lovesick cattle looking at each other across the freeway as if they can't wait to get at it.” He glanced at her. “I don't mean any offense, Cara.”