A Baby...Maybe? & How to Hunt a Husband

by Bonnie Tucker

  Her lower lip stuck out a little. “You’re making fun of me, aren’t you?”

  “Now, why would I do that?”

  “Because I’m from the city and don’t know a farm from a ranch, so you think I’m dumb.” She sniffed.

  “That’s not true.” Again he moved forward, the table edge cutting into his ribs. He wanted to feel closer to her, he liked being close to her, and for the first time, it scared him. He felt almost out of control when it came to her, and he had from the moment he saw her. Otherwise he never would have been climbing trees. Sure, she was beautiful. She had skin the color of peaches, and hair that looked like silk. Her fingernails were long and tapered, her hands smooth. “I’m not making fun of you. Teasing maybe, but never making fun.”

  “Thank you,” she said softly, lowering her gaze, staring at his extended arms, his hands only an inch away from hers. Her fingers stretched out, the tips a fraction of a space from his. And just as quickly, she balled them into fists and moved them away from him.

  That was good, he thought, because if something like the perfume she wore, which was so faint that he could barely smell it, was strong enough to entice him and make him want to nuzzle her neck, sink his lips into that soft skin, he needed to know he was having an equally strong effect on her.

  He watched her brown eyes, already big, widen even more. Her lips parted, her tongue peeked out, then outlined them, leaving a moist trail behind. He raised his hand, then stopped himself when he realized he had been about to follow where that tongue had been. Fool, he called himself. Idiot. He didn’t know her really, not yet.

  But boy, did he want to touch those lips of hers.

  He tossed Donetti’s matchbook across the table, where it slid off the opposite end, landing on the carpet below. He put his wayward hand under his thigh, rendering it useless against what his male instinct was urging him to do. He had to settle for a knee that was rubbing against her knee. Lucky knee. “Believe you me,” he said, “it never occurred to me you were dumb.”

  “Well, good.” Her body relaxed and her shoulders lifted. She gathered that hair, that thick, glossy hair, and threw the whole mass behind her, where it landed over the back of the chair like a waterfall. He’d never seen hair like hers before and he had a longing to dig his fingers right through it. Last night hadn’t been enough. He needed more. Much more. For the life of him he didn’t know why.

  “I’m not dumb. I’m a schoolteacher.”

  “Really.” He didn’t care what she did for a living. All he could think about right now was the difference between hair that had been shampooed and left alone versus hair that had been teased and lacquered with maximum-hold hair spray.

  “I really liked Pegleg when I first visited. Then when I went home to Erie, all I could think about was how much I wanted to get back here and visit again.”

  “I’m glad you wanted to come back,” he said.

  “Me, too. But what struck me most,” she said softly, looking at him all innocent-like underneath those long thick eyelashes she had, “was how cute the cows were.”

  He stopped himself from laughing. He cleared his throat and hoped he looked serious. “Cute?”

  “Just absolutely precious,” she gushed. “And I tried and tried to figure out a way—a reason to come back and stay in Pegleg, at least for the summers—and finally it dawned on me.”

  “You did?” he asked. “It did?” She was confusing him.

  “Cows.” She lifted her shoulders and brought them back down with a beautiful sigh, as if that one word, cows, explained it all. It explained nothing.

  She must have sensed his skepticism, because she said, “It’s the Erie winters,” as if he should have known that. “They’re positively wicked.”

  He’d never been farther east than Chicago, and that had been in the spring, but he agreed with her. “Snow and ice.” Even he knew that. It had snowed in Pegleg, oh, about twenty years ago. A momentous event. It had to have been if he still remembered.

  She looked at him as if she expected more. More of what, he didn’t know. But he tried. “That white stuff.”

  “Absolutely.” She glowed. “More than you can possibly imagine. So I thought and thought.”

  “You did all that thinking. During the snow?”

  “During recess.”

  “I don’t understand.” She had lost him. Again.

  “You know, when the kids go outside and play. Only they couldn’t because of the snow. So we tried to think of summertime games, and we came up with the cow game.”

  In his mind, the only game Cara was serving up was a mass of confusion. “What’s the cow game?”

  “Moo-moo.”

  “Am I supposed to know this?”

  She at least had the decency to blush. “No. It’s like Go Fish, only instead of saying ‘go fish,’ they say, ‘moo-moo.’ It’s a lot more fun.”

  “What does this go-fish-moo-moo have to do with cows and bulls?”

  Now she was looking at him as if he were dense. “It made me long for Pegleg and to have my own cow.”

  “Of course.” He grabbed her knee and squeezed. “I shoulda known.”

  Even though he heard her breath catch when he touched her, and that gave him a bit of satisfaction if he did say so himself, she didn’t lose her train of thought. If she ever even had one in the first place.

  “But then I thought…” She went on without skipping so much as a beat, although she did place her hand on his, which made him catch his breath. She took it away, too quickly in his mind. “…what could I possibly do on a teacher’s salary that would let me stay in Pegleg, at least during the summer?”

  “Why summer?”

  “Because that’s when I have vacation. I teach, remember?” She didn’t sound exactly exasperated, but she definitely was talking to him as if he had less than a full set of brain cells.

  “Are you saying you’re not going to live here the rest of the year?”

  “I’m from Erie.”

  “People move from where they’re from all the time. What does that have to do with anything?”

  “I have a job. I have responsibilities.” She paused. “My parents are there. Remember, my mother?” She lowered her voice, “She is going to have a cow, no pun intended, of course.”

  Understanding almost dawned on him. “Of course. But it was bad, you know.”

  “The pun or my mother?”

  “Both, but I’m talking about your mother.”

  “You can’t imagine.”

  “Your mother has driven you to raising cattle.”

  “One cow,” she corrected him. “Plus one calf. So—” She leaned forward again. “So, can you help me? Because—”

  Ted’s voice scratched through the intercom. “Your one o’clock is here.”

  “Ask him to wait. Offer him a drink. I’ll be there soon.” He wasn’t anywhere near finished with Cara. “Go on.” He nodded at her.

  “Because I can’t do it without your services. See—” and she gazed at him so earnestly he couldn’t help but believe her “—I can’t afford to buy and feed both a bull and a cow.”

  “No?”

  “Oh, no, and certainly not for the length of time it might take them to do the natural thing.” Her cheeks turned a pretty shade of pink. “So I’m only going to buy a cow.” She sounded triumphant. “And if you supply the sperm—” she whispered the word sperm “—then everything will be perfect.”

  “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 unrealistic.” 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.

  9

  CARA 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?