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

by Bonnie Tucker

  “I’m not surprised.” And she wasn’t, but the information didn’t sit well. “Does he, you know, does he act on those…women who offer him pieces?”

  “I doubt it. He’s a terrible tease, but I’d bet he’s pretty discriminating when it comes to the woman he’s fooling around with.”

  “I hope so, since I’m one of those women.”

  Kate dropped her fork. “Why, Cara, you little dickens.” She smiled a great big smile, showing gorgeous white teeth.

  Cara had to smile back. Then she gave a little shiver. “Normally, I would never do anything like that. I just met him. But it was like, what can I say? I mean, he was there, and I was there, and our clothes were wa-a-a-ay over there—” She pointed to some space on the other side of the restaurant. Then she sighed, her thoughts drifting away to the night before.

  Kate snapped her fingers in front of Cara’s face. “Don’t stop.”

  “You see, it was raining. Was it raining here, too?”

  Kate stared at her and didn’t say a word.

  “Silly question. Never mind. It makes no difference.” Cara rushed the words out. “The bottom line is, Rex didn’t take the keys out of his truck, and when I locked the truck, we couldn’t get back in.”

  “Why didn’t he call someone?”

  “He had everything in there, the cell phone, wallet, calling cards, everything. We were stranded. In the rain. Just us. So what could we do?” she asked.

  “I don’t know, but I’m sure Rex could have thought of something. I heard through the grapevine that he was one imaginative doctor.”

  Cara could feel her face begin to flame. “He might be, but in this instance we were more worried about hypothermia. We had to run through all that rain to the house and when we finally got there, the electricity was out. I heard the transformer blow. We were soaking wet, so we got naked and were about to play strip poker.” She lifted her head and straightened her shoulders. “What else could we do?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” Kate said sarcastically.

  “Well, we didn’t play.”

  “Why am I not surprised?”

  The waiter took away the appetizer and plopped the main course on the table. Cara took three more antacids, rubbing her tummy in small, circular motions as the cherry-flavored pills made their way down the path. She wasn’t sure eating this much was worth all the pain that followed. Although one more bite and she had to say it did.

  “And I had to make some very hard decisions.” She finally told Kate about her plan to have a baby, and how at first she thought the sperm bank was for humans. How she saw Rex and knew without a doubt that he was the one who would be her perfect donor. “There he was, naked, and I couldn’t help myself. I had to have him. This was the right thing to do.”

  Kate leaned over the table a little, getting closer to Cara. “He didn’t use condoms?” This seemed to scandalize her more than any other part of the scandalous story.

  “He did use condoms. And I didn’t get pregnant. I didn’t puncture the condoms. Well, I did one, but threw it out. I couldn’t be deceitful to him. I couldn’t. I think I’m in love with him.”

  Kate sighed. “I don’t want you to get hurt.”

  “I’m not going to get hurt.”

  “Falling in love with the wrong man?” She raised her eyebrow with the unanswered question.

  “He’s not the wrong man. It just the wrong time and place.” The knowledge about broke her heart.

  Later that afternoon, trying to read a book in her room at Mandelay, Cara wondered if that “not going to get hurt” statement was true. Rex hadn’t called.

  She wasn’t going to wait around forever. Absolutely not. She was going to get dressed, go to a movie, a club, dancing, something. She wouldn’t be some kind of desperate dolly waiting for her man to call. A man who might not even be her man. Maybe she’d been right all along, and this had only been a one-night stand for him. But the way he’d touched her, gazed at her as the night wore on, it was hard to believe he didn’t want more of her.

  Cara took a deep breath and did her best not to cry. Sometimes life wasn’t fair. There was the time she had bought strawberries. They were big and beautiful. But they were also out of season and expensive. She bought them anyway, and put them in the refrigerator. She thought she’d save them for a special occasion, maybe when she had a special date. A week passed with no date and no special occasion. One night she turned on the TV to some old movie and when she brought out the strawberries to eat there was mold growing all over them. That wasn’t fair.

  Not that she’d compare Rex to a moldy strawberry, but since he hadn’t called her, he wasn’t much above moldy, either. With that gross thought in mind, Cara plopped down on her bed, her empty bed, and gave herself up for a long, long cry.

  REX FELT AS IF the bottom had dropped out of his chest and his heart was floating down there somewhere near his…well, anyway, that wasn’t where it ought to be.

  Clay, Arthur, Tigger, Clyde, Cathy and Barbara were all standing in the lab. One of Cara’s coins was on the floor next to the freezer, another was behind it. He held a third in his hand. Some time between him closing the clinic and picking her up later at Mandelay, she’d managed to break in and steal from him. She hadn’t had a lot of time to do it, but she had done it. The proof was right here.

  Cara? How could she do this to him? He’d thought she was the one. He wanted her, more than he had wanted any woman, and he’d had visions and dreams of a future between them. He’d never felt this way about anyone else. When he first saw her, he went hard. Every time he saw her, he went hard. Not that a sexual attraction was important in the ways of a heart, but it sure helped. She had a good heart. A wonderful heart. She was a kindergarten teacher. She was warm and loving.

  She was a liar, a thief. A traitor, too. He had been played for a fool.

  “What do you think we should do?” Barbara asked.

  “Call the police.”

  “No.” Arthur was adamant. “Not that. Don’t bring them into it.”

  “Why not?”

  “She’s such a pretty girl. I’d hate for her to go to jail.”

  “She can’t get away with it,” Rex said. He wasn’t about to let his personal feelings intrude.

  “Call her, talk to her,” Tigger suggested. “Maybe it’s a mistake. Maybe she was testing out some theory. You’re the one who said she had a good imagination.”

  “That’s right,” Cathy agreed. “Call her. Go see her.”

  “I will with the sheriff.”

  “Don’t be such a wimp,” Barbara said. “Go see her first, find out what happened, then get the police.”

  “Do you have an inventory yet on what was taken?”

  “Five straws of LuLu’s semen.”

  “That’s a lot of money.”

  “Tell her to give it back and you won’t press charges.”

  Despite the strange hurt he had somewhere near his heart, Rex had his own ideas about how to deal with Cara. And he suspected none of his business partners would approve.

  CARA HAD BEEN in such a deep sleep that she had no idea what time it was when the phone started ringing. By the time it registered that the noise was coming from the phone and she’d reached for the receiver, the ringing stopped.

  No sooner did she close her eyes when it started ringing again. This time, though, she was prepared. “Hello.”

  “I want to see you tonight.” His voice was deep and seductive.

  She was trying very hard not to let the information Kate had so casually dropped about Rex and his social life affect her. “What time is it?” she asked.

  “Eleven.”

  “Oh.” She yawned, pretending disinterest. “I guess you’ve had a busy day.” She was going to ignore what Kate had said about those women who were after Rex. She wasn’t going to think about who he might have been with earlier. The person who was more important to him than she was. After all, they might have had one incredible night, but to Rex, she migh
t be just one incredible night in a long list of incredible nights. The night might have meant more to her, but that was her problem and she would have to deal with it.

  “I had a wonderful time last night,” she said, just testing the waters.

  His voice hardened. “I’m sure you did.”

  The tone of his voice startled her. He was being a womanizing pig, an egomaniacal turkey.

  “You have a very high opinion of yourself.”

  “Yes, I do. At least I have a high opinion of my professional ethics. We have to talk, Cara, right now.”

  “I’m already in bed. Naked,” she added, still trying to get the mood back to the Sunday-night level. Just to tease him, because Sunday would be the last night he’d ever have her. Let him weep.

  Only she was the one who was going to weep with wanting. She could imagine him in a big leather chair, leaning back, his fingers over his eyes, holding at bay a tension headache. He sounded that tired. Suddenly she felt very sorry for him. She must have worn him out last night and this morning. She had to smile, a soft secret smile. That was a good thing. “But I could put on some clothes, I guess, and you could come over.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  “Rex? What happened with the clinic? Something’s different. You sound different. You sound so sad.”

  “I had a bad day, and that was the good news.”

  “I don’t understand. What’s the bad news?” In Texas they talked in riddles. Everything he said all seemed to make sense when he said it. Then when she went back and rethought the words nothing made sense.

  “The bad news is, it’s fixin’ to get worse…” He let the rest dangle.

  Finally, she could stand it no longer. “There’s more?”

  “The worst possible news on top of the already bad news, at least to me.”

  “Can you tell me?”

  “We have to talk. In person. I’ll be right there.”

  “Rex? Are you mad?”

  “No. Don’t move.”

  Cara jumped out of bed. She didn’t have any clothes to receive him in. She threw on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt and waited for him to climb through the window. Her Romeo.

  Only he came through the door. And he looked as if he were a bee who got usurped from his hive.

  “You took my semen,” he accused.

  Oh, my, he thinks I used those pinpricked condoms. “No, I didn’t. I was thinking about it, but I didn’t. There’s a difference.”

  “Yes, you did, and I want it back.”

  He wasn’t being rational. “Rex, you know when you have an orgasm, you can’t take that semen and put it back. That’s silly.”

  “Don’t tell me it’s silly. You hand it back.”

  “I didn’t take your semen. I was going to try but I threw those condoms away.”

  “You were going to try and take my semen?”

  “I wanted a baby, Rex. I thought Noble Sperm Bank was for people when they needed to be artificially inseminated. I didn’t know it was about a bull until you showed me the picture of LuLu.”

  “What about last night?”

  She lowered her gaze to the carpet. “I had stuck some pinholes in a condom package, but I threw it away. I couldn’t do that to you.”

  “All last night was about was sex? Having a baby? It didn’t mean anything to you?”

  That shocked her. How could he say that to her? “Of course it did. What do you think? I realize I don’t know you well, but I thought I knew you well enough to think that what we had was special. The way you looked at me. The way you touched me. The way you held me.”

  “It was special.”

  “Ha! I had lunch today with Kate, and apparently, what is special to you and me is also special to you and a horde, or perhaps I should say a herd, of other women, too.”

  “I’ve had it.” He had raised his voice. The look he gave her was full of scorn, and it hurt her. “I’m done with all you and your feminine manipulation. I’ve had about all I can handle.” He stormed out of the room, slamming the door, and it wasn’t two seconds that he came back. “Your coins, from your bracelet, were found at the lab where the straws of semen were stolen. I’ll give you twenty-four hours to bring them back. After that, I call the police.”

  He slammed the door so hard it rattled the walls.

  12

  TO ANYONE LOOKING at Rex Noble, they’d think he was cool and collected. What they couldn’t see was how he felt inside, his heart slamming in his chest, his insides ripped apart. Cara had done this to him. How a woman had turned him to this in such a short time, he didn’t know. He was hurting. But he’d get over it. He always had before.

  The gold coin he had been flipping through his fingers he now placed in the middle of his desk as if it deserved a place of honor. Was there honor among thieves? Hell, no. Yet, in a bizarre way, the coin did deserve its place of honor, because without the coin, he never would have known who had stolen the semen.

  Not only bull semen, but possibly his own. His baby. How would he ever know? And if she was pregnant with his child, how could he possibly keep her from going back to Erie?

  There was one way—by holding her captive. He doubted, after what he’d accused her of doing, that she’d willingly stay here with him.

  The only other way was to make her a prisoner. She deserved to go to jail because of what she had stolen.

  He released the condom wrappers he’d found in the trash can at the cottage from his fist, put them on the desk and gently smoothed them out. There were six of them. One had pinpricks through the foil. He had even found the safety pin, still open, in one of the bathroom drawers.

  Cathy and Barbara and the old boys had found some of the coins and the police had found several more of Cara’s coins near other freezer units.

  Rex knew he had been a chump. He’d been set up. Set up by a woman who he thought he loved. No. Make that definitely loved. He had always believed in love at first sight, but until she’d hit him over the head with hot wings, it had never happened to him.

  Now she’d made him too mad to be in love. She’d made him look like a fool. No one, not even Cara, would make a fool out of him and get away with it. And any woman who might be pregnant with his child was not going to get away from him either.

  He had to call Les Herman, Pegleg’s police chief, and report her, hand over the evidence. While no one had told the police officers their suspicions about Cara when they were here, and had pretended the coins near the freezing units meant nothing, now was the time to face the truth. Rex had no choice. Rex cleared the foil wrappers off the desk and hid them in the back of the top middle drawer. The chief could know about LuLu’s stolen semen. That Cara had also stolen semen from Rex was between Cara and him and no one else.

  Les came in a while later bearing his fingerprint kit. “Come on, Les,” Rex said. “Call Houston and see if they’ll send someone out with more up-to-date investigative equipment. Don’t waste your time with that stuff.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with this.” Les dropped the kit on Rex’s desk. It made a loud plunk and only bounced once. “It works perfectly fine.”

  “I hope there wasn’t glass in there.”

  “I don’t think so.” He only looked worried for a second.

  “When was the last time you used it?” Rex asked.

  The chief actually turned red. Then with boldness and bluster he said, “It’s never been used. There’s no crime in Pegleg.”

  “There is now,” Rex said darkly. He told Les his suspicions about Cara. It was one of the most difficult things he had ever done. He handed Les the coins they had collected.

  “Why would she do it?” the chief asked. “What’s the motive?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe she’s a spy or something.”

  Thinking about Cara and the way she looked the first time he saw her in her very urban, very un-Pegleg-like clothing made him smile. Not a big smile, mind you, but a smile all the same.

  Then he remembered her in
the cottage, sitting on the floor, naked. Her breasts, so perfectly formed, firm, and when she’d crossed her legs— He closed his eyes for only a second then popped them open again. Yet, even in that brief second he could see the dark triangle of soft curls, the moist center that he had tasted, touched, entered. An acute desire for her made him hard and very uncomfortable in his jeans. He needed release, and he needed it from her.

  Les opened his fingerprint kit, reading the directions while he talked in his monotone voice about why it would work just as well as anything Houston would have. Rex thought about Cara’s nipples, which were a lot nicer to think about than some stupid fingerprint kit that wasn’t going to work anyway.

  Her nipples were sweetness. He could still taste them, feel how they stood up to his touch, grew erect under his tongue. The soft moan she made deep in her throat spurred him on. “Cara,” he said, not even realizing he had spoken her name out loud until Les said, “She’s a dog, huh?” The chief’s question sliced through Rex’s thoughts.

  Rex snorted. “Not at all.”

  “She’s good-lookin’?” he asked, sounding surprised.

  “She’s okay, if you like that type.”

  “I’d still like to know the motive.”

  He had a sneaking suspicion that she probably got the idea when they were talking about it Sunday afternoon. She may have thought to use that ridiculous cow and cottage story as a cover-up for her real intention. To steal his personal semen. For her own means.

  Women were funny about things like that, going the indirect way when there was a perfectly straight line.

  He refused to admit to himself that it hurt to know that his feelings for her were deep, and to Cara, he was nothing more than stud service.

  By the time the chief left, leaving behind a lot of black dust and probably taking nothing with him, Rex had started receiving the phone calls.

  Tony called inviting him to dinner, apologizing for whatever Cara might have done.

  Kate called. “You’re a cad,” she yelled and hung up.