High Country Baby

by Joanna Sims

  Clint put his hands out, palms up. “Why would you think that?”

  “Because you smoke like a chimney and drink tequila straight out of the bottle like it’s water, that’s why.”

  She had a point, granted.

  “I don’t do drugs.”

  “Never?” she asked disbelievingly.

  Clint stared at her, his arms crossed. If he lied, she’d know it. “Not since I was a kid.”

  Her cowboy was trying very hard to stall the inevitable—she’d used stall tactics before in business, so she recognized them for what they were. She operated the lighter like a champ and lit the end of joint. After a couple of seconds of trying to suck in the smoke without any success, Taylor inspected the end of the joint to see what was wrong.

  “Darn it! Why’d it go out?”

  “Jesus Christ, this is gonna take all flippin’ night!”

  “Why don’t you just go to sleep?” Taylor suggested harshly.

  “You’re in my bedroom!”

  “Well—I’m not going to do this in my tent. That’s not safe.”

  Clint threw up his hands, crossed back into her territory, knelt down beside her, took the lighter, took the joint, lit it, puffed on it until the end was cherry red and handed it back to her.

  “There. Have at it.”

  “Thank you.” But her tone didn’t match the words.

  She took a tiny little puff, held it her mouth and then blew it out. She repeated the act several times, with Clint watching her like the fun police.

  “I don’t know what the big deal is—I don’t feel any different.”

  Clint didn’t want any campers that may be nearby to smell the distinctive scent of marijuana. The way Taylor was dragging this out, it could be another hour of this nonsense.

  “And...he’s back,” Taylor said when Clint crossed over to her side of the fire for the third time. This time, however, he sat down next to her on the log she was using as a makeshift bench.

  She could tell that he was about to cave and help her. So, she reminded him, “I have as much to lose as you do. Maybe more.”

  “Not more.” Clint looked her right in the eye. “Now watch. You’ve got to inhale it and hold it in.”

  He demonstrated before he passed the joint back to her. She tried to follow his example, but just ended up coughing so hard that she started to gag. Her eyes were watering, she couldn’t stop coughing and there was an odd, unpleasant aftertaste in her mouth. But she wasn’t willing to give up until she had succeeded and she told Clint as much.

  “The only way we’re gonna get this friggin’ thing done is with a shotgun.” Clint took charge of the operation. “I’m gonna blow the smoke into your mouth and you’re gonna breathe in deep and hold it like you’re about to go underwater. You got it?”

  She gave him a little salute. Clint took off his hat, put it down next to him, and before she could think about it he had his hand on the back of her head, guiding her face toward him as he put his lips next to her lips.

  Taylor closed her eyes to focus on the instructions Clint had given her moments before. Against her face she could feel the softness of his beard that, surprisingly, mirrored the softness of his lips. She wouldn’t have thought that his beard would feel so soft. And she wouldn’t have ever believed that such a rough man could have incredibly soft lips.

  “Hold it, hold it...” Clint told her.

  When she couldn’t hold the smoke in her lungs for a second longer, she blew it out and started coughing again. But this time she was laughing between coughs. Her eyes were watering again, her lungs were burning, her nose was burning, her throat already felt sore from all of the coughing. But she still felt like laughing. It took some doing, but after a couple of minutes, she managed to get the coughs under control. She found herself chuckling while she wiped the tears from her eyes.

  “Oh, my...” Her watery eyes smiled at Clint. “Do it again!”

  * * *

  Clint remembered the first moment he had ever seen Taylor. He’d been coming in from repairing fences in the south pasture and she had just arrived at the ranch driving a VW Bug. She appeared to him, at the time, to be an educated, successful woman. It was more than the haircut, the cut of her clothes or how she accessorized—it was the way she walked, head up, shoulders squared. To him, she appeared to have a confidence not often seen in the women he had known. She seemed to know who she was, to be confident in her position in the world. And, by the way she had looked him directly in the eye when they passed each other, he had the feeling that she was used to dealing with men in business and winning. But of all of the impressions he’d had of Taylor Brand, he’d never suspected that she was the type of woman who would get him high as a kite.

  Now he was lying flat on his back on a woven blanket next to Taylor, boots off, hat off, staring up at the stars dotting the night sky overhead. He was aware of everything about Taylor, as if all of her womanly assets were being brought to the forefront of his mind. When she brushed his hand with hers, was that purposeful? When her shoulder touched his, was that a signal that she wanted to be close to him? His brain was scrambled and he couldn’t figure this woman out. But what he did know was that he really liked how her hair smelled, and out of the corner of his eye he could see the swell of her full breasts. He had the undeniable urge to reach over and fondle them.

  “Look at my hand.” Taylor was holding up her left hand in front of her eyes. “I’ve never noticed how weird knuckles are...”

  “You’ve been looking at your hand for five minutes.”

  “I have?” she asked with a laugh. “That doesn’t make a bit of sense.”

  She started to giggle and pressed her hands into her stomach. “Ow—my stomach hurts from laughing.”

  Her face hurt from smiling, too. It took her a minute to stop giggling, but when she did, she brought up a new topic.

  “Do you know what I find surprising?”

  “Mmm?”

  “You’re beard is so very soft, like a little baby bunny,” Taylor mused aloud. She ran her fingers over her own lips. “And your lips are really soft, too.”

  Clint turned his head toward the woman lying beside him. He’d found her attractive from the get-go; he liked her curvy, womanly figure, her large breasts, her full, rounded hips—he liked the fact that she challenged him, didn’t give him an inch and often beat him at his own game. She was totally off-limits—he understood that. But she was making it damn difficult not to act on his body’s urges and see how far he could get with his sexy companion. And he had to imagine that he might have a pretty good shot to score with Taylor—newly divorced women were usually sexually deprived and looking for a rebound to soothe their wounded pride. At least, that was his experience.

  “Are you a married man, Clint?”

  “No.”

  “I’m not a married woman. I was,” Taylor said on a sigh. “Eighteen years. Would you believe that?”

  Taylor studied her left hand again. “My hand looks weird without my rings. I’m so glad that I never took Christopher’s last name. What a pain in the neck it would be to change every single thing back to Brand. My driver’s license, credit cards, bank account...”

  Taylor’s voice trailed off for a moment before another thought popped into her head.

  “Do you have any children?”

  When Clint didn’t respond right away, Taylor kept on talking.

  “I don’t have any children,” Taylor mused. “I want kids, though. I’ve always wanted three, but I’d settle for just one. Christopher—that’s my ex—had unmotivated sperm.”

  Taylor turned toward Clint. “Do you know that a woman is born with all of the eggs she’s ever gonna have?”

  The cowboy had his eyes closed, but shook his head no.

  “Now that I’m almost fort
y, I have a pretty limited supply... My doctor says that the best eggs go first and now the ones that are left are the less desirable eggs. I have slow eggs! I didn’t even know such a thing existed, and here I have it! So even if I do find a man to marry in the next year or so, the chances of me getting pregnant with my slow eggs is a long shot at best...”

  Clint didn’t respond—not because he didn’t hear her, but because he knew that she wouldn’t be sharing any of this personal information with him if she weren’t under the influence. It was best just to let the conversation trail off naturally and pretend he’d never heard any of it. Not his business. He closed his eyes; he really wanted to drift off to sleep, but not with Taylor right next to him. He felt her stirring beside him. Clint opened his eyes to find her staring at him.

  “Now I know who you remind me of—Sam Elliott! The actor with the hair and the mustache—remember? He played a bouncer in that movie with Patrick Swayze...”

  “Road House.”

  Taylor propped up on her elbow. “That’s it.”

  “I’ve heard that before,” he told her.

  “It’s the voice.” Taylor looked the cowboy over. “And the hair.”

  Taylor rolled onto her stomach and rested her head on her arms. A feeling had been growing inside of her for a while and it was getting stronger and stronger, to the point where she couldn’t force it to go away.

  “Clint...”

  Her cowboy didn’t open his eyes. She thought she heard him make a sound that sounded suspiciously like a snore. She poked him the arm, hard, with her pointer finger.

  “You need to rest.” Clint mumbled.

  “No.” Taylor disagreed emphatically. “I need food. I’m starving. I mean, really—where’s a McDonald’s when you really need one?”

  She tucked her head into her arms, frustrated by her rumbling stomach begging to be fed. “Man...why am I so hungry?”

  Clint groaned loudly and rubbed his hands over his face before he dragged his fingers through his hair. “You have the munchies.”

  * * *

  Taylor awakened the next morning with an odd type of hangover. She was exhausted, her lungs hurt and she felt really fuzzyheaded and groggy, as if she hadn’t slept at all. She was still dressed, so all she had to do was jam her feet into her boots and crawl her way out of her tent. Honestly, the end of the night was a blur and she didn’t even remember going to bed. She emerged from her tent and was immediately met with a sun that was too bright to be tolerated.

  “Oh...”

  She squinted her eyes and shielded them with her hand until she reached the edge of the fire pit where there was some shade.

  “Good morning,” she mumbled, then sat down on her makeshift bench and dropped her head into her hands. Her voice was raspy; it hurt to talk.

  Clint handed her a cup of black coffee. It was his coffee, so it was strong and chock full of grounds. She didn’t care. Taylor thanked him, took her first sip of the bitter brew and said a silent prayer for the caffeine to work its magic on her body as quickly as possible.

  “What do you want me to do with this?” Clint held up the remainder of the joint.

  “Ugh—get rid of it.”

  Clint flicked it into the small fire he had built to heat the coffee and to give Taylor a place to warm up a little until the late morning sun took the chill out of the air.

  “Done experimenting?” Clint looked as though he had survived the night without much damage done. His eyes were a little puffy underneath, but his eyes always seemed to be chronically bloodshot from the tequila.

  Taylor grimaced and karate chopped the air with her free hand. “Completely.”

  “Not all it was cracked up to be?”

  Taylor picked some grounds off her tongue, wiped them on the pant leg of her jeans. “It was interesting, I’ll give it that. But, uh...” She made a face. “My lungs are on fire, I woke up surrounded by a graveyard of wrappers—I ate two days’ worth of snacks last night. No. Never again.”

  After three cups of grainy coffee, Taylor forced herself to stick to her schedule and spend another day exploring on foot alone. It was hard to believe, but she was closing in on the halfway mark of her journey and soon it would be time to turn back.

  The whole point of this trip to the Continental Divide was to figure out her next move. She had quit the only career she’d ever known, she had sold the house she had called home for most of her adult life, had divorced the only man she had ever loved. Perhaps it was foolish to think that one trip to the mountains would bring about an epiphany—she had never been without a safety net before, but this time, she didn’t have a plan B. In truth, other than fulfilling her childhood dream of riding the CDT, she didn’t even have a plan A.

  After a day of hiking, Taylor returned to camp with a nagging thought in her head. She had thought about so much on the hike, but the one thing that her brain wanted to mull over the most was the fleeting feeling of Clint’s lips on hers and the fleeting feeling of the surprising softness of his beard on her skin. At first, she had thought there was nothing to admire about Clint. But she was wrong. Yes, he was rough, and crude at times, and his English was deplorable and he drank too much. On the other hand, he was strong, protective, resourceful, intelligent. He had more positive attributes than she would have ever suspected. And there was a handsome ruggedness about his face—decent bone structure—and he had a trim, but muscular physique. A lot to like there.

  “Hungry?” Clint asked her when she joined him by the fire.

  He was cooking freshly caught fish again. She hadn’t gotten tired of eating fish because Clint cooked the fish with different native plants and the flavors were so unusual that Taylor couldn’t wait to taste his next culinary creation.

  “Famished.”

  “Not too long now.” Clint was kneeling by the fire.

  His hat was sitting back on his head, the sleeves of his long sleeve shirt rolled up to the elbow. His hands were large—she’d never noticed that before.

  Clint could feel Taylor’s gaze on him. He looked up from the fish he’d just turned over in the pan, directly into her light-blue eyes. She was staring at him, examining him as if she was seeing him for the first time.

  “What’s up?” he asked her.

  “I had an idea last night,” she told him. “And the more I’ve thought about it today, the more I think that it’s not...the craziest idea I’ve ever had.”

  Clint didn’t say anything when she paused, so she decided to just keep on talking before she lost her nerve.

  “You’ve mentioned in passing, that you’re having some financial difficulties...” Taylor threaded her fingers together on top of her knees and pulled her bent legs closer to her chest. “And I’ve shared with you that I really want to have a child of my own...”

  A flicker of concern—and fear—appeared in his dark eyes.

  “And it made me wonder...why couldn’t we help each other out?”

  She had the cowboy’s attention now.

  “Have you ever...” She shook her head a little. “No...let me rephrase that—would you ever—consider selling...your sperm?”

  Chapter Six

  “I’m sorry...” Clint’s entire body tensed. “What?”

  Once she got out her thoughts, the thoughts that had been nagging her since the night before, she felt calm. In control. It was the same feeling she’d always had after she ran a great meeting or brokered a solid deal for the bank.

  “I think the fish is burning.” She pointed to the pan on the fire.

  It took a second for Clint to take his eyes off her and put them on the fish. He took the pan from the fire. He stood up and, out of habit, fished around in his front shirt pocket for a pack of cigarettes that wasn’t there.

  She stood up, as well. “I’ve been thinking about th
is all day, and I really believe that we can help each other.”

  “I have something you need—money—and you have...” Her eyes naturally dropped to his groin before meeting his eyes again. “Something I need.”

  Clint didn’t know how to respond to Taylor’s nutty idea, an idea that was obviously hatched when she was high as a kite the night before. So he said nothing. He was hungry, and the fish he’d caught and cleaned for their dinner was getting cold. He divvied up the fish onto two plates, handed Taylor hers and took his to his usual spot by the fire. Clint sincerely hoped that she would just drop the subject. He’d had some women ask him some strange things over the years, but this was the most bizarre.

  They ate in silence. Taylor complimented him on the fish, he nodded his thanks and that was the end of the conversation. He kept the brim of his hat low to save him the trouble of avoiding eye contact with the woman sitting across from him. And he didn’t want to avoid looking at Taylor. He liked looking at her. She had a pretty face; he liked the way she smiled, he liked her laugh, those wide-set, bright blue eyes. He’d grown accustomed to enjoying the view.

  “Just hear me out.” Taylor waited until he’d finished eating before she broached the subject again.

  Clint was leaning back against his saddle. He had a belly full of fish, had taken a couple of tugs off his last bit of tequila and his harmonica was ready to play.

  “I like you, Taylor, but that just ain’t gonna happen.”

  “You like me?” Taylor asked with a pleased smile. “That’s nice.”

  “I do like you. But that don’t change right from wrong.”

  “Hear me out,” she repeated. “And then I promise—I’ll never bring it up again.”

  He heard her out. She had to give him credit for that. Of course, he was a captive audience. But she put forward her best pitch for the idea. She would have thought that giving a voice to her idea would have deterred her, yet it only made her feel more strongly that it could be the perfect solution for the both of them. He would be debt free, or close to it, and she would have one last hail-Mary chance to have the child she had always dreamed of having.