PRIZE: An MMA Fighter Secret Baby Romance

by Brooke Valentine

  She didn’t reply again until late that evening. “I am very tired from working long day. Today I am off of work,” she responded.

  “What do you do?”

  “I work in a garment factory,” she replied after a lengthy pause. Then she sent a picture. She was posing at a street-side noodle vendor with another girl, holding up her plate of fried rice cakes sprinkled in chives. “My breakfast,” she wrote.

  Chris smile and sent her a picture of the simple hamburger with ketchup that he was eating. “My dinner.”

  “I want to try American food,” she responded.

  “Do you want to come to America someday?”

  “I would like that yes. Cambodia has little for me.”

  “I suppose you have family there,” he mused. “That counts for something. I don’t even have any family left. I just have the ranch.”

  “Poor thing! How can you have no family?” Then she added, “My father recently died and my mother died many year ago from childbirth.”

  “I am very sorry to hear that. Who do you live with then?”

  “I live by myself. You?”

  “I live by myself too. My parents and my brother all passed away.” Chris hesitated before sending the message. He didn’t want to answer any questions about Jake.

  But Chanda was polite and didn’t ask. Instead she expressed her condolences and asked him, “Are you very lonely living alone?”

  “I can be at times. Mostly I like it, but I want someone to greet me at the door when I come home. That’s why I’m on this site. I have been looking for someone for a while and I am tired of being alone. I am thirty-two and I don’t have a wife. I’m getting too old for this.”

  “You want love,” she wrote back, with several smiley faces.

  “Yes,” he replied, with a few smiley faces and a few hearts. It seemed awkward talking about love already, but he realize that Cambodian women probably weren’t as flighty as American ones. Besides, this girl was clearly looking for marriage. Why be shy? “What do you want in a husband?” he went on. “I can offer you a lot. If you want, we can work toward that and get to know each other.”

  “I would like that. I am not scared.” She sent a winking face. “I am twenty-five. That is old here, too. I need to leave this place.”

  “Would you like to Skype?” he ventured cautiously. The idea of speaking face to face terrified him, but he was also enthused about speaking to this woman as if in real life.

  “Sure!” she responded.

  She gave him her Skype address, and within a few minutes, he called her. His heart was beating extraordinarily hard. When her pretty face filled the screen on his phone, he couldn’t speak for a minute, he could only drink in how beautiful she was.

  “Hello?” she said awkwardly. The nervous trill in her voice gave away that she was as shy as Chris was.

  Somewhat more at ease knowing that this goddess was nervous too, Chris manage a smile. “Wow, you are stunningly gorgeous.”

  She giggled, pink flushing her high cheeks. “You are very handsome. Like Disney prince.” A picture of John Smith popped into the chat. “This is you,” she said.

  Chris shook his head. “But I’m not nearly that handsome.” He was tempted to lift his hair and show her his scar, but decided against it.

  “No, it is you. You are handsome. All American men are handsome.”

  “I don’t know about that. I know some ugly ones.”

  Chanda wrinkled her nose, then burst into laughter. “That is mean to say!”

  “But it’s true.”

  “You are lucky then. Very good looks.”

  “So are you. Are all Cambodian women as beautiful as you?” he teased back. “I bet you’re the prettiest one.”

  “No! My cousin Yun is much prettier.”

  “I don’t believe that. You are the most beautiful woman I have seen.”

  They went on chatting all night. They never seemed to run out of things to say. From that night on, they would Skype every night. Chris’s sleep cycle had become whacked as he worked his day around Chanda’s. The time difference made things difficult, but hearing her voice was more than worth it.

  Chris was willing to stay up, since Chanda had to work so much. The long shifts she spent on her feet without breaks amazed him. He thought back to the days when he was a teenager, groaning about taking out the trash, or even now, when he wanted to sleep in after a night of drinking, and he felt ashamed. Chanda was more of a man than he was when it came to work.

  Chapter 3

  “I’m going on vacation in Cambodia for a week,” Chris declared after roundup the next morning. “I trust you guys to take care of the cows. I’ll leave you the keys to the barn and the office, Carlos. I know you guys know what to do, so I trust y’all with everything. You’ve been a great crew, and I trust you guys.” He handed a huge set of keys to his lead hand, Carlos, a stocky Hispanic guy with a healthy mustache and eyes always full of laughter.

  “Cambodia?” all the guys seems puzzled. “Hell, have you even been out of Texas? You never even leave the ranch, man.”

  Chris grinned sheepishly. It was true, he almost never left. This was the first time that he was leaving the ranch in Carlos’s hands for vacation; normally, he was tethered to the ranch, leaving only for a few hours at a time at most. “I’ve been out of Texas. A few times I went down to Laredo with my brother and friends to get wasted when we were younger.”

  “Ah.” Carlos waved Chris away with his massive paw. “Laredo might as well be Texas.”

  “I don’t know. There are some pretty wild bars down there. My brother used to get into all sorts of trouble.”

  “And you didn’t? You aren’t always such a good boy,” Carlos grinned, showing his gold tooth that he got after a vicious cow kick during round-up the year before. “There’s some lovely ladies down that way.”

  “And they’re all after your money if you’re not careful,” said John, a lanky hand who lived in a small cabin near the main ranch house. John had been orphaned and had ran away from foster care. Chris took him in and let him live on the ranch as soon as he had turned eighteen. “I spent eight hundred one night at a strip club down there.”

  “You don’t go to strip clubs in Laredo, you fool!” Carlos chided him.

  “What are you doing in Cambodia?” a scrawny kid named Derek asked. Sometimes they called him Elvis because of the way he wore his hair.

  Chris grinned secretively, revealing his brilliant blue eyes and his perfect white teeth. “Let’s just say I met a girl.”

  The other men began to hoot and slap their thighs. Chris just shook his head. He knew that he had this teasing coming. While many people avoided him now, these three ranch hands had stayed by his side over the years. He could trust them with everything, from friendship to managing the ranch properly.

  “You know those types of girls just want money,” Carlos cautioned. “They want green cards. Then they’ll move their families over and leave you when they get their feet on the ground.”

  “This one is different. She is really something. And she has no family left.” Chris pulled up a picture of her on his phone and all the guys hooted in admiration.

  Then they started teasing him about how he was in love and that he was utterly useless now. “Might as well sell the ranch now,” John and Carlos joked.

  “Are you going to bring her back?” Derek asked.

  “Eventually, if it all works out.”

  “So I see how it is. You’re getting a week of sex while we get to keep working,” Carlos joked.

  Chris waved him away. “Don’t talk about Chanda like that. I actually like this girl.”

  Again, they begin teasing him. But it was clear that their teasing was good-natured. They were all genuinely happy for Chris, who had been lonely for years.

  Chris said bye to the hands after a few more minutes of teasing and went up to his room to start packing his things. He ran his hands through his blond hair as he surveyed his clothes.
What should he wear? How could he look handsome, rich, and professional, but also fun and caring? Between his Western clothes for horseback riding and his business suits, he really didn’t have anything casual. There were the sweats he wore around the house, but he couldn’t imagine wearing those to see Chanda.

  He finally packed some suits and found an old poncho. The website said to pack lots of insect spray, so he made a note to pick some up on his way to the airport in Houston. There was also the matter of finding Chanda a gift. Chanda was so polite and modest that she wouldn’t tell him what she wanted. He wondered if flowers would make for a good gift. Honestly, he knew nothing about Asian girls, or girls in general really.

  The idea of traveling to Cambodia petrified him. He had not been lying when he said that the only place outside of Texas that he had ever gone was Laredo. He used to go a lot with his older brother, Jake, before Jake passed. For a few minutes, he took out a photo of Jake. Jake would have been happy for him, especially since Jake had always had a thing for shy, pretty Asian girls. He also loved adventures and went for a motorcycle trip through Central America. What a crazy guy he was, always cracking jokes, always inciting laughter and hilarity. The parties he used to throw would gather the whole town. He was friends with everybody.

  Choked up with grief, Chris placed the photo back in its place, face-down in his closet. Then he gingerly closed the door. It had been years since he had let himself think about Jake, and let himself cry. Sometimes, though, his heart ached and he wanted nothing more than to see his brother again. If only Jake was still here, able to see Chris into potential bliss with the beautiful Chanda. Everything in Chris’s life would be OK if Jake was still here.

  The familiar ting ting of a Skype call interrupted his sad reverie. “Chanda,” he said excitedly when her face filled his phone screen. Like that, his grief was replaced with happiness.

  Chanda beamed. “Are you ready to come, love?” she asked in her thick, sweet accent.

  “I am packing as we speak.” He turned the camera around so she could see the clothes neatly folded and stacked next to his open suitcase. “I’m all ticketed and booked. I leave to Houston at four tomorrow.”

  “So I better not keep you up all night, then,” Chanda giggled.

  “I don’t mind. I prefer talking to you instead of sleeping.”

  She smiled and looked just like an angel. “You are so wonderful.”

  “I can’t wait to see you.”

  “I can’t wait, either. I hope you like it here.”

  “I’m a little scared. I heard it’s very different there.” Chris ran his fingers through his hair, a gesture that Chanda would soon come to find comforting and familiar.

  “You will do fine. We are like Texas,” she assured him. “Very hot.”

  He chuckled. “But it’s not jungle here.”

  “Please show me Texas again,” she pleaded.

  Chris carried the phone downstairs, to the lovely covered patio in the back of his house. He held the phone in the air and showed her the view he had of the sweeping hills and distant mountains. She gasped. “So bare,” she commented.

  “You always say that,” he said. “Is it too bare for you here?”

  “No, no, it is pretty.” She took her phone outside and showed him the dirty, sprawling city around her apartment. The bamboo beside her balcony was dripping with fresh rain. There were the distant sounds of traffic and people yelling in the market nearby.

  “It is another world entirely,” Chris said. “But I can’t wait to explore it with you.”

  She pursed her lips and blew him a kiss.

  Chapter 4

  Chris left the airport, a bit disoriented. The filthy city of Phnom Penh pushed in around him, overwhelming him with its foreignness. The foul, dank smell of the air and the clanging of temple bells, men pulling carts, and donkeys assaulted his senses. The humid heat was worse than even the peak of summer at Stryker Ranch, where it was arid and dry, with flat plains of grass and mesquite shrubs and cactus. He had to grab onto something to steady himself as his head began to swim.

  Chanda was still at work. He was supposed to meet her at a small café in a few hours. When he composed himself, he waved down a passing tuk-tuk. “Do you speak English?” he asked the sweaty man navigating the small, sputtering motor bike pulling the seat.

  “Yes!” the man nodded enthusiastically.

  Chris gave him the name of the café, praying that he had pronounced it correctly. The man seemed to know where he was going. They took off into the dense stream of disorganized traffic. Dogs, donkeys, and people swarmed on either side of the vehicles. Most of the vehicles looked a bit dilapidated and unsafe. Chris clung to the side of the tuk-tuk, feeling his stomach turn. The stench of the city was unbearable, but the way that vines and bamboo shrouded the buildings was beautiful. Never before had he seen a tropical place like this, where even the air dripped with moisture.

  Seemingly by a miracle, they arrived at the café. Chris peered at the place and wondered if he should eat there. The place seemed skuzzy and disreputable, but the aroma of meat and rice wafting from their kitchens was delicious. He began to salivate but didn’t want to eat. The heat made him feel full and lethargic, with no appetite. “Thanks,” he told the man, as he handed him a wad of cash. The man seemed extremely excited and took off rapidly.

  Chris uncomfortably lounged in the shade, which wasn’t much cooler than the open. The café owners called to him, trying to tempt him to buy their food, but he politely shook his head. They didn’t give up, however. An old woman brought him a bowl of soup and begged him to try it. “No, thank you,” he told her. She wrinkled her brow and insisted that he take a taste. When he finally acquiesced, she held out her palm for money. Chris shrugged and gave her a bill which was much more than the worth of the soup. At first she argued and tried to give him the bill back, but he waved it away. Seeing the poverty around him and the way these people worked made him want to contribute. It wasn’t like he wasn’t richer than most of this country combined.

  After that, the café owner kept bringing him more food. He ate it out of politeness, even though he felt leaden and dead from the heat. He kept giving them bills and they would bow and thank him profusely.

  “I’m here,” he texted Chanda, praying that she would come sooner than agreed upon and save him from this awkwardness. But there was no response. She wasn’t allowed to text during work. It seemed like she never got breaks, either, despite working ten- or even twelve-hour shifts sometimes. She was clearly of strong character, as she worked her hands to the bones to make clothes like the jeans he wore.

  People who walked by stared at him. A white man in the middle of the city was not an entirely unusual sight, but Chris stood out with his cleanliness, his pressed Levis, and his expensive Western shirt. He didn’t carry a camera and he didn’t have the scruffy look of an experienced traveler accustomed to third world countries. Frankly, he was disjointed and severely out of place with his surroundings.

  It did not take long for beggars to notice him. Soon, he was swarmed with children begging for money. He gave them each a few coins, and they would run off, returning with friends. Just as irritation started to set in, a woman in a pink dress appeared, shouting at the children to scatter. They parted and Chanda strode up to him, wearing the largest smile he had ever seen.

  Though exhausted from work and sweaty, Chanda was still radiant. Chris stared at her for a moment before cupping her face in his hands. She pulled away shyly, and indicated all of the people around. Public affection would be improper. But then she stared into his eyes, and they just stood looking into each other’s souls for a long moment. Her eyes were even more mesmerizing in real life: full of light and hope and strength.

  “Come,” she said finally, seizing his hand and leading him away from the café.

  Chapter 5

  Chanda could not believe that Chris was actually here, in her home. She had slaved away for the past few days, adding decorations an
d cleaning, trying to make it pleasing for him. But now that he was here, standing awkwardly by the door, she worried that the place was not good enough. Everywhere she looked, she saw something drab or threadbare that embarrassed her. Chris was groomed and dressed like some cowboy in a high-budget Western movie. He was just so clean and so…handsome.

  “This is home,” she laughed apologetically. “I hope you comfortable here.”

  “It is very nice,” he smiled.

  “It is my family’s. I lived here when I was a little girl.”

  He nodded slowly. “I can picture you playing dolls and singing. You don’t look that far from being a little girl still.”

  “Oh, stop it,” she dismissed his comment away with her hand.

  “I like your humor. You don’t mind my teasing,” Chris grinned. “It’s a Texas thing.”

  “Texas thing?”

  “It’s something we do in Texas. We tease a lot. All of my family does that.”

  “Oh, I see.” She grinned. Then she sobered. “Even your brother?”

  “Especially Jake.”

  “I would like to meet your family.”

  “I would like that too, but I don’t have much left.” Chris shrugged. “We’re the same in that way.”

  “You don’t have uncles, aunts, cousins?”

  “I have some, but we’re not particularly close. They’re spread out across the United States.”

  “You can visit them. You can become close.” Chanda was lost at the idea that someone might not be close to his family members. To her, family was everything.

  “The US is very large,” Chris shrugged. “We’re all busy. It doesn’t matter. I’m looking to build a family of my own now.”

  Chanda beamed. “Well, I am too. I will cook for you now.” She made a move toward the small kitchen.

  “No.” Chris caught her hand. “Is there a nice place here? Maybe somewhere that you have never been?”

  “Chris! You are very tired. You must rest. I make dinner.”

  “No. I’m jetlagged, but that’s OK. I would like to go out and show you off.”