Rodeo Baby

by Mary Sullivan

  “All the same as every morning.” Will sounded puzzled.

  “It’s wet out there. Probably be busy early. People will want lots of warming comfort food.”

  Silence. No movement.

  Vy glanced at her cook. He stared at her, his expression as inscrutable as ever. Überhandsome, thirtysomething Will had a string of women in town circling around him but as far as Vy knew, he didn’t partake of offers. Just kept his reticent distance. The man didn’t give anything away—Vy didn’t even know where he’d come from—but he was a stellar cook and dependable, so he could remain as taciturn and solitary as he wanted for all Vy cared.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “Of course. Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “Don’t know why, but you’re chatty. I’ve known you a dozen years or more. You aren’t ever chatty.”

  And here she’d thought she was sounding normal.

  “You’re kind of bright today, Vy. Do you have a fever?”

  Yeah, she had a fever all right, and its name was Sam.

  Caught between despair and hysterical laughter, sparkly, life-affirming laughter, she put together her pies, planted them in the ovens and opened the front door.

  At six, customers wandered in. By six thirty, the joint was jumping and Vy was glad of it. Hard work took some of the sparkle out of her. She settled into her normal routine. If it lacked luster, so what?

  She had no time in her life to be giggly lovesick. She had no room for a man who rode into town claiming to be something he wasn’t.

  What if he had come into her diner and said simply, “Hi, I’m Sam and I like the way you look, I like your laugh, I like your jokes, will you go out with me?”

  But no. He’d come here in disguise. With only one previous kiss, without one single date and without a declaration of caring or affection, he’d taken her against a tree.

  But, oh, that taking had been astonishing.

  Besides, she’d taken him right back.

  Honesty compelled her to take a step away from faulty thought, from her assumption that she would have dated him if he’d come to her in a straightforward fashion. She knew better. Where affairs of the heart were concerned, she was a coward.

  With good reason.

  There were only so many things she deserved in this life. Amazing sex wasn’t one of them.

  “Vy?” Lester Voile watched her silently from his seat. “That coffee’s gonna get too cold to drink if you don’t start pouring soon.”

  Vy stared at the coffeepot in her hand. She had no memory of picking it up and walking to Lester’s table. She had no idea how long she’d stood there woolgathering.

  What she did know was that her cheeks were hot with memories of yesterday. Here she stood like a fool, thinking about what she was consciously to walking away from, instead of doing her job.

  She pulled up her proverbial socks, or in her case stockings, and squared her shoulders. Vy, diner owner extraordinaire, took over.

  “You’re absolutely right, Lester. This coffee won’t get served on its own.” She filled his cup, patted his shoulder and got on with her unsparkly day.

  Right here, this diner? These people? This was it. This was all that she deserved. They were good people, in a good town. She lived a good life. She had more than she could have ever hoped to gain in her lifetime.

  Suck it up, Vy.

  Be grateful for the life you have and move on, even if it means accepting less.

  What less? Sure, she’d had mind-blowing sex with Sam, but that was all it was. Just sex.

  A squiggly, squishy, warm part of her mind protested. She’d felt more. Had he?

  But he wasn’t honest, was he? He was a pretender. She knew too much about those. He could have pretended his warmth for her. He could have pretended his guilt about being here falsely.

  He could have told her the truth about why he was here. But he hadn’t.

  Case closed.

  No more lovemaking. No more joking, sarcasm or giving him a hard time in her diner. No more Sam. He would be just another customer. That was all.

  Only he wasn’t.

  He didn’t return to her diner.

  Chapter Nine

  Chelsea and Sam visited his grandfather every other day. Sam had missed his doctor a number of times because of work. They’d played a frustrating amount of phone tag.

  Every time they saw Gramps, he reiterated that he didn’t know exactly what felt wrong about the fairground deal. He only had a hunch, an instinct that not everything was on the up-and-up and that Sam needed to dig deeper.

  Sam objected, “I don’t know what else I can do without raising suspicions.”

  Gramps leaned back in his chair. “How is Vy doing?”

  Sam shrugged. “Haven’t seen her lately.”

  “Aw. That’s a damned shame. I like Vy’s spark. She’s got great ’tude.” He glanced at Chelsea with a twinkle in his eye.

  She giggled.

  “Gramps, you suspect these women might be cheating you and yet whenever you speak of them as individuals, you sound admiring. I’m getting mixed messages.”

  “Um...”

  “Gramps?”

  He looked so confused that Sam backed off. Now that he could clearly see the state of Gramps’s mind, he wondered whether the women might be honest after all.

  But what about leasing for a dollar and taking over Gramps’s house and not signing an agreement regarding profits?

  “You’re not helping out much by being so vague,” Sam said.

  “Sorry.” Gramps rubbed his hands together. No, not rubbed. More like washing them, but without soap and water.

  Sam left Gramps’s room frustrated and confounded. He didn’t have a clue how to find out any more about what was going on other than to call Samantha Read and demand that she show him the books.

  And he couldn’t do that. If he played his hand so plainly, Vy would never talk to him again. Her opinion had become important to him, more important than it should be.

  Climbing into his vehicle, he asked himself, what’s my next step?

  He had no idea.

  * * *

  OVER THE NEXT two weeks, while Sam herded cows, mucked out stalls, mended fences and in general helped out around the ranch, he became comfortable with his role as a cowboy.

  He liked the work. He liked how physical and honest it was, and how uncomplicated, after dealing for so long with volatile markets or equally volatile personalities or overweening greed.

  Travis and he developed an easy relationship working together. If not for Gramps’s problem, he might have relaxed.

  As well, if there weren’t so many calls and texts from New York about the new business, he might have been able to move faster in his investigations. Between working on the ranch, visiting Gramps and fielding criticism from his new business partners about being out West, he struggled to find time to question people.

  Sam wrestled with the issue of his grandfather’s dilemma while his time limit in Rodeo became shorter and shorter. He’d asked everyone around town what they knew about the fair as casually as he could.

  To do any more would raise suspicions.

  He became more and more worried about his grandfather. Gramps’s mind wandered, had holes and bumped along from one topic to another. He told the same stories about the past over and over. He pulled out his wallet and counted his few bills repeatedly, sometimes only minutes apart. Not that he needed money in the home, but he seemed to need reassurance that he had money, even a paltry hundred dollars important to him.

  At last, Sam and his grandfather’s doctor, who visited the home a couple of days a week, met up. Yes, these were symptoms of dementia creeping in.

  Was dementia behind Gramps’s original worry a
bout the women? Was the committee innocent of wrongdoing and had Sam been wrongheaded in his approach to the women and this town?

  Should he have come here honestly?

  He decided the time had come to look at the problem from a different angle, and to interview one of the women on the committee, someone to whom he’d not had exposure yet.

  He chose to talk to Honey Armstrong, the woman who owned the bar at the edge of town. It would be easy enough to talk to her by just going in and ordering a drink.

  According to Rachel, who he’d asked about the members of the committee, Honey had a good head on her shoulders.

  Nadine, as a journalist who wrote for the local paper, might find his curiosity too suspicious. Sam didn’t want anything he said to become fodder for an article, so he ruled her out.

  Apparently, Maxine was a good woman but had a chip on her shoulder the size of Montana. Sam didn’t need complications. Just answers.

  He figured he’d pumped Rachel for answers enough that he couldn’t bother her more.

  A drizzly Saturday afternoon found him leaving Chelsea to visit with Gramps while he occupied a stool at the bar, where he ordered a beer.

  He hadn’t seen Violet since that day beside the stream. He’d avoided the diner. He missed the food.

  Get real, Sam. You miss her.

  How could that be? He barely knew her.

  “You’re Sam, aren’t you?” Honey was a knockout. Miles of curly blond hair ran down her back. Deep-set china-doll blue eyes watched him steadily, the intelligence in them sharp.

  “Sam Michaels. I take it you’re Honey?” He held out his hand to shake hers.

  With a smile that could shine through a hurricane, she took it.

  “You’re one of the women working on that fair outside town?”

  She nodded.

  “Looks like a big job. The rides are shaping up. My daughter wants to be first in line for the carousel.”

  “It’s beautiful, isn’t it? You’re staying with Rachel. Did she tell you that ride was her baby? She’s the one who restored it.”

  “She did an amazing job.” He drank some of his beer. It was midafternoon and the bar was quiet. She didn’t seem inclined to end the conversation, so he figured he might as well jump in.

  “How did this whole process come about? How did you all decide to do this? I mean, it must have been a daunting task to take on.”

  She was off and running about everything they were doing, everything except how the finances worked, which made sense. He was, after all, a stranger.

  “I heard the park had gone to seed? The owner was happy with you reviving it?”

  “Carson Carmichael. Yep. He supports us completely.” While the words might sound positive, something flickered across her face, here and gone almost before he caught it. Discomfort or worry?

  Interesting. “So will he get any of the profits once the fair is successful?”

  She chewed on her lip. “If it’s successful. This is a real leap of faith we’re taking, hoping that people are nostalgic for something that was a fixture here for the past hundred years.”

  While she lost herself in thought polishing beer glasses, Sam asked, “How certain are you that people will come out?”

  “We’re not. Not at all.” She rallied and smiled. “Of course they will. Effort pays off, right? We’re all working our butts off, so it has to be a success.”

  He hadn’t gotten around to the question of how much they were leasing the land for, because he didn’t know how to do it without seeming suspicious. He made a terri­ble detective.

  It wasn’t until after he’d left that he realized she hadn’t answered all of his questions directly. Would Gramps share in any of the profits?

  That “if it was successful” implied as much, but Honey hadn’t answered the questions directly so Sam

  didn’t know.

  Damn.

  What now?

  He drove past the amusement park on his way toward town to head back to Travis’s place. He pulled up onto the shoulder and got out to stare at the house in the distance.

  Again, a wave of longing passed through him. He still had no idea what it represented. Why was that house so important to him? Sure the fair should have been his legacy, but he’d never cared enough to come out to claim it, had he?

  In a week he would head back to New York and his new business, to salvage the pride that Tiffany and her father had trampled during the divorce.

  Success is the best revenge.

  He would never choose to give up his life in New York and his career to live here on the amusement park land. So why this draw? Why this constant feeling that he was missing something? Or missing out on it?

  Nothing more than a solid brick two-story vertical rectangle, and nothing a fraction as beautiful about it as the house he owned, still it drew him.

  He couldn’t get inside.

  And yet...

  He wanted to check it out, to stand inside it just one time. He might get away with asking for a tour of the grounds to check out the fair, but he could come up with no reason to ask to see the house.

  Why had the women wanted it as part of the fair lease? What was in there? Were they hiding something?

  There’s only one way to find out, he thought as he pounded the side of his fist on the top rung of the fence.

  He would get inside on his own.

  Tonight.

  * * *

  VY STARED AT the pregnancy test.

  Only two days late, but for a woman whose body worked liked clockwork and had for years, this was cause for concern. Hence, the home pregnancy test she’d driven to the next town to purchase.

  No sense getting the rumor mill going.

  Besides, she knew the symptoms.

  She knew her body well. She recognized the changes, even so early, sixteen days after that afternoon with Sam.

  With breasts tender and sore for no good reason, and nausea threatening every morning, she knew.

  Oh, dear God, she knew.

  They’d been rash. They’d had sex without protection. Vy had been so upset about giving in to temptation that she hadn’t given the possibility of conception a second thought.

  Shame on her.

  After using the test, all vestiges of doubt washed away.

  She was pregnant.

  She would go to the doctor for a blood test, but she knew.

  What on earth would she do now?

  Her life about to change permanently, she buried her head in her hands as though she could escape the truth.

  But there was no escaping the reality. A baby, a precious child, grew inside her.

  A terrible fury roared through her. She wouldn’t give up this child. She couldn’t give it up.

  On the other hand, she couldn’t let Sam into her life. He hung around town working for Travis, but still he refused to state his true intentions.

  Or so she assumed. She hadn’t had a conversation with him, but Rachel would have passed along anything she’d learned.

  She couldn’t trust him. Yet one thing her conscience compelled her to do was to be honest with the man.

  For the remainder of the morning, she fretted, another new experience for Vy. Ordinarily, she didn’t sparkle and she certainly didn’t fret. She dealt with problems head-on, skipping the worrying part altogether.

  Huge and bringing back too many memories, not all of them good, this new wrinkle colored every action and every step she took.

  Her heart ached. Her stomach burned.

  That afternoon, she told Sam.

  * * *

  “ARE YOU SURE?” Sam stared at her with his mouth open. It would be funny if this wasn’t a laughing matter.

  “Positive. I haven’
t seen a doctor yet, but I used a pregnancy test and I know my body.”

  He staggered against the stall door and leaned on it. Vy had shown up on the ranch so she could break the news in person.

  “Whew! I didn’t expect this.”

  No, he couldn’t have. “We’re a pair of adults,” she said, “who had sex without once thinking of birth control. We didn’t use a condom. Shame on both of us.”

  “I guess I assumed you were on birth control.”

  “You didn’t ask. Did you seriously assume?”

  “No,” he admitted. “I didn’t give it a single thought.”

  “Neither did I.”

  He scrubbed his hands over his face.

  “I guess I didn’t think at all.”

  “We were worse than a pair of high school students, heedless and...”

  “And horny. You were angry. I was angry. We wanted each other. I’ve never wanted a woman like that before. No excuse, I know, but what a mess. What now? What are your plans?”

  Vy stilled. “What are my plans? We’ve just determined that we both made this baby.”

  “I’m saying that it’s your body. You decide. Are you telling me you would agree to an abortion if I asked for one?”

  “No!”

  Again he scrubbed his face. “I didn’t think you would, but I had to be sure. For the record, I’m not asking for that. Whew. This is unreal. I can’t wrap my head around it.”

  “I assume you plan to go back to wherever it is you’re from sometime soon?”

  “New York City.”

  “What?”

  “I’m from New York City and in one week, I’ll be driving home to start a new company with two partners, a multimillion-dollar investment firm.”

  “Multimillion?”

  “That’s what I do. You know I’m not a cowboy. I’m not a rancher. I’m a businessman.”

  “So, Mr. Not-A-Cowboy-But-Really-Mr.-Businessman, what now?”

  “I don’t know. I’m having trouble breathing and assimilating this.” He spun away but turned back. “You’re sure?” he asked again.

  “Reasonably certain.”