A Baby for the Texas Cowboy

by Sinclair Jayne

  “The boys.” Tinsley snorted. Anders, August, and, from what she’d heard, Axel, were far from boys. Both August and Anders spoke of Axel with reverence, as if they didn’t quite measure up, which was ridiculous.

  Tinsley’s mouth froze before she could utter her next words. She had thought something positive about Anders. That was happening more and more, and she no longer felt the driving need to stop it.

  He was the father of her baby.

  There. She’d thought about the B word. Progress.

  And not a panic attack in sight.

  Catalina continued talking about something, ignorant of Tinsley’s epiphany.

  Last night she’d paced around, her brain on fire with ideas for the tasting room and branding but her heart heavy with the need to apologize. Maybe she should explain to Anders about her past—her family, John, and why it was so hard for her to trust. But her skin shriveled just thinking about her past.

  Anders hadn’t come by her apartment last night. He’d sent her a text instead asking how she felt and if she needed anything. She’d expected him to arrive banging on the door after her “no thank you,” but she’d had the night to herself to research and think and plan.

  She’d tried to sleep, but all she’d done was toss and turn and think about Anders. He might be the most irritating, emotionally unattainable male in Texas, but he was scorching hot.

  “Stop thinking of Anders.”

  “I’m not.”

  “I recognize that goofy sex-starved look,” Catalina said. “I was on fire for August before, and pregnancy just amplified the I-need-to-have-sex-now full-body clamor.”

  “Let’s not talk about this,” Tinsley said. “Both you and August are my bosses.” And Anders was Catalina’s brother-in-law. Sheesh!

  “Boss, schmoss.” Catalina tossed her head a bit like a horse, making her short, curly ponytail bounce at the back of her neck. “We’re going to be sisters-in-law, and our kids are going to be cousins.”

  Cousins. For a moment, the word filled her with warmth. Her child wouldn’t grow up so alone like she had.

  Wait.

  The other word penetrated.

  “I am not marrying Anders.”

  “That’s what I said repeatedly.” Catalina waved her shiny wedding ring at her.

  “You and August had a history. Anders and I had nothing.”

  Catalina laughed. “Right. I had high school bio. I know you didn’t gaze at him lustily during my wedding and pop!—a precious egg burst from your ovary and Anders’ just had to give you the come here girl eye and bam! Spontaneous combustion. A baby is conceived in the East Barn.”

  “Girls, you are sadly in need of an anatomy class if you think that’s how it works.” A tall, beautiful woman with long, black hair in an intricate braid down her back and wearing surgical scrubs walked around the building, holding a very fragrant, large takeout bag from the local barbecue restaurant The Hut. Cruz Lopez now Wolf lofted a wine-size bottle of sparkling water over her head. “I’ll explain how sex and the female body works over a delicious girls’ night out dinner because we are celebrating!”

  “Cruz!” Catalina hugged her sister-in-law, who had the height, slimness and classic-boned, exotic beauty of a supermodel. Catalina, already petite, looked almost childlike, but she was such a force of nature, that impression instantly fled. “You’re off early! For once. August picked up Diego from soccer practice.”

  “I know,” Cruz smirked. “I heard you and Tinsley were working here all day and staying late so I thought we could have a re-meet and greet and eat and talk some smack about the Wolf brothers.”

  “Second favorite recreational activity.” Catalina sniffed at the bag. “I’m starved.”

  “What’s the first…never mind,” Tinsley said quickly when both Cruz and Catalina turned to face her, hands on hips and nearly identical expressions of “no duh,” like they were humming a popular Billie Eilish song.

  “I have dinner, sparkly so that we can pretend that we are drinking. I’m assuming you got wineglasses over here already.”

  “Of course,” Catalina said. “Soooooo—” she drew out the word “—no wine for you?”

  “I thought I would join you in your temporary sobriety as an act of sisterly solidarity.”

  “You’re trying, aren’t you?” Catalina jumped up and down. “I knew it. It’s the Wolf competition thing. Waiting a few years my ass.”

  “I plead the fifth.”

  “You don’t have to. You’re glowing. This is the best news ever.”

  “I haven’t announced any news,” Cruz said coolly.

  Catalina stared hard at her sister-in-law. “Okay,” she said, reluctantly. “I’ll play your game.”

  “I have plates and silverware upstairs, even linen napkins,” Tinsley said, and then winced. Linen napkins. Things like that belonged in her old life. “I’ll get them,” she tagged on, feeling like Cruz and Cat could do with some time alone.

  “You move in fast,” Cruz commented beginning to unpack the food.

  “More like Anders moves in fast. I think he depleted the nearest Amazon warehouse with his online finger prowess.”

  “As long as that’s not the only prowess he and his fingers demonstrate,” Catalina called out as Tinsley headed up to her apartment to grab some dishes and cutlery.

  She found herself grinning as she ran back downstairs. She hadn’t expected to be enjoying her new job and fast-track roots so much, nor had she anticipated making friends. Sure, she’d enjoyed working in the sponsor tent and training new staff and selling the Cowboy Wolf Whiskey as she traveled with the tour, and she’d had plenty of acquaintances that she’d been friendly with, but friends, not so much.

  And even growing up, a lot of the girls she was “friends” with were also cut-throat rivals—in the barn and at the competitions, and academically everyone wanted to be on top. Tinsley had thrived, but it hadn’t been until she’d left that she’d realized how empty she’d felt.

  “Not empty now,” she remarked, and was surprised that thinking about the baby didn’t feel so scary today.

  That was good, she thought as she walked back downstairs more sedately. She was done with fear.

  “I have the tasting room wine set up and the wine cellar is organized. It’s really too bad none of us are drinking.” She brandished a corkscrew along with some serving spoons. “I’d love to practice my pouring skills.”

  “Not going to pour out tastes using your oh-so-marvelous cleavage to rest the glass on for our new Verflucht wine-tasting guests?” Catalina teased.

  “August told you.”

  “He didn’t have to. You’re a bartending legend. The online videos and comments prove it,” Catalina sang out and stole a hush puppy from one of the food boxes where Cruz was gracefully organizing the takeout meal on three plates.

  “Pull one up. I want to see,” Cruz said, much to Tinsley’s dismay. “That sounds adventurous—like a scene in a movie. Not even in my dreams with the best push-up bra in the world could I hold anything up, including a shot glass,” Cruz said, looking down ruefully at her chest.

  Tinsley popped the cork on the sparkling water and poured it into three champagne glasses.

  “Titty pours?” Catalina dared, popping another hush puppy into her mouth.

  “Not really the vibe I was going for in the tasting room.”

  “That can be a private show for Anders,” Cruz suggested with a smile, taking a fork and picking a little at the food on her plate.

  “He’s the one who got the show in the first place, the lucky, lovestruck dog,” Catalina said.

  “There was no love involved.” Tinsley tried to control the conversation. “Lust only.”

  “Did you really let him drink a shot off your breasts?” Cruz’s eyes rounded. She pulled out her phone and deftly Googled.

  “August is having a still blown up and hung in the whiskey bar he’s opening in Portland.”

  “Legend,” Cruz breathed looking at her
phone.

  “He’s not really making a picture out of that.” Tinsley wasn’t sure how she felt about the discussion. She wasn’t ashamed. She’d enjoyed being that woman—daring, sexy, show-off, a little scandal-provoking. “Is he?”

  “You kidding? This is August you’re talking about. Not shy and not one to miss an opportunity to promote a product.”

  “Wow,” Cruz marveled as Catalina looked over her shoulder and munched on a spare rib.

  Tinsley’s appetite hadn’t returned to that extent. This much meat made her feel a little queasy, but the cornbread, hush puppies, baked beans and slaw sounded good. Carbs, carbs and more carbs.

  Don’t think like that.

  “I would have spilled for sure,” Cruz said, holding up the champagne glass as if to toast. “The glass would have fallen to the floor, so here’s to your mad skills. You are a sexy goddess and brought Anders Wolf to his knees and made him look like a love-starved idiot for all eternity.”

  “You are reading way too much into the situation,” she objected but felt pleased all the same. “I only did it at the finals last year and as a dare and at the after-party. And it was Wolf brand whiskey of course.”

  Somehow that made it sound even sexier.

  Cruz pushed play again and they all watched the bartender Whiskey tuck a shot glass in her ample cleavage, dance and work one of her self-designed flair routines to music that had been popular on the tour. She then flipped the bottle up like it was a baton, caught it, poured the shot and let Anders, hands behind his back, take the shot with his teeth and shoot it, his blue eyes burning into hers.

  Then they’d both smiled—as if they shared a secret.

  “Cheers!” Catalina and Cruz clinked glasses with her. “Take the compliment. Run with it. I want you to teach me how to do that.”

  “Okay,” Tinsley said, sitting down beside them and kicking her boots up on the recently delivered gas fire feature.

  She’d liked being Whiskey. She’d been fearless. A little naughty. Powerful. Independent. Uncaring of what others thought.

  And now she was knocked up by the bull rider she’d publicly let shoot a whiskey shot off her tits. She unexpectedly laughed.

  I’m a long way from Greenwich, Connecticut.

  She watched Catalina and Cruz dig in, boots kicked off, feet warming by the fire and talking.

  Catalina sipped at the sparkling water—grapefruit.

  “Don’t make that face,” Cruz warned her.

  “I wasn’t making a face.”

  “You were,” Tinsley outted her, and she and Cruz laughed.

  “It’s bad enough that I can’t unwind with a glass of my own hard labor for the next few months,” she said. “I’m already trying to think of what I want August to bring me after I pop the mini Wolf out—a late harvest wine? A Tempranillo? Bubbles.”

  “Bubbles,” Cruz said dreamily. “Definitely.”

  “Okay. I know what to bring to the hospital when you push a Stetson-wearing watermelon out of your body.”

  “That is such an appealing image, Catalina. Thank you. Why was I bothering to try to be both a supportive sister-in-law and a future sister-in-law?” Cruz huffed.

  “I’m not marrying Anders,” Tinsley repeated.

  “That’s what I said,” Cruz waved an impressive solitaire in Tinsley’s direction.

  “Having an oops is not a reason to marry anymore,” Tinsley was adamant on that point. “We barely know each other.”

  “I saw you two together at my wedding. Those steamy looks across the barn and the way Anders watched you like you were the latest Avengers movie in the middle of blood and guts action sequences do not lie.” Cruz sounded matter-of-fact. “And then when he got you out on the dance floor, girl, it was a capital R rating. I thought Axel had moves, but dang girl.” Cruz fanned herself. “I would say that’s knowing each other.”

  “That’s not enough to base a marriage on.”

  “Couples have started with a lot less,” Cruz said pragmatically. “You’re going to have a child together so you will need to get to know him better even if you don’t want to marry him. You’ll have to parent together. You’ve got half a year. Get to know him.”

  “In the handful of days he’s back each month,” Tinsley scoffed, but her heart leapt in her chest. What was that? Hope? She didn’t want to hope. She needed to rely only on herself. She wouldn’t deny Anders time with their child, but time with her couldn’t be on offer.

  “I have a feeling he’ll be around a lot more now,” Catalina said, taking a break from eating.

  “I’m surprised he’s not here right now,” Cruz teased, “trying to get rid of us because it’s your bedtime.”

  “He would be,” Catalina said. “But we lucked out because he flew to Montana today to see Kane Wilder about bulls. He’s thinking about going into partnership as a stock contractor and breeding bucking bulls with Kane and his family.”

  Tinsley nearly dropped her glass of sparkling water. Dread washed through her.

  Anders couldn’t be thinking of quitting the tour because of the baby. He couldn’t. He lived for the competition. He was top tier and thrived on the travel, the fans, the adrenaline, the challenge. He’d resent her, and he’d resent their child. She had to make him see that the baby didn’t mean that they both had to give up their dreams.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “Well, what are your thoughts on the Fury Creek flight?” Tinsley asked Last Stand’s town matriarch, Minna Herdmann, and six of her friends ranging in age from mid-fifties to eighty. According to Minna, she topped them all at one hundred and two.

  “Are you only pouring tastes from one flight?” Minna asked archly.

  “I might be persuaded to let you try the Elizabeta flight, which has wines pressed whole cluster, but my goal is to tease you so that you come back in.”

  Tinsley smiled enigmatically. It was Thursday, and she was trying to ignore the fact that Anders hadn’t returned from Montana before heading to one of his last few competitions of the season in New Mexico.

  She shouldn’t care.

  Instead she kept looking out the large window, expecting to see him swinging his body out of his truck and striding toward her. She had to get over that wish.

  “At my age, I may not get a second chance,” Minna said drily. “August donated several cases of wine to my birthday last April, but that bus came barreling across the road and smashed his tasting room to dust, a tragedy of so many people being injured and two deaths.”

  Tinsley had not even been in town a week, but many people who’d knocked on the windows of the tasting room in order to introduce themselves and proceed to interview her often referenced the accident.

  “The tragedy would have been greater, but dear Asa saved the day again.”

  “What?” Tinsley nearly jumped out of her skin. Minna had seemed so with it, but now she was referring to a dead man as saving the day.

  “The statue, dear. I still have all my marbles. The truck that collided with the bus spun out of control and would have hit the library, but the statue stopped the truck.”

  “A toast to Asa.” One of Minna’s friends picked up one of her taste glasses and held it high. “And yes, Minna, you will have another birthday celebration. It’s tradition.”

  Tinsley smiled, charmed by the group and pleased that she’d opened the tasting room a few days early. This soft opening allowed her to practice for the tastings and engender some community goodwill. Offering a free tasting for Minna Herdmann and her guests seemed like a brilliant marketing idea.

  August had shuddered and refused to come because she’d probably “box my ears.”

  “Your funeral,” Axel had said.

  Catalina claimed she had too much work training the cellar crew but left Tinsley with advice: “Keep your mouth shut or she’ll have you and Anders married by some archaic decree before the state was a state, and Anders won’t even have to be present. She knows everyone, and she knows what buttons to press. Bu
t she’s really funny.”

  “Why would we come back in if we don’t know what we’re going to get, young lady?”

  “Because you thrive on surprises.” Tinsley arched a brow. Then she smiled. “But since you are my first group and I am honing my pouring and tasting skills, I will pour y’all a surprise that is not on the tasting menu.”

  “What is it?” one of Minna’s friends asked.

  “That’s not how a surprise works.” Tinsley shook her finger slowly at them, her expression mock serious.

  “I like her,” another friend said and looked pointedly at Tinsley’s left hand as she held the bottle of Pinot Noir Catalina had made when she worked in Oregon. It was her own label—Orphan Cowgirl Vines. August had rented a refrigerated truck and had hired a driver to bring all of Catalina’s stored wine to Texas so they could pour it and offer it at the tasting room.

  The wine had arrived last night, and Tinsley had unloaded it with Cruz, who wasn’t working today.

  Cruz had also helped her reconfigure the tasting room for a more relaxed vibe. The scattered couches had been organized in small and larger seating arrangements to allow for a more casual but intimate and comfortable tasting experience for couples and groups of friends. Now she wanted to get some local art in here. Or large pictures from the vineyard and winery on canvases.

  She made a note on her phone to hire a local photographer.

  There also were tables for more formal group experiences, which is what Minna had chosen for her group to the surprise of no one.

  “What do you think, Minna? What about Marcus for Tinsley?”

  “Or my grandson Jacob who just finished law school and joined a firm in Austin,” another woman spoke up, and by the nods and noises of approval, Tinsley could tell Jacob was considered a catch. “But he still plans to spend weekends on the ranch. He loves the land. He specializes in water rights, along with many other areas of law.”

  Oh Lord. One cowboy is more than plenty.

  “What do you think, Minna?” More than one woman turned toward the matriarch as if Minna were Last Stand’s matchmaking expert for new women in town.