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

  Before she could answer, he went on, “Because if you are, as much as I think you’re cute as all get-out, don’t look to me to fulfill those dreams. It ain’t gonna happen.”

  “Why would I want to get married?” She gestured with both hands, which made the sheet slip a bit, but she pulled it right back up.

  “All women do,” he said with certainty.

  “That is not true. All mothers want their daughters to get married, but not all women want to be in that institution.” And even if she did, she’d never let him know it now. He was nothing but a smooth-talking playboy out for a good time. Probably another reason Rosey and Kate had kept her name away from him.

  “I know how that goes. My parents are the same way. They keep throwing these women at me.”

  “My mother has this bet with this other lady about whose daughter will get married first. She’s driving me nuts.” She spread her arms to better show him just how crazy her mother was driving her, and that’s when the sheet did slip almost right past her breasts. Almost, but not quite. She grabbed on to it before any nipples showed. She gave him her back and retied the sheet, this time knotting it closed. When she turned back toward him, she mumbled, “Sorry.”

  “No problem.”

  “I get too excited when I talk about my mother and that bet.”

  “If you get that excited—” his glance slid down the length of her body, then slowly up again “—I’ll talk about your mother more often.”

  “I think you’re being patronizing.”

  “You are wrong. I’m sympathizing. I’m trying to share your feelings.”

  “Are you for real?”

  “My mother is desperate to get me married. She says I need to soften up a bit, try and understand the woman’s point of view.”

  “Is it working?”

  He gave her a cocky grin and shrugged one shoulder. “I’ll let you make up your own mind about that.”

  “Okay then.” She shimmed a little, making the sheet a bit tighter. “I’ll think about it.”

  He watched her with a look of hunger in his eyes, but he didn’t say another word, until he asked, “Any brothers or sisters?”

  He changed the subject and she was grateful. She shook her head.

  “Me neither. If I had a sister maybe I would have gotten better advice about girls. My mother’s advice isn’t going over too well.”

  Cara smiled at that. “You’re not too bad.” Actually he was pretty great, but she wouldn’t tell him that, because his male ego could get too big.

  “I always wanted a brother or sister,” he said. “Actually, I wanted three of them. Being an only child is not easy.”

  “Believe me, I know. There’s no one around to defuse the attention you get from your parents.”

  “There’s no one to play with growing up, especially if you’re like me and you’re a kid on a farm. I had a dog, I had a cow, cats were everywhere, but it would have been nice to have a brother to do stuff with.”

  “Do things? It’s impossible to do things if you’re an only child. Because there’s no older brother or sister who had been there before, to smooth the road. We’re charting the unpaved highways through life.”

  “That’s right. No one has gone before us to make it easier to get away with things.”

  “It would have been less strict,” Cara said. “Because in my house, everything had a ‘no’ answer. Even before the question was asked, the answer was no. Then I got to ask the question and the answer was still no. Even if it was a matter of something simple like washing my hair.”

  “Your parents wouldn’t let you wash your hair?” he asked, surprised.

  She leaned over the railing again. “No, that was just a hypothetical example of how strict they were. The problem started when I cut my hair.”

  “I get a haircut every couple of weeks, I never had to ask.”

  “I got it cut once. You would have thought I had committed a crime, the way they acted. Not my father. It was my mother.” The memories still hurt. Only, Cara knew the hell she got for cutting her hair was nothing like what she was going to get when she returned home from Texas. It would make the haircutting incident look like an ice-cream sundae.

  “You have beautiful hair,” the doctor said softly. “It was the first thing I noticed about you.”

  “I thought it was the way I delivered food that you first noticed.” She smiled at him.

  He smiled right back. “I can never forget that. Your hair though, it’s not like Texas hair.” He was shaking his head in awe of something so different. “Can I touch it?”

  “Why not?” Cara leaned even farther forward over the railing, her breasts straining against the sheet, struggling for release. She couldn’t hold everything in, and figured he would be concentrating on her hair and not looking at her chest. Only one quick glance in his direction and that theory was blown out of the water. Somehow though, the thought that he found her attractive enough to look everywhere, and that he wanted to touch her hair, made her feel powerful in a way. Like a real woman. She found strength in that.

  She grabbed hold of the ends of her hair. The strands reached below her waist and even with her arm stretched out, she could still hold on to a good portion of it.

  The doctor leaned forward, hands brushing against hands as he took possession of her hair. “Soft,” he said. “I thought it might be soft, but I wasn’t sure.”

  “Who’s out there?” a rusty voice sliced through the darkness. Cara jumped back at the same instant the doctor let go of his hold. Her sheet almost came down again, but this time her impulses were working a little swifter and she stopped it just in time.

  “Who is that?” she asked. A ripple of fear went through her. “He has a gun. A big gun.”

  “Tigger, is that you?” the doctor called out. “It’s a rifle,” he said for her benefit.

  “I knew it was a rifle, Doctor. But it still shoots things. You know him?” Maybe the doctor was an escapee from jail, associating with people who carried big rifles. Or maybe the man with the rifle was a police officer and had come to arrest the doctor. Or maybe the doctor wasn’t a doctor at all, only playing at being a doctor. She’d seen that movie, Catch Me If You Can, and she knew all about people who faked their identities.

  “Don’t move, or I’ll shoot.” The rifle was bigger and longer than the small man holding it. He staggered under the weight, the long barrel swung first toward her, then toward the tree, then back toward her.

  “Tigger, put it down.”

  The gun aimed at the tree again. “Doc, is that you up there?”

  “It’s me,” the doctor said. “Lower it, Tig. It’s okay.”

  “Get your carcass out of that tree. Right now, ya hear? You know you ain’t supposed to be up there.”

  The doctor’s laugh was deep and oh so lovely. And if the rifle-bearing man called him a doctor, then he must be a doctor after all.

  “I’m on my way down,” the doctor said.

  “What’s the doctor’s name?” Cara called out to Tigger.

  “Don’t you dare tell her, Tig. Not until she tells me her name.”

  “Won’t say a word, Doc.” The rifle had been lowered. Tigger grinned up at her. “That’s a right nice dress you’ve got on there, ma’am. My wife had one just like it.”

  “Thanks.” She waited for a brief second before she asked, “Can you see okay?”

  “I sure can,” Tigger said. “Rosey’s got it well lit out here, but just in case, I brought me this flashlight.” He shone the beam on her, then on the doctor’s face.

  The doctor towered at least a foot over Tigger, and from behind him, shook his head. Cara understood immediately. “Mr. Tigger, thank you so much. I hope your wife was able to get as much enjoyment out of her dress as I’m getting out of mine.”

  The doctor gave her a big smile and she knew then she had done the right thing, going along with what Tigger thought he had seen. He put his arm around the smaller man and urged him back toward th
e front of Mandelay. They stopped for only a second when the doctor wrested the rifle away from Tigger. He looked back one more time, found her still standing on the balcony and waved.

  When they were out of sight, she went back into her room, shut the door and let the sheet drop like a puddle to the floor. This time when she climbed into bed, she reveled in all the sensations—the cool air hitting her skin, the way her breasts tightened, her nipples puckered, her skin against the bed linens. As she tucked the covers around herself, she knew she wouldn’t have any trouble falling asleep. She only wished she had the long, lean and very naked body of that doctor cuddling right there next to her.

  5

  IT TOOK A FEW MINUTES for Cara to fully wake up on Sunday morning. The pillow she hugged was a poor substitute for the cowboy doctor who she really wished she was hugging right now. She flipped the pillow behind her head and sank deep into its feathers. She rubbed sleep from her eyes, yawned, then stretched her stiff muscles under the down quilt.

  It was a beautiful morning. She could see that from the sun trying to shine into her room. She knew the sun would win and the cloudy gray sky would melt away.

  Not that gray skies mattered, because they didn’t. Not one bit. Her world right now was full of sunshine because, despite being pelted with chicken, her cowboy doctor had found her.

  That chicken incident had been right up there as one of her most embarrassing moments, second only to walking down the aisle at her high-school graduation, very conscious of Tommy Rompart walking behind her, watching her, or so she’d wished. He had been captain of the soccer team, a hunk to die for, with shoulders out to here, narrowing to slim hips down to there.

  He was her very own high-school secret crush. Not once in all the years they had been in school together, despite coming right behind her in alphabetical order, had Tommy ever acknowledged that she existed. Cara was invisible to him. Which is why Tommy walking behind her had made concentrating on the simple act of putting one foot in front of the other entirely too complicated. Which is why she’d tripped over her own feet and fell, first on one knee and then, not able to catch her balance, ended up sprawled on her stomach, face to the floor. Her cap flew off in one direction, the heel of her shoe broke and went behind her. Tommy tripped on the heel, or her feet, she was never sure what caused his fall. Cara only knew he landed right on top of her. She felt every single part of his body across her back and buttocks. Their programs had scattered. When Tommy tried to get himself off her, he’d dug his elbow into her kidney. Ignoring her moan of pain, he’d used her back for leverage to stand.

  By the time Tommy was back on his feet, she had righted herself to a sitting position. She had taken his extended hand, accepting his help to rise, all the while apologizing profusely, which he brushed aside. The whole episode couldn’t have taken a minute at the most. The ceremonies hadn’t even stopped. Without hardly missing ten beats, Cara and Tommy had returned to their places in the line. As they passed, the guests handed back their programs and caps.

  Cara proceeded to the stage, a little lopsided on her broken shoe, and received her diploma. The principal, Mrs. Merish, had whispered to her, “Are you all right, Cara? It’s not like you to make a scene.”

  Sadly, that was so true. Plain, white-picket-fence Cara. Nothing wrought iron, ornate or fancy about her. Since Tommy had never spoken to her before or after that embarrassing incident, she really had no reason to think the doctor would have ever wanted to speak to her either, let alone seek her out. But he had. And she was so glad he did.

  She knew he had to have gone through a huge process to locate her, since he had done it without knowing her name.

  The doctor. Cara got tingly just thinking about him and what he had done. He was so romantic. Throwing pebbles at her window, scaling a giant-size tree to get closer to her. And then, doing the most intimate thing possible, touching her hair. Caressing the waves, gently pulling, sending tingles from her head to her toes. All that and they didn’t know each other’s names.

  Her imagination took flight. What was so wrong with a spring-break fling between two strangers? What could be more romantic or more exciting? A no-strings-attached, nothing-but-sex fling. Something she’d never done before. Had never even thought of doing before because, until now, she had never met any man who made her even want to consider such a wild adventure.

  Life was short, she knew that. If she never saw him again after she went back to Erie, and if they never knew each other’s names, then it wouldn’t be too personal. It would be a kind of fun, wild week of romance and sex. It could be very exciting. Very memorable.

  If she thought enough about it, she might even get up the courage to pursue the idea. If he could find her, she could certainly find him.

  Right now though, she had things to do, a doctor to see, decisions to make. She flung back the covers and the chill in the room hit her body with an arctic blast. Goose bumps jumped across her skin, her nipples puckered almost painfully, her feet instinctively rubbed each other, urging warmth back.

  She wrapped the quilt around her and went to stand at the middle set of windows. Looking at the view from her window, she saw nothing but blue-gray sky and vast amounts of space. A space bigger than any she’d ever been in before.

  A perfect day. She closed the drapes, dropped the quilt on the bed and headed for the shower. Later, fresh and clean, she pulled out her clothes. Her outfit had to be perfect. She dressed so carefully—the gray skirt, pink sweater set and gray suede pumps with three-inch heels gave her confidence.

  She gathered her purse, made sure she had the directions to the clinic and left the room.

  She was almost at the main door when Rosey called out, “Good morning.”

  Cara said good morning back, had her hand on the door handle ready to leave, when Rosey asked, “Don’t you want breakfast?”

  “No, I’m not hungry, thanks.” Cara was so used to being questioned about every move she took, every decision she made, that she was almost ready to launch a defense on the pros of artificial insemination for single women. It took a moment to realize Rosey hadn’t asked her anything more personal than if she wanted to eat. The idea that someone wasn’t examining her every move was almost unheard of in her life. It threw her for a loop. She almost wanted to give the woman a hug just for the simple act of minding her own business.

  “Are you okay?” Rosey asked. “You’ve got this little pained look on your face. Maybe you better get something to eat after all.”

  “I’m fine, really.” Suddenly, Cara realized that she wanted to talk about her plan, she wanted to tell someone. Rosey would be a perfect person, because, like the doctor, Cara would never see Rosey again. She wouldn’t pass judgment because, the truth was, Rosey didn’t care one bit what Cara did. The thought was reassuring. Rosey would be a perfect test case on the reaction of the general public. “I’m going to the Noble Sperm Bank.” She watched the woman carefully for any sign of a negative reaction.

  “Cara, that’s wonderful!” Rosey practically gushed as she ran around the check-in counter and gave Cara a bear hug. “I’m so happy for you.”

  “You are?” That was not what she’d expected.

  “Oh, yes. I was hoping something like this would happen. I hope it works out for you.”

  “You do?” What was going on here?

  “Don’t be so surprised. It’s what everyone wants.”

  “Everyone?”

  “Yes.”

  Cara couldn’t help but be surprised. She had never thought anyone’s reaction would be so excited. “I want it more than most,” she confessed.

  “Then you will get it. If you want something or someone bad enough, it will happen.”

  “I hope so.”

  “Let me know how things go, okay?”

  “Okay, but, Rosey, please don’t tell Kate or Tony. I want to surprise them.”

  Rosey’s thumb and pointer finger clamped together, and she waved them over her mouth. “My lips are zippered. We
keep our secrets here.”

  “I know you do.”

  “I bet they’ll be so happy when you tell them,” she said.

  “I hope so.” She could only hope her family would be, too. Maybe that was one hope too many.

  It wasn’t until Cara was in the car and on the road that she realized Rosey had been the other person who knew the doctor’s name. Without having a cell phone, there wasn’t anything Cara could do about getting that information now.

  The drive out to Noble Sperm Bank was a long one. Or maybe it just seemed long because she was so anxious to be there.

  She had expected it to be inside the little town of Pegleg, but it was farther out in the country. Actually, to anyone from Erie, the whole town of Pegleg would have been considered “in the country.” To people from Pegleg, the country meant about a half mile past the last four-way stoplight.

  Cara zigzagged down blacktop roads, barbed-wire fences bordering either side, and behind them, cows and horses grazed.

  The way to the doctor’s office was clearly marked, as was the route to a middle school, the French Toast Restaurant, post office, library and a subdivision called Tranquillity Park. Despite the signs, though, she didn’t see any of these establishments. All she saw for miles and miles was grass, livestock, big trees and a creek that seemed to meander along the same road she drove.

  But she kept on going. As long as there were signs saying she was driving in the right direction, she wasn’t about to stop until she reached what she now considered to be the House of Conception.

  REX WAS WHISTLING as he drove up to the office Sunday afternoon. He was still angry as all get-out about those billboards, and he still intended for them to come down. But right now he wanted to concentrate on one little lady. He didn’t want anything to interfere with how he remembered her wrapped in a very revealing white sheet.

  When she had come out on the balcony last night with only that ridiculous sheet for cover, he almost fell out of the tree. The light had been shining behind her, so he could clearly see the outline of her legs, and that alone had made him want to jump off the branch and onto the balcony. Her breasts though, they had been right there for him to feast his gaze on. Okay, so maybe they hadn’t been right there. Maybe right there was in his imagination. He’d even go so far as to admit they were well hidden under the sheet, except for how her nipples had stood erect, evidence of her excitement that not even the sheet could cover. Now, him being a guy, he had to believe her excitement was for him. If he thought any other way, he wouldn’t be a true guy, he’d be a wimp guy.