Her Bull Rider's Baby Read online

  He forced a smile. “Your chickens will miss you.”

  She grabbed his hand. “The chickens can wait. I want you to see the bulls.”

  He took in their surroundings as they walked, the rolling mountains enclosing the valley, the low scrub creeping all around. It wasn’t ugly exactly, but it certainly wasn’t as pleasing to his eyes as the grasslands of his youth. Too brown, too low, too… barren.

  “It’s not much like Brazil, is it?” As if she could read his mind. Or perhaps only his expression.

  “No.” Here the plants clung to the mountains almost desperately, as if just one dry season away from dying completely. At home, the plant life was so exuberant and green. Not quiet like this chaparral. “Have you ever been to Mato Grosso do Sul?”

  She shook her head. “No. I’ve never even been to Brazil.”

  If she’d never been, she had no idea of what she was missing. Of what their child would miss if she stayed here in California. “You’ll have to visit sometime,” he said, careful to keep his tone casual. “It’s a very beautiful place.”

  “It’s beautiful here too,” she said.

  He didn’t argue, although he didn’t quite see the beauty she did. “Did you always want to run the family ranch?”

  She shrugged. “It wasn’t a question of wanting. I just knew this was what I would do. Even when I went to college, I only wanted to get back here, to where I was born.” She took a deep breath, looked to the sun peeping over the peaks to the east. “This place, these mountains—they’re in my blood. They’re the marrow at the center of my bones.”

  “I feel the same way about my home.”

  After that, they walked on in silence—what was left to say after that mapping of how far apart they were? So they kept quiet as they made their way to the barns.

  Even half-finished, the entire spread was impressive. The finished barn already had three bulls in it, and another barn was under construction. A few other bulls were out to pasture—well away from each other—while the arena and chutes sat empty. Everything had been planned for maximum orderliness and efficiency. And sturdiness. That was important with bulls.

  Adriano couldn’t think of a single thing he’d have done differently. Once she got it completely up and running, this operation was going to be something. He propped himself against the arena fence rail and studied the chutes. “What else needs to be done?”

  “Well, we’ve finally got the remote dummy set up, and the cameras should be ready to go next week.”

  The remote dummy was a weighted robot that was strapped to a bull’s back. When the bull bucked the way you wanted him to, you punched the remote to launch the dummy off his back, making the bull think his clever move had thrown his rider. One of the few ways to train a bull.

  The cameras were to record a bull’s rides. The videos were the bull’s calling cards, his chance to be picked for the top events. The higher the bull’s scores, the more cowboys he threw, the more famous he became. Some bulls were more famous than the riders.

  “It’s very impressive,” he said. A little disconcerting to look at all this and realize she was trying to create a bull better able to put him into the dirt. A great bull made for a great ride, but some bulls were practically unridable. Those were crowd favorites. Lil would probably breed more than a few of those bulls here over the coming years.

  “Yeah.” But she didn’t sound quite as enthusiastic as before, her shoulders drooping as she looked over her work.

  “Are there problems?” he asked. Perhaps too personal, but Lil would simply tell him so. He could always count on bluntness with her.

  She clasped her elbows. “A few. But nothing I can’t handle.” Her usual bravado was hollowed out though.

  “Is there anything I can help with?” But he didn’t know about breeding the bulls—he only rode them. Another thought occurred to him. “You’re not training them in the chutes or flanking them yourself, are you?”

  She slid him a cool look. “No. Beau’s doing all that now.”

  Thank God. But he didn’t say it aloud. Best not to shatter the mood between them.

  “The other problems are only people being dumb about a woman raising bucking bulls.” Lil pushed off from the fence, clearly done with her confessions. “Let me show you the lab.”

  “Lab?”

  She led him to the half-finished barn, to a set of rooms there. She wasn’t joking about it being a lab. There were microscopes and petri dishes and other things he couldn’t name. All of it neat and orderly to the point of obsession. He kept to the doorway, not wanting to get dust on any of it.

  “Here’s where we’ll do the IVF and embryo transfers,” she was saying, gesturing to the benches and equipment. “I’m hoping once we get things running, we can offer those services to other stock contractors.”

  “How do the IVF and embryo transfers work?” He had a general idea, but this looked much more involved than he’d imagined.

  “Well, they ship the bull’s semen to us in liquid nitrogen.”

  He nodded. He’d seen a collection being made once, which might have been the most surreal experience in his life, involving a bull mounting a dummy cow.

  “In the lab, we use that sperm to fertilize an egg taken from a cow,” she went on. “After that, we implant the embryo into a different cow.”

  “So the bull and the cow never meet and the cow never meets the calf?” That might be more surreal than the semen collection.

  She grinned. “Romantic, huh?”

  It was fascinating. So much technology involved in something so primal. “Can I see it happen sometime?”

  “Sure.” Her phone rang then. She frowned at the screen. “Hang on. I’ve got to get this.”

  She went out the door, muttered something to whoever was on the other end, then disappeared around the corner.

  Who was she talking to? Curiosity burned in his gut, but he stayed where he was.

  She might be the mother of his child, they might be sleeping together—but he had no right to know. Which was a separate burn, apart from the curiosity.

  He kept his eyes on the lab, away from her, and tried hard not to listen.

  Lil glanced back at Adriano as she put the phone to her ear. Not that he would necessarily listen in, but she already knew he’d be the topic of this particular conversation.

  “Hi, Bea.” Lil’s face was already hot, and all she’d done was greet her cousin. “You’re calling early.”

  “Don’t remind me. I have the worst headache this morning.” Her cousin’s voice was pretty brisk for someone who had a splitting headache.

  “Maybe you should be sleeping it off.” And not calling about what I know you’re calling about.

  “Ha. I had to find out what happened last night.”

  Lil snuck a glance at Adriano. It didn’t look like he was listening, but she went around the corner anyway. He really should not hear this conversation. “Um, we went home.”

  Bea sighed. “I know that. But with how you two were acting on the dance floor, what happened when you got home?”

  “I don’t think I can tell you all the details.” She knew she couldn’t tell Bea all the details. Not if she wanted to be able to look her cousin in the eye.

  “So you made up?”

  Made up, made out, had the most insane orgasm of my life. “I guess you could say so.” Her voice had an odd flutter that she tried to squash.

  “Should I start planning the wedding too then?” Bea asked dryly. Her cousin was already planning the baby shower—and that joke was not funny.

  “Cute. We’re just seeing how things go.” She tried for light and easy but only sounded strained.

  Of course Bea picked up on that. “How things go until he leaves the country, right?”

  Lil set a hand to her forehead. It was way too early in the morning for this. She hadn’t even had her one cup of coffee. “Bea, I love you. Dearly. But I’m not ready to talk about this.”

  “Okay.” There wa
s a scritching noise, as if Bea was marking something off on a sheet of paper. “Did you do the baby registry yet?”

  “The shower is months away!”

  “And you’ll keep putting it off until it’s too late. Which is why I’m reminding you. I want to finalize the invitations soon, and I can’t do that without the registry information.”

  “You are so anal,” Lil said. Only Bea would want to finalize details on a party three months in advance. People planned surgeries with less precision.

  “Yep.” More scritching. Her cousin was definitely writing on something.

  “Does that cover your checklist for this phone call?” Lil grinned.

  “What? Uh, no, there’s no checklist.” But the scritching continued. “Well, that’s about it. I’ll talk to you later.”

  Lil shook her head as she hung up. Don’t ever change, Bea.

  It was way too soon to set up the registry, crazy soon even… but it was a Saturday. And she and Adriano were both here. Maybe picking out baby stuff together would help with the getting along stuff. Although if the baby went back with him, all that stuff would be useless, a harsh reminder of everything she’d lost…

  Lil shook that off. No sense crying over something that might not even happen.

  “Hey,” she called as she made her way back to him.

  He was still in the doorway of the lab. When he turned to face her, his expression was shuttered. As if he hadn’t been thinking very happy thoughts.

  “Is everything all right?” he asked.

  “Oh yeah. Bea”—wants to know what happened last night—“was bugging me about the baby registry.” She cocked her head. “I don’t suppose you want to go pick out baby stuff today?”

  “The baby won’t be here for months.” He looked a little horrified.

  That was probably a no for him then. “I know, but Bea is very anal.”

  “Anal?” Now he really looked horrified. That definitely wasn’t translating well to Portuguese.

  “Anal retentive. It’s Freudian.” Explaining Freud was only going to make it worse, so she left it at that.

  “Freudian. Okay.” Confusion replaced the horror on his face.

  “You know what? Let’s not talk about Bea or Freud or being anal retentive. Let’s go look at some baby stuff. And let people buy it for us.”

  He laughed, as she’d meant him to. “Okay.”

  So after breakfast—where she only had one cup of coffee, like a good girl—they headed out to the baby superstore. When they arrived and walked through the doors, it was—

  “Whoa.” Lil blinked. And blinked some more.

  Overwhelming didn’t even begin to describe it. Aisles and aisles of baby stuff, stacked all the way to the ceiling. Happy babies smiled out from boxes of diapers, playpens, and formula. And the clothes… racks and rack of fluffy, pastel tidbits.

  God help them.

  “I thought a baby just needed diapers,” Adriano said, as fearful as she felt.

  Lil had thought this would be a lark—not like setting up base camp at the Mount Everest of Baby Gear.

  “A crib,” she said faintly. Not that she saw cribs. “I’m pretty sure we need one of those.”

  “Okay, a crib and diapers.”

  They both remained rooted in place. She wanted to reach for his hand, which was silly, because it was only a baby store—but the size of it was scary. This was what it took to keep a baby alive. All this.

  An older lady with a kind face and a name tag came up to greet them. “Do you need any help?”

  “Um, a registry?” Lil didn’t mean to sound so confused, but dammit, the immensity of this place was scrambling her brain.

  “Starting a registry? Or shopping off one?”

  “Starting one.” She could answer that with some confidence at least.

  “Great. Let’s get your info!”

  The clerk motioned them over to a computer and began to take their entire life history. Or at least what felt like it. The sex, the baby’s name—which they didn’t have yet—the colors of the nursery, whether they were doing attachment parenting or not, breast or bottle feeding…

  When they were finished, Lil was more than a little stunned. The clerk handed her a scanner. “Whatever you want on the registry,” the woman said, “point the scanner at the barcode and it will be automatically added. Neat, huh?” She beamed at them.

  “Yeah,” Lil said uncertainly. After all that, they still had to go through the entire store? She took a deep breath. People had climbed Everest before—surely she could survive a baby store.

  She glanced at Adriano, who’d been very quiet throughout the interrogation. “Ready?”

  He didn’t look ready, but he nodded.

  They went back to where they’d started, facing down all those aisles, both of them in a gunfighter’s stance. Lil held the scanner loosely by her thigh.

  “We can do this,” she said.

  He took the scanner from her. “Of course we can. We work with bulls for a living.” He raised his arm, angled the scanner toward the ceiling like a shooter who’d just drilled his target. “Let’s do this.”

  “Right.” His confidence was catching. “To the diapers.”

  They went through diapers—cloth and disposable—like a couple of pros, then picked out the crib in five minutes. But when they got to the bottles, the arguing started.

  “A package of formula and some bottles isn’t going to ruin the baby for breast-feeding,” Lil insisted.

  Adriano’s jaw was set, the skin tight across the line of it. “The book says you shouldn’t have formula around if you want to breast-feed. You might be tempted to use it.”

  That fucking book. That was it—the Book was going into the wood chipper.

  “It’s formula, not heroin.” She stabbed her fingers into her forehead and imagined poking them into Adriano Silva’s arrogant, stubborn fat head.

  “The book—”

  She held up a hand. “Stop. Stop before I lose it.”

  Praise all the saints: he shut up. She took a deep breath. They couldn’t get into a fight here. She’d have to change tactics.

  “Okay. Imagine this: there’s a disaster.” He made a disbelieving face, but she kept on. “I can’t get to the baby, and you have nothing to feed her. Because I’ve got these”—she gestured to her chest—“and you don’t.”

  His lips twitched. Was he actually going to laugh?

  “So if we don’t buy any formula, she’ll have nothing to eat should something terrible happen. Or we could get one case, promise to never use it barring an emergency, and avert tragedy.”

  He was definitely trying not to laugh, his chest shaking with the effort to hold it in. It looked like some well-timed jokes could soothe his temper just fine.

  “You make an excellent point,” he said dryly. “Let’s get one case.”

  She smiled to herself as she hit the formula case with the scanner. This registry business was going to be easy.

  Facing down the bedding tripped up the both of them though.

  She could have a drawn a line down the shelves, blue and football and dogs on one side and pink and unicorns and princesses on the other.

  “Wow,” she breathed. “How can we pick something when we were not sure if it’s a boy or girl?”

  There didn’t seem to be anything cute that didn’t scream boy or girl. This bedding demanded that you pick a side in the gender wars—there was no middle ground. Lil pitied any parent who chose not to take advantage of technology and found out the baby’s sex the old-fashioned way at the time God had intended.

  “The doctor said it was probably a girl,” Adriano said. But he didn’t sound as certain as the doctor had.

  “Probably. Not definitely.” What if they got everything in pink and ruffles and it turned out to be a boy and he hated them forever? Or if they did have a girl but she hated pink and adored trucks? Gender wasn’t destiny. And hell, their kid would probably end up resenting them when it was a teenager anyw
ay.

  Lil tapped the scanner against her thigh. It was a crazy train of thought, but here in this wonderland of baby crap, crazy thoughts seemed to be the only way to keep sane.

  “It will be a girl.” Adriano was certain now. “And we’ll name her Gabriela.”

  He sounded like an oracle. So convinced, so definite.

  Gabriela. Her daughter, Gabriela. Lil put a hand to her belly. Gabriela.

  It was a good name. Lil could see herself saying that with love for the rest of her life. And occasionally with exasperation and annoyance. If the baby stayed with her.

  And if the baby was with him, he’d do the same.

  Stop obsessing over it. These circular thoughts would get her nowhere.

  “Yes,” she said, because he was right. She knew it somehow, deep within her. “Gabriela. Now where is the horse stuff? Because any kid of ours is going to love those.”

  When they were done with the bedding, they went on to the play pens, then the bouncy seats, strollers—Jesus, some of those were more expensive than a crib—bottles and Binkies, and finally, the clothes.

  Lil had never been one to coo over baby clothes before, but something stole over her when she saw all the tiny little scraps of fabric, so soft, all pastel.

  Her child would wear these. She’d have to place tiny limbs into those clothes, would cover an itty-bitty bald head with those hats.

  It seemed almost impossible.

  Adriano was inspecting a pair of pants that had “Cutie” plastered across the butt, with kitten-faces for the footies. “Did you ever see anything so adorable?” he demanded.

  She hit it with the scanner. “Can you imagine how cute it will be on her? Our brains will probably melt.”

  “I found some other things she’ll need.” He took the scanner from her and began hitting all kinds of clothes. Most of them frilly and fancy and more appropriate for church.

  The clothes were adorable, but so was he. “She’ll need some play clothes too,” Lil pointed out, a laugh tickling at her lips.

  “You’re right.” He added some Onesies and pants that wouldn’t be too much worse for the wear with some spit-up on them.

  Here they were, talking about the baby as if she were a real person and getting along beautifully. If they kept this up, maybe by the time he was ready to go back home, they could…