The Curvy Vet and the Billionaire Cowboy (He Wanted Me Pregnant!) (4 page)

Oh my God, I can’t believe I just—

Just breathe. Act normal. There’s no way he can know.

“You okay?” he asked. There was a teasing tone in his voice. Just joking around, or did he suspect?

“Fine,” I said, still a little breathless. “Just got a bit out of control.”

He smiled and nodded and—

He gave me this
look,
with a fire in his eyes that I’d never seen before. It was like raw, superheated lust, so hot that it fanned the afterglow of my orgasm back into life and sent a tremor through me.

But that made no sense at all. Not when directed at
me.

The look cleared from his eyes. “Come on,” he said. “We’ve got a long way to go.”

I fell into place a little way behind him and we rode on.

Chapter 5

The scenery got, if it was possible, even more beautiful as we approached the mountains. We broke for lunch, sitting in the shade of a couple of huge boulders. He’d brought home baked bread and cheese, cold meats and pickles, and I found I was ravenously hungry. We talked about high school teachers we hated and movies we loved and, sitting side by side against the cool stone, we could have been two lovers out for a picnic. Until I turned down his offer of a brownie.

“I’m big enough, thanks.” I said it with a smile on my face. I’d gotten used to that smile—it was my
I’ll say it before you say it
smile.

He frowned. “You’re perfect,” he said.

Disappointment rolled through me. Why did he have to go and lie, and spoil everything? I’d thought I’d sensed in him a sort of open honesty, a refreshing lack of the lines and games men used on women in the city. “We should get going,” I said, my voice tighter than I’d intended.

I swung myself up into my saddle and stared off at the horizon until I heard him do the same.

“Amanda?” he said tentatively. “I’m sorry if I said something—”

“You didn’t.” I said. “It’s fine.” And I set off at a trot before he could argue.

***

By the end of the first day, we were nearly at the mountains. After feeling the sun beating down on me all day, the chill of the evening was a shock. I buttoned up the shirt Russ had given me and helped him set up the tents.

Tents
plural.

I’d expected that, of course. It wasn’t like I’d been angling to share a tent—or a sleeping bag—with him. I would have been outraged at his expectation. But there was some tiny part of me, one I didn’t want to admit to, that was just a tiny bit disappointed.

Russ cleared some ground and built a fire. By the time it was roaring, the temperature had dropped enough that I was very glad of its heat. There was chili, heated over the fire, thick and dark and warming. Salty, crunchy crackers and icy spring water to go with it. Stretched out on a blanket, eating in companionable silence, I never wanted to move again.
I could get used to this,
I thought. And for a second I entertained childish dreams. Me and him in some rosy portrait of country life, all home-cooked food and kids running barefoot in the fields.

Except the wife wouldn’t look like me, would she? She’d be like the woman at the airport. Slender and petite and beautiful.

“Look up,” Russ said.

“What?”

“Look up.”

I looked up…and gasped. While I’d been watching the fire, the sky had come alive with stars. I could see the milky way, the sweep of light across the sky that makes even the most cynical observer think
we are not alone.
Looking up at the millions of tiny pinpricks of light, I somehow felt tiny and yet part of something much bigger, all at the same time. I wanted to share it with someone.

That’s why I reached for his hand. I wasn’t even aware I was doing it until it was done. My fingers curling around his much larger ones. A second’s hesitation and then he closed his grip and squeezed mine tightly.

We sat there in silence for a few minutes, just watching. And then I started to feel something. Like a hot throbbing emanating from our held hands, radiating out along our arms and into our bodies. As if our hearts had started to thump to the same beat.
Shit! What do I do now?!

I’d accidentally created a moment. Alone, miles out into the wilderness, where no one could see us. Under the stars. Holding hands.
Shit!

The sensible thing, if it had been a movie, would have been to lean over and kiss him. Or maybe lean over and close my eyes and part my lips and wait for him to kiss
me
.

But this wasn’t a movie. If it had been a movie, Russ would have had a little slip of a woman with long, arrow-straight blonde hair and perky little breasts and an ass that was barely there. She’d be a natural rider instead of nearly falling off the horse and she’d giggle and smile prettily and he’d be able to sweep her up into the air with one hand. The only movie I was auditioning for was a painful romantic comedy where the klutzy heroine misreads the signs and comes on to a man who isn’t interested. And I didn’t want that part.

I jumped up, releasing Russ’s hand. “I have to stretch,” I said. “My leg is going to sleep.”

He nodded. He’d taken his hat off at last and his dark hair shone in the firelight. For a second, he looked almost embarrassed. Why would
he
be embarrassed? It was me who’d nearly done something stupid.

I needed something safe to talk about. Something that had nothing to do with relationships or love or sex. Work. We would talk about work.

“So, tell me about the farm,” I said. I made a big show of stretching my leg, almost toppling headfirst into a rock in the process. “How does an oil man come to breed horses?”

He let out a chuckle. He did that a lot, I was noticing, and it made me more aware of my own moodiness. How was everything so
easy
for him? He seemed to completely miss all the inherent dangers and stresses that surrounded us.
He
didn’t seem to be checking the ground every few seconds for scorpions, or jumping at movements in the shadows that might be bears.
He
didn’t seem to be worried about the fact that we only had enough water for a few days and what if someone came in the middle of the night and unscrewed the caps on our canteens and let it all drain out and we woke to find ourselves miles from anywhere, slowly dehydrating, crawling on our bellies towards a river that turned out to be only a mirage—

Breathe, Amanda.

My point was, none of those
very real and reasonable
fears seemed to bother him. Was it because he had the money? Or was the money some sort of karmic reward for being all positive and carefree. And why couldn’t I be more like that?

“Basically,” said Russ, “I hated my life.”

I sat up straight. “What?”

He shrugged. “I was sitting at the head of the table of a big oil company. Couple of billion in my portfolio, company jet, roomful of lawyer ready to pounce like attack dogs on whoever I set them on, and I realized…none of it was real.”

I looked at him blankly.

He sighed. “What you do,” he said. “Saving animals’ lives. That means something. That’s important.”

I blinked.
Important?
That was a word I’d never heard attached to what I did before.

“All I did was make zeroes into more zeroes on a spreadsheet,” he said. “Buying and selling. I wasn’t
creating
anything. The world wasn’t a better place for me being in it. Probably a worse one.” He took a deep breath. “So I got out.”

“Just like that?”

He gave me a lopsided smile. “Well, it wasn’t like I gave up my worldly goods and became a monk. I cashed out pretty well. Found a nice place to call home and bought the stud farm. Now I get to actually do something with my hands, instead of just nodding and giving orders all day. And I’ve got time, for the first time in years. Time to relax, time to think about settling down with someone and starting a family. I’d been buried in my work. Do you know what it’s like to look around and realize what you’ve been missing?”

Something went cold inside me.
That’s not me in the lab,
I thought quickly.
I haven’t been missing anything. Have I?

I had to quickly turn the conversation back to him. “So. Um. Horse breeding?” I smiled brightly.

“Yes,” he said. Just one word. But I caught his eye and found myself flushing.

For a vet, talk of breeding comes with the territory. I’d had countless conversations about bull semen and fertility cycles and the best stallion to mate with a mare, and I’d long since gotten over any embarrassment about it. So…why did it suddenly feel different, talking about it with Russ? Was it because those conversations had all been with overweight ranch owners with no necks, pushing sixty, while Russ was lounging there with his strong chest and chocolate brown eyes?

Or was it because, only a moment before, he’d been talking about starting a family?

I swallowed. “Well,” I said. “That sounds like a worthy, ah…pursuit.” I cast my eyes about for an excuse to escape and go to bed. It was too early, really, but maybe I could say I was tired—

“I’d like to get your advice, if I could,” he said.

I swallowed again. I was sitting facing him, both of us stretched out with our backs against rocks and our feet almost touching as we gazed at the fire. “Sure.”

“This feral horse we’re after…if we can save her, I was thinking about using her to start a line.”

I looked at the fire. “You’d have to tame her, first.”

“Right,” he said. “I’d have to break her.”

Break her.

“And then…you know, maybe it wouldn’t be a good idea to move too fast.” I stared very intently at the flames. “I mean, you wouldn’t want to do it as soon as she was at the farm.”

His tone was neutral. “Oh. No?”

I leaned a little closer to the fire. Maybe if I got close enough, he’d think that was the reason my cheeks were red. “No. She’d have to settle in first. She’d have to trust you.”

“’Me’?”

“
Him.
She’d have to trust him. The stallion who was going to, um….”

“Mount her.”

“Yes. Mount her. She’d have to be ready.”

“How would I tell?” Russ asked. “How would I tell if the feral mare’s ready to be covered?” He paused. “What should I look for?”

—this is not happening don’t be stupid he’s talking about horses he’s talking about horses—

“Um…well, you can often see it in the way she…breathes. Like, if she’s all sort of…heady and excited and…panting.” I tried to catch my breath. “Then that’s a sign.”

He nodded slowly. “Mmm-hmm.”

“But you can’t just run in and do something like that,” I said quickly. “With any…mare. However much you want to start a…line.”

I was leaning closer to the fire, but that didn’t explain why the temperature had shot up by twenty degrees.

“Why not?” Russ asked. “Isn’t it the most natural thing in the world? We’re all designed to breed. If it’s right, and you know it’s right, then why not go ahead and do it?”

I nodded, barely able to speak. Dark ripples of heat were moving up and down my body, making my face glow and my nipples harden. Down between my thighs, I could feel the heat turning to moisture.
This is crazy! He can’t be talking about—

I stood up. “I think I should go to bed,” I said. My legs wavered, all the strength drained from them. “Goodnight.”

He just sat there watching me for a moment. Then, “Goodnight.”

I could feel his eyes on my ass as I crawled into my tent. Inside, I zipped it closed and then turned on a torch, lighting up the interior with a spooky white glow.

What the hell was going on? Had Russ really been coming on to me, in some very raw and primal way? Had he really been hinting that he’d like to—I squirmed—
breed
me?

I quickly stripped off my jeans, shirt and tank top and then my bra, and then reached for an old green Atlanta Falcons t-shirt to sleep in. It was only then that it hit me.

I was inside the tent, with the light on. He was still sitting out there in the darkness, watching me. I was probably silhouetted. All of my horrible curves. Hell, even my nipples, still shamefully hard and straining from the conversation.

I yanked the t-shirt down over my head and quickly scrambled into my sleeping bag and turned the torch off. Had he been watching? Had he been gazing at my breasts as they bobbed and swayed? There was no way of knowing.

I lay very still. I couldn’t hear him moving around, so I figured he was still sitting by the fire. Maybe watching. Maybe not.

Breeding
me. Utterly ridiculous. What he was suggesting was some sort of rustic, country fantasy. Starting a family immediately with someone, even someone you loved, was nuts. Babies were something to be planned, and planned carefully. Maybe in your mid-to-late thirties, when your career was secure and you’d paid off all your debt,
then,
you could draw up calendars and plan fertility cycles and have sex on just the right day and then, maybe, it would happen and you could go
squee
with your friends and have a baby shower. But no one these days just got together and…
went for it.
No man just saw a woman and decided she was going to be his brood mare. Did they?