Designer Genes (8 page)

“Just
cause--you aren’t going to tell anybody, are you?”
 
Carter asked.

“About what?”

“What I did
the first time we met.” He avoided her gaze. Apparently he’d been brooding
since she mentioned the subject. “I didn’t know the punch was spiked.”

“Neither did I
until later,” she said. “The hotel manager called to apologize in case anyone
from the conference had interrupted our meeting or behaved badly. But I don’t
mind people staggering a little. That’s kind of normal in L.A.”

 
“I was completely, totally snockered for the
second time in my life,” Carter continued. “I’m not proud of it, I can tell you
that.”

“You weren’t
totally
drunk, though, right?” she said. “Just enough to relax you.”

“If you put me
in a race with a blind cow on loco-weed, she’d have won.”

A fist
clenched inside Buffy’s stomach. She’d assumed that, at some level, Carter must
have wanted to create a little boy or girl. Maybe he didn’t expect to meet them
in person, but he might be receptive to the idea.

Wrong,
wrong, wrong.
Her pie in the sky had just fallen smack in her face. “You
didn’t have
any
intention of donating sperm? What did you think you were
doing?”

His answer
came out strained. “I thought it was a fund-raiser for the school district.”

“We did give a
small sum to your designated charity.” Honesty forced her to add, “Like, ten
bucks.”

“But the other
donation?”

“That was
for—well, you know what it was for.”

He smacked his
forehead. “How humiliating. If people found out what I’d done, I’d have to keep
my face buried under the hood for the rest of my life.”

This discovery
threw a monkey wrench into Buffy’s plans, whatever a monkey wrench was. Her
insemination with the wrong sperm hadn’t simply been a mistake on the part of
the clinic. Carter’s donation in the first place had resulted from his being
drunk and confused.

In a way, she
herself had helped to lead him astray. She was the one who’d recited, with
appropriate emotional inflections and while wearing invitingly low-cut
clothing, the clinic’s spiel about loving families and their need for help
producing children. She was the one who’d arranged transportation for him and
two other men in the clinic’s van.

Things were
worse than she’d believed. A less optimistic woman might consider them
hopeless.

Carter was a
decent man. Even leaving aside the hunky muscles and the appealingly boyish
hair, he put Roger in the shade. But every man Buffy had ever met had a limited
tolerance for feminine missteps. Lose your balance and you found yourself being
booted off the trapeze without a safety net to break the fall.

She had to
regroup. With Carter’s lean body so close and only the baby seat between them,
however, she couldn’t begin to formulate a new strategy right now.

“I won’t tell
anybody,” she promised, which seemed to reassure him. “Believe me, the clinic’s
business is confidential.”
Unless you have a good lawyer,
she added
silently. Thinking of lawyers reminded her of yet another touchy matter. “By
the way, I did call Mr. Fringo. I’m afraid we can’t pry any money from my ex
right away. I’ll pay you as soon as I can.”

Carter
frowned. “How will you do that?”

“I’ll handle
your housekeeping and cooking to earn my room and board while I’m here,” she
proposed, briskly and firmly so it might not occur to him that he had the right
to refuse. “As for the money you spent on the parts, I’m planning to sell
dresses on consignment to earn enough for a down payment. Then, when I get to
Dallas, I’ll sell the sports car and buy something cheaper, and pay you the
difference.”

“You’re moving
to Dallas?” He sounded perplexed. Or possibly disappointed, but she didn’t
trust her instincts in this situation.

“Or else San
Antonio or Austin,” Buffy amended. “Someplace where I might find a job. I mean,
there’s no reason I should stay in Nowhere Junction, is there?” She caught her
breath.

“No, uh...” He
let the words trail off. “Guess not.” Disappointment twisted inside her, but
what had she expected?

Time to get
moving. Buffy unstrapped the baby and, when Carter came around the truck,
handed the little girl into her father’s arms. Only he didn’t know he was the
father, and she was beginning to wonder if she’d ever figure out how to tell
him.

There
certainly was no chance for a private chat in the dry goods store, a sort of
department store that sold everything from clothes to auto parts to farm tools.
Ladders reached up to high shelves, assorted Western-style clothes crammed
racks, and cowboy hats hung from pegs. Buffy couldn’t figure out how you sorted
through the merchandise; it was nearly impossible with a baby in your arms. But
the proprietor, a man with thinning hair and pale, unblinking eyes, easily produced
the items on a list that Carter handed him.

After leaving
his purchases in the truck bed, Carter led the way to the grocery story.
“Aren’t you afraid they’ll get stolen?” Buffy asked, glancing back. “And don’t
tell me everybody in town is honest, because you already mentioned there are
strangers.”

Inside, he
took a cart, ignoring a bent wheel as he pushed it along. “It’d take a hell of
a nerve to swipe stuff out of my truck right in front of God and everybody.”

“All the same,
you should have a compartment to lock up your stuff.”

“Too much
bother.” He strode along the narrow aisles, piling canned goods into the cart.
They skirted the produce section as if it sold poison. Buffy peered wistfully
at the display of avocados, their Texas-size prices beyond her reach. Then she
remembered that right now even the cheap avocados in California would be out of
her reach.

“Doesn’t your
father eat fresh vegetables?” Buffy asked, grateful that the baby was so
fascinated by the surroundings that she wasn’t fussing at all.

“He grows them
himself.” Carter piled his selections onto the front counter.

“He butchers
his own meat, too?” Buffy hoped the man’s protein intake wasn’t restricted to
canned tuna.

“That old
coot?” asked the plus-size woman behind the counter. “He buys a side of beef at
a time and stores it in the freezer.”

“I suppose he
milks his own cow and churns the butter, too,” she said.

“Durn
straight,” responded the woman, who’d jumped right into the conversation.

“You must be
Gigi.” Adjusting Allie on her hip, Buffy stuck out her hand. “I’m Buffy.”

“Yep, whole
town knows who you are.” Gigi gave her hand a firm shake. “How’re you and the
cat hitting it off?”

“She changed
her name,” Buffy said.

Gigi quirked
at eyebrow at Carter. “That true? Without so much as a meow?”

“She’s Toast,”
he said.

“You got rid
of your cat?” The woman glowered.

“Just her
name. It’s Toast now.”

“Because she’s
tan,” Buffy explained.

“I see you’re
a woman who knows her own mind,” Gigi remarked as she bagged the groceries. “I
like that.”

“Thank you.”

Outside,
Carter stowed the groceries in the truck cab behind the seat. His other
purchases remained undisturbed in the bed, Buffy was relieved to see.

“Oops, nearly
forgot the mail.” Carter ducked his head apologetically. “You sit right here.
No sense disturbing the baby again.”

“Okay.” Buffy
watched his lean, confident body march down the block to the drugstore, which
apparently doubled as the post office.

She’d been
struck, the first time she saw him, by how real he seemed compared to most of the
men at the hotel, with their trendy hairstyles and gym-buffed builds. Now,
witnessing him in his natural milieu, she felt almost privileged. This was a
vanishing world, small towns and all. Not vanishing anytime soon though, she
hoped.

He returned
with a sheaf of envelopes and magazines, and they headed out of town. As they
left behind the last adobe house, she settled back to watch the countryside
unfold.

Fences marked
the boundaries of the ranches, although Buffy couldn’t see any ranch houses or
outbuildings. Just miles of rolling pastureland, punctuated by the occasional
oil well or clump of trees. Male cows—she supposed she should think of them as
cattle--stood around in small groups, chewing and daydreaming.

The scope of
the land made it hard to remember that it seemed normal, at Roger’s house in
Beverly Hills, to have only a green strip bordering the flagstone driveway. Yet
that property, with its swimming pool and airy modern architecture, had no
doubt cost more than a lot of these ranches.

“You deliver
your dad’s stuff every week?” she asked.

“That’s the
idea.”

 
“It’s kind of funny, that I get to meet your
father when I’ve only been in town for two days,” she said.

His forehead
furrowed. “What’s funny about it?”

“I was married
to Roger for five years and I never met his mother. I think her name’s Louise
and she lives in Ohio.” Or it might have been Illinois, she amended silently.

“Why not?”

“She never
visited, and when I answered his phone, she didn’t even greet me, just asked
for her son as if I was the maid.” Buffy shrugged. “I guess she gave up on
daughters-in-law after his second divorce.”

“His folks
didn’t attend your wedding?” Carter sounded almost angry, as if they’d violated
the rules of decent behavior.

“We were
married in Las Vegas.” She’d understood why, the third time around, Roger
hadn’t been eager for a big wedding. Still, she’d insisted on flowers, a white
gown and music, and her mother and sister had cried their eyes out. In
retrospect, possibly they’d been less than thrilled about her choice of
husbands, but at the time she’d interpreted the reaction as sweet
sentimentality. “It was a small ceremony.”

“Seems odd,”
Carter said. “My dad’s a bit of a hermit, but he says hello to people.”

“Does he
operate a ranch?” she asked.

“He owns one,
but he rents most of it to his neighbor, Fordyce Huggins, who’s retiring as
town mayor.” Carter rested an elbow in his open window. “Since my mom died ten
years ago, Dad’s kept close to the house and shut other people out.”

Buffy tried,
and failed, to imagine anyone voluntarily living in such isolation. “He must be
lonely.”

“He’s got a
couple of dogs named George and Lucas, after his favorite film director,” he
said, “and a lot of DVDs and books.”

“We should
invite him to dinner while I’m here,” she said.

“Dinner? My
dad?” He was so startled, he nearly lost his grip on the wheel.

“Why not?”
Buffy asked. “He has to eat, doesn’t he?”

“Inviting
someone to dinner, that’s like a social occasion,” Carter said. “Dad hates
socializing.”

“He won’t need
to talk. Mazeppa and I do enough of that for everybody,” Buffy pointed out.

“You’re
welcome to bring it up,” he said dubiously. “By the way, when we first get
there, I’d better approach the house alone.”

“Why?”

“Dad’s
suspicious of strangers,” he said. “I’ve learned not to visit after dark, since
the occasion when he fired a warning shot over my head. Ever since he stopped
having a phone, there’s no way to call ahead, so we’re not expected.”

Maybe bringing
Allie hadn’t been such a good idea. “Is he losing his mind?”

“Being
paranoid doesn’t make him senile. If any criminals show up, it might save his
life, as he’s pointed out more than once,” Carter said. “The only law
enforcement in Nowhere Junction is a part-time sheriff. Most ranchers figure
they’d best be prepared to stand and deliver for themselves.”

“Seems to me,
you’re the one delivering,” she pointed out.

“Gives me an
excuse to check on him.”

They turned
onto a gravel-strewn private lane that wound through clumps of bushy trees for
a considerable distance. “I’ll bet he doesn’t get many door-to-door salesmen,”
she said.

“No
telemarketers, either,” he noted. “He says reading in the bathtub is one of the
great lost joys of modern life.”

“What does he
read?”

“Louis
L’Amour,” Carter answered in a tone that implied it was almost too obvious to
mention.

They rounded
one more grove of trees and Buffy spotted a one-story adobe ranch house.
Judging by its size and layout, it must have been quite comfortable once. Now,
the paint was peeling, cactus lined the front walk and what looked like old
sheets hung inside the windows.

The two dogs
lazing on the lawn barely glanced at the truck. In one window, a sheet stirred.
“I think he’s noticed us.”

“Good. That
means he’s less likely to fire.” Carter halted in front.

“If he’s so
paranoid, why doesn’t he train his dogs to keep watch?” she asked.

“He says that
if they barked at a rustler, the bastard might shoot them. This way, they’re
more likely to trip him in the dark.” As he opened his door, he gave her a
quick grin. “Don’t worry, Dad’s not so bad.”

“Who’s
worried?” Buffy said. “I’ll feed Allie while you’re gone.”

“You do that.”
He scurried out of the truck, fast. While he headed for the house with an
armload of supplies, she freed the baby and sat back to nurse. To her relief,
there was no gunfire. The front door simply opened a crack and Carter
disappeared inside.

Buffy couldn’t
picture him, or anyone, growing up here. Of course, his mother had been alive
then, and he must have had a horse to ride, and friends at school. But there was
something missing, not only shopping and traffic, but something essential, if
she could just put her finger on it.

Dreams. That
was it, Buffy thought. Dreams of glamour and excitement. What could you dream
about in a place like this?