Teaching the Cowboy (15 page)

“Will he be extended congratulations or apologies?”

“No frickin’ clue.” Ronnie’s thoughts swirled into an incoherent torrent. Pregnant? Ronnie? She’d never even imagined being pregnant, even with age thirty approaching at the speed of light. None of her goals had included kids except the ones in classrooms who’d go home every day to their own parents at three o’clock. How was this even possible? As far as she knew, she had been lucent for every one of her encounters with John, so how else could sperm have met egg? And when?

Doc scribbled some more notes. “What are your thoughts? You know there are options.”

Ronnie gave her head one hard shake. “No. I’ll deal.”
Shit. Daddy’s going to kill me if this kid doesn’t, and then Phil is going to consult a medium so he can laugh at my ghostly form.

“Okay. Should I schedule you for a Saturday follow-up, then? Would that work best for your schedule?”

“Yes.” Maybe on a Saturday she wouldn’t have a Lundstrom escort beyond the one implanted in her uterus.

“Okie dokie. You have great insurance by the way.” The doctor padded back to the door and shouted out again. “Kinsey!”

“Yep?”

“Bring Bessie.”

“Right.”

Ronnie heard the creaking of wheels down the hall and Doc pulled the curtain aside as Kinsey wheeled in a dinosaur of an ultrasound machine.

“We’ll draw some blood before you leave, but let’s see if we can date ya.”

Ronnie lay back and stared at the ceiling while Kinsey plugged in the machine and Doc rooted through the drawers again.

Oh, my god. What am I going to do? I can’t stay here.

“Sorry, Veronica, this is cold.” Doc smeared cold goop on her belly that made her nearly jump off the table. “Told ya.” She pressed the wand against Ronnie’s lower abdomen and hummed while she did her scan. “Measuring your uterus. I’d say you’re—” she clucked her tongue and squinted at the screen “—somewhere between five and six weeks. We’ll look at your betas to confirm, but I really need to do a second draw to make sure the hormone is doubling. You got a lab near where you live?” She handed Ronnie a towel and let Kinsey roll the cart away.

“No. I live on a ranch out in Storafalt County.”

Doc made a
Yeesh
sound. “Sorry, hon. Gotta come back in, then.”

Ronnie did the math in her head. Close to six weeks meant that very first night they’d fallen into bed. And if she had to guess, she’d say it was that very first time, the time he’d eased away with the pull of mortification on his features. She’d thought maybe he’d realized he hadn’t fed his horse or something. Obviously something more serious was on his mind.

She ground her jaw and focused her stare on the Depo Provera poster tacked to the back of the door. “You won’t even have to think about it,” it said.

Well, she
had
thought about it, and it hadn’t mattered. She certainly didn’t appreciate a poster mocking her about it.

She growled at the smiling, savvy, take-no-prisoners V.I.P. businesswoman on the advertisement, and accepted the sheath of papers Doc kept poking her with.

Good job, John. Hole in one.

Chapter Eleven

R
onnie sent Landon on a wild goose chase for three specific kinds of Pepperidge Farm cookies she was fairly sure were no longer manufactured while she leaned against the pharmacy counter, waiting on the tech to ring up her prescriptions. Prenatal horse pills, iron, and something for nausea, “Just in case,” Doc had said.

“Well, that’s a pretty reliable form of birth control there,” the same tech from before said. “When are you due?”

“April-ish. Hell, I don’t know.”

“Yep. That’s how I was with my first. I never even kept track. Damn sure do now.”

Ronnie grabbed her bag of pills and slowly trekked the grocery aisles in search of Landon. He found him squatting in front of a cookie display. When he noticed her there, he stood and shrugged. “Maybe I’m blind, but I don’t see ’em.”

“It’s all right. They may be a regional thing,” she hedged.

All the way back to the ranches, Ronnie’s mind swam. What the hell was she going to do? Every time Landon turned a page of his book, she looked over at the young man and saw so much of John in his profile that her stomach threatened to return its contents. She knew it wasn’t just the hormones. She needed to talk to someone. Anyone but John. Landon? No way. Maybe Anna or Becka? Probably not smart, especially if they started to dote. John would get suspicious. Sid? Maybe Sid. Definitely not Momma. She’d be on the first plane out.

She tapped Landon on the knee and he looked up at her and pulled out his left earplug. “Hmm?”

“Do you want me to take you to the Ericksons’ or do you want to read at home?”

“Where are you having dinner?”

“Um, I’ll probably eat alone tonight.”

“Not up for company?”

“Something like that.”

“Well, take me to the Ericksons and I’ll take Liss and Peter home.”

“Right.”

As soon as Landon hopped out of the car, she woke up her phone and dialed in her number-four speed dial.

“
Yello
?”

“Hi, Phil.”

“What’s up? I’m just getting off work.”

“Phil, can you keep a secret?”

“No. Are you forgetting who you’re talking to?”

She sighed and killed the ignition of the car after idling in front of her little house for a while. She pressed her forehead against the steering wheel and closed her eyes. “I thought maybe you’d matured in that one thing.”

“Oh, come on. If it’s juicy, I can’t help but to share. If it’s serious, I’ll keep my lips zipped.”

Which category did her predicament fall under? She was afraid to guess. She sat up and grabbed her bags from behind the passenger seat before pushing the door open.

“Well?”

“Hold on. Let me get inside. Sound travels out here.” She ferreted her keys out of her purse and poised the appropriate one over the slot before noticing the color of the knob was a bit off. That wasn’t her knob. She stepped back from the stoop and looked around to make sure she’d pulled up to the right unit, but nope, it was hers. No other staff house had a periwinkle door. “What the hell?”

She tried the new knob and found it locked. “Awesome. Just bleepin’ awesome.” She grabbed her bun and gave it a growling yank.

“Uh-oh. What’s going on out there in Wyoming? Buffalo attack?”

“No. It’s nothing.” She hitched her bags back up and stomped to the car. She got in and dumped her load on the passenger seat. Then she started banging her forehead against the steering wheel. She pulled her phone back from her ear as the chirp of an incoming text message pealed.

“Ronnie, Landon and the kids are home. I swapped out that dinky lock for you. I have the key. Come get it.”

She thrashed her head some more.

“Ronnie, it’s fun listening to you breathe and all, but you’ve got to say something or I’m going to just keel over dead from boredom.”

“Phil, I’m pregnant.”

“What’d you say? There’s some static on your end. How many cell towers are out there in that part of the country? Did you ever find out?”

“I said I’m pregnant.”

“Bitch, stop playing with me. I don’t have the constitution.”

Ronnie started the car and backed out onto the ranch road, heading toward the highway. “I’m not playing.”

“Pregnant by
whom
?”

“Who do you think?”

“I don’t know who to think. The last conversation we had that even hinted at your love life indicated you were still as chaste as a Carmelite nun.”

“Well, that changed.”

“Obviously, since immaculate conception only exists in storybooks. Is it, uh, he or she, John’s?”

“Yes.” She turned onto the highway and didn’t bother getting up to the speed limit. She wasn’t going that far.

“And does John know?”

“No.”

“When are you telling him?”

“I’m not.”

“You’re getting an abortion?”

“No.”

“I’m sorry, honey. I need to go lie down for a minute. Let me get this door open.”

She sighed and listened to the bang of their former shared apartment door being pushed in against the stopper, it being slammed and locked while Phil mumbled “holy shit” on repeat. There was a thud, probably Phil dropping his briefcase on the hardwood floor, and then the sound of a
whoosh
as he’d likely tossed himself onto the bed. When he spoke again, his voice was muffled.

“Please explain this to me in simple terms. Lay all the shenanigans out right now so when I need to tell a lie for you, I know which one to choose.”

Ronnie turned her little car onto the Lundstrom Ranch road and slowly navigated over the dips and holes. “I guess I’ll be leaving before it gets conspicuous. Christmas, maybe. I can’t stay here. This is a miserable place to live. I shouldn’t have to drive an hour to get my brand of shampoo.”

“I could have sworn I told you that.”

“Shut up. Further, the public school here is a hot stinking mess, there’s no diversity, and no cultural activities beyond, oh, cattle roping? I don’t know.”

“Have you tried to maybe connect with whatever the closest Native tribe is? At least you’ll get some flavor that way.”

“Are you even listening to me Phil? I’m not staying. Besides, there’s another half-native person at the Erickson Ranch. We talk a lot.”

“Ronnie, that’s fucked up. I didn’t think you had it in you.”

“Whose side are you on?”

“No one’s. I mean, shit, I don’t know. Oh, my God, Ronnie. Why couldn’t you leave that man alone?”

Ronnie’s jaw dropped so fast the ligaments popped. “He came on to
me
, Phil. And
strong
. He said I should marry him.”

“You mean before you found out about the bean?” Phil’s voice had suddenly cleared. He must have sat up and got his face off the bed.

“Yes.”

“Shit. Shit, shit, shit, Veronica. That’s all kinds of fucked up.”

“I’m sorry, am I talking to my friend Phil? Because my friend Phil would be telling me to get my ass on the fastest-flying vehicle I could afford a ticket for and come home.”

“Ronnie, honey. You’ve got a bunch of kids depending on you. You know I’m not the maternal type, but I do believe in that karma thing. If you do those kids wrong, it’s going to come back and bite you in the ass with your own kid. I don’t want my little god-fetus to have problems, do you understand me?”

As soon as she got her car parked in front of the Lundstrom house, she started thumping her head against the steering wheel again. “Yes, I understand you.”

“Karma, Ronnie.” He whispered it. “Karma.”

“I got it. Heard you. Shit.”

“I won’t tell a soul.”

“You’d better not, Phil, not even your mother. If you tell your mother, she’ll tell mine. She’ll tell Daddy, and Daddy will come out here and put a fist through John’s head.”

“Oh, honey, you’re twenty-eight. He wouldn’t do that.”

“Maybe not.”

“But he would definitely threaten him. If John doesn’t know Jesus now, he will.”

“Okay, Phil. I gotta go. I’m parked in front of the Lundstroms’ right now.”

“Good luck and Godspeed. Oh, and make sure you reduce your caffeine intake, abstain from alcohol, avoid taking any—”

She pressed
End
.

John thought Ronnie looked a little worse for wear one night a few weeks later when he finally convinced her to have dinner with the Lundstroms. She’d been up to her neck in lesson planning and test preparation for Landon, Kitty, Tina, Taylor, and Allen, and spending many of her evenings remediating Peter. The kid was finally catching up, even if it was at Ronnie’s expense. She’d promised she’d do it, and a small part of John hadn’t really thought it was possible.

He gazed at her across the corner of the dining room table where she sat with her chin propped up on her fist, her eyelids heavy and occasionally shutting as she nodded and mumbled “Mm-hmm” in response to Liss’s cues. John reached under the table and gave her knee a squeeze. She sat upright and cleared her throat, apologizing, before picking up her fork and pushing her food around on her dessert dish.

“Ronnie, why don’t you let me take you home?”

She turned her head slowly toward him, studied him for a moment in a manner indicating she didn’t know who he was, and then nodded after a while. Had it been that long since they’d had time alone? She’d been particularly slippery over the past couple of weeks, and he’d let it slide because he was swamped himself and damned emotionally taxed with all the drama Charlene was stirring up. He’d need to rectify that. He carried his plate into the kitchen, against Anna’s explicit and constant instructions, and bent to whisper in her ear, “Get Landon to put Liss to bed, okay? I’ll be at the guesthouse.”

She nodded and snatched the plate from him.

Ronnie was waiting by the front door for him when he went off in search of her. From the way she was slightly hunched and shifting her weight from foot to foot, he surmised she had a quick escape on her mind.

Tough
.

She straightened up and patted down a few stray hairs that had fallen into her face when she spotted him. Her bun had been getting lower and lower with each passing day, as if her hair was somehow just as tired as she was and couldn’t stand to be upright.

He looped an arm around her waist and pulled her through the open door. “So, how are you, Veronica? You’ve been avoiding me.”

She shook her head as he led her around the path to his truck. “No, not at all.” Her words were terse, and when he looked down, he saw a tightness in her jaw. “Just been busy.”

“Really? You sure what I told you just isn’t getting to you?” He knew he ran the risk of scaring her off, but what was he supposed to do after confessing his love of her while pissy drunk? He couldn’t take it back, so he did the next best thing and reiterated it. He didn’t want her to think he was the kind of man who wasn’t careful with his words.

“No. Not at all.”

He gave her a boost into the truck’s cab and noticed the droop of the waistband of her jeans. “New pants?”

She smoothed the hem of her shirt down over her belt. “Yeah. Ordered a bunch. Wanted to fit in with the dress code.” She offered a strained smile. He winked at her and closed her door. When he started down the path toward the rear, she sighed and said, “Taking a detour? Road’s the other way.”

“No. I’m taking you to the guesthouse. You can’t run from me there.”

“I’m not running, John.”

“Then what are you doing?”

She sucked her teeth. “I’d planned on going back to the house to get some sleep.”

“Well, you can do some of that, too.”

She was quiet the rest of the short drive and when John parked in the garage, a step he generally didn’t bother with, she jumped down without waiting for his aid. She sulked around the path to the carport and climbed up on the stoop and stood with her arms crossed over her chest.

“No need to be surly, honey.”

“I’m not surly. I’m tired.”

“So you say.”

He unlocked the door and waited for her to climb up. “You want a cup of coffee?”

“No, thanks. I don’t want anything to keep me up. If I could manage it, I’d prefer to sleep.”

“Well, I’ll try not to keep you up too long. Come here. I want to show you something. Sid found it at a flea market down in Fort Collins.” He looped his fingers through hers and pulled the reluctant teacher through the kitchen and into living room.

She froze in the doorway, staring at the room’s new addition.

“Wow. It’s gorgeous. How old is it?” She broke free of his grip and marched across the Oriental rug to glide her fingers along the edges of the wide, pale desk.

He shrugged and joined her where she stood between it and the bookcases behind it. “Sid says around a hundred and fifty. Said it came out of an old abandoned telegram office.” He watched as she pulled drawers and shut them to test their functionality.

She pressed her palms against the refinished wood to feel its smoothness.

“Need to get a chair for it,” he said.

“Well, it’s probably not pressing. No one’s using it, right?”

“Well, that stands to be determined. I bought it for you.”

She tore her hands away from the desktop and jammed them into her pockets as she took a step back. “What do you mean?”

“I thought you deserved something a little more stately than that rickety particleboard thing at your house on the Erickson ranch. Look. It’s totally kitted out.” He pulled out the middle drawer and gestured to the trays filled with paper clips, tape dispensers, pens in every shade imaginable, and other odds and ends. He picked up some silver sticky notes and brought them to eye level. “Special ordered those.”

Her cheeks flushed. “John, I can hardly move this thing over there. You shouldn’t have bothered.”

He laughed. “No plans to move it. I thought maybe you could work over here when it’s just you and a couple of the kids. It’d be more quiet. Probably be better for Peter when he’s playing catch-up.”

She pulled her hands out of her pockets and trailed her fingers along the carving on the edges. “Sweet of you.”

He drew her into the embrace of his arms and teased her head back so her face was raised to his. “I told you no one will take care of you like me.”

Her eyes moistened and he caught a tear with his thumb before it could trail down her cheek. “What’s wrong, honey? Did I offend you somehow?”

She forced out a long, jagged exhale through her mouth. “No. I’m just tired. Nearly delirious.”

“Oh, well come on.” He took her hand once more and led her up the stairs and down the hall to the master bedroom. He sat on the edge of the bed and pulled her down beside him as he started to unbutton his shirt.

“John, I don’t want to have sex tonight.”

Fuck.
“Okay. That’s fine. Doesn’t mean we can’t cuddle.”

“I have a hard time believing a cowboy would be content with mere cuddling.”

He shrugged. “Let me prove it to you.”

She studied his expression for a while and then started fiddling with the catch of her belt.

“Do you miss me at all when you’re busy hiding?”