by Brenda Novak
“And?”
“And what?”
“That’s it?”
“Isn’t that enough?” Delaney asked.
“That’s pretty pathetic for a thirty-year-old.”
Not for the daughter of a woman who rambled from town to town and changed men almost as often as she bought shoes. Maybe Delaney had gone to the opposite extreme, but at least she wasn’t like her mother. “I’ve been saving myself.”
“For spinsterhood. Great.” Rebecca finished her gin and tonic, ordered another one, and had the grace to wait until Maxine, the bar’s only waitress, headed back to the kitchen before adding, “Now I know why an illegitimate baby coming from you is going to scandalize the whole town.”
Something in Delaney’s face must have revealed her alarm at this idea because Rebecca added, “But they’ll get used to it.”
Delaney started wringing her hands. “You think so?”
“Sure. Look at how Millie and Ralph took you in and everyone in town’s adored you from day one. They’ll gossip and fuss and be amazed but, bottom line, they’ll secretly thank you for the juicy controversy and eagerly await the baby.”
The people of Dundee had been good to her. Delaney didn’t want to repay them by setting a bad example for the town’s youth, but Rebecca made getting pregnant sound so simple. One night in exchange for a baby. Delaney’s own baby. Someone to care for, someone to love. Someone to teach and to guide. Surely Dundee could forgive her one small indiscretion.
She moved closer. “If I do this, and happen to find…you know, someone who’s right, how do I know he won’t have AIDS or some other STD?”
Rebecca laughed. “Out here? In Idaho?”
“AIDS is everywhere,” Delaney said defensively.
“Well, your chances of getting an STD out here are pretty slim compared to most other places,” Rebecca said. “But I guess there’s no guarantee. The whole plan depends on a certain element of spontaneity, so you can’t exactly drag your target down to some clinic, right? All you can do is ask if he’s been tested and see whether you trust the answer.”
The smell of onion rings lingered in the wake of Maxine, who smiled as she bustled past them with platters of food for Johnny Coker and his new wife, a few tables away. “Your drink’s coming right up,” she told Rebecca.
“No problem.”
“What if he only practices safe sex?” Delaney asked when she thought Maxine was once again at a safe distance. “What good will a one-night stand do me if he uses a condom?”
“Probably more good than you think.”
Delaney scowled at the sarcasm in her friend’s voice. “Be serious.”
“I am serious. When the time comes, you just tell the guy that you’re on the pill, then get him so excited he forgets about everything else.”
Right. She just had to get him excited, that was all. A complete stranger! “I’ve always considered myself a better person than to do something like this,” she said so she wouldn’t have to focus on the mental picture of what it might take to get a man worked up to the point of total forgetfulness.
“You are a good person. This isn’t going to hurt anyone, Laney. It’s just a one-night stand—something that happens all the time with millions of people. You’ll go on your merry way, and he’ll go on his. No big deal.”
“What if I don’t get pregnant?”
“Then you might want to consider artificial insemination or simply wait and hope for the right person. But if you time it correctly, chances are good that it’ll work out.”
Delaney rubbed her lip. “It’s just one night. No big deal…”
“That’s what I said. People do it all the time.”
“It’s not hurting anybody.”
“What he doesn’t know can’t hurt him. It’s not like you’re ever going to go after him for child support or anything. And you’d take great care of the baby, right?”
The baby. Her baby. A longing so powerful she could hardly speak clamped down on Delaney’s insides. “Of course I would.”
“Then, that’s what matters. So there’s no problem.”
“Right.” Delaney stared at her glass, thinking maybe she’d drunk too much because this whole thing was actually starting to seem plausible. But she wasn’t even finished her first margarita. “So who do I—you know?” she asked.
“Anyone with the right equipment,” Rebecca responded. “Look around you. This place is filled with guys. Dexter’s right over there. He’s been trying to get lucky since the eighth grade.”
“Dexter’s been trying to get lucky since before that,” Maxine announced, catching the tail end of the conversation as she appeared with Rebecca’s drink. “I remember him sneaking into the girls’ rest room at school and looking under the stalls at me when I was only in the fifth grade.”
“Yeah, Dex has always been a little pervert,” Rebecca agreed. She paid for her drink, and Maxine hurried off to collect her next order.
Delaney rolled her eyes. “Dex, Becky? That’s the best you can do? He’s dumber than a doornail—not the kind of genes I want to pass on to my baby. Besides, no one from around here is even a possibility. How much of a secret will it be if I sleep with Dex and then wind up pregnant?”
Rebecca frowned. “Maybe you should sleep with several guys in the next few weeks, just to create some confusion.”
“No way!”
“I’m kidding,” her friend said, laughing her deep smoker’s laugh. “I think this is going to be hard enough for you to do the first time. Do-gooders typically don’t lie well, and, let’s face it, you don’t have a lot of experience with the seducing end of it, either.”
“Which is all the more reason we’ll have to go out of town. Somewhere far away.”
“How far?”
“California, at least. Isn’t California the sex capital of the world?”
“That’ll be expensive. What’s wrong with Boise?”
“It’s only a two-hour drive from here!”
“Exactly. It would save us plane fare, and it’d be just as good as going halfway across the country. Big-city valley people aren’t interested in small up-country towns like ours. What are the odds of running into Joe Schmoe Donor from Boise out here in Dundee?”
Joe Schmoe Donor? Delaney liked the sound of that. Joe Schmoe created a generic, anonymous image, and donor carried with it the connotation of something freely given. She was only looking for a donor. Maybe she could do this, after all.
“We don’t get Boise people up here very often,” she mused.
“My point exactly. Boise is plenty far away. And even if you do run into your man later, here or anywhere else, he’ll be none the wiser.”
“He might suspect if I’m pregnant at the time.”
“Why would he? Why would he assume he’s the only one you’ve slept with? Heck, for all he knows you might’ve gotten married.”
“O-ka-ay,” Delaney said, drawing the word out and feeling more eager to trust Rebecca on this than she probably should. “I’ll buy that.”
“Good. So, are we going to do it?”
A gust of cold air and a few flakes of snow blew into the Honky Tonk along with Billy Joe and Bobby West. Although they were brothers, they didn’t look much alike. Bobby was wiry and thin; Billy Joe was almost as big as a house. Like Rebecca, Delaney had known them since grade school. She’d grown up with the men in this town and doubted she’d suddenly find herself wildly attracted to one of them. If she waited for love to strike, she could spend the next fifty years alone.
“Okay,” she said at last, straightening her spine. “We’re going to do it.”
“We are?” Rebecca’s brows shot up.
“Definitely.”
Her friend looked skeptical. “I don’t believe you.”
“Why? I can break the rules when I want to.” Delaney nervously tucked her shoulder-length brown hair behind her ears. “I’ve just never wanted to before.”
“Then, let’s go.” Rebecca sto
od, gathered her cigarettes and lighter and slung her purse over her shoulder.
“Tonight?” Delaney squeaked, terror seizing her heart and nearly sending her into cardiac arrest.
“Why not?”
“You haven’t finished your drink.”
“Considering our agenda, I think I’d better leave the rest, don’t you?”
She started toward the door, but Delaney called her back. “Wait! I’m—I—I just need a couple of days to get used to the idea,” she managed to say. “And…and…you talked about timing.”
Rebecca propped one hand on her hip. “The timing is good. I know because we’ve been on the same cycle for the past few months.”
“But—”
“That’s what I thought,” she said with an exaggerated sigh. Piling her things on the table, she scraped her chair across the wooden floor and sat down again.
“What?” Delaney demanded.
“You’re not going to go through with this. It’s just a dream.”
“I’ll do it!”
“No, you won’t. We grew up two houses from each other. I’ve known you since I was seven, and you’ve never done anything wrong in your life. You’re like…you’re like Abraham Lincoln. Didn’t he walk some ungodly distance to return a penny? The store clerk probably thought he was an idiot.”
“I wouldn’t walk very far to return a penny. I’d just leave an extra one the next time I was in.”
Rebecca smacked the tabletop. “Ugh! See what I mean?”
The jukebox was playing one of Garth Brooks’s older hits as Billy Joe and Bobby West ambled over. Standing at the table dressed entirely in denim and wearing a pair of silly good ’ol boy grins, they tipped their black felt cowboy hats when Delaney and Rebecca looked up, then dragged over two chairs from the next table.
“Howdy, ladies.”
Delaney couldn’t help it; she frowned when they sat down. She could spend the rest of her life throwing darts and playing pool with Billy Joe and Bobby, or she could go to Boise and do something about getting what she wanted most.
Summoning all her courage, she stood. “We were just leaving, boys.”
They blinked at her in surprise—and so did Rebecca.
“Aw, come on,” Billy Joe said. “We just got here.”
“Are we going where I think we’re going?” Rebecca asked uncertainly.
Delaney nodded, then prayed she wouldn’t lose her nerve. One night. It would only take one man and one night, she told herself.
But there was another small problem. Delaney had stretched the truth a bit when it came to her sexual experience. When Booker Robinson had tried to get down her pants, she’d slugged him—probably the only aggressive act of her life. He’d been embarrassed about the black eye and had tried to take revenge by bragging that he’d gotten more than he had. Delaney hadn’t bothered to contradict him. It helped her seem less different from the other girls at school, less alone. And on prom night, Tim Downey had gotten so drunk he’d passed out before he so much as kissed her good-night. She’d had to drive him home.
In fact, Delaney was still very much a virgin.
CHAPTER TWO
CONNER ARMSTRONG KNEW what fun was. He’d spent a good portion of his thirty-one years trying to destroy himself with good old-fashioned reckless living, but he doubted he was going to find any excitement here. That, of course, was why the old man had sent him to Boise. Clive Armstrong was trying to teach him a lesson, trying to force the illegitimate son of his adopted daughter to straighten up at last—and Conner figured the only way his grandfather thought he’d be successful was to remove all temptation.
He glanced around the small hotel bar, which was nearly empty, and frowned, figuring it just might work.
Hell, who was he kidding? It had to work. Conner had run out of second chances, and although he’d never admit it to Clive or anyone else, he secretly embraced the challenge his grandfather had placed before him. He was ready to grow up, deal with the past, move on. He’d been ready for some time, but old habits died hard.
A work-roughened man with big hands and a whiskery jaw came in through the street entrance. Shaking off the snow clinging to his hat and clothes, he settled at the bar next to Conner, then nodded. “You new in town?”
He was wearing a dirty pair of Wranglers, a red flannel shirt over long johns, and no coat. Because of his ruddy appearance and seeming indifference to the cold, Conner took him for a local.
“What gave me away?” Conner asked.
His new friend ordered a beer and pushed his cowboy hat back on his head. “You look like a city fella.”
Shrewd dark eyes flicked over Conner’s turtleneck sweater, his jeans, faded but clean, and his pristine leather hiking boots. “You come up to go skiing?”
“No.” Conner considered telling him what he’d really come to Idaho to do, then decided against it. He hardly looked the type, and didn’t want to get laughed out of town on his first night.
“Where ya from?”
“Napa Valley wine country.”
“Where?”
For a moment, Conner had forgotten that he’d been relegated to the American equivalent of Siberia. “California,” he said.
“That explains it.”
“What?”
“You look like a Californian. Must be the tan.”
Conner didn’t have California to thank for the tan; he had his old UC Berkeley buddies, who’d just accompanied him to the Caribbean. But he wasn’t too grateful, because he probably had his affiliation with those same people to thank for the lifestyle that had brought him to this point.
The cowboy downed half his beer, then wiped his foam mustache on his sleeve. “How long’re you staying?”
“That depends on how long I last.”
He chuckled. “Don’t let the snow scare ya away.”
Conner wasn’t worried about the weather, miserable though it was. His family—his mother’s adopted family—owned a three-million-dollar condo in Tahoe, so he’d been exposed to cold and snow, at least on occasion. It was the boredom he feared in Idaho, the lack of contact with the real world. From what he remembered, there weren’t many people where he was going. In Dundee most folks were ranchers. They went to bed early, got up early, worked hard and rolled up the sidewalks on Sundays. How was he going to fit in there? How was he going to succeed?
His uncles, of course, were hoping, betting, he wouldn’t.
“What do you do?” Conner asked to keep the conversation going.
The man told the bartender to bring him some chips and salsa. “I’ve done just about everything,” he said. “Right now, I work for the county driving a plow.”
Snow removal. That sounded exciting. Maybe he’d underestimated this place, Conner thought sarcastically.
“What about you?” his friend asked.
“I’m a dissolute heir to a great fortune,” Conner told him, making himself into the joke he thought he was, even though he doubted he’d ever inherit a dime. His multimillionaire grandfather had no reason to give him anything—not when he had three sons and several legitimate grandchildren.
“A disso—what?” the man asked.
“A bum,” Conner supplied.
The other man shrugged. “Least you’re honest.”
That was the one thing Conner had always been—painfully honest. But he didn’t see it as a virtue. If only he could hide from the truth as well as his mother did, pretend the past had never occurred…
But he couldn’t dwell on Vivian or Clive or anyone else. Idaho was a test to see if he really was the no-good, lazy individual his uncles claimed him to be. Could he beat his genetic legacy? Compete with the great Armstrongs? Only time would tell.
His cowboy friend started on the basket of chips, and Conner ordered another beer. He was almost finished with it and thinking about heading up to his room to see if hotels in Boise had Pay-Per-View, when the street door behind him opened again.
“Let’s go somewhere else,” a woman
murmured. “There’s hardly anyone here.”
“It’s getting late and it’s storming. There’s not going to be a big crowd anywhere,” another female voice replied, this one more clearly. “Besides, hotel bars might not be the busiest in town, but you won’t have to go anywhere to rent a room if you happen to get lucky.”
Get lucky? Conner turned to see a tall redhead with a petite brunette. The redhead was saying something about the clientele of a hotel being transient and how perfect that was, but her words fell off the moment she noticed him.
“Omigod, there he is!” she cried.
Conner stiffened in surprise, wondering if the redhead thought she knew him from somewhere. Not very likely, he decided. He would have remembered her. This woman wasn’t exactly the type to get lost in a crowd. Nearly six feet tall and bone-thin, she was dressed in a floor-length, fake leopard-skin coat, wore bright red lipstick, nail polish and high heels and had dyed her hair to match. She was mildly attractive despite all the fashion handicaps, but she certainly didn’t look like anything he’d expected to find in Idaho.
She immediately started prying off the brunette’s coat. Though the brunette obviously didn’t want to relinquish it, she finally let go, probably hoping to save herself the humiliation of an all-out brawl.
At that point, Conner turned away. The redhead was sending him overtly interested looks, and he didn’t want to be singled out by a woman who reminded him so much of Cruella De Vil. He had only one night in Boise, which made it pretty pointless to socialize. And he’d long since grown bored with easy women.
“I think someone’s got her eye on you,” his neighbor said with a chortle.
Conner shook his head and lifted his glass. “I’m not interested,” he said, but then he caught a good look at the brunette in the mirror behind the bar and wasn’t so sure. She had wide blue eyes, creamy white skin, a slightly upturned nose and a full bottom lip. Except for her eyes, which were striking because they were so light against the contrast of her dark hair, she wasn’t stunningly attractive. But there was something about her that was wholesome, almost sweet, and it certainly had nothing to do with her dress.
