Cowboy Baby Daddy

by Claire Adams

  Jim insists that we call the spoons “Cuillère.”

  She scoffs and returns the modicum of focus she was expending on me back to her book. Or, at least that’s what I was hoping she was doing.

  “Do you remember the address?” she asks, her eyes moving side to side as she reads.

  “Not remotely.”

  That one’s not a lie.

  “Do you know the name of the chef?” she asks. “I could probably look it up from that.”

  “You really liked it, huh?” I ask, secretly patting myself on the back.

  “Yeah,” she says. “Oh well. If you can’t remember, you can’t remember.”

  “All right,” I say, and start to walk back toward my room.

  “Only…”

  I stop.

  “I don’t know. I’d love to find out where you got it. It’s the best confit de canard I’ve had since—well, it’s the best I’ve had in years.” She finally looks up from her book. “Maybe sometime when you’re free we could walk through the area. I’m sure we could find it.”

  I have to give her something; otherwise every conversation is going to end up here. We really don’t have anything else to talk about.

  “It has a flower on the sign,” I tell her. “Other than that, I’m not sure that—”

  “L’Iris?” she asks, her breath bated.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “Maybe.”

  When I’m free and clear of the restaurant, I’ll tell her where to go. Not that Cannon could even dream of making confit de canard without me holding his hand and slapping him in the face with it.

  “I bet that’s it,” she says. “I’ve wanted to try it out, but I hear the chef is a real jerk.”

  “You don’t say.”

  “Yeah,” she says. “If the food’s that good, though, maybe it’s time to drop in and see what happens.”

  “Nah,” I tell her. “I could hear that guy from the kitchen. Everything was ‘fuck this,’ and ‘fuck that.’ It kind of kills the mood.”

  “Yeah,” she says. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I’ll just have Mike go in there for me. People who curse all the time get on my last nerve. I mean, what kind of idiot—”

  She pauses a moment and looks up, but she doesn’t look at me.

  “Thanks for picking that up for me, anyway,” she says, and goes back to her book.

  I smile, but don’t pursue the insult.

  It’s already 12:30, and if I’m going to find any wet comfort, I’d better get showered, changed, and on my way. Otherwise, I’m going to end up booty-calling one of last month’s rejects, and that’s really not worth the drama if I can avoid it.

  Chapter Five

  Work, Work

  Leila

  A couple of weeks have gone, and I haven’t kicked Dane out yet.

  That’s not a testament to his improving manners: rather, my saintlike patience.

  I’m walking down the hall at the firm right now, hoping Mr. Kidman isn’t in his office.

  Every time I pass, he calls me in just to see if I’m going to take him to HR for sexual harassment this time.

  To tell the truth, I would—the man’s a degenerate—if I didn’t know he was just trying to get fired so he could cash in his ridiculously bloated severance package. This may be the only situation in which I’m willing to put up with his crap.

  I pass the office, but am immediately beckoned back.

  Unfortunately, Mr. Kidman is one of my many, many bosses. If he wasn’t, I’d just keep walking and let him use someone else for his little game.

  “Miss Tyler,” he says as I poke my head into his office. “You look absolutely fuckable today.”

  “Did you want something, or are you just trying to make me think you have a less embarrassing package than you actually do?” I ask.

  It helps that I can give as good as I get.

  “You know I love it fiery,” he smirks. “Why don’t you waddle that juicy ass over here and pick up this file? It needs to go to Atkinson, so don’t suck any dicks on your way to his office. This needs to go out today.”

  Okay, maybe I can give as good as I can get, but this jerk is so far past the line, I almost don’t care that one complaint from me and he’d get rewarded with a check larger than what I’ll make in my lifetime. It’s almost worth it just to have the man out of my life.

  This is really a horrible position to be in.

  I walk over to his desk and take the file.

  “Now, why don’t you give me a little kiss,” he says.

  “Try it and you’re going to find the business end of my high heel embedded in your left grape.”

  He just laughs, and I am so sick of it.

  I don’t know if he actually thinks I’m enjoying this or what, but I do know that things only got worse when I told him to stop.

  My only consolation is that my silence is causing him pain.

  “One more thing,” he says as I’m almost out the door.

  “What?” I ask; any tolerance I had left now gone completely.

  “Would you mind walking out again, only this time with your skirt pulled up above that bubble butt of yours?”

  Leila, don’t hit senior citizens. It’s not worth it. You’ll be the one to end up in jail.

  Oh, but it would be so worth it.

  “Screw you.”

  As I exit the office, fully intending to just give up and get the prick fired, I glance back: he’s smiling and pumping his arm in celebration. Getting him fired is what he wants, but I can’t deal with his crap much longer before I come in here and become the latest office shooting statistic.

  And I’m really a very calm, nice person.

  I get the file to Atkinson’s office. Luckily for me, he’s always been respectful.

  The problem with Atkinson is that he always has a couple dozen things for me to do, and I’m not sure he realizes that I’m still an intern.

  It’s not like I haven’t told him a few dozen times.

  He tries to get me to make a call to the SEC and go over my monthly numbers as some part of our firm’s latest investigation that I still don’t quite understand, but I have no personal numbers to go over. To make the conversation go more quickly, I just tell him that it’s already taken care of.

  He smiles, and I only end up getting coffee for him and half the floor, emptying his wastebasket, calling his wife to tell her that he won’t be home until after midnight because he’s slammed with work and then call his favorite drinking buddy to tell him that they’re still on for 6 o’clock, water his plants, place his picture of the Great Wall in a more feng shui-friendly position, explain to him yet again that I don’t know anything about money laundering, but reassure him that I’ll look into it, tell him which tie is most appropriate for a trip to a sports bar, and organize his stack of subpoenas by date of appearance.

  This is my job.

  And college was so exciting.

  I stayed up every night before an exam to make sure I’d always be at the top of my class. A social life was a concept that I only became aware of in a sociology class, and then only as a study of human behavior. It was never a participatory topic for me.

  Now, I’m the office bitch, and this is somehow supposed to prepare me for life as a big time broker.

  “Hey, Lei-Lei,” Annabeth says.

  She’s the only one here who knows the hell that is this job. By that, I mean she’s also an intern.

  “Hey, Annabeth,” I sigh.

  “Bad day?”

  “I don’t know if I remember what a good one is to make a suitable comparison,” I answer. “How about you?”

  “Well,” she says, “I tried slapping Mr. Kidman, thinking maybe that would get him to shut his fucking mouth without getting him fired, but that only seemed to turn him on.”

  “What the hell is it with men, anyway?” I ask. “I get that he wants the severance, but even in his position, with that much money riding on it, I would never treat anyone that way.”

&n
bsp; “You and me both, girl,” Annabeth scoffs. “Smoke break?”

  “Please.”

  I don’t smoke, but going out on the roof with Annabeth is about the only time on the job where I can pretend like I’m making some kind of a difference.

  Annabeth blows out her first puff before we’re out the door and I’m holding my breath.

  “Have you gotten any offers yet?” she asks.

  “Nothing yet,” I tell her. “I would say that I hope I can get something here when my internship is up, but I really don’t know that I could handle working in this hellhole for the rest of my career.”

  She takes a drag. “I know what you mean. If it wasn’t for Kidman, I’d say we could make it work, but sometimes…”

  “Have you heard back on anything?” I ask, walking to the other side of her to avoid the cloud floating by me.

  “Not a damn thing,” she says. “I always thought that summa cum laude meant I could walk into any job I wanted. Too bad everyone else had the same idea and we all moved to New York.”

  The problem with Annabeth is that she tries to work how she got summa cum laude and I only got magna cum laude into every conversation. Still, other than Mike, she’s the closest thing to a friend that I’ve got in this city.

  “Things still bad with your roommate?”

  “Oh, you wouldn’t believe,” I tell her. “Last night, he came in at like 4 in the morning, drunk and knocking over just about everything that stands upright on the way to his room.”

  “Well,” Annabeth says, blowing her drag out, “at least he was alone this time.”

  “Oh, did I forget to mention that every time he crashed into something, I could hear the chick behind him running into the same thing?”

  Annabeth laughs.

  “It could be worse,” she says, but doesn’t offer any proof to back the theory.

  “I guess,” I tell her. “I wish that just once, something could go right for me in this city. Everything’s so competitive and everyone treats each other like dirt.”

  “It’s not the city,” Annabeth tells me. “You just need to get out there and get your freak on.”

  “My freak,” I tell her, “is permanently set in the off position. Besides, I think people stopped saying that like 10 years ago.”

  “Whatever,” Annabeth says. “I have the perfect guy for you.”

  This is the other problem with Annabeth. She’s always trying to hook me up with someone, and she has the worst taste in men.

  “My cousin just got into town and he’s looking for someone to take out to a nice dinner. He’s a really funny guy, and people tell me that he’s pretty handsome, too. He’s my cousin and all, so I don’t really look at him like that, but I think you two would really hit it off.”

  “And now tell me what’s wrong with him.”

  “Nothing,” she says, taking another drag. “Nothing’s wrong with him.”

  Wait for it.

  “Okay, I guess he can be a little impulsive, but girl, you know spontaneity’s the spice of life.”

  “You said he just got into town. Where was he?”

  “Upstate,” Annabeth answers, looking at her feet.

  I really hope I’m not that bad at hiding things.

  “Where upstate?” I ask.

  And here it comes.

  “Okay, he was kind of locked up for a little while, but the whole thing was just a total misunderstanding. He was drunk and thought the car was his!”

  “Yeah,” I say. “I’m sorry, but I do have a no felons rule in my dating life.”

  “Oh, like you’re going to find a good-looking single man in this city without a record,” she scoffs.

  “I’ll take my chances,” I tell her.

  “I’m done. You wanna play hooky?”

  “I still have to go downstairs and help Atkinson write a speech for his son’s career day.”

  Annabeth groans.

  “I know,” I tell her. “Maybe next time.”

  “You always say that, but you’ve never slipped out with me longer than a smoke break,” she complains. “Who’s even going to know that we’re gone?”

  “Everyone!” I snap. “Every time you leave in the middle of the day, I have to pick up your crap just to make sure no one wonders why you’re not here. Nobody’s going to do that for me, and they’re certainly not going to do that for both of us. Maybe, with your summa cum laude, you might have better luck landing something if you ever did any damn work around here!”

  I don’t know what exactly she said that pushed me over the edge, but here I am on my way down.

  “Easy, girl,” she says, holding her palms up and toward me. “I didn’t know it was such a burden for you.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say, not knowing why I’m crying. “I just hate this stupid job and I hate this stupid city, but I can’t leave or else I’ll always be the one who couldn’t make it in the real world.”

  “You think New York is the real world?” she asks. “Hell, you think there is something called the real world? Lei-Lei, you gotta calm down and realize everyone out there’s going through the same shit as you. None of us are going to land half what Kidman would pull down with his golden parachute, and that man hasn’t done a hard day’s work in 30 years. What you’ve gotta do is learn to find some kind of happiness for yourself. That’s the only way you’re going to make it.”

  “I’m sick of the platitudes,” I tell her. “I get what you’re saying, but going out there and hooking up with a car thief isn’t going to make my life any better.”

  She laughs. “Fine, you don’t have to go out with my cousin. Actually, he’s not really my cousin. Joe just wants us to double with someone. Can you believe it? He says that when we go out alone, I just dominate the conversation and never let him get a word in. He tells me that I’m always trying to tell people what to do…”

  She starts to trail off as I roll my eyes.

  “Listen,” she says, “things aren’t that bad, okay? Yeah, we’ve got shitty jobs, but we’re working for a company that moves millions of dollars around every day. The whole economy can rise or fall depending on what mood the boss is in—yeah, that’s terrible planning on a societal level, but this is where it all happens, and we’re a part of it.”

  “Atkinson wants me to help him lance a blister between his toes.”

  All right, I’m smiling.

  “Okay, that’s disgusting,” she says, “but you know how good this place looks on a resumé. Hell, getting kicked out of the lobby will land you a couple hundred thou anywhere else.”

  “I guess.”

  For all her flaws, this is why I love Annabeth. She always knows how to cheer me up when I’m starting to look at the edge of the building too seriously.

  “There you go,” she says. “Now you get in there, and you lance the shit out of that old dude’s blister!”

  I laugh. “You almost had it there,” I tell her.

  “Took it one too far, didn’t I?” she asks, smiling back at me.

  As I’m walking back into the building, the strangest thought comes into my mind.

  I think it started as a way to comfort myself and keep Annabeth’s pep talk going, but the direction my brain just went is strange and I don’t like it.

  At least I have Dane to go home to.

  Chapter Six

  The Building across the Street

  Dane

  She doesn’t really talk to me, so I can’t be sure, but I’m starting to get the feeling that Leila doesn’t like me.

  It probably didn’t help that I only learned her name last week when I was going through her mail. Maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad if she hadn’t caught me in the act.

  After knocking that lamp off the table in the living room last night, it’s probably best if I don’t go home tonight. As I open my eyes and take in the gorgeous view that is this naked redhead, I think I’ll be fine.

  “You know,” she says, pulling me down to her mouth, kissing me softly, “I
never do this.”

  They never do.

  “Well, I’m glad you made an exception,” I tell her.

  The next thing I know, she’s somehow pulled me down onto the bed, rolled us both so she’s now on top, and she’s sliding me inside of her with a greedy look in her eyes.

  Her muscles wrap around me, holding me tight, and I kiss her neck as she breathes, “You feel amazing.”

  “So do you,” I respond. It’s not the most romantic or clever option, but it’s close enough.

  She leans back slightly, positioning her breasts directly in front of me, and I take her nipples into my mouth, each in their turn, drawing little circles with my tongue.

  She leans back further, and now I’m running my hand between her breasts and down the front of her body, her skin so warm to the touch.

  “I love the way you fill me up,” she moans, and I place my hands on her hips, guiding her smoothly up and down my erection.

  I meet the motion of her hips with my own and we move in sensual harmony, our only goal to bring each other to that release that just makes every problem in the world seem so trivial.

  “Can I ask you something?”

  “What’s that?” I ask.

  She continues to rock her hips, and she throws her head back, her long, red hair flipping with the motion.

  Her eyes are closed as she utters, “There’s something I’ve always wanted to try, but I’ve never had the courage to ask anyone.”

  “Sure,” I said. “What is it?”

  She leans forward and presses into me hard. She’s reaching for something with both hands, but from where I’m lying, I can’t tell what until I feel the cold metal around both wrists.

  I snicker a bit.

  “A bit kinky,” I tell her, “but that’s all right.”

  “Shut up, bitch!” she yells, and slaps me hard across the face.

  I can feel her growing wetter, and I think maybe it’s time she and I have a little talk.

  “I’m really not into any rough stuff,” I tell her.

  “Oh,” she says, pulling off of me. “I’m so sorry.”

  A moment later, my hands are free and she’s sobbing uncontrollably.

  I haven’t the slightest idea what I’m supposed to do here.