Page 37 of Her Cowboy Baby Daddy
“That sounds so...”
Hayley lifted her eyebrows, but Bella merely shook her head. “I am not interrupting again.”
“I gave you a lead-in.”
“Fine. It sounds so cold and clinical. Getting pregnant this wayisclinical.”
“And that’s how I want it,” Hayley said. She’d had her share of relationships, mostly short, but two had lasted well over a year, and, like her mom, she seemed to choose guys that were wrong for her. While her mom gravitated toward charming, outgoing guys—guys who were a lot like Spence—Hayley had chosen low-key guys who had their own unique foibles, as everyone did.
But foibles aside, Hayley was beginning to think that the problem might be her. Maybe she wasn’t cut out to be a partner because the problems in her relationships usually started when she began to feel concerned about getting in so deep that it was going to hurt like hell when things blew up. And they would. She’d never known a relationship not to blow up. The obvious answer was to keep from getting in too deep.
“I’m going with the sperm donor catalog,” Hayley said. “Those guys are carefully screened.” She raised her eyebrows at Bella. “Right?”
“There have been enough AI horror stories over time to make me believe that a reputable clinic would screen carefully, thus keeping their reputation intact.”
“There you go,” Hayley said. “I’ll just do some research.”
Bella signaled the server and pulled a twenty out of her purse. “He’s coming to work today?”
There was no doubt what ‘he’ she meant. Spence, who would not be fathering her child.
“Tomorrow. We’re going to fix a fence that a tree fell on.”
“You’ll let me know how that goes? The working together, not the fence.”
Hayley shouldered her purse before sliding out of the booth. “I will. But I can pretty much guarantee that it’ll be a case of two people pretending that one never asked the other to be a baby daddy.”
*
“What’s eating you?”
Spence gave Reed a questioning look before starting a new row in the wood stack, dropping a couple of half rounds of fir into place. Finally, a job that Henry wasn’t doing, but only because his bursitis was flaring up.
Reed lifted two quarter rounds from the wood splitter and tossed them to the side, then placed another round on the bed. “Since you got back from Nevada, you’ve been preoccupied. Yesterday I assumed you were tired, but you’re still miles away.”
“Nothing’s eating me.”
“Nice try.”
Spence scowled at his brother. “It’s nothing.”
“Was it hard coming home again?”
“No.”
Reed gave a small shrug. “I thought that heading out on a job made you realize how much you miss the open road.”
Spence considered for a moment. “I can’t say that I heard the siren’s call.” It’d been a job like any other.
“You drove the speed limit?”
“Ha. Ha. Siren, like in Mrs. Bailey’s mythology unit.” Spence had always been more of a student than Reed, so he understood why Reed had no idea what he was talking about. He chucked more wood into the pile. “It’s not the open road that draws me. I just like doing different stuff. Seeing different things.”
“Which sounds like the call of the open road.”
Spence let out a sigh and changed the subject. “Lex’s birthday is coming up. Any big plans?”
“She’ll have a party in Bozeman with her mom and Greg and her friends, then will head down here for the weekend to celebrate with us.”
