that way,” he said. “You’re basically shopping for baby ingredients.”
“That is the most distasteful thing you have ever said.” But she dug into her eggs nonetheless so he couldn’t be that distasteful.
“You don’t want to put flawed ingredients into your baby cake, Sammy. That’s all I’m saying.”
The conversation was bordering on absurd, but there was actually no way to have a conversation like this without straying into the absurd.
“Fine,” she said. “I would like him to be tall. I’m not very tall. I would like to make sure that the gene pool is...you know, boosted.”
“All right,” he said. “There’s quite a few tall guys around.”
“True,” she said.
“Tall, smart, decent. Laz, from the bar.”
Immediately, he imagined Sammy in the arms of the other man, and suddenly his stomach turned sour and he didn’t much want his bacon. But he did his best to remain stoic and not to demonstrate any of the feelings that were swirling around inside him.
“He would be good,” she said. “Good-looking, kind. Makes a good cocktail, which would help me not at all during my pregnancy, but maybe he’d give me free drinks after. I mean, I guess I would have to ask him if he would be comfortable having a baby that he doesn’t have a lot of involvement with.” She frowned. “You know, it would be okay if the guy saw the baby sometimes. Like a favorite uncle.”
“Sure,” Ryder said.
“Or, you know we can have your cousins ask around amongst the rodeo guys. Maybe they wouldn’t mind.”
“Right,” Ryder said, gritting his teeth.
He’d agreed to do this. He’d offered. He had no call getting annoyed now.
But he couldn’t even imagine just how an offer like that might go. Offer a guy the chance to have unprotected sex with a gorgeous blonde who didn’t want you to hang around and deal with the consequences.
The problem was most guys that were super on board with that probably weren’t actually all that decent.
But he suspected that what Sammy really meant when she said she wanted a good guy was one who wasn’t violent.
Sammy’s father had lived as long as he had only because there had been no way that Ryder would take the chance on getting sent to jail. He’d had too many responsibilities. And if he hadn’t...
The night that he had discovered Sammy wounded like he had... Well, her father had been arrested, but he had barely served any jail time because her mother had failed to press charges.
It was a sad story, and it was all too common. And unforgivable when it came to his friend.
That was when she had come to Hope Springs on a permanent basis.
He had made vows in his heart about the way he would take care of her.
This was no different, not really.
Sammy was hell-bent on this, and when Sammy was hell-bent on something there was no stopping her.
There was only standing there to catch her if she fell.
Or in this case, making sure that the fall wouldn’t hurt badly.
“This is killing you,” Sammy said.
“Look, I don’t love it,” he said. “Would you like to help me find a woman to knock up?”
She laughed. The little minx laughed.
“I would definitely ask you if you had taken to the bottle, Ryder, because you and I both know that you would never do that. It’s not in you. Honestly, I think the only reason this really bothers you is that it’s so unconventional.” She wiggled her eyebrows and took a bite of bacon.
He thought there had to be something wrong with him. The way that he watched her straight white teeth close over the crispy meat, the way that his focus was completely captured by how she chewed.
But everything about her was ethereal.
Even her bacon-eating.
And years in her presence hadn’t done a thing to acclimate him to that.
“Well, you seem to take a particular kind of joy in being unconventional.”
“What did convention get me? Look at my parents. Conventional as could be. High school sweethearts. You know, I don’t know... If he turned into a monster after they got married or if he always was one. If she... If she knew when she married him, or if he changed on her. I wish I did. I wish I did, because it definitely changes the way that I think about trusting people. Whether or not I think other people are less trustworthy, or that your own self is.”
“Either conclusion isn’t much good,” he said.
“But it’s important,” she said.
“You’re not your mother,” he said.
“I know,” she