Maybe Baby

MAYBE BABY

Book 1 of “Baby Series”

AUTHOR: Andrea Smith

MEATBALL TASTER PUBLISHING

Text copyright © 2013 by Andrea Smith. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under The U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without prior express, written consent of the author.

All characters and events in this book are fictional. Any resemblance to actual persons or events, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

This book is intended for adult readers only.

Cover Design: SueBee www.BookCoversbySueBee.com

The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of a copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to five years in FEDERAL PRISON.

Stop and Stare
~ One Republic

So What
~ Pink

Super Freak
~ Rick James

Don't You Forget About Me
~ Simple Minds

If You Leave
~ O.M.D.

Born This Way
~ Lady Gaga

Viva La Vida
~ Coldplay

Wild Horses
~ Rolling Stones

AND . . .

(You're) Having My Baby
~ Paul Anka

(Come on! You knew I was going to throw that one in there - LOL!)

Thanks to everyone on my team! I love that you believe in me, and in my legacy series!

Chapter 1

I wiped the sweat from my brow with the back of my hand, capturing a stray lock of brown hair that had escaped from my ponytail. Angrily, I twisted it behind my ear as I had countless times today.

Damn it's hot!

It was only 2 p.m. and I had to endure two more hours in this sweltering stable. Sweeping my pitchfork the length of the stall, I studied the piles of manure and chunks of straw that reeked of horse urine, fantasizing about the cold shower that awaited me back at my cottage when my shift ended. I

Just then, Luke Winslow came into the stable leading Ariel, a gray dappled mare, down the aisle between the stalls. I noticed him taking off his wide-brimmed straw hat and wiping sweat from his brow with his forearm. Luke was tall, strawberry-blond, and leanly built.

“Hey, Tylar, looks like you could use a beer about now,” he remarked, bringing Ariel to a halt outside the stall I was picking. I glanced in his direction briefly, keeping my focus on the straw. The college hands liked to party after hours.

“Sounds tempting, Luke. All I can think about now is finishing up here and getting a cold shower back at my place. My shift ends at four.”

“Oh, that’s right. Well, I get off at three. I got a keg at the cottage. Some of the others are coming over later. We’re going to have a bonfire. Why don’t you stop by? It's Friday, you know!”

“I’ll see, maybe. Is Jenna going to be there?”

He smiled wickedly. “Sure thing. You know Jenna. She doesn’t miss a chance to party," he winked.

He flashed me a grin, pulling on Ariel’s halter and clicking his tongue as she finished her business. “It’s cottage number eight on the end,” he called out as he led the horse down to her stall. “Hope to see you later.”

“We’ll see,” I called out after him.

I was the new kid on staff, and among the youngest at age twenty, soon to turn twenty-one. The others had worked at Sinclair Stables on weekends and summers since high school. Most were in college and one was even in grad school; they came back to work summers to pay for college.

I wasn't a local, having been born and raised in Kentucky and now attended nearby Virginia Intermont College. My major was equine studies. My dream was to work with quarter horses and warm bloods in breeding science.

My parents divorced when I was a baby; I'd never known my father. I knew that he had financially supported me over the years. I was using the trust he’d established to pay for college. It'd had become active when I turned
eighteen.

Mom was a part-time secretary at the law firm that handled my trust. She often came to me for help especially after the child support payments stopped. She couldn't afford the lease payments any longer on her new Mustang; I'd given her my old Jeep. She'd bitched about how the Jeep wasn't sexy like her 'Stang had been.

A loud snort and whinny brought my attention back to the present. Derringer, the most beautiful black Lipizzaner I'd ever seen, was pawing the ground in the stall across from me. He was skittish and spirited and he intimidated most of the other help here. His temperament suggested he was missing something or someone.

“Easy, boy,” I said quietly, unlatching the gate to his stall. I entered slowly; pulled a carrot from the back pocket of my jeans, and held my open palm out to him to take it.

“Ahh, I get it. You want to walk don't you boy? I don't know," I said, rubbing his mane. It didn't go so well last time, did it? You promise you'll behave today if I take you out? You embarrassed the hell out of me the other day over at the Belle."

He whinnied, moving his hindquarters almost in a dancing motion. I had to giggle; he was a show-off, if nothing else. Perhaps he'd been trained in dressage. That would definitely explain his frustration with never being exercised with the other horses.

"Okay," I clicked my tongue as I led him out of the stables, "But remember your promise. No showing off for the pretty little fillies over at the Belle this time."

I led him out to the pasture and then over to the gate that opened to the trail leading over to the Sinclair plantation on the other side of the woods. The estate was called “La Vie Belle,” which meant “The Life Beautiful.” We all called it the Belle for short.

In addition to their estate and stable, the Sinclairs owned and operated a horse farm, a summer horse track, a winery, and a tourist attraction, which was an immaculately restored antebellum mansion. There was a turf racetrack where horseracing events were held on weekends during the summer months, attracting hundreds of tourists. The mansion and winery hosted tours all year round.

Leading Derringer through the woods offered some relief from the sun and presented a more pleasant, slightly cooler atmosphere than the stable had for sure.

"Hey wanna go by the mansion and make fun of Jenna in her hoop skirt and prissy little bonnet?" I laughed.

Jenna lived a few cabins down from mine; she worked at the Belle. She and Rodney were tour guides in the mansion, wearing period costumes of the Civil War era. Jenna as a southern belle absolutely hated the hoop skirts, frilly undergarments, and button-up leather boots required. When she was in character, she wore her bleached blond hair in a tight bun, and no make-up.

Rodney came from Mississippi. Along with helping Jenna, he also provided horse and buggy rides for the tourists. Rodney was a serious guy with a fun-loving side.

I led the horse up the brick, half-circle drive in front of the colonial mansion. I saw Jenna in her floor-length hooped skirt with the layers of crinoline underneath to pouf it out nicely. She had a frilly parasol opened and positioned over her head, tilted at an angle to shade her face from the sun while she was talking to some worker, I presumed.

He was leaning up against one of the massive columns on the front veranda, muscular arms crossed in front of him as Jenna was peering up at him smiling and talking; she occasionally pointed over towards the brick smokehouse off to the side, fanning her face vigorously as if telling him of some problem.

I wondered how long she would've lasted shoveling horse shit. I continued leading the horse and noticed that Jenna had caught a glimpse of me and Derringer as we'd started up the stone driveway. It seemed that she was working even harder at trying to keep the guy's attention. I could now see why.

He looked a bit older than the usual college workers employed during the summers. Probably a local who worked full-time year round. He was around 6'2", muscularly built with dark brown hair that was thick and tousled at the moment; he had a firm flat belly, and broad shoulders. He had a white tee-shirt on that hugged his ripped abs in all the right places. It was my turn to fan myself and Jenna caught it. I heard her flirtatious giggle float down the drive as we closed in.

"Well, well," she called out, "I see you're out with the beast again, Tylar! Ever going to get enough nerve to put a saddle on him and ride over?"

I see Scarlett's trying to impress ole Rhett here with her Southern charm.

The guy turned his attention to me and Derringer; immediately a look crossed over his face that was not good. I was close enough now to see the color of his eyes and they were blue. No, that's an understatement; they were more than blue, they were piercing sapphire blue and, at that very moment, they were an extremely pissed-off blue.

He immediately excused himself from Jenna and jumped down from the porch, taking long, angry strides towards me and the horse.

What the hell?

As he reached us, he immediately looked me over top to bottom, then bottom to top, his hands now resting on his hips, standing in a half-slouch that was really, really hot, and I noticed his chin dimple.

My first instinct was to flinch because beneath my faux street-smart demeanor, I'm actually quite passive and avoid confrontation whenever possible. The fact that Jenna was standing on the porch observing us and probably expecting me to high-tail it out of there was just enough to spark a bit of courage in me so as to hang on to the faux cocky attitude I was trying to pull off.

"Why do you have Derringer over here?" he asked abruptly.

"I'm just taking him out for some exercise is all."

"What's wrong with letting him out in the fenced pasture?" he pressed.

"Well, there's nothing wrong with it, I guess," I faltered. "I mean sometimes he just likes it when I lead him, you know, to different places for a change of scenery."

"I see," he said, regarding me beneath his thick lashes, his anger dissipating somewhat.