“No!” he said flatly. “Don’t even think about it. I’ll talk to your grandfather if you even consider it.”
She was surprised and flattered by the protest. She knew he was remembering what had happened to him in Iraq, with the roadside bomb. “Cane, I wouldn’t be working in a combat zone,” she said softly. “It would be at a dig site, with security people.”
“I’ve seen the quality of some of their security people,” he came back. “Rent-a-Merc,” he said sarcastically. “Not even real military—independent contractors who work for the highest bidder. And I wouldn’t trust them to guard one of our culls!” he said, alluding to the non-producing cows who were sold at auction each breeding season.
“Selling off poor cows because they can’t have babies,” she muttered. “Barbarian!”
He laughed roundly. “Listen, ranches run on offspring. No cow kids, no ranch, get it?”
“I get it. But it’s still cow insensitivity. Imagine if you couldn’t have kids and somebody threw you off the ranch!”
“I imagine they’d have a pretty hard time harnessing me,” he admitted. “Besides, that’s not something I’ll ever have to worry about, I’m sure.” He hesitated. “You want kids?”
“Of course, someday,” she qualified, “when I’m through school and have my doctorate and have some success in my profession, so that I can afford them.”
“I think it might be a problem if you wait until you’re moving around with a walker,” he said.
“It won’t take that long!”
“Generally speaking, if you wait to have kids until you can afford them, you’ll never have any.” There was a pause. “I hope you don’t plan to do what a lot of career women do—have a child from a donor you don’t even know.”
She made a huffing sound. “If I have kids, I plan to have them in the normal way, and with a husband, however unpopular that idea may be these days!”
He laughed. “Statistically, married people still have the edge in childbearing.”
“Civilization falls on issues of religion and morality,” she stated. “First go the arts, then go the morals, then go the laws and out goes the civilization. Egypt under the pharaohs, Rome…”
“I have to leave pretty soon.”
“I was just getting up to speed!” she protested. “Where’s my soapbox…?”
“Another time. I studied western civ, too, you know.”
“Yes. Sorry.”
He hesitated. “You’re sure that nothing…happened?” he asked again.
“Cane, you were too drunk for anything to happen,” she replied. “Why are you so concerned?”
“Men get dangerous when they drink, honey,” he said, and her heart jumped and skipped in a flurry of delight, because he’d never used pet names. “I wouldn’t want to do anything out-of-the-way. Maybe it’s a bad idea to let my brothers keep calling you when I go on a bender. One day, I might do something unspeakable and we’d both have to live with it.”
“The answer to that is that you stop getting drunk in bars,” she said in a droll tone.
“Spoilsport.”
“You can drink at home, can’t you?”
“It’s the ambiance of bars. I don’t have that at the ranch. Besides, Mavie would throw me out the back door and pepper me with potato peelings if I even tried it.”
“Your housekeeper has good sense.”
“Good something. At least she can cook.
“Well, I guess I’ll let you go,” he said after a minute.
“You be careful on the road,” she said softly, in a tone far more intimate than she meant it to be.
“You be careful, too,” he added. His own tone was oddly tender. “Wear a coat when you go out. Temperature’s dropping.”
“I noticed.”
Soft breathing came over the connection. “I guess I should go.”
“You said that,” she replied, and her own tone was as reluctant as his.
He laughed softly. “I guess I did. Well…good night.”
“Good night, Cane.”
“I like the way you say my name,” he said suddenly. “Bye.”
He hung up abruptly, as if he regretted what he’d just let slip. Her heart was pounding like mad when she put up the phone and opened her bedroom door. She felt as if her feet weren’t even touching the floor.
All the same, she did manage to get the material memorized for her biology final. She got up very early the next morning to drive back to school in her battered old vehicle.
She kissed her granddaddy goodbye.
“Good luck on those finals,” he told her as he hugged her.
She grinned. “Thanks. I’ll need it. I’ll see you next weekend.”
He managed a smile. “Miss you when you’re not here, girl.”
She was touched. “I miss you, too. I won’t be away that long, and then we’ll have the Christmas holidays together. I’ll make cakes and pies…”
“Stop! I’m starving already,” he teased.
She grinned again and kissed him again. “See? Something to look forward to.”
* * *
FINALS WERE EVERY BIT AS grueling as she’d imagined. Her first was biology. A lab rat was laid out on a dissecting board with pins stuck in various portions of its anatomy, designating which parts were to be labeled and discussed on the exam.
She felt that she’d sweated blood on the written portion, however, especially trying to recall the methodology of the Punnett Square, used to predict heritability of genetic traits. That was one part of the textbook section that she had problems with. But she hoped she remembered enough of the material to slide by.
The next exam was physical anthropology. That one didn’t worry her. She loved the subject so much that she was in her element when she studied it. She breezed through the test. Only two to go at that point, English and sociology.
* * *
FINALLY THE EXAMS WERE finished, the teacher evaluation forms at the end of each class were filled out and turned in and she was packing to go home.
“You should stay here tonight…come out with us to celebrate,” Beth told her with a grin. “Ted’s got this friend Harvey. He’s really nice, you’d like him. You never date,” she accused.
Bodie just shook her head as she went back to her packing. She wasn’t going to tell her friend anything about Cane, for fear of being teased. It was too early in her changed attitude toward him for that. “I have a career in mind. No time for romantic activities.”
“There’s the holidays, we could go out then,” Beth persisted.
Bodie shook her head again. “I’m going home for the holidays and it’s just too far to drive back with gas prices what they are. I’m really sorry,” she said when her friend looked disappointed.
“Well, I’m going home, too,