Hand-Picked Husband

“Be serious.”

“I am.”

“Remember that the computer only knows what you tell it,” she said, quoting Maria.

“So what are you putting down?” He turned her paper before she could stop him. “Hey—under Sports you put no.”

“I don’t like sports.”

“Yes, you do. You ride, you rope, and you were a pretty fair barrel racer.”

“My barrel-racing days are past and the rest is work, not sport. Besides, I don’t want some man who’ll plop down in front of a big-screen television, click to a football game and call it a date just because he sprang for imported beer.”

Clay eyed her. “Have you had dates like that?”

She turned her paper back around. “Never more than once.”

“So, what kind of dates do you like?”

The overly casual tone caught her attention. She blinked.

When she didn’t answer right away, Clay tapped the paper. “It’s number fourteen on the list.”

“Oh.” Maybe he just wanted dating pointers. “I like dates with an activity and then going someplace for coffee or a meal afterward. I don’t like dinner, then a movie. I like the movie first.”

“So...you still try to eat the jumbo tub of popcorn so you can get a refill and make yourself sick?”

Autumn smiled with remembered embarrassment and flipped her hair over her shoulder. “I’m not sixteen anymore.”

“No.” Clay’s answering smile faded. He cleared his throat and stared down at his paper. Autumn did the same. They worked in silence until Clay let out a low whistle. “I see potential problems here.”

“Where?”

“Page three, the part about describing yourself. That’s where people will cheat.”

“Why? Why go to all this trouble and cheat?”

“Maybe ‘cheat’ is the wrong word. What I mean is, they’re going to put down the character traits they’d like to have, rather than the ones they actually do have.”

“But we wouldn’t do that.”

“No way.” Clay shook his head. “We’ll be completely honest.”

They looked at each other.

“When we finish, you can read mine and I’ll read yours,” Autumn said.

“Deal.”

Finishing took longer than they thought. Autumn was very conscious that Clay would be reading her descriptions of such topics as her favorite way to spend an evening, her idea of a perfect day, her pet peeves and her goals and ambitions.

He completed his form before she did, probably because he wasn’t trying to thmk of alternate answers for pet peeves. Autumn’s current pet peeve was Clay.

Now as for goals and ambitions... Autumn realized her life’s goal had been to convince people that it wasn’t carved in stone that she would settle down, marry Clay and merge the ranches.

She’d gone to law school because, yes, the law, as it pertained to ranching, had interested her when she’d studied ranch management, but even more because the length of study required would take her away from San Antonio for several years.

She glanced at Clay, wondering how he stood it. Since he had no brothers or sisters, he’d known his whole life that he would live on the Golden B and run it after his parents retired. The only choice available to him had been whom he’d run it with, and even that had been taken away from him.

Autumn stared at the personality profile, but she was remembering her seventeenth birthday. Clay and his parents had come for dinner. Autumn’s present had been her first car, a used one, and they had gone to the garage after dinner so Clay could check out the engine.

It was one of those clear, cold nights when every sound carried for miles. Both their fathers had stepped out onto the porch to smoke their cigars. They’d been talking and Autumn hadn’t paid attention until she heard her name and Clay’s.

The men had been discussing repairs to the fencing between their properties on the east pasture.

“You know, we could just leave it,” Hank Barnett had said. “We’re going to be mingling stock eventually. Might as well start now and use the money eisewhere.”

Ben, Autumn’s father, gave a loud crack of laughter. “We’ll be mingling stock in more ways than one!”

Hank joined him, then added, “I hope those two kids don’t get their hormones all to jumpin’ and quit school before they finish.”

“Autumn’s got a good head on her shoulders. She’ll keep Clay in line.”

“Clay’s almost eighteen. It’s not her head he’s concerned with!”

Autumn had been horrified. Clay was staring under the hood of her car with an unnatural intensity and she knew he’d heard, as well. Neither one of them said anything, so they both heard her father’s next words.

“Clay’s a fine boy. I’ll be proud to claim him as a son-in-law.”

Autumn’s heart had pounded so hard that she missed the exact words said next, but the gist was clear: the two families assumed that she and Clay would eventually marry and were planning on a merger of the two ranches. From the tone of the conversation, it was clear that this was a long-held assumption.

She and Clay had stared at each other before Clay had carefully closed the car hood. Nothing had been the same between them after that.

Autumn could hardly blame him. He was the only son, bound by tradition and economics. He ought to be able to choose his wife instead of having one forced on him. She didn’t want to be forced on anybody. She wanted Clay to have a choice, and she wanted one, too.

But he was a Texas gentleman through and through. There was no way he’d marry first and make it look like he’d jilted her. No, it was up to Autumn to find someone and free Clay from his obligation. The problem was that she hadn’t found anybody she could contemplate marrying yet.

“Aren’t you finished with that thing yet?” Clay complained. “I’m telling you, none of this matters if a person doesn’t like the way you look. Within thirty seconds, you’ll know if it’s a go, or a no go.”

Autumn gave him a disgusted look. “We don’t all judge people by your shallow standards.”

“It’s a fact of life.” He plucked her paper from between her fingers. “You don’t need to worry about it, by the way.”

“Why not?”

Clay looked up from reading her profile. In a heartbeat, his expression changed from looking at her as a childhood friend to the way a grown man looks at a woman he desires.

As her eyes widened, Clay’s lids lowered slightly and his gaze scorched over her. To her acute embarrassment, Autumn felt her cheeks heat.