The Baby Bargain

“Or maybe he had car trouble,” Sean suggested, wanting to wipe that look of angry humiliation off her face. She didn’t deserve to be stood up just because she was too tall and too smart for her own good.

“No, I finally called his house. His little brother told me he had a date with Amanda Clayton and that he’d already left.” Zoe stared blankly down at the toes of her green high heels.

Amanda Clayton? A babe, if Sean had ever seen one. Little and brunette and cuddly. And dumb as a post. Her longtime steady had rolled his car after a party last weekend, Sean had heard, and was in the hospital down in Durango with both legs in casts. High school dances were like a game of musical chairs, he’d always thought, and this time poor Zoe was left standing. Stork ablaze. “So why didn’t you just…” Call me? He’d have been happy to help her out.

“Stay home? Right, and tell my dad why? He’d have stomped down to the gym and dragged Bobbie out by his ear. Or maybe shot him. I have enough to live down without that, thank you. So I—” Zoe shrugged and turned toward the fire exit. “I’ve got to go.” She spun back again, tottered on her heels, and braced one long arm out against the wall. “Oh, and Sean, do me a favor? You never saw me.”

She must be just riding around, he realized, killing time till it was safe to go home. “Then how about a favor for a favor?” Her embarrassment made him feel bolder. “Could you give me a ride out to the ranch? There’s no hurry,” he added, as she opened her mouth. “You could drop me at my turnoff out on the highway—any time tonight at all.”

She closed her soft pink lips and cocked her head, studying him. Being Zoe, he knew, she saw more than he wanted to show. He shrugged and held her blue-eyed gaze with an effort.

“Yeah, I could do that,” she said thoughtfully, her eyes turning inward in that look that usually ended in another crazy assignment for him—like the time she’d hidden him in the ceiling above the teachers’ lounge to take candid photos. “I’d be happy to.”

TWO HOURS OF CRUISING around in Zoe’s baby-blue antique Mustang. Sean had held his breath when they drove past the small sign out on the highway that said Ribbon River Dude Ranch, 4 miles, Guests Welcome, but Zoe had given him a sideways smile and had kept on driving. All the way to Cortez, where they bought hamburgers and French fries—Zoe’s treat—at the drive-through window in the McDonald’s. They ate in the parking lot while they punched the buttons on her car radio, ceaselessly scanning the airwaves for anything but country music. Sean preferred hard rock, golden oldies, songs that reminded him of the West Coast; Zoe liked anything with a Latin sound. Her mother had been Hispanic, Sean remembered her telling him once while they developed film in the school darkroom. That was another thing they shared, besides their impatience with small-town life: they’d both lost a parent; though Zoe’s mom had died ages ago, when she was six.

Driving back, they passed the Ribbon R again. “You don’t want to go home yet,” Zoe said, and it wasn’t quite a question. She drove almost halfway to town, then flipped on her blinker as they neared the turnoff to the private airport that lay a few miles to the south. Sean felt his stomach jump, then swarm with butterflies. Surely she couldn’t mean to—

But she did. Zoe chose the left-hand fork in the road, which wound around the back side of the airport, and stopped at the far end of the north-south runway, where the road skirted the edge of a bluff. She parked facing the dropoff, with the far-off lights of Trueheart twinkling in the thin mountain air like diamonds scattered in the snow. Two other cars were parked at discreet intervals along the overlook. Sean stole a glance at the one on his right, but its windows were too steamed up for him to see anything.

“I come here in summer to watch the planes take off,” Zoe said, ignoring their neighbors. “Did you ever do that? They zoom right overhead. It feels like they’re going to snap off your antenna they fly so low—then whoosh—they’re out there beyond you and gone.”

“Wow.” His throat was too dry, and his mind a blank. What did she want from him?

“I’m going to fly away like that one of these days. Soon. I just got admitted to Harvard—early admission. Did I tell you that?”

She hadn’t, but he’d heard. The whole school had been abuzz with the news last week. Nobody from their school had ever been admitted to Harvard. And Zoe Montana was the baby of her class, a year younger than the next youngest senior—not even seventeen yet, since she’d skipped a grade of school back in elementary.

“That’ll be neat.” For her. For him it meant he’d have zero friends next year, instead of one. “I wish I could fly away.” His mother’s last letter from the health spa had said he should be patient, finish the tenth grade in Colorado. But after that, surely she’d agree that he belonged with her. If he belonged anywhere.

“Yeah,” Zoe murmured without conviction, then said it again, louder and brighter. “Yeah! Boston…Harvard…Everything’s going to be different then. Better.”

He glanced at her, surprised. What was wrong with her life now? She had an overdose of brains. A grudging respect in the school, if not popularity. A rich rancher daddy who loved her—he must love her to have given her this wonderful car. And she was escaping Southwest Colorado, going off to the real world where exciting things happened. She was practically grown up, practically free, while he—he was trapped here in Nowhere City. Trapped by his own age—couldn’t drive, couldn’t drink, couldn’t vote, couldn’t hold a real job. Couldn’t choose with whom he wanted to live. His dad had appointed Dana his guardian, and had never once asked Sean what he thought about that.

“Oh, rats, rats, rats!” Zoe started the Mustang, reversed it hastily onto the road, then popped it into forward gear. The tires slipped on an icy rut, then caught, and they zoomed off around the perimeter road.

“Hey, your headlights!” Sean reached for the switch, and she batted his hand aside.

“Uh-uh! Look behind you.”

Sean turned—to see that a car had stopped behind the first car back at the bluff. A spotlight switched on, illuminating the luckless couple twined together in the backseat. “The sheriff!”

“Nosy Noonan. And he’s a friend of my dad’s.” Zoe passed the first hangar and hung a hard right, driving along the far side of the building toward the airfield, then tucked her Mustang in neatly ahead of a pickup truck set up as a snowplow.

The giant curved blade blocked Sean’s view of the road entirely, provided perfect cover. “Whew!” She was clever.

“Get down, get down!” she cried in a giggling frenzy. “If he shines his light…!” She leaned sideways toward him over the gearshift, her frizzy hair brushing his knees. Sean laughed and hunched down over her, his chest pressed against her quivering shoulder. He stayed there that way, in a state of total bliss, long after the sheriff’s car had cruised past. Her shampoo smelled of lemon and a spice Dana used sometimes in her cooking; rosemary, that was it. Something soft was touching his thigh, and he thought—hoped—prayed—it was her breast.

“Is it safe to come out?” she asked finally in a muffled voice.

“I think…” Except he wasn’t. He was absorbed totally in feeling all the wonderful sensations of a warm girl sprawled across his lap. Zoe. Her giggles made her seem younger, more his own age than an impossible two years older.

She jabbed an elbow gently into his ribs, and he had to sit up. Curling one hand around his thigh just above his knee, she pushed herself upright—then slowly turned her head to look at him over her right shoulder. Their lips were only inches apart.

Every muscle in his legs tensed and hardened. Heat pooled in his lap. Oh, Zoe!

She pulled completely away from him and sat, clutching her steering wheel, staring out through the windshield.

He counted his own heartbeats, dizzy from the lack of blood in his head. What do you want from me, Zoe Montana? Anything, anything at all that she wanted, he’d give—and give gladly.

“Want to see a special place?” she said finally, not looking at him, her voice sounding funny. “My special place?”

TEN MINUTES LATER they sat in the cockpit of a wrecked Cessna, which was parked on the far side of the hangar. Zoe had claimed the pilot’s seat, which to Sean seemed only fitting. She could take him anywhere she wanted tonight.

They even had supplies for their journey. Zoe had pulled two down sleeping bags, and a sack that contained water and granola bars, from the trunk of her car—part of a safety kit her father made her carry in winter, in case she ever was caught out in a blizzard.

“I found this last fall.” Zoe stroked the Cessna’s steering yoke. “Some elk hunter flipped it coming in for a landing. He walked away and swore he’d never fly again. Something’s twisted in the frame. Luke, the mechanic here, bought it cheap from the insurance company. Said he’s going to fix it one of these days. But meanwhile she just sits here, all lonely.”

“Cool.” In every sense of the word. Huddled in his ski jacket, Sean was starting to shiver, partly from the cold, partly from excitement.

“I’m going to be a pilot someday,” Zoe said dreamily. “Dad promised he’d pay for my flying lessons when I graduate from college.”

And his dad had promised that when Sean graduated from high school, he’d give Sean a motorcycle, an old Harley he could fix up himself. That they’d ride together all the way up to Alaska, then back again, the summer after his senior year. Dreams…so fragile that a mound of moving snow could crush them. The snowbound runway beyond the windshield shimmered, then blurred, and Sean blinked frantically. “So tell me about college, what that’ll be like.”

“College…” She tipped back her head and stared up at the dented ceiling. “It’s going to be…different. Very, very…different.”

“Different how?”

She turned to fix him with her wide, light eyes, and was quiet so long that he wondered if he’d said something really stupid. “I’m freezing,” she said at last. “Want to get into the bags?”

They zipped themselves into the puffy down bags and sat shoulder to shoulder in the wide, flat space in the rear that once must have held passenger seats.

“Much better,” Zoe murmured, leaning against him. She sighed contentedly. “Mmm…how will college be different? Well, for starters, nobody’s going to call me a brain, or a grind or a teacher’s pet at Harvard. I won’t be a freak. I’ll be normal.”

Just as he had been a normal kid, back in San Diego, before Dana married his dad and lured them off to Colorado. “That’s good.”

“Yeah…and maybe I’ll throw all my clothes away and start over. No more thumbing my nose at the cowgirls and the cheerleaders. I want a whole new image—sleek, elegant, sophisticated. I’m going to scout the campus for a day or two when I get there. Before I check in. See what everybody’s wearing…”

He was so used to Zoe’s rebel tomboy looks that it was hard picturing her dressing to blend in, but Sean knew what she meant. You got tired of fighting, but what else could you do? Once they had you pigeonholed, they’d laugh at you even harder if you tried to change. If he broke down and bought a Stetson and boots like the cow-patty crowd wore, that wouldn’t get him accepted now. They’d brand him as a phony—and a coward.

“And maybe I’ll switch to using my middle name. Elena.” She gave it the Spanish pronunciation, making it sound rich and exotic.

I’d miss “Zoe.” But he nodded gravely. A fresh start; it was what he wanted, too. “Elena—it’s pretty.”

“And…” She tipped her head down to rest it against his shoulder. “Promise you won’t tell anyone?”

“I swear.” He drew a shaky breath and, holding it, put his arm around the soft, puffy expanse of her waist. When she didn’t stiffen, didn’t pull away—actually seemed to settle a little closer against him—he felt as if the Cessna had taken off. He was floating, flying…“I swear I won’t.”

“I’m thinking of dyeing my hair. Black. Or maybe an auburn so dark it’s practically black.”