HEATHER MACALLISTER - Hand-Picked Husband

“Anyone matched with me would give the Yellow Rose ladies a bonus.”

He was insufferable.

“Prove it,” she challenged him. “Sign up.”

Laughing, he shook his head. “I don’t need to prove anything.”

But Autumn did. If she showed up at the ball with another man, that would be good, but if both she and Clay came with others, it would be great. “Dare ya.”

It was a taunt from their childhood.

Clay raised an eyebrow.

“I dare you to bring your match to the Champion Buyers’ Ball.” Autumn was counting on his competitive streak where she was concerned.

For a moment, she didn’t think he’d agree, then he slowly nodded. “Okay. But only if you’ll do the same.”

Autumn stuck out her hand and grinned. “Deal.”

They were shaking on their deal when Maria returned.

She was more than happy to sign them up. “Fill out these forms, front and back.” She sat Autumn and Clay at a table in one of the offices. “You going to want a video?”

“You didn’t mention a video,” Autumn pointed out.

Maria waved her hands. “Don’t get me started on videos. I don’t like ’em. People don’t look good in videos. The camera makes them nervous. Besides, the machine isn’t working. My cousin, Ramon, is fixing it.”

“We don’t need a video,” Clay assured her.

“Good.” Maria smiled at them. “Holler if you have questions. I’m going to check on Hector and make sure he cleans all the way into the corners on those windows. And as long as he’s up there, he should clear out the gutters.”

“Hector is going to wish he hadn’t taken this job,” Clay said as Maria hurried off.

“Hector should have been on time. Speaking of which, we’re going to have to hurry if we don’t want to be late to the meeting.” Actually, they probably would be late, but Fred Chapman was notoriously lax about starting on time.

“This doesn’t look like it’ll take much time to fill out.” Clay was already halfway down the first page.

Autumn was stuck on the weight question. Should she put her actual weight or the weight she planned to be before the first match? “Wait until you get to the hard questions.” Weight wouldn’t be a hard question for Clay. He was a nice triangular shape. So was Autumn, only the triangle was more inverted than she liked.

“What hard questions?”

She looked at him. “Politics? Religion?”

“I just put yes.”

Autumn rolled her eyes. “You’re supposed to tell what your politics are and which religion.”

“Okay, ndb and Texas.”

“What is ‘ndb’?”

“None of your... business.”

“Clay! Just put conservative.”

“I’m not all that conservative.”

“Okay, try this.” Autumn thought a moment. “You’re at a Dallas Cowboys game and the ‘Star-Spangled Banner’ is being played by the Texas A&M University Marching Band. The man next to you refuses to stand, citing freedom of speech. What do you do?”

“I’ll freedom-of-speech him to his feet!”

Autumn pointed to the blank on the form. “Conservative. And Texas isn’t a religion.”

He looked at her in mock outrage. “Don’t you go saying that around just anybody.”

“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.