Romance Novel Excerpt # 4 - Cow or Never

Catch up on previous chapters:

Chapter 1 - Vanessa Lonelyheart

Chapter 2 - The Scottish Cowboy of My Heart

Chapter 3 - Lovers Ridge


The Heart is the Loneliest Dude Ranch

Excerpt from Chapter Four - Cow or Never

Was there ever a more beautiful moment between man, woman, and cow?  No, Vanessa thought. Never in the whole history of earth according to evolution or intelligent design.  The birth was a success.  The calf lay in her arms like a giant four legged baby. Snoring. Breathing into her hair. So hard to imagine this perfect creature would one day become a mediocre cut of meat at Applebee's.

Dexter McChest slipped the birthing chains from the calf's body, his arm muscles rippling with gentle power.  As gentle as two pistons powered by bunnies.  The way he gentled those chains from the gentle calf made him seem so gentlemanly. But oh, how ungentle it was to be in love with the gentlest gent in all of Gentrified County. 

But for now, it was all perfect.  She and Dexter had just shared the world's closest thing to sex. Which was birth. Which was actually a post sex thing.  So if things progressed as well in reverse they would be at sex in no time. Right after hospitals and wanting to eat rope or dirtclods.  She had never envied the state of a cow before.  But she coveted the sweet genetic bonds that bovine had to this furry, slimy angel in her arms.

Dexter finished winching and put his boot up on the bumper and lit up an electronic cigarette. He was trying to quit.

“How’s your baby, Mama?” said Dexter wryly.  Dexter always said things with adverbs.

Vanessa smiled and patted her calf’s calf.  “Dexter Aston McChest, how can you not want to have a baby when you’re covered in the miracle of life?”

His face clouded.  Like a face sky with emotion clouds.

“Oh no,” she thought. “I’ve gone too far.”

"Babies and me are complicated, Vanessa.  Russian novel complicated." Dexter said, the light of his fake cigarette punctuating his sentence.

But how could she be with a man, no matter how perfect, if he didn't want to have children?  Her womb would howl like a babyless canyon full of the winds of barren want.  Look how happy the cow was. Her mouth covered in the happy foam of birth exertions.  Passed out with the pure joy of almost splitting open from new life.  Didn't she want that for herself?

Dexter looked off into the distance. Straight into the afternoon sun. Because even his eyes were strong.

"Vanessa, it may come as a surprise to you but I had a child."

Vanessa gasped. Dexter sighed. All around them the air got denser as the plot thickened.

"I lost him and his mother in a helicopter crash. This was back when I was a Scottish prince.  He wasn't even mine.  She was a Brazilian heiress who was impregnated by the leader of the Cocoa Mafia.  I'd met her at a fashion ball, wearing a maternity gown by Versacci.  She needed to run away. I had a castle."

Dexter paused. Breathed out some nicotine substitute. His eyes furiously squinted at the sun like he was willing it to retreat.  It did.

"Somewhere along the way, we fell in love.  I promised to take care of her child.  We were going to name him Bilbo. We both loved J. R. R. I thought we had escaped, I thought I had taken all precautions but the Mafia Caocao found us.  A surface-to-air missile put a hole in our copter. And a hole in my heart."

Dexter shed one manly tear. It was made of motor oil.

Next Chapter: EVERYBODY GET (HOE)DOWN