THE FAMILY PORTRAITS CAME DOWN. 

Cassie was twenty-four when she decided her baby needed a horse to make him happy. Abruptly Cassie was competing with the Creighton Resort people for carpenters and tradesmen to build a barn, pens, and fenced areas for her horse, then for the vet’s attention when that one horse turned into a small herd she allowed to roam over her property. The recluse was once again the subject of speculation in her community, but to their disappointment, Cassie stayed within her thorny rosebush enclosure.

Cassie learned to ride and found she enjoyed it. Soon she used her baby’s horses to ride the fence lines, checking on her roses, making sure the pesky, enthusiastic new golfers on the other side of her roses stayed on their side, and using the time to think about Joseph, for a while picturing him growing up with some anonymous family, bizarrely wondering if he would like golf when he got older. The Creighton Resort golfers irritated the hell out of her from the first, though, what with their balls coming over her fence and their blatant use of her shade trees as a congregating place. She decided Joseph definitely would not be interested in golf.

Over time her menagerie grew. Cassie got her baby a kitten, then another dog, then a calf, and then graduated to some cows and a bull. After seeing some longhorn cattle on someone else’s ranch Cassie got some of those. And after watching “Lawrence of Arabia” one afternoon Cassie decided her baby would enjoy a camel, but she couldn’t find one. She kept looking, coming real close to signing the paperwork on some used-up circus camels, decided to think about it later and kept changing her mind.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Copyright by Gretchen Rix

Photos by Roxanne Rix

http://barnesandnoble.com/c/gretchen-rix

http://smashwords.com/books/view/79235

http://amzn.com/B003UYUVZC 

THE COWBOY’S BABY continued.

Prologue to the book that was never used. 

The rose growers and gardeners she kept in business for several seasons blessed her sweet hide.

Red roses, white roses, peach and yellow roses, antique roses, miniature roses, rose trees, roses running up the original fence in trellises, roses from catalogs, roses from neighbors wishing to honor Joseph’s memory, all became a thorn obstruction keeping Lennon property separated from Creighton.

Visits to the lawyer dwindled away to none as the resort property developed on schedule. Tidy roads were laid into the black dirt. Two small lakes were dug out of the former plantation fields and forests, pine trees drowned under a deluge of piped-in water and man-stocked fish, and a nine-hole golf course was planted over the native grasses, though many of the trees were retained.

Through all of this activity, Cassie thought only of the missing Joseph, but she spent most of her physical time on reinforcing the rose bush hedges around her fenced land and building herself a fantasy life that made her happy. She ate, she slept, and she worked on the fence. The roses were for Joseph. Everything she did was for when Joseph came home. One day she thought of getting him a pet.

When David died she was caught off guard.

The police came to tell her, quiet and polite. A traffic accident in Dallas, Texas, had killed her husband a day previously. He had stayed her husband because of Joseph; she had felt no divorce possible as long as her son was in his father’s power. But although David had been tracked, there had never been any sign of Joseph. The police mistook her tears for grief.

TO BE CONTINUED. Copyright by Gretchen Rix. 

Photos by Roxanne Rix

http://amazon.com/author/gretchenrix

And so it continues. The unused prologue to The Cowboy’s Baby by Gretchen Lee Rix.

“You don’t need the money, of course, but it’s a good offer and this county needs a resort like this to bring in some business, new people, new money.” He stopped to take breath. The interested expression had come back into Cassie’s face. “Resort,” he repeated. “That’s the word I was looking for.”

Cassie grimaced. She knew she should care about the community of Creighton. Hundreds of them had come out to search for Joseph, some still searched for her son, sending her notes to tell her so. But two years of anguish had changed her.

“There’ll be a fence?” she asked. “They won’t be getting on my property?”

“There will be a big fence.”

She had another thought that stopped her hand in mid-signature. “What if I don’t like what the Hubbard people do? What if they tear down all the trees or something?” 

Cassie had spoken her reservations, but immediately she waved her lawyer quiet. “I don’t know why I opened my mouth,” she said. “I don’t give a damn, anyhow. They can put in a Texas Disney World next door just as long as they leave me alone. And I hope you know I’m doing this for you,” she told him. She had the momentary satisfaction of seeing him blush.

She flourished the pen, signed and acquired a new neighbor that day in the Creighton Lakeview Resort to be. The fence that abutted the land she kept for herself went up the next month. That was when the community of Creighton started calling Cassie Lennon the Sleeping Beauty, behind her back, or course, alternately bemused and appalled at the quantity of thorny rose bushes she had trucked in and planted to keep pace with the fence construction.

TO BE CONTINUED… Copyright by Gretchen Rix

Photos by Roxanne Rix

WHAT I READ THIS WEEK:  No Country For Old Men by Cormac McCarthy.

THE COWBOY’S BABY available  http://amzn.com/B003UYUVZC  http://barnesandnoble.com/c/gretchen-rix  http://smashwords.com/books/view/79235

THE COWBOY’S BABY Prologue continued…

Before long Cassie Lennon was twenty-two and had gained a little weight on her formerly spare five-foot-ten-inch frame. The curly hair was shorn too close to her head, and the designer clothes had been replaced by blue jeans and tee shirts. The house could no longer be called fine, for she was neglectful of it, but the family portraits remained on the walls. Even the ones with David in them remained on the walls. But Cassie no longer had a family. Cassie’s parents were long dead, her husband was fading into a bad memory, and her son had completely vanished. She received private investigator reports monthly: David was still out there somewhere, but Joseph wasn’t with him.

The Lennon estate had mostly fended for itself, what was left of it. She had sold off a large portion of it to the Hubbard people with her lawyer’s approval.

“It’s going to be a retirement community, I think,or a gated residential community or something like that,” he told her when the offer was first made.

His description had been so uncharacteristically vague that she had sat up and paid attention. The lawyer immediately noted her change in attitude and felt the first stirring of hope for the poor lady.

“I know, I know,” he replied, rushing his words in his attempt to keep her engaged. “It’s probably just a housing project built around some man-made lakes. And they’ll have a fence around it,” he added quickly, seeing her face change. “And the residents will need a pass to get in and out.” He felt he was losing her with every word.

TO BE CONTINUED….. 

Copyright by Gretchen Rix

Photos by Roxanne Rix

http://smashwords.com/books/view/79235 http://amzn.com/B003UYUVZC

http://barnesandnoble.com/c/gretchen-rix

Continued from yesterday’s post, The Cowboy’s Baby Prologue.

In the morning the community of Creighton was combing the fields of the Lennon estate, whole lines of neighbors and police stretched across Cassie’s land while a doctor’s drugs restrained Cassie to her bedroom. She put David clearly out of her mind. It was Joseph everyone wanted to find, a blue-eyed, smiling, pudgy child not even a year old, lost. They found nothing. But as the days of fruitless searching bled into weeks of frustration, Cassie remembered that it wasn’t smart to forget about David. She began making lists.

Over the months the police used the lists. David hadn’t quit his totally unnecessary job, he just never went back. The paycheck was eventually voided; Cassie didn’t need the money and didn’t want to see the name David J. Lennon written as if it were an important name to her.

“But darlin’,”advised her lawyer. “He had better be important to you or you might never get little Joseph back. You need to make thinking about David Lennon your top priority.”

He hesitated, not wanting to say it.

“Of course,you need to get well, too. I don’t think you’ve seen anything but law officers and doctors and your own house since David left.”

He deliberately omitted a reference to her prolonged hospital stay.

“Come on over tomorrow and have supper with us,” he said. She didn’t. 

TO BE CONTINUED. Copyright by Gretchen Rix

WHAT I READ THIS WEEK:  The One In My Heart by Sherry Thomas.

Photos by Roxanne Rix

http://amzn.com/B003UYUVZC

http://barnesandnoble.com/c/gretchen-rix

http://smashwords.com/books/view/79235

Prologue to The Cowboy’s Baby continued, again.

Cassie felt helpless trembling naked in her own home, balked by the memory of her husband’s smile. She wanted to search for her baby so badly that her legs were walking her forward as her mind was forcing her back.

“Search first, then call the police if you can’t find him, if you can’t find Joseph,” she muttered, pacing the hall.

Already David had been edited out of the picture in her mind. There was no David for her anymore.

“No,” she said. “Get the police first.”

In the end she ran back to the kitchen, grabbed the phone and dialed for help. She searched the house on her own before they got there, barely taking the time to dress. David and Joseph were gone.

Cassie looked in places Joseph could not have fit and wouldn’t have had the wits at age ten months to try. Along the windowsill, under the bed, the hope chest, in the wastebaskets, in the bathtub. It was with an awful trepidation that Cassie forced herself to raise the lid on the commode and check. Then she took the tank lid off. She put it back,careful of its weight and its ability to break into a thousand tiny, sharp, dangerous pieces just as her soul had just done.

She searched outside the house. David’s car was gone. She raced back inside for her own car keys, fearful of the space in her car’s trunk, then of the area under the hood. She looked in the trashcan knocked on its side in the driveway. She looked everywhere. The police looked everywhere.

TO BE CONTINUED. Copyright by Gretchen Rix. 

Photos by Roxanne Rix

http://amzn.com/B003UYUVZC

Continuing with the original prologue to The Cowboy’s Baby by Gretchen Lee Rix.

Cassie Lennon was twenty-one years old and this was her house, her home, but as she drew the obstructing door open to this completely familiar hall in the long-loved refuge, she fixated on her hand in front of her. David had come out of nowhere to win this hand, she thought, becoming her husband in a trice. Between them they had made Joseph, their only child. Cassie was terrified.

“David!” she screamed.

Portraits of her family watched disinterestedly from the walls in the family room as the blue-painted door knocked her soundly in the rear, rebounding from her sudden force. She got no answer from David as she stood frozen in the hallway seeing nothing.

Part of Cassie wanted to break down and cry, to stop here, to not go any further into her home. As she felt the beginnings of this defeat spread like fog into her head she shook herself and leapt completely out of the nightmare that had caused her to scream. Frantic with worry, Cassie raced into her husband’s part of the house.

She knew they weren’t there even before searching. David would have been smiling that lopsided sneery way he had of making her feel stupid and coming towards her by now. She would have heard his contempt in the very vibrations of the air if he had been there.

TO BE CONTINUED. Copyrighted by Gretchen Rix. 

Photos by Roxanne Rix

WHAT I READ THIS WEEK: A Dangerous Road by Kris Nelscott.

See all my books at http://amazon.com/author/gretchenrix

Book of the Month, part 3. The missing pieces out of The Cowboy’s Baby. 

Here is the prologue that I deleted from the final version. I’ll put it up here day by day until it’s finished. Copyright Gretchen Rix.

The Cowboy’s Baby

“David?” Cassie called, tugging the sheet to cover her bare breasts, heart racing as if it wanted to jump out of her throat, a woman’s scream ricocheting in nasty echoes around her skull.

Abruptly unmindful of her nakedness, she clambered from the couch she had slept on this night, angrily wadding the sheets into a ball over the soiled cushion she had never been able to get him to clean or replace.

“It’s a souvenir, like,” her husband had explained in a very calm, even voice when she had complained that one time too many. “Next time  you’ll think first.”

No one answered, not husband nor child. The house radiated emptiness. Her tongue tried to do her thinking for her, darting out to touch the edge of her mouth while her eyes looked at the ceiling. Certain fear brought on the goose bumps.

“David!” she yelled, stumbling naked from the living room to the closed door of the hallway.

The door separated the two living spaces of the house, soundproofing it as well. She cursed the man who’d planned that door, her hand trembling as it wavered like a frightened thing reaching for the knob butting from the door separating her from her family. Cassie had to use her other more obedient hand to force it to do its work.

(TO BE CONTINUED)

Photos by Roxanne Rix

Find The Cowboy’s Baby at http://smashwords.com/books/view/79235  and at http://amzn.com/B003UYUVZC and  http://barnesandnoble.com/c/gretchen-rix

WHAT I READ THIS WEEK:  Masterminds by Kristine Kathryn Rusch.  Fosgate’s Game by David C. Cassidy.

Book of the Month, part 2. Talking about my first published novel, The Cowboy’s Baby. Loosely wrapped around the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale, this contemporary Texas romance has a baby of a different sort as well. Took me a long time to figure it out. And I do mean long.

The original cover to The Cowboy’s Baby

This was the original cover for The Cowboy’s Baby. Photo is by my sister Roxanne from a local site in between Lockhart and Martindale, and the design is by me and a friend who helped us out. We liked it a lot back then, but it really didn’t say anything about the story other than it’s set in Central Texas.

We’ve still got two copies left of the original. Anyone interested in buying one of them before I sell them locally?

I patterned the setting of the book after Hide-Away Lake in Texas where my parents lived. Golf course and cemetery, all real.

Not anything like the small cemetery in the story.

But when I relocated to Central Texas, I took the setting down here with me. Wish I’d placed it right outside Kyle or Buda, but I made up a name instead.

And here’s the revised cover by Streetlight Graphics. See the golf clubs? See the golf course flag?

A contemporary romantic comedy

Originally The Cowboy’s Baby had a prologue. I thought it was damned good, too. Right now I’m wondering if I still have it in my files. (Just looked. Yes, I do. Maybe I’ll put it up here for everyone to read next week.) Anyway, I took it out because the tone of the prologue was nothing like the tone of the book.

You can find The Cowboy’s Baby and my other work at http://amazon.com/author/gretchenrix and http://barnesandnoble.com/c/gretchen-rix and  http://smashwords.com/books/view/79235

Photos by Roxanne Rix

WHAT I READ THIS WEEK:  Come To Grief by Dick Francis.  Never Go Back by Lee Child.

THE COWBOY’S BABY

A contemporary romantic comedy

The Cowboy’s Baby isn’t the first book I wrote. It is the first book I published. It continues to be the book that sells the most and keeps on selling. The sequel The Cowboy’s Baby Goes To Heaven is probably a much better book, but it’s the original everyone goes for.

Is it the cover?

The title?

I’ll tell you a story. I wrote this fairy tale-related romantic comedy completely from the title on out. I started with the concept of “cowboy” and ended several years later when I finally got my mind wrapped around the quirky concept I came up with for the “baby” part. What fairy tale, you ask? Sleeping Beauty.

Not the same old baby! One reader reviewing the book said that about it. She’s right. There are numerous other romance novels with the same title, and I’ll bet you none of them has a baby like this one.

The cover is a collaboration between Streetlight Graphics and my sister Roxanne and myself. We made the suggestions, Streetlight Graphics made it come true.

If you’ve got a Kindle, find TCB at http://amzn.com/B003UYUVZC.

If you prefer to read off your phone, http://smashwords.com/books/view/79235

WHAT I READ THIS WEEK: Peril by Thomas H. Cook.  Starbase Human by Kristine Kathryn Rusch.  One Lonely Night by Mickey Spillane.