He rolled off the side of the bed and gathered her into his arms. “I’ll get you settled and come back to lock up.”
“Anything you say.” She was already drowsy.
He put her to bed, propped her ankle on a pillow, and wrapped the ice pack around it. “I’ll lock the door. Don’t move until I get back.”
“I promise,” she said.
Her eyes grew heavier while he went to claim their saddles and lock up her trailer. She was barely awake when he returned with his saddle, carefully stowed it away in the closet, and disappeared into the bathroom. When he got into bed with her, she snuggled up to his side and used his shoulder for a pillow.
Her neck was in a kink when she awoke the next morning, and the ice pack was a lukewarm lump next to her ankle. Trace’s eyes were wide open and he reached over and touched the end of her nose.
“Good morning, beautiful,” he said.
“I’m so sure I’m beautiful with my hair all tangled and a scrape on my face, not to mention my foot,” she grumbled.
“Grumpy this morning, are we?” he asked.
“Yes, I am.” She nodded.
“Does coffee tame the beast down?”
“It usually does.”
He pushed the sheet back and threw his legs over the side of the bed.
“I need to go to the bathroom,” she said.
He picked her up like he would a child and set her on the floor. “Use my arm like a crutch.”
“I can use the wall to hobble to the bathroom. If we were in a house or even a hotel room, I would use you for a crutch, but I can make it four feet to the bathroom,” she grumbled. She shut the bathroom door. Sitting on the potty wasn’t a problem, but it took some maneuvering to get up.
“You going to be able to drive?” He raised his voice so she could hear through the closed door.
She opened the door, hopped to the edge of the bed, and sat down. “Of course I can drive. It’s my left foot. I don’t use it to drive.”
“We can go halfway today and finish up tomorrow. We’ve got six days.”
“Sounds good to me,” she said.
He started coffee and then opened the cabinet doors. “What do you want for breakfast?”
“Cereal is fine.”
“That’s not breakfast. That barely qualifies as food. We haven’t had time to shop so we’ll stop at the first IHOP. Then we can call it a day at lunchtime and you can rest that foot all afternoon and night.”
She nodded. “Okay. And I could polish my saddle, readjust the stirrups, and get my boots ready for the rodeo while I rest the foot, right?”
He slid a sideways look her way. “I had something else in mind.”
She wiggled her dark eyebrows. “Something that would produce a bangover so I’ll wreck in New Mexico?”
He chuckled. “It sounds like fun, but no, ma’am. I will not have you saying that I screwed your brains out so I could win the title. No sex until after the rodeo in New Mexico.”
She sucked air for a whole five seconds. “That’s six days, Trace!”
He laughed out loud. “Then no sex tonight and none the night before the Lovington rodeo. That sound better?”
She figured up the nights in her head. None that night. None the night of the rodeo. That left three nights free.
“I can live with that.”
He carried a cup of steaming hot black coffee to the bedside and put it in her hands, poured himself a cup, and sat down beside her.
“I wish I had my crutches from back home,” she said. “It would make getting around a lot easier.”
Trace opened a closet door and brought out a set of aluminum crutches. “We’ll have to adjust them, but there they are. I got a sprain last year and had to hobble around until I could buy them. Swore I’d never travel without them again.”
With a few swift movements, he had them adjusted to the right height and handed them to her. “You going to try to prove that you can beat me in New Mexico even with a busted ankle? I’m telling you right now, that is my win.”
“Spit in one hand and wish in the other, cowboy. We’ll see which one fills up fastest.”
“Oh, we’re back to the cowboy stuff, are we?”
“When it comes to bronc riding, you’ll always be cowboy to me.”
“Well, then this cowboy is going to get everything ready to hit the road in fifteen minutes.”
“I’ll be ready,” she said.
***
They stopped at the Corral RV Park in Dalhart, Texas, at noon. The campground had wide pull-through lots with shade trees spaced just right to give the campers some relief from the blistering hot August sun. Gemma unfastened her seat belt and opened the truck door. Cold air wasted no time rushing out. Hot air replaced it so fast that she was sweating before she swung her legs out and eased down on her right foot. She hobbled around to the pickup’s back door and grabbed her crutches.
“Hey, I was coming around to help you,” Trace yelled.
“I need to walk on this leg or it’ll get lazy,” she said. “You reckon we could get pizza delivered out here?”
“Probably. I’ll see what I can do about getting a delivery when you are in my trailer. And we’re having spaghetti for supper. I make a mean pot of spaghetti, and you, darlin’, are going to spend the day with that ankle propped on a pillow. We’ll ice it this afternoon and by tomorrow it should be better.”
She didn’t start to move. “Give me a minute to look around. We stayed right here every year when I was a little girl. Momma and Daddy would bring the big trailer and all five of us kids. It’s not until next week and we’ll be in Lovington. The whole town is probably gearing up this week for the XIT Rodeo and Reunion. Grandpa brought Momma when she was just a kid, and then Momma and Daddy always brought us kids.”
Trace slipped an arm around her shoulders. “I came with Uncle Teamer two years. When I was twelve and again when I was thirteen. I loved it and Mother threatened to ban me to my room and make me read Hemingway or Faulkner if I didn’t stop talking about the barbecue and the country music.”
“Did Teamer take you to see the Empty Saddle Monument?” she asked.
“Oh, yeah! I kept the framed picture of me standing in front of it in my dresser drawer. I was afraid Mother would burn it.” He chuckled.
“She hates ranchin’ that bad?” Gemma asked.
“No, she doesn’t hate it at all. She actually likes to go to Goodnight for a couple of days and relax. What she doesn’t like is me likin’ ranchin’. She wanted me to be a lawyer. Coleman and Coleman was her big dream. It was all right that I got a business degree, because afterward she’d see to it I got into prelaw. But I shattered her hopes when I moved to Goodnight. She hasn’t forgiven me yet.”
“She will,” Gemma said.
“What makes you so sure?” Trace asked.
“Because she loves you,” she said.
***
The next day they drove all the way into Lovington, New Mexico, and parked on the rodeo grounds. Gemma’s foot was looking better and she still had three days before she needed it to be well enough to get her boot on and make it into the saddle. Even if it hurt like a son of a bitch, she could endure it for eight seconds.
They pulled their trailers into a couple of lots back behind the rodeo and fair grounds. Vendors and the carnival crew were already setting up, and excitement was as thick as the dust. Lovington, New Mexico, wasn’t a lot different than Dalhart, Texas: cotton, cattle, oil wells, cowboys and cowgirls, and rodeo fever everywhere she looked.
Lovington, like Dalhart, wasn’t a big town. Nowhere near ten thousand people, it had a small-town feel to it. The rodeo with the carnival, the mutton bustin’, and the music for four whole days was the highlight of the whole summer, and everyone couldn’t wait
for it to get started.
In just three days, everything would be in full swing. Then the excitement would turn into sheer frenzy as kids ran from one ride to another, one game booth to the next, and back and forth from snow cone stands to corn dog vendors. There’d be more fancy cowboy hats and boots than anywhere short of a Western-wear store. And cowboys would be everywhere, trying to win the favor of the cowgirls with big hair and tight-fitting jeans. It was rodeo time in Lovington, and life was good.
The rodeo motto was “Livin’ Life in Eight Seconds,” and Gemma couldn’t get that line out of her head. When she started the circuit, she would have agreed wholeheartedly. Now she wasn’t so sure. Those eight seconds were an important part of her life. Each one brought her closer and closer to her dream, but that wasn’t all there was to life. Even when the dream became reality, it wasn’t really, really life.
By the time she got the seat belt unfastened, Trace had opened the door and held out his hand to help her out of the truck. She put her hands on his shoulders and carefully slid out to land on one foot.
Slipping his hands under her arms, he picked her up and kissed her, letting his tongue tease her lips open and make promises for later that night.
When he set her down he said, “I missed you today. I wanted to call several times, but you’ve got the foot problem and I was afraid for you to talk and drive. But it’s been the longest damn two hundred miles I’ve ever driven. I could stand right here and kiss you all afternoon.”
“Sounds good to me, but I’d have energy to do more than kiss if we could find something to eat first.”
She reached for her crutches, but he beat her to them. “Here you go. Have I told you that you are beautiful with those cute little braids?”
She smiled up at him. “I look like Laura Ingalls with them, and honey, she was not beautiful.”
The hot dog and hamburger vendor was set up for business, so they ordered one of each and Trace carried them to the tables set up under an awning attached to the end of the wagon.
“Looks like it’s going to be an exciting one,” Trace said. “I hate to ride when the crowd is dull, don’t you?”
“I don’t ever know if they are happy or dull. I just block everything out and ride,” she answered.
“Hey, Trace Coleman,” a red-haired woman yelled from halfway across the grounds.
He waved and squinted. “Who is that? Is that your sister?”
The mention of her sister got Gemma’s attention immediately. “No, hair is too carrot red. Colleen’s is burgundy. But I’ve seen that woman before. She was one of that group who knocked on your door, who wanted to have a foursome with you, remember? She said that Ava had a surprise.”
“Oh, yeah,” Trace said coldly.
“Looks like she intends to try to seduce you again as fast as she’s coming this way,” Gemma said.
“Hey, I’ve been on the lookout for you since yesterday. I thought that was your trailer when you drove onto the grounds, but I waited until I saw you get out of it to call Ava. There she is. I was just supposed to keep you busy until she got here so she wouldn’t have to hunt you down.” The woman waved at a shiny black car driving toward them, and then headed off toward the funnel cake wagon.
“Damn!” Trace said.
“Might as well get it over with,” Gemma told him.
The car came to a stop and a tall blonde wearing a spaghetti-strapped flowing sundress in a bright splash of color, designer high heels, and a killer smile got out of the driver’s seat. She left the engine running and walked around the car.
“Hello, Trace,” she said. She didn’t have an accent at all. Not Southern. Not Northern. Her tone was as flat as the New Mexico landscape.
Gemma stood up.
“Don’t you dare leave,” Trace said.
She sat back down beside him.
He nodded toward the woman. “Hello, Ava. What brings you to Lovington? Last time I saw you, you said you’d had all the cowboys and rodeo business you ever wanted.”
“I meant it. I’m not staying for the rodeo. I flew down here, rented a car, and came to see you. May I sit down?”
“Of course. This is Gemma O’Donnell.”
“I know who she is,” Ava said. “I’ve kept up with your every move these past months. Hello, Gemma. I’m Ava.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Gemma said.
Ava sat down gracefully and put her arms on the table. “We have a problem, Trace. Do you want to discuss it in front of Gemma?”
“Gemma is my friend. We can discuss anything in front of her.”
Ava laughed. It had a crackling, humorless sound to it as if it came from her throat and not her heart. “I expect you are more than friends, but that’s your business, none of mine. Okay, here goes. When we had our fling, I was engaged to an archeologist doing research in Africa. We’d had an argument and I was very angry. Why or what about isn’t important. You just need to know that before I go on.”
“Okay,” Trace said.
“He’d been gone two months. So when I fell into the point one percent of women that get pregnant on the pill, I knew the baby wasn’t his. And you were the only man I’d been with other than him. I could have gotten rid of it, but I’m a big contributor to the Pro-Life organization and if the tabloids got hold of that kind of news it wouldn’t be such a good thing, especially for my fiancé, who is a very private person. So we decided I’d have the baby and put it up for adoption.”
All the color drained from Trace’s face.
Gemma reached across the space and laced her fingers into his.
Ava went on. “Then I found out that since I knew who the father was and even named you on the birth certificate that you had to sign the papers for me to adopt the baby out. I brought the papers for you to sign.”
“But,” Trace started.
Ava held up a hand. “I also brought the baby. It’s your choice. Keep her or take her to the nearest hospital with all the legal documents and tell them to find her a suitable family. It certainly doesn’t matter to me. I carried her. I gave birth to her. But I do not want children, now or ever.”
“Where is she?” Gemma asked.
“She’s sleeping in the backseat of the car in her car seat. That’s why I left the engine running. She was born two weeks ago. Please take her out for me. I’m not supposed to lift anything that heavy yet. The papers are in a folder beside her, and there’s a diaper bag with formula and diapers. The nanny I hired has a notebook among the papers that tells what she has done for the baby on a daily basis the past two weeks. I had her by Cesarean birth and I wasn’t allowed to travel for two weeks.”
Trace didn’t move.
Ava tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “I signed the documents giving up all my rights so you won’t have any trouble when you give her up for adoption.”
“I can’t,” Trace said.
“I don’t expect you to. Never did. I don’t want her either.”
“I did not say that,” Trace enunciated slowly in a growl. “I could never give up my child.”
Ava shrugged. “It’s up to you. I did what I had to. Now you can do whatever you want to. Anything else you want to know before I go?”
Gemma was stunned. “How can you do that? Carry a baby nine months and then just give her away?”
“I demanded that they take the baby by C-section so that I could think of it as a surgery. If you had a gallbladder removed, would you want to hold it and cuddle it up next to you? I hired a lady to take care of her so I didn’t have to touch her. That same nanny traveled with me on the plane and will go home with me this afternoon. She put her into the rental car and I haven’t even looked at her any more than absolutely necessary. Like I said, I don’t want kids. Never did. I won’t ever look back on this and get all warm and fuzzy.”
<
br /> “What if you change your mind in ten years? What makes it fair that you know all about Trace and he knows nothing about you?”
“Life is not fair. Good-bye, Gemma, and rest assured I will not come back in ten years for that child. The heart does not grieve what the eyes do not see.”
Trace stood up slowly and headed for the car. He opened the back door and when he turned around to face Gemma, he had a baby seat in one hand, a diaper bag over his shoulder, and a folder full of papers tucked under his arm.
Ava stood up just as slowly and got into the car. “I went ahead and named her, but it can be changed if you want to amend the birth certificate. I remembered looking at your driver’s license and seeing that your name is Joseph Trace. There was snow on the holly bushes the day I found out I was pregnant. So I named her Holly Jo.”
Gemma’s ears rang with Liz’s voice when she had told her fortune in the spring: “You will definitely have a cowboy of your very own and a baby by this Christmas.”
She had not said a cowboy of your very own and you two will have a baby together.
Chapter 18
He set the baby on the table and slumped into a chair. “Gemma, I don’t know anything about this business, and you have every right to be angry. What am I going to do? She said she was on the pill and…”
She laid a finger over his lips. “Shhh. I’m angry at Ava, but why would I be angry at you? You had no idea about any of this. If you’d have said you were taking that child to an adoption agency, I would have walked away from you and never looked back. Look at her, Trace. She has your dark hair and lips. Take her out of that thing and hold her.”
His face went pale. “I don’t know how.”
Gemma hobbled over to the car seat and unfastened the buckles. “See, it’s easy once you get the hang of it. I learned with Rachel.”
Trace shook his head. “I could have figured that out. That’s not the problem. I’ve never held a baby in my whole life. They scare the hell out of me.”
Just a Cowboy and His Baby Page 23
