“You are smiling. What’s so funny?”
“I’m Irish and we can hold our liquor, and besides, my boobs are big.” Gemma giggled.
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
“Well, according to Irish legend, it has to do with the boobs. Liquor all goes there before it hits the brain. I’ve got enough to handle a lot when you add it to my Irish heritage.”
Trace’s chuckle turned into a guffaw. “Cute story, but don’t ever think for a minute that you can outdrink or outride me, Gemma O’Donnell.”
“I don’t think anything. I know I can do both,” she said.
A whole string of popping firecrackers sounded in the distance.
Gemma jumped and dropped a piece of steak on the ground.
Sugar hugged up to Trace’s leg under the table and whimpered.
Trace chuckled again.
“What’s so funny?”
“You could outdrink and outride me, but a firecracker spooks you. I think that’s funny,” he said.
“Laugh now. Cry later,” she smarted off and changed the subject. “Guess some folks are gettin’ an early start on the evening show.”
“When I was a kid, my father let me start popping firecrackers before dark. Probably so I’d shut up begging him about when we could put off the fireworks he had bought for the evening. How about you and your brothers?”
“Oh, yeah! We’d do firecrackers all afternoon and then ride over to Terral to watch the fireworks. They rope off the street in front of the school and it’s a big show. Ringgold is too small to have its own display.”
“Houston has a show that goes on for hours. But I always liked the one we had in the backyard just as well. You mentioned watermelon wine?” he said.
“It is chilling to have with dessert. It’s too sweet to eat with a good steak,” she said.
Another round of firecrackers went off and Sugar yelped.
Trace unfastened the leash and carried the tiny dog into his trailer.
“Poor baby,” Gemma said when he returned.
“She’ll be all right. She was already snuggled down in the pillows. This is a very good steak. Mostly I don’t like marinades. I like the flavor of a good steak just like it is, but this isn’t overpowering. Want to share your secret?”
She shook her head. “Old family secret, darlin’, and I could tell you, but then… well, you know what those Navy SEALs say.”
“Would I get to pick the way I die?”
She looked across the table to find him staring right into her eyes. “Maybe. What have you got in mind?”
His voice had dropped an octave and caressed her skin as surely as if he’d been touching her with his big rough hands. “It has to do with a whole night in my bed, lots of watermelon wine, and long slow kisses.”
“Are you trying to seduce me with words?” she asked.
“I don’t know. Is it working?”
Call his bluff! Don’t let him get into your head and get ahead of you!
“And what if I said that sounded like a fine idea?” she asked.
“Then I’d go get the wine and carry you inside the trailer to my bed,” he said.
“Sounds nice, but poor little Sugar has been traumatized enough. We can’t throw her out of her pillows. It wouldn’t be right,” she teased.
Gemma had had relationships in her twenty-eight years. But the past couple of years nothing had crossed her path that even looked interesting. After that last fiasco she was gun-shy and didn’t trust her own judgment when it came to men, but it didn’t stop her from wanting a family—not one bit.
Trace gave her another one of his killer smiles. It was almost as heady as the kiss.
“I’ll get the wine,” she blurted out and escaped again into her tiny trailer where she cooled her face one more time with the wet cloth.
“At this rate I’ll wash all my skin off before the night is over!” she whispered.
She stacked everything she needed and picked up the bottle with Austin’s label on the front. He reached for the wine and glasses. With very little effort he uncorked the bottle and poured while she set out fruit and bowls. He filled a bowl with fruit, tasted it first, and then sipped the wine.
She shut her eyes tightly. She’d look at the sky, her food, hell, even the ants making a beeline for the edge of the trash can before she let her eyes wander to his lips again.
Trace nodded in appreciation. “Very good together. I usually don’t like wine or mixed drinks. I’m a cold beer man most of the time, but occasionally I like a double shot of Jack Daniel’s with one cube of ice. What about you?”
“The same. Cold beer on a hot night. Jack Daniel’s, neat though, on special occasions. But I do like Austin’s watermelon wine, and when we girls get together things can get pretty funny after we polish off a few bottles of it,” she said.
“Your smile says that there are stories to be heard. Talk, lady,” Trace said.
“Darlin’, husbands or wild horses couldn’t drag it out of us about what happens on girls’ night out.”
“Like coon huntin’,” he said.
“What?”
“Coon huntin’. When us menfolk go coon huntin’ we don’t tell anyone what we talk about either,” Trace said.
Gemma frowned. Just what did all the menfolk in her family and their friends talk about when they went coon hunting? Damn that Trace anyway for the hundredth time that day. Raising a question like that. She’d never thought about what the guys talked about.
“Gotcha!” He laughed.
“You are a snake in the grass,” she said.
“It’s not against the rules.”
“I’ll get even,” she declared.
“I look forward to it. It’s at least two hours before dark. Let’s take our wine inside and watch a movie before they start. We can be cool until it’s time to come back out and see all the pretty colors.” He picked up the bottle of wine and led the way to his trailer.
She followed and hoped the air-conditioning in his trailer would cool her thoughts as well as her skin. She stepped inside and stopped in the kitchen area. Where was the television, anyway?
Trace was halfway to the bed when he turned to see where she was.
“It’s in here,” he said.
But her feet wouldn’t move. Sitting on the bed with Trace after all the sexy thoughts she’d entertained all day and evening was begging for danger.
His gaze started at her toes and moved up her legs to the hem of her cutoff jean shorts and farther, taking a moment at chest level to get even softer, and then to her lips. Hot liquid want was in his eyes when they locked with hers, something that would not be denied. Or if it was the same degree of heat she felt, maybe it could not be denied.
He set the wine on the cabinet, took a step toward her, and she took one toward him. He picked up her hands and held them.
“You are a very beautiful woman, Gemma,” he whispered seductively.
His thumbs grazed the tender part of her palms. His eyes searched hers as if asking permission to kiss her. Pure fire radiated between them. And his lips came closer and closer.
She couldn’t look at anything else. She couldn’t think about anything else but his mouth and the way his lips parted ever so gently. The kiss was both sweet and spicy hot, sending delicious ripples of pent-up desire shooting through her veins like scalding hot lava.
She wiggled her hands free, snaked them around his neck, and tangled her fingers in his hair. He backed up and sat down on the bed and drew her onto his lap. She thought with every kiss that she’d explode. She tried to slow the process down by thinking about riding broncs, but a picture of him in his chaps came to mind and sparks danced around the bedroom like lightning streaks. If he could control the bedroom scene like he did a bronc, they were in for a long, long evening of amazing sex.
His hands rested on her slim waist, but she wanted them to travel. Up! Down! It didn’t matter as long as they went somewhere. She moved back enough that sh
e could tug at the top snap on his shirt and little popping sounds opened it up. She ran her fingertips down the soft hair on his chest and he groaned.
Good! I’m glad my touch makes you as hot as yours does me.
He eased a hand up her back, unfastened her bra, and gently massaged her back from neck to waist. His rough hands felt so good on her skin that she didn’t want him to quit the gentle massage on her back, and yet she wanted his hands to move on to touch more and more, to see how many blazes he could start all at once on her body.
It had been months since Gemma had had sex. It was as if the whole scene was being played out in slow motion and she loved every moment of the foreplay. Trace tensed and pulled back, asking with his eyes if he should stop or go on. She pulled his shirttail from his jeans and unbuckled his belt.
He moved his hands around to touch her breasts. She unzipped his jeans and slipped a hand down inside them. She bit back the gasp when she realized the size and readiness of his erection.
Damn! That old wives tale about foot size is true.
“Are you sure about this?” he whispered softly in her ear.
His hot breath mixed with the deep drawl of his voice added gasoline to the raging fire inside her.
“Yes, I’m sure,” she whispered back.
He picked her up and laid her on the bed, carried Sugar into the other part of the trailer, and pulled the door shut. He removed his clothing and boots while she watched. His eyes never left hers, and she couldn’t have blinked if it had meant going blind for the rest of her life. He was even more magnificent without all the trappings of clothing than he was in those tight jeans. His chest was broad with fine hair traveling down the V of his body to an erection all ready and willing. His thigh muscles were taut and chiseled, his calves were muscled, and his biceps looked like those of a weight lifter. The whole package was even more than she’d wished for when she’d sat on Santa’s lap and asked him for a cowboy. Evidently, Santa or fate, or maybe both, had a really big sense of humor.
When he stretched out fully naked beside her, she ran her hands down his chest.
“God, your cool hands feel like silk,” he mumbled.
“And yours feel like coals of fire on my skin,” she said.
“It’s been a while, darlin’. I won’t be running a marathon this first time,” he whispered.
“It’s been a helluva long time in my world too. I was thinking a nice sprint.”
He tugged her shorts down over her hips, removed her silk panties in one long sweep, and then flipped her shirt up over her head. The shirt and bra landed somewhere near the door when he tossed them over his shoulder.
“Ready?”
She gulped and nodded.
The first thrust made her gasp, but he leaned close, nibbled on her ear as he began a slow, steady rhythm, and said, “You are delicious.”
She couldn’t argue with that line because he was just as tasty. She tangled her fingers in his hair and brought his mouth to hers in a series of sizzling hot kisses as she rocked with him, urging him to increase the rhythm. He slipped his hands under her and cupped her hips.
She’d never experienced such raw deep need nor never known such depths of want. When she couldn’t take anymore, she pleaded with him to join her in the climax. He covered her mouth in deep, passionate kisses and she forgot all about wanting it to end. And then he muttered her name and she could feel the tension draining from his body.
“Oh!” she said.
“Yes!” he answered.
Trace buried his face in her hair and all the sun rays in the world were trapped in the bedroom. The romance books lying around her beauty shop talked about sex like that, but she’d thought it was fiction right up until that moment. She’d experienced afterglow, but she’d never experienced it in living Technicolor like what was surrounding her right then.
She nuzzled her lips into his neck. “Is that real or is it the aftereffects?”
“Both!”
“Fan-damn-tastic,” she said.
“No, darlin’. It was magic,” he stammered.
She put a finger over his lips. “If that was a sprint, I’m not sure we could stand a marathon.”
Gemma ran her hand down his muscular back and the scalding hot feeling was still there wanting another round.
Dear Lord, she’d opened Pandora’s box. What did she do now?
Chapter 6
Trace reached across Gemma’s naked body and pulled the cord to raise the mini blinds. She turned over, used his arm for a pillow, and pulled the sheet up over them. A burst of color filled the whole window in dazzling sparkles. Before it had time to fall to the earth in slow motion, the next shower came with a loud pop and an array of red, white, and blue. It wasn’t completely dissolved when another crack brought about a purple, pink, and lime green display even bigger than the one before.
“This is the way to watch the fireworks. Lying in bed with a beautiful woman in my arms,” Trace whispered.
Gemma looked over her shoulder into his eyes. “Fireworks inside the trailer and now fireworks outside.”
A loud sizzling noise took her attention back to the window. “Oh! Look at that one. It filled the whole window.”
“I’d rather look at you,” he said huskily.
She giggled.
“What’s so funny?”
“Do you tell that to all the girls who watch fireworks naked with you?” she asked.
Trace removed his arm and sat up. “It was not a line, and I meant it. And for your information, smart-ass, I’ve never watched fireworks with another naked woman. You are the first one.”
She popped up and drew the sheet tighter around her body. “Hey, don’t go all pouty.”
“I do not pout, and FYI, I meant what I said.”
“Well, on that note, I’m going home. Thank you.”
It had been wonderful, even better than wonderful, but now she was angry at herself for allowing it to happen. Having sex with him had not put out the desire but made it even more acute and it simply could not go on another minute.
“Don’t thank me for the sex,” he said.
“I didn’t. I was thanking you for everything else today. And FYI, I don’t thank men for sex,” she said.
She slung her legs over the side of the bed and gathered up her clothing. Trace propped up on an elbow with the bedsheet covering the lower half of his body and watched her. She was a spitfire when she wasn’t mad; angry, she was a force resembling a pissed off tornado.
Her butt wiggled into cute little black underpants that weren’t even an inch wide on the side. Watching her slide them up her legs caused a stirring that he didn’t think was possible after that bout of sex. She reached around behind her back and fastened her bra and then bent over to shake her breasts down into the black lace cups. His fingers itched to touch them one more time before she put them away. Then she pulled on jean shorts and a shirt.
He sighed.
His toys were all put away and suddenly he wanted to get them out again and play until morning.
“Stay with me, Gemma. The fireworks aren’t even over and you could spend the night right here,” he said.
“I’ve had all the fireworks I’d better have for one night,” she said.
“Then just snuggle with me,” he said.
She bent over the bed and kissed him on the forehead. “Good night, Trace. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Breakfast is at seven in my kitchen. Wagon train leaves at eight,” he said.
“My wagon might leave earlier than that.”
“And you called me pouty?”
She turned quickly and shot him a drop-graveyard-dead look. “I do not pout and I’ll be here for breakfast. What can I bring?”
“A healthy appetite for food and for anything else you might have in mind.”
“In your dreams! Good night.”
When she opened the door Sugar bounded into the room, up her special stairs, and landed on Gemma’s pillow where she turned
around several times and then plopped down to sleep.
Trace turned over and watched out the other bedroom window until he saw her lights come on. In a few minutes they went off again. There she was no more than twenty feet from him and yet she might as well be across the whole state. He turned over to see another bright flash of sparkles in the other window and hugged a pillow.
“Sugar, I should put an end to this, but I can’t.”
The Chihuahua’s tail thumped against the pillow.
“Nothing permanent can ever come of it.”
Sugar shut her eyes and sighed.
“That’s just the way I feel too, girl,” Trace said.
***
He dreamed of Gemma again that night. She’d wrecked in the final ride in Vegas and he’d won the prize. Then he dropped down on one knee and proposed to her. She looked at him the same way she had when they were arguing and walked off with a foggy mist closing around her. When he awoke the next morning, he was hugging a pillow and frantically calling out her name.
Sugar was standing on her pillow staring at him as if he’d lost his mind.
He kicked the sheet off and slung his legs over the side of the bed. “She’s going to be the death of me and I’ve only known her a few weeks.”
Sugar meandered down the bed and onto the floor.
“She might be playing me yet, even after last night. She might just be messing with me until I can’t ride for thinking about her and then laugh when I lose everything.”
Sugar barked at the front door.
“Okay, I’ll stop thinking about her and take you out for a walk. And I don’t think she’s that kind of woman either, Sugar. I’m just damn confused and I hate this feeling.”
Trace pulled on his jeans and a shirt, slipped his feet into flip-flops, and took down the dog leash from the hook beside the door.
The dog danced around so much he had trouble getting the leash hooked.
“Dammit! Stand still. I swear all women are trouble, no matter what the species. Can’t live with them and it’s against the law to shoot ’em,” he groused.
He finally clasped the leash on her collar and slung the door open to find Gemma standing there with her hand up, ready to knock.
Just a Cowboy and His Baby (Spikes & Spurs) Page 8
