Just a Cowboy and His Baby (Spikes & Spurs)

by Carolyn Brown

  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.”

  “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 eve
ry 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.”

  Gemma sat down in a chair nearest the car seat. She loved babies, and not picking up that poor little motherless child was the hardest thing she’d ever done.

  She touched his cheek and said, “Slip a hand under her bottom and support her head with the other, then hold her close to your heart so she can hear the beat. Sugar was a hell of a lot smaller than that when you got her, wasn’t she? And I bet she wiggled more than a two-week-old baby.”

  He did exactly what Gemma told him and held his daughter so close that he could feel her little heart beating next to his chest. His expression went from bewildered to amazed in a split second. He leaned back and looked down at Holly and she snuggled down in his arms.

  “Oh, my!” he said.

  “See, nothing to it,” Gemma told him. “It’s a lot easier than riding a bronc.”

  “But a bronc event is only eight seconds. This is a lifetime,” he said softly.

  “Yes, it is. Once a parent, always a parent. You can’t go back, only forward.”

  “She’s so tiny.”

  “And beautiful.”

  Trace’s smile barely turned up the corners of his mouth. “Come and sit in my lap. I want to share this moment with you. You will help me, won’t you?”

  Tears dammed up behind Gemma’s eyelashes when she sat down on Trace’s knee. When she touched the baby’s hand, Holly wrapped her fingers around Gemma’s pinky.

  “That woman is heartless. I could never give up something this precious. It’ll take both of us to take care of her at the rodeos. I’ll watch her while you ride and you can while I ride. And we’ll take turns on the night feedings.”

  Trace cut his eyes around at her. “The what?”

  “Night feedings. You can’t just put a pan of water and a bowl of food beside her bed. Someone is going to be getting up every three to four hours to feed this little girl. Her tummy won’t hold enough formula to last longer than that. Mind if I look into that folder and see how much she weighed?”

  “Of course not. You need to know everything.”

  She moved into a chair right beside him and thumbed through legal documents and finally found the birth certificate. “Holly Jo Coleman was born July 15th. She was nineteen inches long and weighed six pounds and two ounces. She’ll be eating every three to four hours for sure. Babies that weigh more than eight pounds eat more, so they sleep longer.”

  “How do you know all this?” Trace asked.

  Gemma touched Holly’s face. The baby opened her mouth and turned toward her hand.

  “She’s getting hungry. And I know all that because Austin was terrified about being a mother. She was an only child, and she was afraid she’d do something wrong, so she read baby books by the dozens and we heard about them all the time. Then Pearl got pregnant with the twins and it was the same thing all over again. And I used to keep the nursery at the church on Sunday mornings.”

  “Thank God!” Trace said. “What do we do now? Is there food in that bag?”

  Gemma rummaged through it. “Six diapers. Two bottles of formula. One extra blanket and no more clothes. We can change her diaper and feed her, but we’ve got to go to the store pretty quick. And that means we have to unhitch my trailer.”

  “Why your trailer?”

  “Because my truck has a backseat. It’s against the law to put a baby in the front seat of a vehicle. She can’t ride in your truck. Guess we’ve got some plans to make.”

  Worry etched into Trace’s face like lines on a road map. “I don’t feel anything. Shouldn’t I be overwhelmed like those guys in the movies when they hold their babies? I bet Rye and Wil felt something when their babies were born. Is there something wrong with me? Is this really my child?”

  Gemma patted his shoulder. “Nothing is wrong with you. Rye and Wil and now Ace all had nine months to get ready for a baby, and they had it with someone they were in love with. They didn’t have a baby dropped out of heaven into their arms. Be patient. One day at a time, like the old song says. Right now, we go to the nearest store and buy necessities,” she said.

  He set the diaper bag and the folder in the car seat, carried it in one hand, and cradled the baby in the other. Gemma picked up her crutches and the three of them headed back to her truck.

  “Eight seconds can change the world,” she said.

  “You talkin’ about ridin’ or this?”

  “Both. Who would have thought that thirty minutes ago when we walked away from my truck we’d come back with a baby?”

  “What is this going to do to our relationship?” he asked.

  “We have a relationship?”

  “Don’t tease.”

  She braced her back against the truck. “I expect if what we have is strong enough to withstand the competition we are in, then one little bundle of smelly pooped diaper won’t hurt it too much.”

  He took a deep breath and snarled. “Is that what that is? I thought we were downwind from a hog lot.”

  “Lay her on the backseat and put the diaper bag on the floor. I can take care of that in no time,” she said.

  Trace watched over her shoulder while she changed Holly’s diaper. “Maybe I should forget the rest of the circuit and go home.”

  “Why? She don’t know if she’s being raised up these first months in a trailer or a mansion. We can do this, Trace. Don’t give up on your dream.” Gemma picked up the baby and held her close to her chest. Holly started rooting around, hunting for food.

  “What do I do now?” he asked.

  “You put that car seat in the backseat and strap it down with the seat belts. Then we go to your trailer and heat up a bottle so I can feed her. After that we’ll go to the store and buy supplies. Then we’ll come back and figure out what we’re doing after the ride tonight.”

  “You are fan-damn-tastic, woman.”

  “I can’t carry her and use crutches, so help please,” Gemma started.

  Trace cut her off mid-sentence when he picked her up. She held the baby in her arms and Trace held her like a new bride. He carried both of them to his trailer and set them in the middle of his bed.

  “I’ll go back and get that diaper bag and papers now,” he said.

  She stretched Holly out on her knees and checked her toes and fingers: ten of each. Then she touched her little ears and traced the outline of her lips. “You are perfect, sweetheart. And you’ll have the best daddy in the whole world when he settles down and realizes that a little angel just got dropped into his lap.”

  Holly had begun to whimper by the time Trace returned and he panicked.

  “Is she all right? What do we do now? Should we take her to the hospital and have a doctor look at her?”

  “She is hungry, Trace. Run hot water in a pan or a bowl in the sink and stick one of those bottles in it, then you can feed her,” Gemma said.

  He swished the bottle back and forth. “How will I know when it’s ready?”

  “Pick it up and let a drop fall on your wrist,” she answered.

  He followed her instructions and said, “I can’t feel it.”

  “Then it’s ready. Come on over here and sit down beside me.”

  When he sat down, his eyes reminded her of a scared rabbit. “Will you do it this time and let me watc
h? Like the diaper thing. If I see how to do it then I’ll be able to take on the job.”

  Gemma cradled Holly in her arms, held the bottle to her mouth, and the baby latched right on to it. “See, it’s not a lot different than feeding a calf.”

  “Except with a calf you put it in a bucket.” Trace laughed nervously.

  She looked up to find him staring into her eyes. “What?” she asked.

  “You are beautiful holding that baby.” He kissed her and sparks flew around the trailer just like always.

  “Whew!” she said. “I wondered if a baby would change the fire power. It didn’t.”

  He chuckled again. “I wondered the same thing, but I do believe that kiss was the hottest one yet.”

  “Burp time and you get to do it.” She put the baby in his arms.

  “How?”

  “Put her on your shoulder and pat her gently on the back.”

  “Like this?”

  Gemma leaned back and glared at him. “You rascal. You lied to me. You’ve done this before.”

  He shook his head. “I saw it on television.”

  Holly burped loud and clear, shoved her thumb in her mouth, and made sucking sounds.

  Trace handed her back to Gemma. “Thumb sucker? Will that ruin her teeth or give her a speech problem?”

  “We’ll get her a pacifier at the store and that will take care of any problems. While I finish feeding her, can you get my trailer and truck unhitched? Why don’t we use my truck from now on and your trailer?”

  “Sounds good, but how?”

  “Remember, Ace and his brothers are coming to the rodeo. Momma and Dewar were pouting, remember?”

  “Lord, I barely remember my name,” he said.

  She went on, “We can send your truck and my trailer back with them. It’ll be a tight squeeze to fit all my things plus Holly’s in your place, but it can be done. My saddle can ride in the backseat beside her car seat, and if you’ll put your tool chest over in the bed of my truck we can store things in it. We can share the gas and food expenses.”

  He was shaking his head before she got the last word out. “I can pay for those things. If you’re going to help with this baby, it’s the least I can do.”