“Not one bit. It’s not very big, but it works for one person just fine. You might even find a woman camped right next to you in a trailer park that will change your luck,” Gemma teased.
“Ain’t happenin’. My luck is plumb run out with the women. I’m going to be the old bachelor uncle who spoils his nephews and nieces.”
An hour later she’d moved in with Trace. He’d better get used to it because she intended to be around forever.
Chapter 20
Gemma fed Holly. Trace burped her, and then they’d stared at her for several minutes after they put her into her makeshift bed.
“We’d better get some sleep. She’ll be ready to eat again in four hours, max,” Gemma said.
Trace pulled her down on the bed. She cuddled up next to his side and shut her eyes. When she opened them a minute later, nothing had changed. There was still a baby in a big wooden box next to her. She didn’t have a trailer of her own anymore. And her saddle was in the backseat of her truck. And she’d made up her mind about her future and set it in solid stone.
“Did today really happen?” Trace asked.
Gemma kissed him on the jaw. “It didn’t happen. That would mean it was over and an end had occurred. It is happening. No end in sight. Once a father, always a father, even when she’s grown.”
“That scares me,” he said.
“It should terrify you. It’s a big job.”
He kissed her on the forehead. “I’m worn completely out both mentally and physically. How about you, Gemma?”
“Yes, on all counts. You go take a shower and then I’ll get one and we’ll get some sleep. It’ll be a short four hours.”
It seemed like she’d barely shut her eyes when Holly whimpered. She looked at the clock and only an hour had passed. The baby couldn’t be hungry yet. She rolled out of Trace’s arms and tucked the blanket back around Holly’s feet. Then Gemma could not go back to sleep.
One thing after another kept her awake. She worried about her saddle in the truck. Would the heat tomorrow cause it to get out of the fit? Then she mulled over and over the fact that she was now officially living with Trace. If they had big fight, the only place she could go was outside.
She shivered when she realized how much trust they’d put in each other. It was her truck but it was his trailer. She could drive off and leave him stranded with a baby on the side of the road. But he could throw her and all her belongings out and she wouldn’t have a home.
Home!
There was that word again.
Finally, she beat her pillow into submission and fell asleep only to be awakened by pitiful little cries two hours later. When she opened her eyes, Trace was sitting straight up in bed, his hair a mess, and his eyes wide open.
He dug his fists into his eyes. “I’ll heat the bottle if you’ll change her diaper.”
“Okay,” she said.
This time he fed her and Gemma did the burping. In thirty minutes Holly was fed and asleep again. Trace curled up to Gemma’s back with his arm around her.
“We make a good team,” he whispered.
“Yes, we do,” she said groggily.
***
Gemma looked down at a bronc who would have been cussing a blue streak if he could’ve talked. He snorted and tried to shake the saddle off. Everything about Sugar Baby said there wasn’t a sweet bone in his body and he couldn’t wait to toss her into the dirt.
The first order of business was that she had to stop thinking about the eighty-one points Trace had just racked up, about the fact that he was watching Holly all by himself, and about the fact that her foot hurt like a son of a bitch in that boot. When she could get all that out of her mind she’d be fine.
“Well, shit!” she said.
“What?” the cowboy at the top of the chute asked.
“My lucky horseshoe and my shamrocks are headed toward Texas.”
The cowboy frowned.
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“Don’t reckon I would. You ready?”
She measured the rein again and touched her lucky hat pin.
Sugar Baby came out of the chute with all four feet off the ground and his back straight up in the air. She knew the crowd was putting out some noise, and the announcer’s voice was full of excitement. Her feet went back, spurs raked, feet came forward, and ankle throbbed. It was like doing a line dance on a broken foot. She should’ve taken her mother’s advice, but oh, no, she had to prove that she could ride with a sprained ankle.
The buzzer sounded and a rescue rider grabbed her around the waist. She slid off the horse and winced when both her feet hit the ground.
“And that, cowboys and cowgirls, was Gemma O’Donnell from Ringgold, Texas, who was tied with Trace Coleman for the top-seeded place in this year’s Million Dollar Pro Rodeo Tour right here at the Lovington Rodeo. Trace has racked up eight-one big points, and now the judges are handing me their scores for Gemma O’Donnell. And oh, my goodness, I don’t believe this—” The announcer’s booming voice held so much excitement that the crowd quieted.
Gemma held her breath. Had she beat him even with a busted ankle and very little sleep?
“They are still in a tie! They both have eighty-one points and will split tonight’s purse at this silver event! Good luck to both of you in the next rodeo. We’ll all be watching to see if you break this tie then. And now we’ve got barrel racing, starting with the queen herself of barrel racing, Katy McQueen, from Austin, Texas.”
Gemma bowed to the crowd and limped off to the chutes where Trace and Holly waited. So they were still in a tie? That beat having to listen to him brag about whipping her butt for the next fifteen hundred miles as they drove to Oregon.
***
The days flew by with such speed that Gemma wondered at night where they’d gone. She and Trace had bought a baby monitor, but they were so worn out by evening that most of the time they didn’t want to do anything but cuddle a few minutes and fall asleep.
August was almost half done when they parked in Oregon that evening, and after the rodeo the next night they’d fly to Amarillo. She wondered if they’d have time for sex at the ranch or if this was the way it was going to be. Maybe they’d had a wild, hot affair and now they’d slid back into nothing more than a deep friendship.
“Get all prettied up,” Trace said when they went from the truck to the trailer that evening.
“Why?”
“Because this is date night. I’m taking my two pretty girls out to dinner and a movie and then we’re going to put that monitor gizmo you bought to use. I’ve been thinking about you all day, and I want more than cuddling tonight, darlin’.”
“And what if I’m too damn tired?” she smarted off.
“Then you go on to sleep and I’ll wake you when it’s over,” he teased.
She giggled. “Where did you get that line? And you know damn well that a dozen of your kisses will heat me up until there won’t be any sleeping until it is over, so don’t tease me.”
“Made it up on the spot. And darlin’, your kisses do the same to me.”
He set Holly’s car seat on the table, turned on the air to cool the trailer down, and opened his arms to Gemma. She took a step and he pulled her so close that she could hear his heart beat. Not yet! They weren’t anything more than friends yet!
“Do we have to wait for dinner, a movie, and ten o’clock feeding?” she whispered. “She’s asleep right now.”
Trace grasped her butt, and with one hop, her legs were around his waist. His lips met hers in a hard kiss that sent tsunami-sized waves of desire shooting from her lips to her lower gut. Tongue met tongue in enough fiery heat to burn down the whole state of Oregon. She didn’t know when her shirt and bra left her body, but suddenly she was naked from the waist up, on the bed, and the door was shut. His mouth left her lips long enough to taste her breasts and then latched on to her lower lip again.
“God, I missed this,” he moaned between kisses.
She rea
ched between them, undid his belt buckle, and unzipped his jeans, then ran a hand down inside to tease an already rock-hard erection.
“Me too.” She gasped.
Her jeans and underpants disappeared like magic, and he was naked and making love to her just as fast. She’d expected it to be a slam, bam, thank-you-ma’am bout, but after the first thrust, he slowed the rhythm so much that it was tender and sweet. His lips were everywhere. On her eyelids, her earlobes, her neck, and his hands wandered from her ribs to her breasts and to her face.
They’d had wild, wonderful sex.
They’d had sex on the cabinet top and in an old-fashioned claw-foot bathtub.
But Gemma felt like Trace was making love to her, not having sex. And in that moment she knew beyond the faintest shadow of a doubt that she’d chosen the right horse to ride the rest of her life.
She reached a climax long before he did and then another one, and then he collapsed on top of her with a growl that sounded faintly like, “love you.” But she wasn’t sure.
“Good idea there, sweetheart,” he murmured when he could breathe again.
“Yes, sir, it damn sure was.”
He rolled, taking her with him. “We’ve made it a whole week in a trailer with a baby. Honey, we’re ready to take on the world.”
Or Goodnight, Texas, she thought.
Chapter 21
Gemma picked up Holly’s car seat with one hand, her diaper bag with the other, and followed Trace out of the house. He turned around at the bottom step and kissed her on the forehead. The horizon split the sun on the eastern horizon, making it look like half an orange lying out there toward the Atlantic Ocean. Goodnight, Texas, was flat country with nothing but dirt, cotton, cows, and lots of summer blue sky. When they’d arrived the day before, Gemma’s soul felt as if it had come home. She loved the trees and rolling hills around Ringgold, but there was something majestic about nothing but land and sky.
“See you at noon. You sure you’re all right with watching her while I get some work done?” Trace touched Holly’s cheek.
“I’m fine with watching her, but I’m going with you,” Gemma said.
Teamer chuckled from the far end of the porch where he was sitting in a rocking chair that needed paint as bad as the house.
They both looked his way.
He threw up a palm. “Don’t mind me. Get on with the argument. Just don’t take too long. We’re wastin’ time.”
Trace jerked his eyes around to meet Gemma’s. She wouldn’t have let him win anyway, but she sure didn’t intend to lose the battle with Teamer watching.
“The hay field is no place for a baby,” he said.
“Momma raised all of us in a hay field, and darlin’, we did not have an air-conditioned tractor in those days. I can drive a tractor and get a helluva lot more done than sitting on the front porch of this house and worrying about your momma coming tonight.”
Trace started toward the pickup. “I said no!”
Teamer stood up and followed him.
Gemma stood still, but she raised her voice. “You don’t get to say jack shit, cowboy! Holly and I outvoted you. She says if she’s going to grow up on this place, then by damn, she’s going to learn how to be a ranchin’ woman. And does she need to remind you that her first days were spent in a feed box? So either we both go or you can stay home and I’ll go help Teamer cut hay. Either way, I’m goin’. Your choice as to whether you are or not.”
“You are some piece of work, Gemma O’Donnell,” Trace growled.
“You knew that before you asked me to come to your ranch for two weeks. As John Wayne said, ‘We’re burnin’ daylight.’ You stayin’ or are we goin’?”
Teamer chuckled.
“You are exasperating,” he said.
“That would be the pot calling the kettle black, now wouldn’t it?”
He exhaled loudly. “Okay, let’s go. You got enough diapers and bottles?”
“Right here. She’ll only need one feeding between now and noon. Should be just about break time.” She smiled.
“I wish Louis would’ve been here. We would’ve bet on which one of you would win and I would’ve made a dollar.” Teamer laughed again.
“Thank you for putting your money on me.” Gemma smiled.
“Don’t thank me. I know a good filly when I see one.” Teamer got into his old work truck and led the way to the pasture.
Gemma drove the big John Deere tractor with Holly in her car seat right beside her. The baby cooed and gooed along with the country music radio station and really made a lot of noise when the DJ played “You Look So Good in Love,” by George Strait. The cab was cool. George kept them entertained. And the tractor hummed right along, leaving mounds of alfalfa to cure in the hot sunshine.
They’d flown out of Washington still tied for the lead place in the finals. Billy Washington had come in from the bottom of the list to blow everyone out of the water at the Oregon rodeo with eighty-four points. Teamer had driven into Amarillo and picked them up at the airport the day before. She’d liked him from the minute she met him. He reminded her of her father, Cash. Slow talking, tall, lanky, and bright, twinkling eyes. The amazing thing was that thinking about her father did not make her homesick, and when she stepped foot on the ranch in Goodnight, looked at the little house and across the land to the sky on the far horizon, her soul had said that she was home.
“He’s got rocks for brains if he thinks he can boss me around just because we’re in his stomping territory, right, baby girl? Because it’s not just his territory anymore; it’s mine too. And the quicker he realizes it, the better off we’ll all be,” Gemma told Holly when they were in the tractor.
Holly smiled at Gemma’s voice.
“That’s right. He’s funny as a two-dollar bill for entertainin’ notions of leaving us in the house to stew and fret all day about his parents coming to visit. Thank God they’re staying with Teamer. I’d be crazy as a loon in a hailstorm if they were right in the house with us all weekend,” she talked to Holly. “And you’ll be meeting Granny and Grandpa for the first time, ladybug. Wonder if they’ll let you call them that or if they’ll want some kind of cutesy names.”
At six weeks Holly wasn’t interested in anything but getting her hand to her mouth and gnawing on it. She didn’t care that the second DNA had proven that she was indeed Trace’s child or that her name was formally now Holly Mary-Jo Coleman on her new amended birth certificate.
“I’m glad those new papers said that there isn’t a doubt in the world that you belong to your daddy. I wouldn’t have trusted a beer bottle DNA either,” she said as she whipped the big tractor around at the end of the hay field and started back across it, keeping the tires in the furrows.
The phone rang and she put it on speaker.
“Hello. Are you still mad at me?” she asked.
Trace’s laugh answered her. “Teamer says you remind him of his mother.”
“You didn’t answer my question,” Gemma said.
“No, I’m not mad at you.”
“Good. How are you doin’ in your field? Gonna get it cut by suppertime?”
“Probably.”
“Betcha I cut more than you do today, and I’ve got a baby in the tractor,” she teased.
“Is everything a contest with you?” Trace asked.
“Of course. I’m the baby of five kids. We’d bet on who could run from the house to the barn fastest or who could swat the most flies on the back porch before dinner.”
“You are kidding me! You really counted dead flies?” Trace asked.
“Oh, yeah! I’m the queen. I got fifty-three one evening. But Raylen beat me when it came to catching fireflies and putting them in a jar.”
Trace laughed again. “I want half a dozen kids so they can do those things.”
Gemma was caught off guard and didn’t know how to answer him.
“You there?” he asked.
“I’m here. Why do I remind Teamer of his mother?”
/> “Grandma was headstrong, opinionated, and nobody got ahead of her. She was a pistol. Could outride and out-plow Grandpa in her youth,” Trace answered.
“That is a great compliment. I will have to thank him.”
Trace chuckled. “How’s Holly?”
“She says to tell you that her fist tastes real good and that she likes George Strait. She hasn’t fussed about riding in the tractor, so I think she’s going to be a good ranchin’ girl. We’ll have to let her decide for sure when she’s older. She might want to be a ballerina on the New York City stage and wear high-heeled shoes and business suits. And we need to start looking for a pony. She needs to start riding early on.”
“My daughter can wear high heels, but not in New York City. She’s a Texan and she’ll stay one,” Trace said.
“She’ll be whatever she wants to be,” Gemma argued. “If she decides she wants to be a woman astronaut, then by damn she can be one.”
“Like you are a bronc rider in a man’s world?” he asked.
“Don’t go there, Trace.”
“The main reason I called is to tell you that Mother and Dad are flying up in their plane instead of taking a commercial flight. They’ll be here at noon. Louis is cooking dinner for all of us in the house. We’ll be stopping for the day at about eleven so we can clean up a bit. I don’t expect you want to meet them wearing jeans with holes in the knees and with your hair in dog ears? Now, personally, I think you look like an angel in that getup, and the fact that you can drive a tractor and cut hay puts a halo above your head in Teamer’s eyes. But darlin’, Mother already gave me one dressing down for not telling her about that first dinner, so I’m not about to make that same mistake twice.”
“You better not ever do that again, Trace Coleman. I would like to stop at eleven so I can at least take a shower and get Holly all prettied up to meet them,” Gemma said.
“Another thing.” Trace paused again.
“Remember I’m bullheaded like your Granny Coleman,” she said.
Just a Cowboy and His Baby (Spikes & Spurs) Page 25
