Just a Cowboy and His Baby (Spikes & Spurs) (3 page)

“Have a seat. Breakfast will be served as soon as I wash my hands.”

Lucky
dog! Fate is a bitch. And I’m telling Liz tonight that I don’t believe in her tarot cards or her fortune-telling. There hasn’t been a blond-haired cowboy that made my heart race since she told me I’d have my very own cowboy by Christmas. But just looking at the dark-haired one’s bare feet sets my underpants on fire. And he’s the worst cowboy in the lot because falling for him could jeopardize my whole dream.

Trace motioned toward the table. “Anywhere over there is fine.”

Gemma blushed and quickly slid to the back side of the booth. “I was watching Sugar. She sure knows how to get up on that bed.”

“I tacked a little stool to the end of the bed frame at my house so she could get up and down on it. She was driving me crazy at night wanting up on the bed and then down to go outside, so I came up with that idea and then made a second one for the trailer.”

Gemma nodded, but her thoughts weren’t on the dog or the steps.

Trace went on. “On the ranch, she has a doggy door in the kitchen that opens out onto a screened porch, and there’s another one that goes down a ramp and outside to the yard which she owns. Even the big dogs let her think she’s queen.” He busied himself pouring coffee and reheating a stack of pancakes and bacon in the microwave as he talked. When they were done he set the plate before her and added a glass of orange juice and a cup of coffee.

“You sure don’t look like a Chihuahua man,” she said.

He chuckled.

Hell’s bells! He even chuckled in a sexy Southern drawl that made little goose bumps rise up on her arms.

“You want to know the story about how I bought a Chihuahua?” he asked.

She poured warmed syrup on the pancakes. “I would love to hear that story. Did she stow away in your suitcase after a trip to Mexico?”

“Butter is in the syrup, by the way. I melt it and then add syrup and warm them together. Now, about Sugar? You aren’t even close with the Mexico story. It’s like this. Not last Christmas but the one before that, about eighteen months ago, I was dating a woman from Goodnight, Texas.”

“My sister lives close to there in the wintertime. I’ve heard her mention Goodnight. She lives between Claude and Amarillo. She and her husband are part of a carnival that winters there,” Gemma said between bites.

“Blaze McIntire?”

Gemma nodded.

“Colleen is your sister?”

Another nod.

Trace chuckled again. “Small world! I know Blaze well. Only met your sister once, but I can see the resemblance.”

“Really?”

“Oh, yeah. Blaze and I’ve—” He chuckled again. “Guess I’d best hush or I’ll get in trouble. Colleen doesn’t need to know about all the things in Blaze’s past.”

“And your past?” Gemma asked.

“Colorful. We’ll leave it at that. Now back to Sugar.” He changed the subject. “The woman I was dating was tall, blonde, pretty. And sometime in the fall, must’ve been about the middle of October, we started talking about taking a Christmas trip together.” He carried his plate to the table and sat down at the far end away from Gemma.

“To Mexico?”

Trace’s brows knit together and he tilted his head to one side. “Why would you say that? Oh! Sugar is a Chihuahua. But no, we were thinking about Florida to the beach. I asked her what she wanted for Christmas and she said something that would fit inside a stocking this big,” he held up his hands and measured about six inches, “and nothing bigger. So I figured she meant plane tickets to Florida and a long weekend in a fancy condo. I got them and they looked pretty small inside the red stocking and then I remembered that she’d thrown a fit over a Chihuahua in the pet store when we were in Amarillo at the mall. So I bought a six-week-old puppy and on Christmas Eve when we exchanged presents I stuffed the dog down into the stocking with the tickets.”

Gemma finished her pancakes and sipped at the still hot coffee. “And?”

“She was allergic to dogs. She hated the beach and she wanted an engagement ring. I asked her why she let me think she wanted to go to the beach with me and she said she thought I was joking to throw her off base with the engagement ring.”

“Wow!”

“Yep, I didn’t do too hot that Christmas. I got a refund on the plane tickets and only lost the price of one night on the condo, but the dog was not returnable.”

“And the name?”

Trace swallowed a gulp of coffee. “I took one look at the critter as she stormed out the door and sped out of my driveway and said, ‘I guess visions of sugar plums weren’t what was dancing in her head.’”

Gemma giggled. “And Sugar Plum stuck? What happened to the woman?”

“The dog’s name on the registration papers is Sugar Plum Ziva.”

“After Ziva David on
NCIS
?”

“You got it. Sugar might be small, but she’s a force just like Ziva,” Trace said.

“And the woman?”

“Oh, I run into the lady now and then at the café or in the grocery store. She’s engaged to a CEO of some company out of Amarillo these days. Guess he understands her a lot better than I did.”

Gemma clamped her hand over her mouth to keep the giggle from growing, but it was useless. She could just see the woman peeling out of a driveway in her fancy car, all mad as hell because she got a dog instead of a ring. One bitch sure didn’t want another bitch in her house. The more she visualized the whole scene the funnier it got, and the giggle grew into a guffaw and that went to an infectious roar with Trace joining in.

Finally, Trace wiped at his eyes with a paper napkin. “It
is
funny, isn’t it? I haven’t laughed that hard in years, but the look on your face was hilarious. What would you have done if it had been you?”

“I bet it wasn’t funny then. Did you love her? I would have taken you to court for custody of the dog. I love all animals except spiders and mice. Dogs. Cats. Horses. Even donkeys.”

“No, it wasn’t funny then, and I don’t know if I loved her. I doubt it. She wasn’t ranch material so there wasn’t going to be a long-term relationship. I’m a rancher and have no intentions of being anything else.”

“And what makes a woman ranch material?” Gemma asked.

“Not snarling her nose at a new baby calf or colt goes a long way,” Trace answered.

Gemma understood perfectly. Her last relationship had ended in a hell of a bigger mess than what a Chihuahua dog could bring about. He’d been one of those pretty, spoiled rotten rich kids who didn’t know the south end of a northbound broodmare from a hole in the ground. The only thing they had in common was a couple of friends and a few months of wild sex. The friends fell by the wayside and the sex couldn’t hold the relationship together. She slid out of the booth and carried her dirty dishes to the sink where she washed them and set them in the trailer-sized drainer.

She picked up her bag and opened the door and Sugar bounded off the bed. “Thanks for breakfast. See you in St. Paul. Grab Sugar. I wouldn’t want to have to chase her down.”

He picked the dog up and held the door for Gemma. “Thanks for the conversation and for saving me from public humiliation. It could have been a mess if I’d been caught in the women’s bathroom. See you later and you are so welcome to breakfast. We’ll have to do it again.”

***

Gemma was barely back out on I-90 when her cell phone rang. She put it on speakerphone and laid it beside her on the console before she even answered Liz’s call.

Liz had been born and raised in a traveling carnival. The same one that Colleen and Blaze helped take care of nowadays. Liz had been the belly dancer and fortune-teller for the carnival, but when her Uncle Haskell left her a house and twenty acres she’d changed her lifestyle drastically. Every Christmas she’d asked Santa Claus for a house with no wheels and a sexy cowboy. Her Uncle Haskell took care of the house with no wheels and Gemma’s brother, Raylen, turned out to be the sexy cowboy. They’d been married for eighteen months and Liz had told Gemma’s fortune twice now. Once before she and Raylen married and once after. Both times there was a cowboy in her future and he was going to be hers by Christmas. But Christmas had come and gone the year before and no cowboy had dropped down on one knee to propose.

“Hey, Liz, what are you doing up so early?” Gemma asked.

“Early? We all don’t get to sleep until ten o’clock and only work eight seconds a day,” Liz teased.

“Ten o’clock my naturally born cowgirl ass! I rode that demon of a horse last night and didn’t even stick around for the after-party and drove until two this morning, so don’t be giving me any sass at this time of day,” Gemma said.

Liz giggled. “Woke you up, didn’t I? Congratulations on another win. Met a blond-haired cowboy yet?”

“Hell, no! I’m going to buy one of those signs to hang on my wall that says ‘I believe’ and write
don’t
in big red letters between the two words. I think you used up all your magic chasing my brother down and roping him for your own. All the rest of the cowboys worth their salt are done gone.”

“How about Trace Coleman? I hear he’s giving you a run for your money.”

“He’s got dark hair, dark eyes, and a damn Chihuahua dog. What cowboy rides into a rodeo with a Chihuahua dog? There’s something wrong with the picture even if he does make fantastic pancakes and—” She paused for a breath.

“Whoa!” Liz interrupted. “Back up and talk to me. When did you have breakfast with him? Did you do more than eat pancakes with him and his dog? And FYI, I think those little critters are precious.”

“Hell no, I didn’t do more than eat pancakes with him. And I will not. It would be a definite conflict of interest. He’s giving me the stiffest …”

Liz giggled before Gemma could complete the sentence.

“Okay, get your mind out of the gutter and let me finish. He’s giving me the
stiffest
competition I’ve ever been up against. I swear it’s going to take all my energy and concentration to beat him out enough for a place in the playoffs, Liz.”

“Okay, then tell me more about the pretty eyes and the dog,” Liz asked.

By the time Gemma had finished the story of the dog and perching on the vanity like an owl, Liz was giggling. When she could catch a breath she said, “Now tell me what happens when that cowboy touches you?”

That caught Gemma off guard and she almost told her about the heat and the vibes, but she stopped before she spoke and said, “What in the hell makes you think he’s touched me?”

“I can hear agitation in your voice. He’s kissed you, hasn’t he? But you haven’t had sex or you’d be all dreamy voiced instead of pissy,” Liz answered.

“Don’t be getting your hopes up that your fortune-telling mojo is saved by this cowboy, lady! You are a scam. I’m not going to find a cowboy and I’m damn sure not going to have a baby by then. Last year you promised that I’d have my very own cowboy by Christmas and it would be a forever thing. When it didn’t happen, you said that the cards said Christmas and you assumed it was the next one coming around, but it must be this next one coming up. Are you fixing to tell me that it means the one next year and not this one again?”

“The cards said that you’d have a cowboy and a baby by this Christmas, not just a Christmas but this next one. But you’ve got to work with them, Gemma. You haven’t done your part or you’d be pregnant by now,” Liz told her.

“It’s less than six months now until Christmas. I’ve been too damn busy even to have sex,” Gemma countered.

“Never say never. If just kissing you has got you all worked up, just think about all that wonderful sex you could be having. And you could be pregnant by Christmas and that could be the baby I saw in the cards. It just showed a baby. It didn’t say it was already born. The cards are never wrong. Don’t lose hope, and you could help the cards out instead of working against them. You’ve got to have positive energy and think about falling in love. All that negativity is hindering the outcome of my reading,” Liz said. “Gotta go. Your brother is waiting in the truck for me.”

She hung up before Gemma could even say good-bye. And homesickness set in just as quickly. Gemma had only been gone a week, but she missed Ringgold. She missed her little beauty shop where she caught up on all the gossip from Tuesday through Saturdays. She missed the Resistol Rodeo down by Dallas every weekend in the summer where there were plenty of sexy cowboys to flirt with her. She missed her brothers and Liz and Austin, her sisters-in-law. She didn’t want to be driving through Montana. She wanted to be at home. What in the hell was she thinking leaving it all behind to chase a stupid dream?

When she had left Wichita Falls after the breakup with her boyfriend, she had moved right back into her old bedroom at the ranch. But then Raylen offered to let her move in with him. When he married she moved again, this time in with her older brother, Dewar, who would be making coffee right about then. She could see him fussing about in the kitchen getting the day started and griping at her to wake up. He was next to the oldest child in the O’Donnell family with Rye holding the firstborn place, then Raylen came along after Dewar, and Colleen followed him. Gemma was the baby of the family and she had learned early on to be tough or get left out.

She had a special place in her heart for Dewar and wondered what his future would be. Liz had read his palm and the cards for him and said she could see into the past and a woman was there but it was foggy. Liz had trouble deciphering the cards that day and admitted she couldn’t get a handle on it. Liz said that she wished she could confer with an older fortune-teller because it appeared that she was seeing Dewar in another life, one back when covered wagons came across Texas. She’d said that Dewar must be an old soul. Was Trace Coleman an old soul, or was he just a cowboy living in the modern day?

Gemma slapped the steering wheel. Liz had lost her touch when she married Raylen. When she talked to her again, she intended to tell her that marriage had ended her fortune-telling. Liz and her tarot cards were crazy if they thought Dewar had lived in another life or that she’d have a baby by Christmas.

Gemma thought about all the women who were there when she had her fortune told and slapped the steering wheel again. “Jasmine was there when she told my fortune and I bet the cards saw her instead of me.”