One Hot Cowboy Wedding (29 page)

Read One Hot Cowboy Wedding Online

Authors: Carolyn Brown

Ace moved to her side of the bed and pulled her back into his arms. “And your mother?”

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Jasmine frowned. “Let’s see. The house was nice, but it did need redecorating. A few of those big gold mirrors and some silk flower arrangements on pedestals would be helpful; and of course it real y had to have another bathroom or two and maybe a kitchen makeover. Old Bill and Little Joe surely did not ever come into the house, and Delilah was not given the run of the house, was she? Animals should not be allowed in the house with babies, and her granddaughter did not need to have nasty cat hair or dog dander on her sweet little body.”

“And what did you say?” Ace asked.

“That it was my home; that I loved Delilah and the dogs; and when wintertime came Old Bill and Little Joe could curl up in front of the fireplace at night if they wanted or sleep at the foot of the bed with us if they wanted. That I absolutely hate gold mirrors and I’d take the kitchen makeover under consideration later. And that when and if I had a daughter, she was going to be surrounded by animals and she was going to be at home on the ranch.”

Ace heard
my
home
loud and clear and smiled. “You done good, Jazzy.”

“I don’t feel like I did good. I’m tied up in knots,” she said.

“Roll over on your tummy,” Ace said.

“Why?”

“I’m going to work those knots out for you and then you are going to get a good night’s sleep. You didn’t sleep much at all last night. We were too busy playing and then all this went down today. Roll over while I go in the bathroom and get that vanilla- smellin’ lotion of yours,” he said.

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When he returned she was on her stomach with her shirt off and her boxers resting under her butt cheeks.

She heard him chuckle and looked up.

“What?”

“Nice pose there. Betcha you could pose for
Playboy
.”

“Who says I didn’t already? Heffy, baby, does a real good massage,” she teased.

“Not as good as I do,” Ace declared.

He poured cold lotion in a long stream from neck to butt and rubbed it in before he kneaded the knots out of her neck and shoulders. He moved down by inches using more lotion along the way. Her body was silk beneath his calloused hands without lotion. With the sweet-smelling lotion, she was warm butter dripping though his fingers. Touching her aroused him, made him want to taste all the places he massaged, and more.

“I feel like a wet noodle. Thank you, Ace.” Jasmine yawned.

Ace kissed her softly. “Good night, darlin’.”

“You sure?” she asked.

“You need sleep worse than sex. Go to sleep now and we’ll talk again tomorrow.”

“You are wonderful,” she mumbled.

Even with the massage, she didn’t sleep wel . She had nightmares about big gold mirrors with her mother’s distorted face watching every single move she made.

Instead of the alarm clock flashing in her face to wake her the next morning, it was her cell phone. She threw her legs over the edge of the bed and blindly fumbled on the nightstand.

“Please don’t be Bridget telling me she’s too sick to work,” she mumbled.

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“Hello.”

“Thank God. I was afraid you’d run off the road and was layin’ off in a bar ditch half dead. You are never ever late and I was going to get in the car and come find you if you didn’t answer the phone, and where are you?

Are you broke down in that spot where there’s no phone reception? Just tell me… why are you answering your phone if there’s no reception?”

“I overslept! I’m just fine. I’m getting around right now.”

“Thank God! Want me to start the biscuits and get the sausage frying?”

“Yes, please! I’ll be there in fifteen, I promise.” She grabbed her jeans, threw the cell phone in her purse, and missed, knocking the bag off the chair beside the bed and scattering its contents everywhere. She hoped that she’d scooped everything back into her purse as she hurried outside.

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Chapter 19

It was a Murphy’s Law Friday. If it could go wrong it did! A can of cherry pie filling slipped out of her hands and splattered all over the floor. The chicken fried steaks she’d already put into the skil et burned while she was cleaning that up and she had to start the orders all over. Her mother called six times before lunch to see what she thought of lace curtains for the apartment window; to tell her that she needed the menus a week ahead of time to put on the new website she was designing; that she’d seen a lovely pose for her granddaughter in a field of Texas bluebonnets when she was about three; that her father had ordered a new set of cookbooks especially for country cooking; and the other two times were to ask if she’d changed her mind yet about the café. She told her each of the six times that the café was not for sale.

If it couldn’t go wrong it did anyway! Her produce order was short and she’d adjust her menu or she’d never have enough potatoes to last until the next week.

Every time she had a spare second, Bridget wanted to worry and pout about Frankie not calling her. Ace didn’t come by all day long and she missed him.

By closing time, Jasmine was ready to give the apartment, the café,
and
Bridget to her mother, run away to the beach, and pick up seashells for a living. She locked up behind Bridget, plopped down in the nearest chair, OneHotCowboyWedding.indd 255

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folded her arms on the table, and laid her head on them.

Used to be that she thought her life was boring; how could it have gotten so complicated in such a short time?

She sat there five minutes before she went to the kitchen and whipped up desserts for the next day. She expected something to go wrong the whole day and was surprised when it didn’t. Thinking that she must have finally broken the bad luck omen, she removed her apron, picked up her purse, and started home. She took two steps on the porch, stumbled, and caught herself on the railing but her purse went flying stringing the contents from one end of the porch to the other.

“Dammit!” she swore. “Twice in one day is not fair!” She bent over and crammed things back inside: lipstick, a flash drive with the café business backed up on it, wallet, two- year date planner so she wouldn’t forget birthdays, keys, little red book…

“Whoa! What is this?” She picked up a worn leather red book. She’d never seen the thing before. It was barely bigger than the palm of her hand and leather bound. She turned it over to see gold initials on the outside right corner: A. R.

She sat down on the porch steps. “Ace Riley.” She wiped sweat from her forehead with the bottom of her T- shirt and turned the book over a dozen times.

She knew exactly what she was holding, but opening it would be unforgivable. It was his little black book of women’s names, addresses, and phone numbers.

Just how detailed was it, anyway? And how many names were in it? Did a woman get her name in the playboy’s book of sin the first time they went out, or did she have to put out first?

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Jealousy abounded but she couldn’t stop her thoughts.

Where did he get it? Surely he didn’t buy this thing.

Some woman gave it to him. Is her name in the book?

Shit! I sound like a wife. Maybe it was empty. Some two- bit hussy gave it to him, but he never wrote a single name in it. If she just fanned through the pages she could see if it was empty or if there were really names in it.

Holding it in her left hand and using her right thumb, she fanned.

Enough little black stars flew past her eyes to light up a galaxy or two.

Stars! He had graded each woman. How did it work?

One star for sex; one for humor; one for looks? If she only looked at the first page, she’d at least know that much. She didn’t have to look at their names or how many stars they got.

She shut her eyes tightly and opened the cover.

Lightning didn’t shoot from the sky and zap her.

Thunder didn’t roll in warning. Snow didn’t start to fall right there in Ringgold, Texas, in the middle of June.

She looked down at the first page.

From
Mallory
who
gives
Ace
the
five- star maximum
for sex. All the rest is window dressing.

She snapped the cover shut.

“What would I rate him?” she whispered.

If
five
stars
is
the
maximum, you’d give him a good
solid ten
.

She crammed the book down into her purse, picked up two pennies, a dime, and a quarter and looked around to make sure she hadn’t left anything lying on the porch. Tires crunched the gravel in the parking lot so she looked up, hoping that it wasn’t Ace. She didn’t OneHotCowboyWedding.indd 257

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want to face him until she’d decided how to deal with the book.

How did it get into her purse to begin with? Did he put it there to torment her? Or to leave a not- so- subtle reminder that he had no intentions of a long- term relationship with anyone? Did he want her to look inside it?

“Hey.” Liz crawled out of her truck. “I’m on my way to Ryan for a load of feed. I saw your truck and thought I’d stop and tell you that the O’Donnells can bring the music to your party. Granny is all excited about it.”

“Thank you and tell Granny thank you,” Jasmine said.

“You sick? Or is it just this damned heat. We need a good rain for sure to cool things off a bit. Hate to even think about August when it’s this hot in June.” Liz fished around in her purse and found a rubber band, whipped her hair up into a ponytail, and secured it, and then she sat down on the top porch step in the shade.

“No, I’m not sick but it is hot. Want to go inside?”

“No, you done shut up for the day. Why aren’t you already headed home?”

Jasmine told her about the little red book. “It’s not the book itself. I’m just wondering why it’s in my purse and if Ace put it there to tease me. If so, it’s not a funny joke.

And if he put it there.” She stopped before she blurted out that he was making a statement about her not being a real wife.

Liz fanned her face with her hand. “When Raylen and I went out on our first real date, we were eating at the Olive Garden over in Wichita Falls and the waitress said she hadn’t seen Ace in a while. Raylen and I were laughing about how he should have to put a tattoo on all the women he’d dated so other women could spot them.

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I’m not surprised that he has a book with his women in it or that they’ve got stars. What I am surprised about is that he hasn’t destroyed it. You are my friend and I wouldn’t say a thing to hurt you, but darlin’, you knew Ace better than anyone in the world. You knew what you were getting when you married him, so why does that book bother you so much? Burn the damn thing or give it to him and tell him you’ll burn him at the stake if he don’t set it on fire.”

“Did Raylen have one?”

“Yes, he did. I never saw it but one day I caught him burning something in a metal can out in the barn.

Spooked my horse, Star, and he was pitching a fit in his stall. When I asked Raylen what he was doing, setting a fire in the barn, he laughed and told me he was burning his past because he damn sure didn’t ever want me to find it. You really aren’t going to look in it?” Liz asked.

Jasmine shook her head. “I flipped through it and saw all those stars and then I read the first page. Here, you read it.” She pulled it from her purse and handed it to Liz.

“Oh, my!” Liz said when she read what Mallory wrote. “Is he that good?”

“Is Raylen?”

“Point taken.” Liz handed the book back.

Jasmine dropped it into her purse. “Now I remember!

I spilled my purse twice today. This morning and a few minutes ago. It was dark this morning and some of the stuff went under the bed. I scooped it al up with my forearm. I must’ve gotten that book in with my stuff then. But why was it under the bed?”

Liz shrugged. “Maybe he dropped it or kept it stuck OneHotCowboyWedding.indd 259

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between the mattress and the box springs like a little boy with his stolen girly magazines and it fell out when y’all were bouncing the mattress.”

Jasmine would have shot him right there if he’d been standing in front of her and she had a gun. He’d had al those women right there under them when he was making passionate love to her. He could have at least put them on the top shelf in his closet in a shoebox of rodeo memorabilia. Dammit!

She almost opened it to the
K
s to see if Jasmine King was in there, but she couldn’t. Just thinking about it put a burning blush on her face. If she only had two stars by her name after the ice cream sex, she’d be so mad she’d go up in flames and prove that internal combustion was indeed a possibility.

“I’m glad I didn’t ever find Raylen’s book. I’ve never heard of a Mal ory so you’ll never have to meet her.

She’s probably someone he met on the rodeo rounds, maybe a groupie. I read somewhere that they are always buying their cowboys presents,” Liz said.

“You are probably right.”

Liz stood up. “I’ve got to go or I won’t make it to the feed store before it closes. Just wanted to stop and offer our music for the party. Call if you need to talk.”

“I will and thanks again for everything,” Jasmine said.

“Sure thing.” Liz hurried across the lot to her truck.

Jasmine followed her and hopped up inside her truck, turned the key, and adjusted the air conditioning to the highest notch. Heat came off the highway in waves, distorting images like special effects on a movie, and it took a full minute for the air conditioner to blow anything but hot air.

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