Chapter 2
Truck engines rumbled outside Gemma’s trailer window, and the weatherman on her radio alarm sounded all excited about the heat wave. “It’s going to be sunny and hot today in Montana, so load up the cooler with water bottles and don’t forget that sunblock.”
She slapped her palm on the snooze button and crammed a pillow over her eyes, muting the sound of his voice.
“I don’t care if it’s sunny and hot,” she mumbled to herself. “What do you expect in July? Snow or sleet? There are still miles and miles of road between me and the next rodeo, so it doesn’t matter jack squat to me unless it decides to rain in St. Paul. I hate to ride a bronc in the rain. Saddle gets all slippery.”
The alarm was set to go off every minute after she hit snooze, and the weatherman was still going on about the heat when it sounded again. “I’m telling you, folks, this is the hottest summer in years. We are breaking records here in the northern states. It’s normal to be this hot in Texas in the first week of July, but not in our part of the world. No rain in sight for the next week.”
She threw her legs over the side of the bed. Another day of white lines on the highway and telephone poles lay ahead. She hadn’t planned on the sheer boredom of the long, long rides. She listened to the radio, played CDs, talked to herself, called her family members, but it was still mile after mile from one rodeo to the next. Add that to constantly analyzing what she’d done wrong on the last ride and how to correct it on the next, and the days dragged on and on like a turtle race.
She rolled the kinks out of her neck and stood up. The trailer looked even smaller that day than it did when she left Ringgold the week before. She wished she’d brought the bigger one. But one person didn’t need a trailer big enough to sleep four.
“I’m an idiot. I could have a bed, a table, and even more storage room if I’d brought the big one,” she said to herself.
In her tiny new world, she was confined to living quarters less than half the size of her bedroom at home. The kitchen and closet that held her clothes and gear covered one side of the trailer. She had a two-burner cooktop, a dorm-sized refrigerator with a freezer packed full of steaks, a microwave, and a tiny sink that served as a place to wash dishes as well as brush her teeth.
At one time a set of bunk beds had occupied part of the space on that wall, but Dewar and Rye, her two older brothers, had removed them and built the closet with a special compartment to house her saddle. A tiny bathroom with a shower and toilet, only to be used when she couldn’t find a truck stop or a campground offering that option, and a booth-type table that dropped down to make a bed took up the other side. Dewar had taken the table out and had a special mattress made to fit on the platform he and Rye had built for the space, but it was a far cry from her king-sized bed where she could snuggle with six pillows if she wanted.
She glared at the clock on the microwave. It couldn’t be six o’clock already. She’d only shut her eyes a minute ago. Something had to be wrong with the clock. Maybe the batteries were old and didn’t work right.
“Coffee! I need caffeine!” She filled a cup with water and stuck it in the microwave for instant coffee. While she waited, she popped the tab off a can of Coke and guzzled down a third of it before she brushed her teeth. When the microwave timer dinged, she removed the cup, stirred in coffee granules, and took a sip.
The KOA campground in Three Forks, Montana, had shower facilities so she grabbed her shower bag from the closet and stuffed in a pair of cutoff jeans and a bright-pink tank top. Then she took a couple more gulps of coffee and slung open the trailer door.
Cool morning air greeted her. It wasn’t all that hot. That crazy weatherman should step out of the house in Texas in July. Then he’d know what real heat was. When she had left Ringgold, the lizards and scorpions were having races every time the back door opened to see who could get into the air-conditioned house before Dewar and Gemma slammed it shut. She smiled at that idea.
The campground was one of those areas that looked like a picture on a postcard, and she was glad she’d finally given in to exhaustion and stopped for the night. She’d been so hyped up when she left Cody that she planned to drive all the way to St. Paul on the jacked-up adrenaline surge from winning the competition. At midnight she’d begun to flag and stopped for a cup of coffee and a fried apple pie at McDonald’s. At one thirty she saw a billboard advertising a campground only a mile and a half off Interstate 90. Next exit, it said, so she took it and followed the signs. It had been dark when she checked in at 2:00 a.m. She’d been too tired to even care what the place looked like and was asleep five seconds after her head hit the pillow.
She took a minute to enjoy the view of the Bridger Mountains off in the distance and sat down at the picnic table right outside her door. Big puffy clouds looked like fluffy icing on the top of cupcakes. The sky was that gorgeous shade of blue that only came in the springtime in Texas. In the summer, it was washed out by the heat, and days would go by when there was never a cloud in sight.
The aroma of bacon and real coffee wafted out from the kitchen window of the camper next to hers and her stomach grumbled. She promised herself a bacon, egg, and cheese McGriddle from the next McDonald’s out on Interstate 90. But for now, she needed to wash the rodeo dust off herself before she started driving again. She set off across the green grass toward the building housing the bathrooms and showers. A squirrel barked at her from the top of a tree, and a hawk swooped down to check out the area for his breakfast.
The bathroom was clean, and the stalls were private. There was plenty of hot water, and it felt so good that she let it beat down on her sore back muscles for five minutes. Eight seconds wasn’t so long when she was out exercising horses at her folks’ ranch in Ringgold, Texas. It wasn’t very long at all when she was talking to her sister, Colleen, on the telephone or playing with her niece, Rachel. But slap her butt on the back of a bucking bronc, and those eight seconds were equivalent to working a whole week with no rest. Everything ached and the next day—the day before Independence Day—she would do it all over again. She would be looking down from the side of a chute into the rolling eyes of a bronc—again. And then five days after that, she’d be repeating the same process in Colorado Springs.
“I wonder if Dewar could rig up a Jacuzzi in my trailer. I could throw a pillow and a blanket in the tub and use it for a bed after I soaked in it after a rough ride,” she muttered.
She turned the water off and ran her hands through her thick hair. When she had squeezed as much moisture out of it as possible, she wrapped one towel around her head and another one around her body. She dressed in the cutoff shorts and tank top she had brought with her and slipped her rubber flip-flops on her feet. She caught her reflection in a floor-length mirror hanging on the back of the bathroom door, parted her hair with her fingers, and checked the roots.
“Still good,” she mumbled.
Her hair was dark by nature, but she was a hairdresser, and she wanted something different for the rodeo tour. The day before she left Ringgold, she had dyed her hair a gorgeous light auburn. It went with her complexion and gave her even more of a kick-ass attitude than she’d had before—if that was possible.
She was smearing sunblock on her nose and face when she felt a movement against her leg. A burst of pure adrenaline sent her into a jump that landed her in a squat on the vanity with one foot on each side of the sink. She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror, and she looked like a big-eyed owl perching on a tree limb, but she didn’t care. Public bathrooms bred spiders and an occasional mouse, and she hated both of them.
They were sneaky creatures, always appearing when they were least expected, and they weren’t afraid of the devil. She didn’t care what her daddy, Cash O’Donnell, said about them being more afraid of her than she was of them. Spiders she could abide at the distance of ten feet if they weren’t wolf spiders. Those suckers had been injected with kangaroo DNA back on the fifth day of creation. They could jump more than ten feet and they always jumped toward her, never away from her, which proved her dad was dead wrong about their fear of human beings.
When she looked down from her perch, she didn’t see a spider or a mouse but a small dog looking up at her with dark eyes. The little critter seemed to be a slick-haired red Chihuahua with all the markings of pedigree. She had a sharp nose and big, soulful dark eyes. Surely someone had lost the friendly little thing and would come looking for her. It wagged its tail as if to say that it was sorry that it had scared her. “Bet you always wondered if humans could fly, didn’t you?” She giggled nervously as she eased down off the vanity. Her flip-flops slapped back down on the tile, but the little dog didn’t move.
She squatted down and reached out to touch the tiny critter and it didn’t growl or snap. The tag on the brown leather collar made introductions.
“Hello, Sugar, where did you come from? Do you live here on the campgrounds?” she asked.
The dog’s tail flipped back and forth even harder as she licked Gemma’s palm. She scratched its ears a few seconds before straightening up and heading for the door.
Sugar followed her—tail still a blur of movement.
“Did someone dump you?” Gemma asked.
“Sugar,” a man’s deep voice whispered outside the door. “Are you in there?”
Gemma stopped and the dog sat down at her feet. Gemma had heard that drawl before. Her imagination was playing tricks on her. That could not be Trace Coleman’s voice, could it?
“Sugar,” he whispered again.
Gemma rounded the privacy wall, flip-flops smacking on the already hot concrete with the dog right along beside her. The owner was searching behind a short hedge with his back to Gemma. He wore red-and-green-plaid cotton pajama bottoms and a red tank top that hugged his muscular frame. His flip-flops were green, and his dark hair hadn’t been brushed.
“You lookin’ for a dog?” she asked.
Trace Coleman turned and flashed a brilliant smile. “Good morning, Gemma. Yes, I am looking for a pesky little Chihuahua.”
Sugar meandered out of the bathroom and sat down beside Gemma’s feet.
“I’ll be damned,” Trace said.
“This is your dog? I would have figured you to have a pit bull or maybe a Doberman,” Gemma said.
“No, just that sassy little Chihuahua,” he said. “She usually doesn’t take to strangers.”
“We aren’t strangers. We shared a bathroom.” Gemma was amazed that she could say two coherent words.
Trace was a couple of inches over six feet tall. He weighed two hundred and ten pounds, and it was all muscle with not an ounce of spare fat on his body. His face was a study of angles covered with a full day’s dark scruff. Jet-black eyelashes and equally dark brows framed brown eyes that looked as if they could see to the bottom of her soul. That kind of cowboy surely did not have a Chihuahua named Sugar for a dog.
He reached down and scooped Sugar up into his arms. “You going all the way into St. Paul tonight?”
Gemma nodded. “I am. Don’t care if it’s midnight when I get there. I can sleep as late as I want in the morning and then check out the grounds. If I have to drive until noon tomorrow, it’s not the same. I like to wake up on the grounds on the day of the rodeo.”
She would never admit that she was as superstitious as a football coach; that she always ate a hamburger from the rodeo grounds on the day before she rode that night; that she touched her lucky horseshoe hat pin just before she nodded for the gate to be opened; and that she would never think of wearing anything but her hot-pink cowgirl boots. Or that the times when she hadn’t come out of the rodeo with the purse had been when she’d gotten there late and tired.
“Me too.” He nodded. “Had breakfast?”
“I’ll stop at a McDonald’s and grab something.” She turned and started walking toward the trailer.
“I made pancakes and bacon. I haven’t eaten yet because Sugar decided to slip out the door when I opened it to look at the mountains. We could heat up the pancakes in the microwave. It’s the least I can do since you saved me from having to go into the ladies’ room to rescue my dog.”
She hesitated.
“Oh, come on! I’m not going to poison you so I’ll win at St. Paul. I can do that without any help,” he said.
She stopped. “Don’t kid yourself, cowboy.”
Trace’s face lit up in another sexy-as-hell smile. “I’ll take that as a yes. Sugar, we’ve got company for breakfast. It’s the first trailer you see over there. I guess that’d be yours beside me? I pulled in right after you did last night. Your lights were still on, but they went out before I could walk Sugar and grab a late-night beer.”
When they reached the trailer he opened the door for her and stood to one side. “It’s not much, but it’s home for the next few months.”
“It’s bigger than mine.” Gemma glanced down at his feet and his big hands.
Dear Lord, what am I doing? That old wives’ tale isn’t true, and what’s wrong with me? I say the word bigger , and my mind goes to his body, not this trailer. I’ve got to get my mind out of the gutter. But he does have some big hands and some big feet, so I wonder. Stop it, Gemma! Right now!
The aroma of fresh-brewed coffee and bacon filled the whole trailer. Gemma dropped her bag inside the door and scanned the place. She was facing a booth-type table on a pedestal that could be lowered like hers used to back before she took it out and replaced it with a platform bed. At the other end of his trailer, she could see a bed with tangled covers.
She couldn’t take her eyes off those gold-colored sheets. He’d look like a hero on the cover of a romance book with his brown eyes and hair against all that gold. She imagined him with the sheet covering the bare essentials and a look in his eyes that invited her to join him. Would he be as good a lover as he was a bronc rider? The past had taught her that cowboys were sometimes better at riding bulls or broncs than they were at having sex. But there was something in the picture in her mind that said Trace Coleman would set those sheets on fire.
Trace made sure the door was shut tightly before he set Sugar on the floor. The dog raced back to the bed, hopped up on a stool at the end, meandered across the bed like it was her personal domain, and finally snuggled down on a pillow.
“Have a seat. Breakfast will be served as soon as I wash my hands,” he said.
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 Trace’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 poured coffee and reheated a stack of pancakes and bacon in the microwave. “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.”
The microwave dinged, and he removed the plate. He set it before Gemma and then added a glass of orange juice and a cup of coffee.
“You sure don’t look like a Chihuahua man,” she said.
“You want to know the story about how I bought a Chihuahua?” He chuckled in a sexy southern drawl that made little goose bumps rise up on her arms.
“I would love to hear that story.” She poured warmed syrup on the pancakes. “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,” Gemma said between bites. “I’ve heard her mention Goodnight. She lives between Claude and Amarillo. She and her husband are part of a carnival that winters there.”
“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 carried his plate to the table and sat down at the far end away from Gemma. “The woman I was dating was tall, blond, pretty. And sometime in the fall, must’ve been about the middle of October, we started talking about taking a Christmas trip together.”
“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 a few inches between his finger and thumb. “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 the still hot coffee. “And?”
“Ava 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. She said she thought I was joking to throw her off base with the engagement ring.”
“Wow!” Gemma gasped.
“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,” Trace said with a shrug.
“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 sugarplums 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.”
“The only time I’ve heard that name ‘Ziva’ is on NCIS ,” Gemma said.
“Yep, and that’s where Sugar got her name. Sugar might be small, but she’s a force just like Ziva,” Trace said.
“And the woman?” Gemma asked.
“She’s engaged to a CEO of a 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, mad as the old proverbial wet hen 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 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 probably 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. You might want to hold on to 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 for breakfast. We’ll have to do it again.”
***
Gemma was barely back out on I-90 when her cell phone rang. She saw the call was from Liz and hit the speaker button before she even answered her sister-in-law’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, 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 became her sister-in-law 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 in the morning 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. I drove until two this morning, so don’t be giving me any sass at this time of day,” Gemma scolded.
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 Christmas 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?” Liz asked. “I hear he’s giving you a run for your money.”
“He’s got dark hair, dark eyes and, of all things, a 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.”
“I did not 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 his pretty eyes and the dog,” Liz asked.
By the time Gemma had finished the story of perching on the vanity like a hoot 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 has 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 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 Christmas when I’m sixty-five years old?”
“The cards said that you’d have a cowboy and a baby by this Christmas, not just a Christmas but this very 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 busy even to have sex,” Gemma countered.
“Never say never. If just him 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 goodbye. 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. 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 had 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 fussing 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 the reading about when and where was foggy. 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.
Is Trace Coleman an old soul, or is he just a cowboy living in the modern day? Gemma wondered and slapped the steering wheel. She didn’t want to think about Trace.
“Liz lost her touch when she married Raylen,” Gemma declared.
When she talked to her again, she intended to tell her sister-in-law that marriage had ended her fortune-telling. Liz and her tarot cards were wrong if they showed that Dewar had lived in another life or that Gemma would 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 Liz told my fortune, and I bet the cards saw her instead of me.”
Jasmine had run the Chicken Fried Café in Ringgold up until the year before when she and Ace got married. And last month just before Gemma leased her beauty shop to Noreen and went on the rodeo rounds, Jasmine and Ace had announced that there was a baby on the way.
“That’s what happened! The cards got all confused.” Gemma swore. “She was reading Jasmine’s future, not mine. Jasmine got the blond-haired cowboy and now she’s getting the baby for Christmas. If that ain’t the luck! Where’s my Irish good luck when I need it?”