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 back seat 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 Holly, and Gemma did the burping. In thirty minutes, the baby 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 really badly. When she could get all that out of her mind, she’d be fine.
“Well, crap!” she said.
“What?” the cowboy at the top of the chute asked.
“My lucky horseshoe and my shamrocks are headed toward Texas,” she groaned.
The cowboy frowned.
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“I think I would, but we can’t go runnin’ after them,” he said. “You ready?”
She measured the reins 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, but she blocked it all out. 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 for 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 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 very 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,” Trace assured her.
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 heartbeat. 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’s 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.
“Me too.” She gasped.
This time was different from all the last times they had had sex. 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.
“We’ve made it a whole week in a trailer with a baby. Honey, we’re ready to take on the world,” he said.
Or Goodnight, Texas , she thought.