Chapter 1

by Unknown

  “Cole.”

  “Cole?” Ace asked.

  Jasmine told him about the day and how bad she wanted to poison his steak.

  Ace sat down on the sofa and threw an arm around Jasmine. Sweat, remnants of the morning shaving lotion, and soap blended together into a heady combination.

  The dirty bad boy didn’t usually appeal to her, but it sure did at that moment. She felt safe and warm, and something else akin to steamy hot.

  “That sumbitch. He had no right to come to your place of business,” Ace growled.

  “I took care of it. He’s gone. He said he was going to the lawyers or the courthouse to see the license because he didn’t trust y’all. I thought about bleaching down the chair where he sat and throwing the plate he used in the garbage,” Jasmine told him.

  Ace fetched his cell phone from the carrier on his belt loop and punched a few buttons. “Understand you’ve been harassing my wife, now.”

  A second of silence then he said, “I don’t give a damn.” Another few seconds of silence.

  “That remains to be seen. I know Jasmine and she is…” he caught himself before he said, “as good as her word.”

  “She’s what?” Cole’s raised voice came through the phone loud and clear.

  “She loves me.” Ace chuckled. “Why else would a woman marry a straggly old cowboy like me two times?” He snapped the phone shut and looked at Jasmine.

  “He told us to go to hell.”

  “No, thank you. I’m not spending eternity with him anywhere around me.”

  Ace kissed her on the cheek. “He won’t be back.

  Wouldn’t have surfaced this time if Gramps hadn’t put that in his will. And Dexter says supper is on the table at seven thirty so we’d better get a move on it. I’m going to take a quick shower. I smell like sweat and dirt,” Ace said.

  “Supper?” Jasmine asked.

  “Summer schedule is breakfast in the bunkhouse, sandwiches out in the field at noon that we take with us from this house, and supper back in the bunkhouse.

  Dexter stops a couple of hours before we do and gets it ready,” Ace explained. “It’ll be nice to have a woman at the table.”

  Chapter 8

  The rich cooking smells permeated out from the bunkhouse and across the yard between it and the main house. The three younger Riley brothers walked ahead of Ace and Jasmine, the scent of their shaving lotion mixing with the aroma of baked bread and something with cinnamon coming from the bunkhouse kitchen.

  Ace had been quiet since the phone call with Cole.

  Jasmine had given him his space like she’d learned to do back at the first of their friendship. In those days, he would pull up a chair in the kitchen and she’d slap a burger on the grill. In a while he’d start to talk and they’d hash out whatever was on his mind, but he had to have time to mull it over.

  The wind whipped her hair into her face, and she tucked it back behind her ears several times before they reached the porch. The guys had already gone inside and she could hear male voices talking and laughing. Just a hint of the cool air that had escaped when they opened the door still lingered on the porch, but the hot summer night was replacing it rapidly.

  She’d just put her foot on the bottom step when her ring tone said that her mother was calling. Hoping that she could get away quickly, she kept one foot on the grass and the other on the step.

  “Hello, Momma,” she said.

  “Where are you? I hear cows and men’s voices,” Kelly said.

  “Ace and I are about to walk into the bunkhouse.

  Dexter makes supper every night and it’s ready.” She hoped her mother would get off the phone.

  “Dexter?” Kelly asked.

  Jasmine’s stomach growled. “Ace has four full- time hired hands. Sam has been here for forty years, Dexter and Buddy for about twenty years, and Tyson just got hired last year. Ace’s brothers also work for him in the summer. His younger three brothers are working here this summer. Well, at least two of them are here for the whole summer. Dalton and Blake will be here until fall. Creed is only here for a week or so. I’m hungry, Momma, and they’re waiting for me.”

  “They won’t start without you. Younger three? How many are there?”

  “Six. Three here and with Ace that makes four, plus four full- time guys that live in the bunkhouse. I’m living in a testosterone- filled world of cowboys, spurs, boots, and bullshit,” Jasmine said.

  “That’s no way for a new bride to talk in front of her husband and al his hands. God Almighty, Jasmine.” Exasperation came through the phone.

  Jasmine could see her mother’s expression without shutting her eyes. The only time that she got God Almighty- ed was when she’d done something like watering down John Richland’s prime whiskey, or when she and Eddie Jay broke up the year before. Those two times got her a God Almighty in bright flashing neon colors. It floated in the air for a full five minutes after her mother raised her voice and put it out there. Evidently mentioning testosterone and bullshit was a sin as big as breaking up with a cheating son- of- a- bitch or watering down high- dollar whiskey. Her mother should have given her a book when she stepped over into puberty entitled GodAlmightySins.

  But Jasmine would bet her café that that book of etiquette was stored right next to the one that Ace talked about being in the nightstand drawer in Vegas concern-ing the rules of the town. Both were secret books and could never be found in common bookstores.

  “Well, aren’t you going to say a word?” Kelly asked.

  “I was thinking about a couple of books,” Jasmine said.

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! I swear, you are more like your father every day of your life.”

  Kelly King only hollered for help from Jesus and his parents when God Almighty had failed. They were held in reserve for really tough times. And it took a long time to work her mother through those times.

  Jasmine sat down on the step.

  Ace sat down beside her.

  “Well!” Kelly said.

  “Sorry, Momma. Have you seen Marcella yet?” Jasmine changed the subject. Get her mother onto the wedding plans and everything would be fine.

  “Of course I have. I called her last night and she’s been here since morning. We’ve been sitting at the kitchen table making plans all day. You should be here,” Kelly said.

  No, I definitely should not be there. We would yankeach other’s hair out if I was there because my idea of areal wedding is what Liz and Raylen did last Christmas.

  Propose, go stand before the judge the same morning,and be married by noon. What Ace and I did in LasVegas was too big to suit me.

  “Are you going to say a word?” Kelly asked.

  “Momma, I’m sure you and Marcella will do a wonderful job. Tell me what you decided today,” Jasmine said.

  “This morning we decided on invitations. I need your fiancé’s, and that’s what he’s going to be to me until you marry him in a real church in Texas… I need his list by the end of the week. I have the King and the Dale lists already done. We have two invitations picked out. I’ll send them to you over the Internet and you can make the final decision. One is ecru with apricot ribbons and pearls; the other is white with embossed doves on the front.”

  “Which one do you like?” Jasmine stopped at the porch of the bunkhouse, and Ace motioned for the guys to go on inside.

  “The white one. It’s more formal.”

  “Then that’s the one I want. You aren’t planning on apricot dresses, are you?”

  “What’s wrong with apricot? It’s a summer wedding after all,” Kelly said.

  “I was thinking about red with multi- colored bouquets,” Jasmine said.

  “Dear God!”

  That wasn’t quite as bad as the God Almighty, but it was only a notch down the ladder. Jasmine smiled up at Ace.

  He pointed at her hip where the John Deere tat was located.

  She smiled at him. “I guess that means green is out of the question. Then how about a very
formal wedding with metal colors? Pewter, gold, silver, bronze, and calla lily bouquets.”

  Silence.

  Her stomach growled again. She was going to starve to death sitting on the front porch of the bunkhouse.

  “If you don’t make up your mind I’m going to starve to death with food not fifty feet from me. If that happens you can bury me in the wedding dress and all the bridesmaids can wear their apricot dresses and stand behind the casket for a picture to go above the mantel.

  Do you want Ace to weep into a hanky or sit on the end of the casket?”

  “God Almighty! Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! That is a horrible thing to say to your mother. I was thinking that I like the idea of the metal colors. I’m picturing it in my mind, but Marcella and I’ll have to go back to the drawing board for the invitations. Something in a very formal off- white with gold lettering. Oh, yes, I can see it all now. Go eat your supper, and don’t you ever say that about a casket to me again! Marcella is still here and we’ve got the books out on the table. I expect that list by Friday. We have to put a rush order on them as it is in order to get them out two full weeks before the wedding.”

  “I trust you and Marcel a to figure it al out. How many bridesmaids do I need?”

  “Pearl will be the maid of honor, so we’ll need at least five more since your groom has six brothers. If he has some very close friends, don’t be stingy. I don’t care if you have a dozen of each. It will make a lovely picture to go above the mantel. Not a word. Not a single word, Jasmine Marie, and I mean it. Let me know dress and shoe sizes by Friday too.”

  “I promise I will. Good- bye, Momma.”

  Ace chuckled. “That was slick.”

  “What?” Jasmine giggled.

  “You know very well. That casket thing was ingenious.”

  “You know me much too well, my friend. Now that I gave Momma something elegant to work with, she’ll be off and running and I won’t hear from her for days. But…”

  “That but is about the dress, right?”

  She nodded. “Pearl is too big to traipse around looking for a dress. Liz and Raylen are at a horse thing in Dal as this weekend. Lucy can’t leave the motel on Saturday afternoon. Please, Ace!”

  “Sure. We’ll all knock off early. Dalton and Blake wil like that so they can have more time to get al spruced up to go tomcattin’.” Ace owed her far more than an afternoon looking at wedding dresses. Hell, she’d just saved the ranch.

  Blake poked his head out the door. “Dexter says he’s puttin’ it on the table and cold gravy ain’t worth eatin’.” Jasmine slipped her phone into her hip pocket. “What was Cole saying on the phone?”

  “That you wouldn’t even stay around the full year and he’d made you a proposition. Half the money from the sale to leave me.”

  “Why should I give that son- of- a- bitch anything? I can get half by leaving you anytime I want. We don’t have a prenup, darlin’.” She looped her arm through his.

  “Lead the way, Ace.”

  “I’m dreading meeting your momma,” Ace groaned.

  “Why?” she asked.

  “If she can control you, she’s Superman’s daughter.” Jasmine was smiling when she stepped inside with him.

  The bunkhouse was unlike anything she’d ever seen.

  The living room and kitchen were one big oblong room with two closed doors on each side. The big room had a long table at one end with benches on the sides and a heavy chair at each end. Cabinets made an L with an enormous refrigerator on the short end of the L and the stove and sink in the longer leg. A couple of comfortable sofas faced a fireplace that was stone cold in the middle of a Texas summer. Everything was in pristine condition, down to the rag rugs in front of the sofa and the fireplace.

  “Welcome to supper, Miz Jasmine. We hope to see you out here every night,” Dexter said.

  Size- wise, he looked more like a bouncer than a cowboy. His huge head was shaved bald, with the back laying in folds on his enormous neck. Biceps as big as Ace’s waist and a chest about an acre wide looked out of place in a snap- front Western shirt. His jeans bunched up over the tops of buff- colored cowboy boots with sharp toes. Maybe a bouncer in a honky tonk instead of a big city club.

  “Thank you. It sure smells good. I’m not used to sitting up to a table with food that I didn’t cook,” she said.

  Dexter motioned for her to sit at the end of one of the benches. “This’ll be your place. When the boss died, we give Ace his place at the head of the table. Sam sits at the other end because he’s been here more than forty years now. Me and Buddy and Tyson take the other side and the boys can line up beside you. Now Sam, it’s your turn for grace.”

  Sam thanked God in his deep Texas drawl for a new woman on the Double Deuce and for the food they were about to eat.

  Jasmine was thinking about her mother’s God Almighty and whether He’d accept the farce wife sitting at the table with all the men of the Double Deuce and didn’t hear Sam say, “Amen.”

  Ace touched her arm and she raised her head to see the men all looking at her.

  “Sorry,” she mumbled.

  They continued to look at her as if waiting for her to deliver a speech or maybe sing a song. Wel , they were going to have a long wait for either. Jasmine King, now Riley, could not sing, and she wasn’t too fond of speeches either.

  “You start the food around,” Ace whispered out the side of his mouth.

  “I see. I’m used to being in the kitchen, not in the dining room. I’ll know next time.” She picked up the platter of meatloaf, put a chunk on her plate, and handed it to Ace. Conversations began as the food went from her fingers to Ace’s, brushing in the transfer and sending more of those spicy shivers down her back every time.

  “You evvvver worrrk on a rrranch?” Buddy stuttered.

  He was as tall and lanky as Sam, but where Sam’s thick hair was silver and curled up on his shirt collar, Buddy’s was dark brown and clipped close to his head.

  His arms filled out his shirtsleeves, but the waist bunched up in pleats where he’d tucked it inside his jeans.

  “No, but my best friend, Pearl, who married Wil Marshall last year, lived on a ranch. So I spent lots of weekends on one,” Jasmine answered.

  “D- d- d- rive a trrractor any?” Buddy asked.

  “Oh, yeah,” Jasmine answered with a giggle.

  Tyson looked up from across the table. He was the youngest of the hired hands. Thirty years old and had spent twelve years in the Army— three tours of Iraq. His carrot red hair was still worn in a military cut, and his shoulders were still squared off in military posture. His eyes reminded her of a two- way glass in a police station.

  He could see out but no one could see inside. She wondered what secrets were back there and if that haunted look would ever be released.

  Ace chuckled. “She and Pearl sampled John

  Richland’s fancy whiskey and refilled the bottle with water. When he found it, she and Pearl got to plow a whole week in open cab tractors.”

  Tyson nodded, but he didn’t smile. “Been on one since then?”

  “Oh, yeah. Pearl lets me drive Momma Tractor sometimes just so I don’t forget how,” Jasmine said.

  “What’s a M- m- momma trrractor?” Buddy asked.

  Jasmine looked across the table at Buddy and wondered if he’d stuttered all his life or if something had set it off at a particular stage somewhere along the way.

  “She and Wil bought three tractors one day and she calls them the Poppa Tractor, the Momma Tractor, and the Baby Tractor. She’s the only one that gets to drive the last one. Selfish that way, she is.”

  Dessert was an apple cinnamon cake that did bring the hint of a smile to Tyson’s face and lit Buddy’s up like a neon sign.

  “I thought I smelled cinnamon floating out across the yard,” Jasmine said when Dexter set the Bundt cake in front of her and handed her the knife to cut it. “It looks scrumptious.”

  Tyson held his plate across the table. “I want a fa
t piece.”

  “You’ll learrrrrn,” Buddy stammered. “He llllikes cinammmmon.”

  “Do you?” Jasmine asked.

  Buddy nodded and held out his plate. She cut a fat piece out for him and looked at Sam. “How big?”

  “One of the slim pieces. I like it but I like meatloaf better, and I’m pretty well stuffed.”

  Dexter brought a full coffee pot and cups to the table, and Creed passed them around. When it reached Jasmine and she filled her cup, the pot was nearly empty.

  “This is wonderful,” she said when she finally tasted the cake.

  “Fresh apples,” Dexter said. “They had some good Granny Smiths at the grocery store this week. Bought enough for a cake tonight and a couple of pies later in the week.”

  “Sounds great to me. I’d like your recipe for this too, please.”

  Dexter nodded.

  Tyson, Creed, and Blake shared the last two inches of the cake and Jasmine picked up the plate to carry to the cabinet. She didn’t mind cleanup after a good meal like that. She’d wash and she’d make Ace do the drying and putting away.

  Dexter took the plate from her and shook his head.

  “Oh, no! It’s Blake and Tyson who does the clean up tonight. Tomorrow it’ll be me and Sam. Then Buddy and Dalton on Thursday. You and Ace get the chore on Friday night. Saturday and Sunday we don’t have supper out here. I’ll write off the recipes for you.”

  “Mind if I use them at the café?”

  Dexter smiled. “I’d be right honored. You two run on now. Honeymoon ain’t much as it is.”

  Jasmine was propped up on pillows watching the cooking channel when Ace waltzed into the room wearing nothing but a towel around his waist. She raised an eyebrow, but it did absolutely nothing for her racing pulse.

  Dammit! She’d gone a year without sex so why were those pheromone things flooding her body now? And why in the hel did they decide to multiply and at ack with Ace? He was so sexy standing there with water droplets still clinging to his broad back and his curls kinked up to his scalp. She needed to fan her face at the naughty thoughts racing through her mind, but she couldn’t figure out a way to do it without him realizing just how hot he made her.