Angie from New Orleans had a Cajun look about her with her black hair and dark eyes. She and Katy made perfect partners with their love for jazz music and Southern accents.
The coffee gurgled one last time and Gemma left her sleeping beauties to pour a cup. She carried it outside to the porch and watched the sun rise over the mountains. The crickets and tree frogs sounded the same as they did back home in Ringgold and suddenly a whole new bout of homesickness set in.
“Dammit!” she swore under her breath. That’s what she got for even thinking about home and family.
“Dammit, what?” Trace said from the shadows.
She jumped and spilled coffee all over her nightshirt. “You scared the shit out of me. Now I’ve got coffee stains all down my front.”
“Take it off,” he teased.
“I don’t think so, cowboy,” she said.
“I have a name. Why don’t you use it?” he asked tersely.
Until that moment Gemma hadn’t realized that most of the time she called him cowboy. In the same moment she realized why she did, but there was no way she was telling him.
“Who pissed in your coffee this morning?” she snapped.
He ignored her question. “As long as you call me cowboy and not Trace, I’m just competition and a romp in the sheets. I’m not a real person who might get in the way of your glory win in Vegas, right?”
She didn’t answer and he pushed on.
“So I’m your one-man groupie for the tour? Is that what I am, Miz O’Donnell? Do you always pick out one lucky cowboy to be your plaything for the circuit?”
She stood up slowly. “If that’s what you think then you haven’t learned much about me at all.”
He held up both palms. “Hey, I’m just asking. You can agree or deny, but be honest and call it what it is.”
She bowed up to him, her nose so close to his that she could see the pupils in his eyes and they were downright angry.
“Don’t you dare put me in a corner and expect me not to fight my way out. I don’t have to explain jack shit to you. But I will tell you one thing, and that is you will not get in my way when it comes to winning.”
“Anyone tell you that you are cute when you are mad?”
“Flattery means less than shit to me right now, and don’t you dare laugh at me. I’m mad and I may not be over it for days. You just made some pretty mean accusations there… cowboy.”
The beginnings of the smile faded. “The truth hurts, don’t it? See you at breakfast.” He took two steps back and the shadow of the cabin swallowed him up as he disappeared around the corner.
Her girls grumbled when they rolled out of their bunks, but when it was time to go to the dining cabin they were wide-eyed and ready for the day.
“We’ll be picking green beans this morning and right after that we’re taking a sack lunch on a long hike up toward those mountains in the distance, so you might want to braid your hair or put it in a ponytail,” she said.
It wasn’t easy keeping her voice calm when she wanted to yell and kick something, but she managed with lots of effort.
Deanna picked up Carly’s brush and began to work the tangles from her long, red, kinky curly hair.
“Ouch. You pull on purpose. You are worse than my granny,” Carly said.
“Well, sit still and stop trying to squeeze your neck down into your backbone,” Deanna said.
“Enough bickering this morning.” Gemma took the brush from her hands and deftly braided Carly’s hair while the rest of the girls looked on.
“Who are you mad at?” Deanna asked.
“None of you,” Gemma answered.
“That cowboy, Mr. Coleman, been mean to you?” Angie asked.
“No, he hasn’t. We just had a little disagreement this morning.”
“He throw his coffee on you?” Jessie asked.
“No, I spilled my coffee,” Gemma explained.
“I’ll put a Cajun curse on him if he’s not nice to you,” Angie said.
“It’s just fine. Really. Now let’s go to breakfast and then go show the boys we can work a garden better than they can,” Gemma said.
The minute she walked into the dining room she spotted Trace talking to Hill, who was on cooking duty that day. He said something to Hill who turned around and waved and motioned toward the buffet.
“Breakfast is ready. Help yourselves. Don’t be shy. I’ll be flipping pancakes in the kitchen as long as you kids want to eat them. Remember you are gathering your supper right after you get done with breakfast. I checked the vegetable garden this morning and there’s more than green beans, so your counselors will divide you up into partners. One will pick ripe tomatoes. One will pick cucumbers, but only those that are at least six inches long. Others will pick the green beans, and then there is squash and okra.”
“And we get to eat all that for supper?” Carly asked.
“Along with fried chicken and hot biscuits,” Hill said.
“We have to kill the chicken and pick the feathers too?” Damian asked.
“No, we wouldn’t expect you boys do that,” Jessie yelled across the rectangular dining cabin. “We did it last night before we went to bed so you wouldn’t get all sick and upchuck at the sight of blood.”
Damian glared at her.
Fiona threw up a hand and high-fived her partner.
Gemma smiled.
Trace looked the other way.
Gemma sat with her girls at breakfast and listened to Jessie and Fiona plot about how to get ahead of the boys even more. Little did they realize that on Friday night they’d want those same boys, even Damian, to dance with them—but then, maybe not! Jessie and Fiona were a force when they walked into a room. They might just form a big circle like Gemma and all those rodeo ladies did after the St. Paul rodeo and dance by themselves.
But who will I dance with if Trace is still acting like a jackass over me calling him cowboy instead of his name?
“Why are you having breakfast with us? You and Mister Sexy Cowboy fightin’?” Jessie whispered across the table.
“He is a sexy hunk, ain’t he?” Fiona said out of the corner of her mouth.
“Oh, yeah, if he wasn’t so old I’d kiss him,” Angie said in her deep Southern drawl.
Katy poked her on the arm. “Angie!”
“Don’t be actin’ all high and mighty. You were the one who said he was sexy last night, and besides, I know he’s too old for me. But if he had a son that looked like him then I’d kiss him for sure, chérie,” Angie said.
“My name is Angie, not Sherry.”
“I didn’t say Sherry, I said chérie. That’s what we say in New Orleans instead of darlin’,” Angie told her.
Gemma caught Trace’s movement from the corner of her eye. He’d loaded his plate with sausage and pancakes and was headed toward her, but then he made an abrupt turn to the right and went into the kitchen.
“See, he’s avoidin’ you. What happened? Yesterday he couldn’t keep his eyes off you,” Jessie whispered.
“We had an argument,” Gemma said. These were street-savvy girls who’d smell a lie a mile away and call her on it. If she wanted their trust she had to be honest.
And you have to be honest with Trace if you want his trust too.
“What about?” Jessie pried.
“I’m not a counselor all the time. I’m a hairdresser in Ringgold, Texas, and I grew up on a horse ranch, not totally unlike this one. But I also ride broncs in the rodeos and I’m on the rodeo circuit right now. So is Trace and we are in competition with each other for the right to ride in the finals in Las Vegas in December,” she explained.
Jessie nodded. “And you can’t let him get under your skin or you might let him win.”
Gemma nodded.
“But he wants to get under your skin, don’t he? He was lookin’ at you yesterday morning like he could kiss you,” Angie said.
“That’s tough,” Katy whispered.
“Well, I say forget the sorry sucker. There’s lots more cowboys in the world. Come on to Nashville if you want to find one even sexier than him,” Jessie told her.
Hill appeared at the end of the room and shook a cowbell to get everyone’s attention. “Hey, listen up. Here are the picking chores.”
Trace joined Hill at the end of a long table and looked over his boys. “For the contest, Damian, you are with Tyrelle.” And he went on to pair them into five different groups.
“Ahh, man! I don’t like the idea of a new partner,” Tyrelle said in a heavy Boston accent.
“I’ll trade with him,” Chipper, a kid from Texas, said.
“No trading,” Trace said sternly.
“But—” Damian started to argue.
A look from Trace ended the whole thing before it went one word further.
Gemma bit the inside of her lip to keep from smiling. He was teaching the guys to accept change. She thought about that, but her girls were doing so well that she didn’t want to upset the apple cart. Trace would make an excellent father someday. A pang of jealousy flared up hotter than pure acid at the idea of another woman bearing his children.
She looked at Hill with his blond hair and sparkling blue eyes. Not one hormone even wiggled. She looked back at Trace and her whole body hummed.
“Okay,” Hill said. “I’ve got the chores in this hat. Each team picks one and then they can decide how they’re going to go about gathering supper. My suggestion is that one partner picks vegetables and the other one carries the harvest bucket to fill up, but you can figure out how to get them from the garden to my kitchen. Be sure and put your slip of paper on the top of your bucket when you bring them in. Points will be taken off for unripe vegetables or for broken plants when Harper takes a walk through the garden. Be gentle, kids. That’s your supper out there.”
Carly and Deanna drew out a paper that had beans on it and Deanna looked at Gemma. “Do they grow on trees or what?”
“They grow on low vines. You pick the ones about the size of your index finger or larger,” Gemma said quietly.
“Do we measure every one of them?” Carly asked.
“No, just do a guesstimate,” Gemma answered.
Beth touched Gemma on the arm. “We’ve got tomatoes. Will you show us what to do?”
Gemma nodded.
“Okra! What is okra?” Fiona’s eyes widened.
“It’s this stuff that is wonderful fried, but I never saw it in anything but a plastic bag from the freezer at the grocery store,” Carly explained.
“I’ll show you how to harvest it,” Gemma said. She hated cutting okra. It made her hands itch and there were always bugs around the plants. Big old flat ones that hung on the leaves and wanted to crawl up her arms.
“Is it horrible? You are snarling your nose,” Fiona said.
“We’ll have a huddle-up after breakfast and I’ll explain,” Gemma said.
“Like in football?” April asked.
Gemma nodded.
All ten girls finished their food, carried their disposable plates to the trash can, and headed for the front porch. Gemma followed right behind them and stopped on the front porch of the girls’ cabin. The boys were still polishing off pancakes so she didn’t have to whisper, but she did huddle them all together just like a football team right outside the dining room door.
“Okay, here’s the deal,” she said.
“Blue forty-two?” Carly whispered.
“No, bugs eight million,” Gemma said. “Gardens have bugs. They try to keep them under control, but they are still there. If you scream and stomp around like you are afraid, those boys will be in heaven. They’ll catch them and throw them at you and they’ll act all superior and macho. So if you see a bug, kill it and be quiet about it.”
“How?” April’s eyes widened.
“There is no wrong way to kill a bug,” Gemma said.
“Stomp the sumbitch like a cockroach,” Carly said.
Gemma started to fuss at Carly for using foul language, but it was the same thing that she was thinking so she held her tongue and nodded. “And there could be a little snake or spider.”
“Wow, this is more dangerous than gang territory,” Kelsey said.
“In its own way, it is. Now are we ready to show those boys we’re not afraid of anything?” Gemma asked.
They all put their hands in a pile and Jessie yelled, “Pick beans!”
As the luck of the draw would have it, Damian and his partner, Tyrelle, had drawn the job of cutting okra and Trace set them to work on the row right beside Jessie and Fiona. Once Gemma showed them what size pods to harvest and how to use the knife to make a clean cut, she went to check on her other four teams, but the arguments over in the okra rows could be heard halfway to Ringgold, Texas.
“Boy, I’m holding a knife. You don’t want to be givin’ me no smack,” Fiona told Damian.
“You think I ain’t got a knife too?” Tyrelle asked. “Oh, oh! There’s a bug. Jessie, I swear it’s big as a dollar bill. You girls better run. It’s goin’ to jump right down your shirt.”
“Where?” Jessie asked.
“Right here.” Damian held up the leaf.
Jessie took a step over to his row, flipped the bug off, and ground it into the dust. “There, boys. Just call me if you see another one.”
“She’s tough as my momma,” Tyrelle said.
Jessie pointed a long slender finger at him. “And don’t you forget it.”
Gemma was proud of her girls. Jessie might be the head she-coon in the mix, but they were standing their own ground. She’d even bet that after a couple of lessons Jessie and Fiona both would be able to manhandle a bronc.
Then the air split wide open when Chantelle set up a screaming howl over near the squash plants. “It’s a rat!”
Gemma’s blood ran cold. She hated spiders and bugs, but she really hated rats and mice. Damian took off in a dead run and grabbed up the varmint by the tail, holding it out at arm’s length.
“Funniest rat I ever saw. It’s blind.” He cocked his head to one side and his straight black hair fell over his eyes. “Look, Tyrelle. I ain’t never seen no blind rat.”
“It’s a mole,” Trace said from the end of the garden. “Bring it on down here and we’ll take care of it. They can damage the roots of the garden plants.”
Damian nodded. “I didn’t think it was no rat. You girls need saving again just call me and Tyrelle. We ain’t afraid of no rats. Heck, I’ve seen bigger ones than that on my way to school.”
“Thank you.” Chantelle shivered. “I hate rats.”
Damian puffed out his chest. “Any time.”
Score one for the girls and one for the boys, Gemma thought. She looked up and caught Trace looking her way, but he deftly slid his gaze toward the boys and walked away.
She’d looked forward to the hike toward the mountains ever since they’d seen the schedule for the week. But in her imagination she and Trace would bring up the rear, letting the twenty kids run on ahead to discover all kinds of nature items, some for the girls to take back to put in their treasure boxes. They’d have a whole afternoon together, but it didn’t work that way. Trace made sure he took the lead in the hike, saying that he was the tracker and he’d scare away the snakes and other varmints that might harm the hikers. And she brought up the rear all alone.
Less than half an hour into the hike the girls and boys were mixed up together like a passel of newborn puppies. They didn’t need much supervision and the sheer noise of their laughing, bantering, and stomping around would put any kind of wild animal on the run so she had ple
nty of time to mull over all that had happened since she pulled into the Cody rodeo two weeks before.
Looking back, it had been a hormonal roller-coaster ride from the time Trace reached out a hand to help her. From there it was all downhill with one coincidence after another throwing them together. She’d been around sexy cowboys her whole life, so why did this one make her juices boil? Maybe it wasn’t all coincidence but fate tossing them together time after time. And Liz said that you couldn’t fight fate.
Well, Liz was wrong just like she was on the bit about her having a cowboy and a baby of her own by the end of the year. It wasn’t happening. She’d proven that she could fight with fate that morning when she spilled coffee on her favorite nightshirt. She’d damn sure fought with Trace, hadn’t she? And he was fate spelled with all capital letters.
She kicked a pinecone out of the way and reached down to pick it up. A white feather was stuck in the scales of the cones. She turned it over several times and looked around the area for the tree it might have fallen from, but the only pine trees were far out in the distance.
“Wonder if one of the guys want it for their dream catcher?” she whispered.
“Did you say something?” Carly turned around and asked.
“I was just talking to myself. Did you find something to go on your box?”
Carly shook her head. “I’m still looking. Did you? I saw you pick something up.”
“I found something,” Jessie yelled and held up a long slender feather. It glistened in the sunlight. “What’s it from?”
“Looks like alien’s hair to me,” Tyrelle teased.
Damian crossed his arms over his chest. “It’s a feather out of an Indian’s headdress.”
Trace turned and walked back a few feet to where the kids had all gathered around Jessie. “It’s a hawk’s feather. It’ll look very nice on whatever your craft project is. Good eyes, Jessie.”
At that point, Gemma thought he might stroll on back to where she was, but he didn’t. He completely ignored her. If he wanted to play that way then she could oblige him. And the truth of the matter, hurt or not, was that she knew why she called him cowboy and it didn’t have a damn thing to do with his name. It was because she really wanted him to be the cowboy and if she kept calling him that maybe Liz would read the cards again and tell her that there was a dark-haired cowboy in her future.
Just a Cowboy and His Baby Page 14