When they finished she handed off the mandolin to Raylen who laid his fiddle to one side and fell in behind the rest of the musicians as they played “Red River Valley.” Gemma handed the Dobro to Colleen and sat down on the quilt. Rachel backed up and sat down in her lap. She hugged the little dark-haired girl, loving the smell of baby shampoo and sweaty kid all mixed up together.
“Hey, everyone, we’re here. Don’t start gossip without me.” Pearl waved from the truck. She and Wil each carried a wiggling toddler son with dark hair and more energy than a class-five tornado. They set them down on the edge of the quilt and both boys made a beeline for Rachel, grabbed her by the hands, and pulled.
She left Gemma’s lap and led them to Austin.
“Star?” she said.
“After a while. You and the boys go play in the sandbox.” Austin pointed toward the play area with a sandbox and swing set under the shade of a big pecan tree.
The three kids scampered off to the sandbox and the bright-colored toys sitting along the side.
Liz laid down her fiddle and joined the group on the quilt. She poked Gemma on the leg. “Confession time. Pretend I’m your priest and we’re in two little dark rooms. Now tell me all about Trace Coleman. Has Maddie got something to really worry about?”
“I’m not Catholic, and if you’re a priest, I’m St. Peter.” Gemma laughed.
“I don’t care who is what!” Pearl exclaimed. “What are y’all talkin’ about? What’d I miss? I knew we should’ve told Momma that we couldn’t meet her for Sunday dinner in Bowie. I missed something good, didn’t I?”
“Oh, yeah, you did,” Colleen joined them. “They can play without me. I wouldn’t miss this gossip session for the world. Momma is ready to crucify you.”
“I thought you weren’t going to let any cowboys ruin your game,” Pearl said.
Colleen smiled. “Looks like one is about to do just that, and he lives right out by Claude, so if she hooks up with him she’ll be close to me in the winters. Momma might hate the idea, but I love it.”
“Talk!” Pearl pointed at Gemma.
Liz pointed at Gemma. “Maddie is going to put a chastity belt on you and send you to a convent on a deserted island.”
Gemma put up both palms defensively. “Y’all stop it! He’s my biggest competition. So Liz, your fortune-telling is still in question, and Colleen, don’t get your hopes up that I’ll be living in Goodnight, Texas, when the dust settles in Vegas. Don’t you think if this was really all that serious that he would have invited me to go home with him?”
A short burst of laughter came from Austin’s corner. “Honey, you aren’t fooling me! I’d bet dollars to fool’s gold that it is serious as hell. Why didn’t you invite him here?”
“Because Momma would have a heart attack.”
Maddie laid the Dobro on the chair and started out across the lawn.
“Huh-oh,” Liz muttered.
Maddie settled down right in the middle of all six young women, and Granny drug up a chair at the edge.
“I heard my name,” Maddie said.
“I said that you’d have had a heart attack if I invited Trace Coleman home with me for a week,” Gemma said honestly.
Maddie pointed her finger. “Gemma Irene O’Donnell!”
“I don’t know why everyone keeps pointing at me today,” Gemma said. “I couldn’t wait to get home, but now I wish I would’ve stayed on the dude ranch this week.”
Liz spread her arms out. “Move back, everyone. I’ve been in this family a whole year and I didn’t even know Gemma had a second name. Hell is about to rain brimstone down upon us all.”
“Why did you tell Willard I might buy his ranch? And why were you going on about me marrying Dalton?” Gemma asked.
“She’s right, Maddie. You want her to settle right here in Ringgold and you’re going about it all wrong,” Granny said.
“You don’t get a vote in this,” Maddie told her mother.
Granny laughed. “Hey, I might have done some manipulation in my day, but it didn’t involve buying a damned ranch. Besides, I knew Cash O’Donnell was the man for you. I was right, too. You love Cash and you’ve got five beautiful children. He’s a damn good father.”
Maddie started to point but dropped her hand. “I don’t want you to move away from Ringgold.”
“Momma, don’t be looking at wedding dresses just yet. I think there’s something about a proposal and there ain’t been one yet,” Gemma said.
“Hmmmph!” Maddie snorted. “Your lips are saying one thing. Your eyes say another.”
Granny touched her daughter on the shoulder. “Maddie, don’t worry about how many chickens you got to feed until they hatch.”
The music stopped and Rye smiled at Austin. She stood up and he slipped an arm around her waist. “Hey, everyone, gather around. We’ve got some news.”
Gemma could have kissed her older brother for choosing that moment to make his announcement.
Rye took a deep breath. “Rachel will have a baby sister or brother next March. Right now she says she wants a brother like Jesse and John, but we’ll be real happy with whatever we get.”
It went from quiet to full-blown noise in less than two seconds. Everyone, including Maddie, was busy hugging Rye and Austin when Gemma’s phone buzzed in her hip pocket. Trace Calling showed up on the screen, so she carried it away from the noise and sat down in Grandpa’s rocking chair on the front porch.
Trace’s voice was even deeper over the phone, and she wished she was lying beside him in his bed.
“I miss you. Are you okay?”
“I keep tellin’ you I’m tough, but my momma is trying to force me into buying a ranch in Ringgold. I wish I’d stayed on at the dude ranch.”
Trace chuckled. “I don’t hear music. I thought y’all were playing music this afternoon.”
“Austin and Rye just announced that they are having another baby in March so they’re getting all the attention, thank God!”
“Call me if things get too hot and we’ll go to Dodge City early.”
“Will do,” she said.
***
Trace pulled into the yard in front of his house on the Coleman ranch just as Teamer came out onto the porch. He shaded his eyes with his hand and then waved at Trace. “Come on in out of the heat, son. Sunday Supper is near to bein’ ready, and the boys are washin’ up. Thought I was going to have to come get you.”
Trace turned Sugar loose and she took off like a streak toward Teamer. He scooped her up while her legs were still churning and got a face full of doggy licks for his welcome.
“That old cowboy ought to leave you here with me when he goes off on his trips. Goodness only knows he don’t take care of you right while you’re out there on the road,” Teamer crooned.
“She’s spoiled rotten.” Trace laid a hand on his uncle’s shoulder and squeezed.
“Trace, I got something to say but not tonight. We are goin’ to talk about this ranch while you are home, so you might as well get ready for it, son.”
Trace chuckled. It was good to be home, and his uncle could talk and he’d listen. That didn’t mean he’d obey.
“I’m hungry. I missed Louis’s cookin’.”
Teamer was tall and lanky, sinewy but strong-looking, had a mop of gray hair that always needed trimming, and clear blue eyes that could cut steel when he was angry. “Hey, boys, he’s here. Time to put it on the table.”
Trace smelled grilled steaks when he followed Teamer into the house. “Louis did do the cooking tonight, huh?”
Louis carried a platter piled high with steaks into the dining room and set them on the table. He was a short, stocky cowboy with bowed legs and a spare tire around his middle right above his belt. His face was as round as his body and his thick gray hair cut clos
e to his head.
Louis clapped Trace on the shoulder. “Of course I grilled the steaks. Teamer would char them so black that the hound dogs out in the yard would be gnawin’ on them when the winter snow comes. And I made the chocolate pies for dessert, and the rest of the meal. I keep tellin’ that old fart that we need a woman on the place. One that can cook. Then I could go on back out in the fields and do some real work. I’m gettin’ fat stayin’ in the kitchen so much.”
Teamer sat down at the end of the table and pointed at Louis. “And I keep tellin’ that old fart that a woman would mess up our way of doin’ things. Hell, she’d probably want to put doilies all over everything and start collectin’ ugly ceramic ducks and elephants. And besides, he’s old so he’s got a right to get fat.”
Gage and Kevlin both came through the kitchen door at the same time. Gage was eighteen and starting college that fall. He was six inches shorter than Trace but square built and strong as an ox. It was his fourth year working for Teamer in the summer months. His young brother, Kevlin, would be a junior in high school come fall, and it was his second summer on the Coleman ranch.
“Thank God you are here for a few days!” Gage said. “Those two need some discipline, and me and Kevlin, well, they don’t listen to a thing we have to say.”
“Y’all had to put up with this ever since I left?” Trace asked.
Gage nodded, but his face split into a wide grin. “They’re like an old married couple. Bitchin’ and snappin’ at each other all the time. But let me or Kevlin say a word and they stick together like Siamese twins. You need to straighten ’em both out while you are home.”
Trace looked at Kevlin.
The younger boy just shook his head. “Never a dull minute. We missed you, and what’s this about you foolin’ around and lettin’ a girl whip your scrawny ass? We need to give you some more lessons on stayin’ in the saddle?”
Trace shook his head slowly. “That’s one piece of sassy baggage that’s been whippin’ me. And if you got any magic tricks about how to get more points, I’m all for learning. How about right now we dive into those steaks before Louis throws it all out for the dogs in a fit of anger.”
Teamer passed the platter of steaks, followed by bowls of steaming fried potatoes, fried squash, and black-eyed peas. Then he started a platter of sliced cucumber, tomatoes, and peppers around. The finale was a big plate of hot biscuits.
They set into their food like hungry hounds after a long night of coon hunting. Teamer was the first one to break the silence and only after he’d finished half his food.
“So talk to us and tell us why that woman is beating your ass,” he said.
“Because she’s that good. We’re both linin’ up pretty solid to be finalists. I just hope that she’ll have a big wreck then and I can come home with the win at the end,” Trace said.
“And maybe she won’t,” Louis said.
“Guess we’ll know soon enough.”
“What does she look like? We saw her on television, but mostly all we saw was a blur of hot pink when she come out of the chute. Is she all mannish lookin’, and does she dip snuff?” Kevlin said.
Trace thought before he spoke. “She’s about five feet three inches tall and has to put rocks in her pockets to hold her down in a hard windstorm. She’s got red hair, but she tells me it’s out of a bottle and she is a natural brunette, the most amazing green eyes, and she’s meaner than a rattlesnake when it comes to riding and soft as an angel when she’s not riding.”
“I’d let someone like that win for sure. You kissed her yet?” Kevlin said.
“You better watch that hussy. She’ll be throwing you off your ride, and when the dust settles she’ll have the prize and you’ll have a busted ego,” Louis said.
Trace looked at Teamer.
“She as good as they say?”
Trace nodded.
“She know anything about ranchin’?”
Another nod.
“Now answer Kevlin’s question, son,” Teamer said.
“Which one?” Trace asked.
“That one about kissin’ her.”
Trace shook his head. “Good cowboys don’t kiss and tell. You taught me that yourself, remember?”
Teamer chuckled. “I’d say she’d do to ride the river with, son. Now eat the rest of your dinner. Potatoes and squash ain’t worth shit when they’re cold. Besides, we got chocolate pies in the icebox, and Louis will whine like a little girl if you boys don’t brag on them.”
***
Lucy looked around the room at the decorations, the cake, the presents, and all her friends.
“Hey, you aren’t supposed to cry,” Wilma said.
“But you all did this just for me.” Lucy sniffled.
“And look what all you’ve done for us,” Wilma told her. “I work for Liz, and Noreen is picking up her life at the beauty shop, and look around, Lucy, at all the women you’ve helped get their lives back on track.”
Gemma patted her on the back. “And those like me who still need you to get theirs on track.”
“Come on and sit down. You are going to open presents first and then eat cake and talk until we run out of things to talk about,” Liz said.
Lucy dabbed her eyes. “Then I reckon I’d better call Tyson and tell him I won’t be home for two days because it’ll take us that long to catch up on gossip, and let me tell you right now, I’ve never opened this many presents in my whole life, total, not just at one sittin’, and I’m going to enjoy every moment, so don’t rush me.”
Lucy was a small woman with nondescript brown hair, big soulful eyes, and a heart as big as the whole state of Texas, especially when it came to those in her abused women’s program.
She’d barely gotten started opening presents when Gemma’s phone vibrated in her back pocket. She slipped off to the bathroom, put the potty lid down, and sat down before she answered Trace’s tenth call that day.
“Party over?” he asked.
“Just beginning. Lucy is opening presents, but she’s slow as molasses in Alaska in December. She even keeps the paper and the ribbons. So we can talk for a few minutes,” she whispered.
“Where are you? I don’t hear squealing and lots of woman oohing and ahhing over presents.”
“I’m in the bathroom.”
Trace chuckled in his deep drawl. “Lock the door, take off all your clothes, and send me a naked picture of you in the mirror.”
“Trace Coleman!”
“I will if you will,” he teased.
“I don’t need a picture. All I have to do is shut my eyes to see you are doing a strip to ‘Hillbilly Bone.’”
A long pregnant pause made her hold the phone out to see if she’d lost connection.
“Trace?”
“I’m lying here on the bed looking out at the stars. I’m naked and the cold air from the ceiling fan is making the hair on my arms stand straight up. I’m thinking about you all wet and slick doing that little dance for me in the Jacuzzi,” he whispered.
Crimson crept up her neck and into her cheeks. “I will get even.”
“Turned you on, did I?”
“Let’s just say I’ll have to wash my face in cold water and stay in here until I stop panting before I go back out there.”
“Hey, Gemma. I… miss… you,” he said seductively.
“You are in big trouble.”
She’d barely gotten back to her chair when her phone vibrated again. She slipped it out and laid it on the chair seat beside her. Trace had sent her a text: Does being in big trouble mean you’re going to let me win in Dodge City?
She carefully sent back a message: Dream on!
She turned off her phone and shoved it in her hip pocket.
“Okay, Lucy, now tell us all about this wedding and
why it was so sudden,” Gemma teased.
“Sudden!” Lucy exclaimed. “I thought I never was going to get that man out of his shell enough to propose to me. And when he finally did I got him to the altar as fast as I could so he wouldn’t change his mind.”
Gemma wondered what she’d do if Trace proposed. Would she rush him to the church the very next day or would she want the big wedding that Colleen had? Could they live together more than a week without the wildfire burning itself out? She loved everything about Ringgold, but she also wanted to be back at the rodeo with Trace. She already missed bickering with him, his kisses, and the way her body felt when he touched her. The week was going to last forever.
***
Trace was in the hay field when his phone rang. He drug it out of a sweaty shirt pocket and answered, “Hello, darlin’,” in his best Conway Twitty impression.
“Is it really only Thursday? I feel like I’ve been home a month.”
“Momma still mad?” Trace asked.
“No, she’s over that. Momma don’t stay mad long. But I’m ready to bust broncs and smell rodeo dust.”
“It’s addictive, isn’t it?”
“Tomorrow won’t never get here, will it?”
“Want me to put down these hay hooks and come get you right now?” he asked.
“What I want and what I’ll get are two different things. Since I’m home and there’s an extra rider to exercise the horses, Raylen and Liz went off on a three-day holiday to spend time with her grandpa and uncle. They’re over in your part of the world and I’m in Ringgold.”
“Seems to me that not long ago you couldn’t wait to get home to Ringgold where your roots are. Why aren’t you fixing hair this week?”
“I’m going to fix hair this afternoon,” Gemma said.
“I need a haircut. If I wait until next week, will you cut it for me? Naked?” he asked.
She moaned at the picture that produced. “Which one of us?”
“Both,” he said.
“One naked haircut after I win in Dodge City.”
“You will never get to me say yes to that,” he said.
Just a Cowboy and His Baby Page 20