“You really were beautiful in those shorts and shirt,” he whispered.
She forgave him as she fell asleep in his arms. It was where she wanted to be, not in Ringgold, Texas, but right there in Trace’s arms. Her ass had chosen which horse it wanted to ride. Now all she had to do was convince Trace and stay away from her mother until the dust settled.
***
Gemma looked over the top of the chute at Pretty Baby, muscles tensing and a look in his eyes that said his full name was probably Lucifer’s Pretty Baby. He had a solid reputation with the rodeo crew as being one tough son of a bitch to ride. His percentage of wrecks was somewhere around eighty, but Gemma was determined to lower his statistics in the next minute. She eased down into her saddle, jammed her boot heels into the stirrups, measured the rein, and touched her lucky horseshoe hat pin. She’d eaten a rodeo hamburger and forgiven Trace for not telling her about his parents. Nothing negative was sitting on her shoulders.
She inhaled deeply and nodded. The gate opened and Pretty Baby came out with gusto. The crowd roared somewhere in a tunnel that was way far away. The announcer was yelling into the microphone something about Gemma O’Donnell taming the wild bronc.
And then Pretty Baby did a dance step that she wasn’t expecting. It happened just as the buzzer sounded and she started to roll to one side. Another two seconds and she would have lasted the whole ride, but when the horse flipped so far to one side that he almost kissed his own butt, Gemma’s foot came loose.
Her left foot left the stirrup and the right one hung, leaving her shoulder to drag in the dirt as Pretty Baby spun her around the arena for a full five seconds before her boot heel dislodged and sent her skittering. Her mouth, nose, and eyes filled with arena sand, and she came up spitting and sputtering to a crowd screaming and yelling.
She stood up, bowed, and let a clown lead her back to the chutes where she dunked her head into a watering trough to get the dirt out of her eyes and ears. When she came up for air, the announcer was yelling, “And our next contestant is Trace Coleman from Goodnight, Texas. He’s riding Devil Dog tonight out of chute six. Our rodeo clown, Low Britches, just signaled that Gemma is all right, so while Trace is getting ready, let’s give it up for our little lady from Ringgold, Texas, who almost showed Pretty Baby who was boss tonight.”
The crowd’s whoops and whistles were muffled as she stuck her head in the water again. That had been her worst wreck ever, and she’d be sore as hell the coming morning. There’d be bruises and aches in places she didn’t even know about. Thank God it was six days until the Lovington, New Mexico, ride so she could heal up. Where in the hell had she gone wrong, anyway? She’d done all the right things to keep her mojo going and hadn’t even thought about Trace except that one time to congratulate herself on forgiving him.
The announcer sounded like he was screaming into the microphone again, “And that was Trace Coleman, showing the rodeo world how it’s done! Trace just racked up eighty-one points to beat out Coby by one point. Now that’s some close bronc busters, folks. Let’s hear it for all the contestants tonight before we go on to the bull riding with Landry Winters starting the competition right here in Dodge City!”
Gemma brushed her wet hair back from her face with her hands. The scrape down her jawline stung like wildfire, but it wasn’t bleeding too badly. Her left boot felt tight, which meant her ankle was swelling. She started toward her trailer to check the damage more carefully and fell to her knees with the first step.
Strong arms scooped her up and she looked up into Trace’s worried face.
“Hey, you,” she whined.
“How bad is it? Is it broken? My God, Gemma, I thought I’d die before I could get off that damn bronc and see about you. You were limping and your face was covered with dirt.”
He jogged toward her trailer. Chap fringe flared out in the hot night breeze. Spurs jingled. Boots heels sent up baby dust devils with every step.
“It’s a sprain. I’ve had them before. Ice and prop it up. My cheek is just a scrape. It was the dirt in my eyes that scared me. For a second there I wondered if we could train Sugar to be a Seeing Eye dog,” she said.
“Don’t even tease about that,” he growled.
He eased her down to stand on her right foot while she opened the trailer door, and then he carried her inside. When she was sitting on the side of her bed, he dropped to his knees and tugged at her boot.
“Ouch! Ouch! Let me do it,” she said.
He stood up and stuck his hand deep into his pocket. “You can’t. Your foot is swollen. It’s not coming off.”
“Hell, no! You will not cut my boot off, Trace! Not without a fight. These are my lucky boots. They’ve gone to every rodeo with me for the past ten years,” she said.
With his thumbnail he pulled a long sharp blade out of the knife.
“They are not!” He pointed toward the floor.
She looked down and moaned. That’s where she went wrong. She’d worn the wrong boots. Her lucky boots were standing beside her bed and she’d shoved her feet right back down into the old boots that she’d worn on the flight from Ringgold to Dodge City. What in the devil had she been thinking about anyway?
He looked at her.
She nodded.
He carefully slit the boot leather down the inner seam. “If I do it this way, you can take them to the boot shop and they might be able to repair them.”
He removed the boot and her sock and gasped. “It’s already turning purple. We need to get you into the shower, get all the dirt cleaned off you, and prop this thing up with ice. I’ll be surprised if you can even ride in Lovington.”
He removed her other boot and slipped his arms around her. “Hold on to me and stand on your right leg.”
She grimaced when she stood up and put weight on it, but she’d had sprains before and she’d had a broken ankle once when she was a teenager. She knew the difference and he was right—it would be a miracle if she was able to ride in Lovington.
He removed her chaps, then the rest of her clothing, and carried her strip-stark naked to her tiny bathroom. He started the water and set her down under the shower.
“Get on out of here before you ruin those chaps and bitch about it until eternity dawns,” she said. “And shut the door. I can hold on to the wall and take a shower standing on one leg.”
“I’ll get out of these chaps and be right here when you get done, but I’m not closing the door all the way shut. You might need me,” he said.
Mud streamed down her body as the water washed away half a bushel of the arena dirt. When she was finally clean, she turned the faucet off and eased the door open. Trace was leaning against the doorjamb with a big white towel in his hands. He took one step forward, wrapped it around her, and swept her off her feet.
He sat down on the edge of the bed, picked up another towel, and rubbed the water from her hair before he brushed the tangles out. After that he gently dried the water droplets from her shoulders and the rest of her body and dressed her in underpants and an oversized nightshirt. Then he propped her leg up and opened the refrigerator. He found the flexible ice pack in the freezer and molded it around her ankle.
“Where’s something for that scrape?”
“In the kit beside my bed.” Every cowboy and cowgirl’s traveling kit contained an ice pack, a heat pad, aspirin, Tylenol, antiseptic spray, antibiotic ointment, and ibuprofen.
He shook out a couple of Tylenol and handed her a bottle of water from the fridge. “No beer or dancing tonight, lady.”
Then he squeezed ointment on his fingertip and applied it to the scrape on her jaw. When he finished, he settled her back against more pillows and stretched out beside her on the bed. He laced his fingers with hers and squeezed gently.
“Now what in the hell happened out there? You survived a damn bee, woman. Did some fool grease your saddle?” he asked gruffly.
She laid her head on his shoulder. “If I’d been drinking I could call it a hangover. Last time
I wrecked this bad was when I tried to ride a bronc after proving I could best my sister at shots.”
“But you weren’t drinking. You haven’t even had a beer since yesterday at lunch.”
She giggled. “If it wasn’t a hangover, then it might be the result of a bangover! From now on, no sex on the night before or the day of a rodeo. And absolutely no naked haircuts, even though your hair does look sexy.”
“What about the night after a rodeo?” he asked.
“That is optional, but tonight ain’t an option.”
“Of course it’s not, but I’m going to carry you over to my place where the bed is bigger and more comfortable. I won’t leave you alone, Gemma. You ready?”
She yawned. “I’m not arguing.”
He sat straight up and ran his fingers over her entire head, carefully probing and searching. “You shouldn’t be sleepy this early, Gemma. Do you have a concussion? Look at me so I can see your pupils. Do you feel dizzy or bumfuzzled?”
She shook her head. “I got a mouthful of dirt and it got in my eyes, so they are probably bloodshot, but I didn’t hit anything but soft dirt when I fell. The pills you gave me are making me sleepy. I’m very drug sensitive. Two Tylenol knock me on my ass for ten or twelve hours. That’s probably why that drug in my beer hit me so hard.”
He rolled off the side of the bed and gathered her into his arms. “I’ll get you settled and come back to lock up.”
“Anything you say.” She was already drowsy.
He put her to bed, propped her ankle on a pillow, and wrapped the ice pack around it. “I’ll lock the door. Don’t move until I get back.”
“I promise,” she said.
Her eyes grew heavier while he went to claim their saddles and lock up her trailer. She was barely awake when he returned with his saddle, carefully stowed it away in the closet, and disappeared into the bathroom. When he got into bed with her, she snuggled up to his side and used his shoulder for a pillow.
Her neck was in a kink when she awoke the next morning, and the ice pack was a lukewarm lump next to her ankle. Trace’s eyes were wide open and he reached over and touched the end of her nose.
“Good morning, beautiful,” he said.
“I’m so sure I’m beautiful with my hair all tangled and a scrape on my face, not to mention my foot,” she grumbled.
“Grumpy this morning, are we?” he asked.
“Yes, I am.” She nodded.
“Does coffee tame the beast down?”
“It usually does.”
He pushed the sheet back and threw his legs over the side of the bed.
“I need to go to the bathroom,” she said.
He picked her up like he would a child and set her on the floor. “Use my arm like a crutch.”
“I can use the wall to hobble to the bathroom. If we were in a house or even a hotel room, I would use you for a crutch, but I can make it four feet to the bathroom,” she grumbled. She shut the bathroom door. Sitting on the potty wasn’t a problem, but it took some maneuvering to get up.
“You going to be able to drive?” He raised his voice so she could hear through the closed door.
She opened the door, hopped to the edge of the bed, and sat down. “Of course I can drive. It’s my left foot. I don’t use it to drive.”
“We can go halfway today and finish up tomorrow. We’ve got six days.”
“Sounds good to me,” she said.
He started coffee and then opened the cabinet doors. “What do you want for breakfast?”
“Cereal is fine.”
“That’s not breakfast. That barely qualifies as food. We haven’t had time to shop so we’ll stop at the first IHOP. Then we can call it a day at lunchtime and you can rest that foot all afternoon and night.”
She nodded. “Okay. And I could polish my saddle, readjust the stirrups, and get my boots ready for the rodeo while I rest the foot, right?”
He slid a sideways look her way. “I had something else in mind.”
She wiggled her dark eyebrows. “Something that would produce a bangover so I’ll wreck in New Mexico?”
He chuckled. “It sounds like fun, but no, ma’am. I will not have you saying that I screwed your brains out so I could win the title. No sex until after the rodeo in New Mexico.”
She sucked air for a whole five seconds. “That’s six days, Trace!”
He laughed out loud. “Then no sex tonight and none the night before the Lovington rodeo. That sound better?”
She figured up the nights in her head. None that night. None the night of the rodeo. That left three nights free.
“I can live with that.”
He carried a cup of steaming hot black coffee to the bedside and put it in her hands, poured himself a cup, and sat down beside her.
“I wish I had my crutches from back home,” she said. “It would make getting around a lot easier.”
Trace opened a closet door and brought out a set of aluminum crutches. “We’ll have to adjust them, but there they are. I got a sprain last year and had to hobble around until I could buy them. Swore I’d never travel without them again.”
With a few swift movements, he had them adjusted to the right height and handed them to her. “You going to try to prove that you can beat me in New Mexico even with a busted ankle? I’m telling you right now, that is my win.”
“Spit in one hand and wish in the other, cowboy. We’ll see which one fills up fastest.”
“Oh, we’re back to the cowboy stuff, are we?”
“When it comes to bronc riding, you’ll always be cowboy to me.”
“Well, then this cowboy is going to get everything ready to hit the road in fifteen minutes.”
“I’ll be ready,” she said.
***
They stopped at the Corral RV Park in Dalhart, Texas, at noon. The campground had wide pull-through lots with shade trees spaced just right to give the campers some relief from the blistering hot August sun. Gemma unfastened her seat belt and opened the truck door. Cold air wasted no time rushing out. Hot air replaced it so fast that she was sweating before she swung her legs out and eased down on her right foot. She hobbled around to the pickup’s back door and grabbed her crutches.
“Hey, I was coming around to help you,” Trace yelled.
“I need to walk on this leg or it’ll get lazy,” she said. “You reckon we could get pizza delivered out here?”
“Probably. I’ll see what I can do about getting a delivery when you are in my trailer. And we’re having spaghetti for supper. I make a mean pot of spaghetti, and you, darlin’, are going to spend the day with that ankle propped on a pillow. We’ll ice it this afternoon and by tomorrow it should be better.”
She didn’t start to move. “Give me a minute to look around. We stayed right here every year when I was a little girl. Momma and Daddy would bring the big trailer and all five of us kids. It’s not until next week and we’ll be in Lovington. The whole town is probably gearing up this week for the XIT Rodeo and Reunion. Grandpa brought Momma when she was just a kid, and then Momma and Daddy always brought us kids.”
Trace slipped an arm around her shoulders. “I came with Uncle Teamer two years. When I was twelve and again when I was thirteen. I loved it and Mother threatened to ban me to my room and make me read Hemingway or Faulkner if I didn’t stop talking about the barbecue and the country music.”
“Did Teamer take you to see the Empty Saddle Monument?” she asked.
“Oh, yeah! I kept the framed picture of me standing in front of it in my dresser drawer. I was afraid Mother would burn it.” He chuckled.
“She hates ranchin’ that bad?” Gemma asked.
“No, she doesn’t hate it at all. She actually likes to go to Goodnight for a couple of days and relax. What she doesn’t like is me likin’ ranchin’. She wanted me to be a lawyer. Coleman and Coleman was her big dream. It was all right that I got a business degree, because afterward she’d see to it I got into prelaw. But I shattered her hopes when I
moved to Goodnight. She hasn’t forgiven me yet.”
“She will,” Gemma said.
“What makes you so sure?” Trace asked.
“Because she loves you,” she said.
***
The next day they drove all the way into Lovington, New Mexico, and parked on the rodeo grounds. Gemma’s foot was looking better and she still had three days before she needed it to be well enough to get her boot on and make it into the saddle. Even if it hurt like a son of a bitch, she could endure it for eight seconds.
They pulled their trailers into a couple of lots back behind the rodeo and fair grounds. Vendors and the carnival crew were already setting up, and excitement was as thick as the dust. Lovington, New Mexico, wasn’t a lot different than Dalhart, Texas: cotton, cattle, oil wells, cowboys and cowgirls, and rodeo fever everywhere she looked.
Lovington, like Dalhart, wasn’t a big town. Nowhere near ten thousand people, it had a small-town feel to it. The rodeo with the carnival, the mutton bustin’, and the music for four whole days was the highlight of the whole summer, and everyone couldn’t wait for it to get started.
In just three days, everything would be in full swing. Then the excitement would turn into sheer frenzy as kids ran from one ride to another, one game booth to the next, and back and forth from snow cone stands to corn dog vendors. There’d be more fancy cowboy hats and boots than anywhere short of a Western-wear store. And cowboys would be everywhere, trying to win the favor of the cowgirls with big hair and tight-fitting jeans. It was rodeo time in Lovington, and life was good.
The rodeo motto was “Livin’ Life in Eight Seconds,” and Gemma couldn’t get that line out of her head. When she started the circuit, she would have agreed wholeheartedly. Now she wasn’t so sure. Those eight seconds were an important part of her life. Each one brought her closer and closer to her dream, but that wasn’t all there was to life. Even when the dream became reality, it wasn’t really, really life.
By the time she got the seat belt unfastened, Trace had opened the door and held out his hand to help her out of the truck. She put her hands on his shoulders and carefully slid out to land on one foot.
Just a Cowboy and His Baby (Spikes & Spurs) Page 22