One Hot Cowboy Wedding (6 page)

She bit into an enormous chocolate- covered strawberry. “I deserve every bit of this. Stress destroys fat grams and calories.”

“And there’s a book in the bedside table…” She air slapped him on the tattoo. “Tell me about that thing. Austin says that Rye’s got one too. I know they protect you from women but that Rye’s didn’t work with Austin. But when did you get them, and are you BFFs or something?”

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Even that close, her almost- touch heated the barbed wire up to the burning point.

“In guy language that BFF shit means something different than you girls stuff about best friends forever,” he said.

“What does it mean?”

He ate another cheesecake bite. “Can’t tell you. It’s a big secret and we have to sign our names in blood before we can be a member. Part of the code is that girls don’t get to know what it means.”

“Oh?” She tucked her chin in and looked up at him through heavy lashes.

“Have to prick our finger with our own spur. No sissies or preppies can be in our BFF club,” he said seriously.

“Ace Riley, you are full of pure old stinky bullshit.”

“That’s what the first letter stands for. Want to keep guessing on the two
F
s?” When he grinned his blue eyes sparkled.

“No, I do not. Any members of your club women?” she asked. “I figured a flirty player like you would let women in just to seduce them.”

“Hell, no! This is a guy’s club,” Ace said.

“You wear cute little necklaces around your necks to prove it, or do you all have barbed wire tats?” She tried to decide between a tiny cheesecake or a bite-sized tiramisu.

“Hell no again! And my tat don’t have a thing to do with our BFF club,” he declared.

“Okay, tell me why you and Rye have one and Wil doesn’t have one, and I’ve never seen one on Raylen or on Dewar, either. Are they members of your club?” OneHotCowboyWedding.indd 43

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“We’re all members of it. We meet at least once a month and everyone tells their wives or girlfriends that they’re goin’ coon huntin’. The tat is something different than the club. Just me and Rye got them.” She propped up on one elbow. “You better tell me because if Cole or his lawyer ask about it, I need to know.”

“It’s a crazy kid thing.”

She cocked her head to one side, her dark brown hair curling up on the pillowcase. “I’m listenin’.” Ace sat up and faced her. His arms were muscled from hard work; his abs ripped; and a fine line of soft brown hair trailed from his chest down beneath red plaid pajama bottoms with a drawstring. Jasmine’s fingers itched go exploring to where that hairline ended.

She sat up and laced them together to keep them out of mischief.

He sighed. “It was eleven years ago. Rye is actually the youngest among me and him and Wil. Dewar is just younger than him, and Raylen comes in after that. We all ran around together but it was me and Wil and Rye who were the same age. Rye’d just turned twenty- one and we’d been down to Mesquite to the Resistol Rodeo.

Not a one of us did a damn bit of good that night. None of us had enough points to even go on to the next round of bull riding. Raylen and Dewar are both younger than us and they ride broncs and they’d put us plumb to shame. So we were whinin’ around like three little girls. We were big boys so we could go to the bars and Raylen and Dewar couldn’t so we left them behind and started home.”

Jasmine was reminded of what her mother said about Granny Dale. “Don’t ask her a question because she OneHotCowboyWedding.indd 44

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begins everything with, ‘In the beginning God made dirt’ and it’ll take her five years to get the answer out.”

“Anyway,” Ace went on. “We were hitting every bar from Mesquite to Dal as. It was very late or very early, depending on how you look at it. But it was way past two because all the bars were shut down. None of us were sober enough to drive but it was my truck so neither of them was going to get behind the wheel. Rye was carryin’ on about this girlfriend he had. Sabrina?

No, her name was Serena. They’d been in love since grade school and she’d up and married another man. Wil had passed out in the backseat, and I looked up to see a twenty- four- hour tattoo parlor right there on our side of the road. I pulled the truck into the parking lot and told Rye all three of us were getting barbed wire tats around our left arm so no woman could ever hurt him again.”

“But why would you and Wil get a tat? Serena didn’t break your hearts,” Jasmine asked.

“Did I say we were very, very drunk? And remember, we’d stabbed our fingers with our spurs and written our names on the BFF roster sheet, which is in a bank vault under lock and key and protected by armed guards, so in my drunken state I thought I had to take care of Rye.” Jasmine giggled. “How on earth did you get home without wrecking your truck?”

“It was a real job, I’m tellin’ you, darlin’. A real trick that took an excellent driver to pull off, but I can drive anything with four wheels or ride anything with four legs.”

“And two legs?” She raised a dark eyebrow.

“I’m a sweet- talkin’ son of a gun with anything that has two legs.” He grinned.

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“Go on,” she said.

“Well, Wil woke up enough to tell us he wasn’t getting no tat and went back to sleep. Me and Rye stag-gered into the place. Hell, we didn’t even look around to see if it was decent. It’s a wonder we both didn’t catch something horrible, but anyway, we told the lady what we wanted. You should’ve seen her, Jazzy. She had tats all over her body, at least the parts we could see, and that was a helluva lot of skin. She took Rye to the back room and I followed. She put a barbed wire around his left arm and I bared mine to get the same thing. Wil didn’t even feel sorry for us when we carried on the next day about them hurting.”

“That was pretty stupid, and I wouldn’t have felt sorry for you either,” she said.

Ace propped the pillows against the headboard and leaned back. “Okay, now you have to share. You got any tats?”

“One,” Jasmine said.

His eyes scanned what he could see. “You’re lyin’ to me— and on our wedding day. I might divorce you in a year rather than you divorcing me.”

“I’ve got a tat. I’m not lyin’ to you.”

“Where?”

His gaze felt like someone was holding a blowtorch to Jasmine. It had to be that damned dress and veil. She’d been a fool to wear the thing and it was supposed to stop making her hot when she took it off. She should’ve worn her jeans and a tie- dyed knit shirt and sneakers. But there it was hanging in the closet when she’d started packing for the overnight trip and she’d decided to play dress- up.

“Where?” he asked again.

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“On my butt, and nobody, not even Pearl or Momma, knows it’s there. I got it when I bought the café.” He grinned. “I didn’t know they made a tat of a chicken fried steak. Show it to me.”

She shook her head. “It’s not a chicken fried steak.”

“Then what is it? Show me. You promised to love, honor, and
obey
me. I’m orderin’ you to show me that tat. I still don’t believe you’ve got one!” Her eyes widened. “You vowed to love, honor, and
respect
me. I’m callin’ in that last vow about respectin’

me and my tat.”

He inched over toward her with a wicked gleam in his eyes.

“Oh, okay. It’s not that big a deal,” she said.

“I’m the very first one to ever see it so it’s a big deal to me,” he said.

She flipped around and jerked down the back of her boxer shorts.

At first Ace couldn’t believe his eyes. He’d expected a butterfly or a heart, or perhaps the Chinese symbol for love, but not what was right there in bright green and yellow high up on her hip. He moved closer and blinked several times, but it was still there. Why in the world would she get a tat of the John Deere tractor logo: a bulging green square with a yellow deer silhouette in the center?

She flipped her shorts back up and turned to face him.

“Why?” he asked.

“Why did I get a tat? Why is it a tractor logo?

Which one?”

He wasn’t grinning any more when she looked up.

“All of the above.”

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“I got it because I quit a six- figure job to buy a café that won’t make half that in a year. And I’ll work twice as hard and twice as many hours to make half that much.

A tractor logo because one time back when Pearl and I were teenagers we got into trouble and our punishment was plowing a field in a John Deere tractor with an open cab. No air conditioning and no CD player, not even a radio. And it taught me a lesson I’ll never forget. Either be smart enough not to get caught, or suffer the punishment without bitchin’. But mostly it was to remind me that I’m in control of where this tractor called life is taking me. And if I’ve ever got a doubt, all I need to do is look in the mirror at my butt.”

“Fine lookin’ butt and fine lookin’ tat,” Ace said.

“You are a good friend,” Jasmine said.

“Not as good as you, darlin’. You saved the ranch, remember?”

She laughed. “Guess neither of us are as smart as we thought we were, though, are we?”

Ace snuggled back down in the bed and laced his hands together behind his head again. “Guess not. What was it that got you and Pearl in so much trouble that you had to plow all day?”

“All day? It was all week.” Her voice raised at least three octaves.

Ace rolled over to face her. “What in the hell did you two do? Wreck his brand new pickup?”

“No, we got into his very expensive bourbon and got pretty well wasted, then we filled the bottle up with water,” she said.

It started as a chuckle down deep in his chest, but when it erupted it was a full- fledged guffaw that he OneHotCowboyWedding.indd 48

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couldn’t control. “I didn’t know I’d married a whiskey girl,” he finally got out.

“That’s what you get for sayin’ yes when I proposed.” She yawned. “Confession must be good for the soul because I’m sleepy now, but if you tell anyone about my tat I’m going to divorce you before the year is out.” Ace rolled his eyes in mock horror. “She has ice water in her veins. She’s threatening me before the marriage is even consummated.”

Jasmine shot a look his way and turned over with her back toward him, curled up in a ball, and shut her eyes. Knowing that Ace was only a couple of feet from her, visualizing that broad chest, a big bicep with the tat wrapped around it, and catching a whiff of his shaving lotion every time she inhaled did not bring on instant sleep.

Ace looked his fill of Jasmine. She did look like she could be that actress’s sister with her small waist, well- rounded cute little butt, shoulder- length brown hair, and those eyes. But he bet dollars to cow patties that Greg House never found a John Deere logo on Cuddy’s butt. He had to force himself to stop thinking about Jasmine, but it damn sure wasn’t easy. Not when he was semi- aroused and wanting do to much more than sleep with Jasmine as in shut his eyes and really, really just sleep.

Q

When she awoke the next morning, sunlight was streaming in the window. Ace was spooned up next to her back with an arm thrown around her midriff and his face buried in her hair. She was afraid to breathe after the dreams OneHotCowboyWedding.indd 49

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she’d had all night. All she had to do was pretend she was still dreaming, roll over into his arms, and whisper his name and the hardness pressing into her back would take care of the rest.

Every hormone in her body had set up a chant:
It’s
okay.
You
are
married. It’s okay. You are married.

She tried to wiggle out of his embrace, but he mumbled something and wrapped her up even tighter and mumbled something about her being beautiful. Jasmine had no doubt that he was having a very good dream.

Was she anything other than a cook slash waitress in the dream, or was she even a character in it? Most likely he was talking to Gracie or one of those other women who’d called him the night before.

She pushed backwards, which was a horrible idea.

Heat practically set the fancy duvet into blazes. “Ace, wake up!”

“Do I have to?” he whispered.

His warm breath heated up the sensitive skin under her ear.

She pushed backwards again. “Yes, you have to wake up. We’ve got to be at the airport in two hours and I’m hungry, so we need to pack things up, check out, and get some breakfast.”

He still didn’t open his eyes. “Let’s stay here all day and have breakfast brought in and catch a redeye home.” She relaxed and stopped fighting against his strong arms around her. “We’ve got to go home and face the music sometime. Might as well get it over with. We got caught.”

“I know, but we could put it off one more day. You think they’re goin’ to make us plow the fields?” He OneHotCowboyWedding.indd 50

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nuzzled against her neck, liking the way his face fit as if they’d been made for each other.

“Hell, I hope not. I need to make desserts for tomorrow’s lunch run when we get home. I sure don’t have time to plow fields,” she said.

“And when you get finished at the café you’re coming to the ranch, right? You can have a guest room or sleep with me. Your choice,” he teased but held his breath until she answered.

Jasmine was barely surviving sleeping with Ace one night. Two nights would be stretching it. Three and the marriage would be consummated multiple times. “I expect we’d best plan on me sleeping in the guest room.

I’d never get up and get to work at five in the morning if I was sleeping with you. Besides, you’ve got barbed wire protecting your heart.”