Just a Cowboy and His Baby (Spikes & Spurs) by Carolyn Brown Page A

to his body like glue, and the night breeze carried the scent of his shaving lotion ahead of him. She rolled her neck. Maybe she had gotten whiplash and it was bearing down on a nerve supplying oxygen to her brain.
    “May I have this dance, ma’am?” Trace asked.
    She took a step forward and the world did a forty-five-degree tilt to one side. She’d read about swooning in romance books, but there’d never been a cowboy in her past who’d given her a dose of the vapors. The band geared up for a Billy Currington song, one of Gemma’s favorites because he said that beer was good, God was great, and people were crazy. Those three things were a given no matter where she was, whether it was at a big family gathering in Ringgold, Texas, or dancing with a tall dark-haired cowboy at a rodeo dance in Colorado.
    She wrapped both arms around Trace’s neck and laid her cheek on his chest. His heart pounded louder than the drums on the stage.
    She’d only had two beers; she could not be drunk, but she could not focus on anything but the beating of his heart. She’d been drunk before and suffered from hangovers. She’d cried in her beer, she’d giggled in her whiskey, but she’d never felt like she was floating.
    She looked up at Trace and his eyes began to blur. His lips looked so delicious and his dark hair so soft. And then everything started slipping away. She opened her eyes wide and tried to get her legs to support her, but nothing worked. Everything went black and she sank into a deep black hole.

Chapter 4
    Trace had never seen anyone pass out as cold as Gemma. He scooped her up and her face lolled against his chest, her arms flailed out limply, and her legs hung as if she had no bones in her body. He wasn’t totally sure what to do next. Call the rodeo doctor? Take her to her trailer to sleep it off?
    The song ended and another one started. Dancers changed partners quickly or else kept the one they had and the crowd began to sway and move again. No one noticed him carrying Gemma away from the arena lights and into the darkness. And she damn sure didn’t wake up.
    He sniffed the night air as he headed toward his trailer. Her exotic perfume covered up the smell of alcohol. She must’ve started knocking them back right after her ride because there was no way she could have gotten to the pass-out drunk stage on just two beers.
    He shooed Sugar back away from the door and carried Gemma straight to his bed. She mumbled something when he carefully laid her down, but he couldn’t understand a word. He pushed her hair back away from her face to fan out like a halo on the pillow. But to think that she looked like an angel lying there would be stretching the imagination. Gemma was hard as nails, spicier than Cajun cooking, and was by far the sassiest woman he’d ever met.
    He sat down on the edge of the bed and leaned over to whisper in her ear, “Hey, Gemma, wake up!”
    Nothing. Not even a rolling flicker behind her eyelids.
    If she hadn’t been stone cold drunk, she would have risen up off that pillow and scorched the hair off his chest with a fiery hissy fit. And then she’d do that sexy little wiggle stomp dance out of his trailer, slam the door hard enough to rattle Sugar’s teeth, and throw looks off her shoulder that would blister the paint off his trailer.
    He tried another angle. “Sweetheart, you were damn good in bed, but it’s time to go home now. I don’t let women sleep in my bed after sex no matter how good it is.”
    Nada. Not even a break in her breathing.
    He looked down at the Chihuahua sitting beside the bed. “Sugar, I can’t believe a woman who can ride a bronc like she does would pass out after two beers. I figured with her Irish blood, she could drink all of us cowboys under the table and then dance on the bar to celebrate.”
    Sugar whimpered and climbed the steps at the end of the bed. She eased up to the pillow and sniffed Gemma’s face. Then she started at her chin and slurped all the