Chapter 1 Read online

  “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 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 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’sokay. Youaremarried. 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 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.”

  “And you’ve got a tractor symbol on your butt to prove that you can control your own destiny,” he said.

  “We’re quite the blissful newlyweds, aren’t we?” He kissed her on the neck, his lips lingering awhile as he tasted the softness of his pseudo- bride. “What would you like for breakfast? Your wish is my command.” She laughed and rolled away from him, standing beside the bed and stretching like a cat. “Bacon, eggs, potatoes, biscuits, gravy, and the works.”

  “I was hoping you’d want something a little closer to this bed,” he whispered seductively.

  She pointed at him. “Don’t tease me, Ace. You want first shower?”

  “How about a together shower? See if your tractor can run over my barbed wire,” he said.

  Who said he was teasing? Jazzy was a fine looking woman even in a gray tank top and plaid shorts. He could have both off and thrown in the corner in five minutes if she’d just cooperate a little bit.

  She picked up her cell phone from the nightstand.

  “You really are a good friend. You’re trying to take my mind off what we’re walkin’ into and I appreciate it. Just remember, as long as we stick to our story and stand by each other, you won’t lose the ranch. Good grief! I’ve got fifteen missed calls and ten voice messages.” He rolled over and grabbed his phone from the other side. “I beat you. I’ve got sixteen of each. Looks like ten of the missed cal s are from my mother, and oh, now isn’t that a sweet surprise. Four from Cole.” He flipped the phone open and hit the recall button on Cole’s number.

  “This is Cole Lemming,” the voice on the other end said.“This is Ace Riley. I missed your call last night, but a groom doesn’t answer the phone on his honeymoon.”

  “I saw it on television,” Cole said icily. “What’d you do, marry a cocktail waitress just to keep the farm?” Ace handed the phone to Jasmine. “It’s Cole. You talk to him.”

  “Hello, I’m Jasmine. I haven’t met you but my mother has insisted we have a real wedding in Sherman, Texas, next month where we will be repeating our vows again before family and friends, and we’d be so glad for you to attend,” she said sweetly.

  “You made a big mistake, lady. What’d he promise you?”

  Ace jumped out of bed and bowed from the waist down.

  Jasmine stuck her tongue out at him.

  “To love, honor, and respect me.”

  “Did he make you sign a prenup?”

  “Of course not! We trust each other implicitly,” she gasped.

  “My lawyer will require proof,” Cole said.

  “Will the marriage license and pictures do, or should I bring the bedsheets?”

  He hung up without another word.

  Ace laughed until his side ached. His cousin had met his match when he meddled with Jazzy.

  Jasmine fussed and fumed as she threw her legs over the edge of the bed. “Damn idiot anyway askin’ me if we signed a prenup. As if I’d take a dime of your money or land. Hell, I’m protecting it from him. He’s stupid.

  He doesn’t know what good friends we are or that this was all my idea.”

  She stood up and kept mumbling all the way to the bathroom. She was stil talking to herself when she came back out with a towel around her head and one tucked around her body. “Your turn.”

  Ace picked up his shaving kit from his suitcase and started that way. “Your phone rang twice while you were in there. One was Gemma and the other was your mother. I didn’t answer either one.”

  She made sure the bottom towel was secure then dried her hair vigorously. “Well, I’m sure not ready to talk to Momma yet, and Gemma can wait until I get home. Which reminds me of something I’ve been wondering about for months. You and Wil were in and out of the O’Donnell’s place for years. Why didn’t either one of you hook up with Gemma or Colleen?”

  Ace stopped at the bathroom door and watched her, his mouth going dry at the sliver of thigh that peeked through a slit in the towel. “It would be like dating my sister.”

  “You got a sister? You said six brot
hers, but you didn’t mention a sister,” Jasmine asked.

  “Hell, no! Thank God for small favors. Putting up with Rye’s sisters was a cross to bear.” Ace whistled into the bathroom. “Hey, Jazzy,” he yelled above the sound of his electric razor. “When do you want that shindig thrown with my side of the family? I’ll try to talk Momma out of another wedding, but I ain’t makin’

  no promises. She probably thinks we have to do it all over again to make it legal in Montague County, not just the state of Texas.”

  “Oh, sweet Jesus,” she moaned.

  “I’m waiting,” he yelled again.

  “Momma is having one July 10. Just make it on a Sunday afternoon.”

  The hum of the razor stopped and the whistling started again as he turned on the shower. It was replaced with a deep voice singing, “Hello, Darlin’,” a song Conway Twitty made popular years and years before.

  Jasmine hurriedly slipped into bikini underpants, a bra, jeans, and a knit shirt while he finished the song and his shower. She was drying her hair when he came out of the bathroom smelling a mixture of soap and sexy shaving lotion. He was dressed in jeans, shirt, belt, and boots. His hair still had water clinging to a few curls.

  She reached up and brushed them away, then quickly drew her hand back. How in the devil could plain old water, no more than dewdrop in size, send shivers down her spine? And how in the hell was she supposed to live with him in the same house for a whole year with these newfound feelings?

  Chapter 4

  Ace worked on a platter of food that would choke a good- sized horse while Jasmine nibbled at some fruit and a crepe from the breakfast bar. That she was nervous angered her as much as anything else. She was thirty years old, for heaven’s sake. She’d been running her own business for a year and a half and she hadn’t asked anyone for anything. So if she wanted to pick up a hitchhiker in Nocona and take him down to the Montague County Courthouse and marry him that afternoon, it was her business. At least she knew Ace and he was a decent guy, a damn fine friend, and a gentleman even if he did have a sexy sense of humor.

  The internal pep talk didn’t do a damn bit of good. She was chewing at her thumbnail when Ace hailed a taxi, and by the time they reached McCarran International Airport she felt like she was walking on the edge of a barn roof in three- inch spike heels during a class five tornado.

  They checked their bags, hurried through security without a hitch, and got to the waiting area just as a young man announced that the flight to Dallas was boarding. Ace followed Jasmine down the corridor and into the plane and found their seats.

  “I’ve got the window seat but I usually sleep on air-planes. You want to sit there?” he asked.

  “Thank you,” she said, not eager to sit in the middle seat with Ace on one side and someone else on the other.

  She was glad she didn’t have extremely long legs like her friend Austin, who was almost six feet tall. At five feet two inches, her knees came within three inches of pressing against the seat in front of her. Austin would be biting her knees unless she flew first class. She snapped her seat belt shut and looked out the window instead of listening to the blah- blah- blah customary cautions.

  Ace settled into the seat next to her and got comfortable. He buckled his seat belt, leaned his head back, and shut his eyes.

  Jasmine envied his ability to doze while the flight attendant gave the “hang onto the seat cushion and use it for a floatation device” speech. He didn’t even open his eyes when the captain’s deep voice came over the intercom and said that they would arrive in Houston, Texas, in two hours and forty- three minutes.

  When they were in the air Ace roused up enough to unfasten his seat belt, order a pillow, and in less than two minutes had slung his legs over into the empty space beside him and slept soundly. How he could sleep with those three teenage girls behind him was a mystery to Jasmine. She tried to tune out the giggles and the “OMG, she’s not even hot, how could he like her?” and “FYI, she’s sleeping with Freddy,” but she couldn’t sleep.

  Suddenly she was pissed at everything and everyone… starting with herself for volunteering for this fiasco and ending with that television station that told the whole world.

  She could not let Ace lose everything he’d worked for his whole life over a piece of paper and a few promises.

  Who was it that said, “Promises are like pie crusts—

  made to be broken?” Well, he was a genius today.

  Tomorrow he might be the biggest idiot in the state of Texas, but right then he deserved that big Nobel Award for the most profound statement ever uttered.

  Ace flipped the pillow on her shoulder and snuggled down into it with a sigh.

  “OMG, he’s like so sexy. I wonder if he like really rides horses. I bet he’s a country music star. OMG, he is, isn’t he? Is he Keith Urban?” one of the teenagers whispered.

  Jasmine frowned. Ace was a hel uva lot sexier than Keith Urban.

  “Shhh, she’ll like hear you,” another one said.

  “FYI, I don’t care. She’s like an old woman and he’s like too sexy to be with her.”

  Jasmine held up her left hand and wiggled her fingers until she heard gasps behind her.

  “OMG, she like heard you. And that’s like a wedding ring.”

  “BTW, like I don’t care about that like either. He just married her for her money, I bet. OMG, I bet she’s his manager and she made him like marry her.”

  Jasmine was glad that Ace was sleeping. If he’d been awake he would have teased her for weeks about the teenyboppers (did they like call them that like still or was that like OMG too ancient of a term for like pubescent girls?).

  Evidently they all had ADD because Ace’s sexiness only lasted a few more minutes and they were off on another tangent. Jasmine wondered briefly if symptoms of Attention Deficit Disorder included abbreviated conversations and overuse of the word “like.” Then everything got quiet behind her and she heard faint noises that meant they were texting.

  Probablyeachother, Jasmine thought.

  She lost interest in the BFFs behind her when she turned toward Ace and got a whiff of his shaving lotion. Ace had never affected her before she put it on the wedding dress, so there must have been some kind of biological sex dust shit sprinkled in it that heightened her senses.

  Did they spray down all white dresses that had the remote potential of becoming a wedding dress with some sexual enhancing pixie powder? She’d like to have the lab rat by the balls who invented the crap. Oh, yes, it was most definitely a male lab rat, one who couldn’t attract a woman if he was the only guy on an island with a mil ion women on it. So he’d invented a little dust to sprinkle in the seams of white dresses that had some kind of weird timing device that set it off on the actual wedding day.

  Damn him! She hoped his invention came around and bit him squarely on the ass.

  She turned her head slightly and looked at Ace. His eyes were shut so she could stare as long as she wanted.

  She held her hands tightly in her lap to keep from running her fingers through his hair. He needed a haircut but she liked his blond curls just the way they were.

  She blinked and looked down at the new wedding band sparkling in the sunlight flowing through the small window. Married! She was married. The M word was now a real word. Married to the biggest player she’d ever known. She wouldn’t even date him because he chased every skirt that walked past him and flirted with anything that had boobs. No way would she get into a committed relationship with Ace Riley, but she was damn sure married to him.

  She looked back at his lips and wondered if another kiss like they shared when the preacher told him to kiss the bride would make her as feverishly hot as that first one had. The way that man could kiss, it was no wonder the women took numbers and waited by his bedroom door.

  If thinking about another kiss could cause her to pant, then a romp in the bed with Ace would set the sheets to flaming. He wiggled and his thigh plastered against hers and that heighten
ed sense syndrome kicked right into action.

  Thigh against thigh.

  Bursts of white- hot heat that that took her breath.

  “Well, shit,” she mumbled as she scooted her leg away from his.

  The girls behind her were now sighing and talking about how boring flights were and how they wished they were home so they could see their boyfriends.

  They would say that Jasmine had an acute case of SMI (Severe Mommy Issues) and she was really like too damn old for like such things.

  “And I am,” Jasmine whispered.

  She’d been fighting SMI issues her whole life. As an only child to a mother who was used to getting her way, she’d learned a few tricks. And more than once she’d stood up to Kelly King. When Kelly had pitched a Texas- sized hissy about her quitting a damn fine job to buy a café in a town that boasted a population of one hundred people, Jasmine had pointed out that Thurber, Texas, had a population of five and the Smokestack restaurant in that town was a booming business.

  Kelly had thrown out the guilt trip of “I sacrificed so you could have an education and make something out of yourself,” but Jasmine’s mind was made up. She bought the café and never looked back at what she’d left behind.

  But this wedding business was the SMI that had Jasmine pissed off. She never did want a big wedding.

  When other little girls put pillowcases on their heads for veils and picked dandelions for bouquets, she’d been more than happy to cater their make- believe weddings with her Easy Bake Oven.

  That’s how long Kelly King had been talking about her daughter’s wedding. She had been planning it as the event of the century in North Central Texas for as long as Jasmine could remember. Maybe it had to do with the fact that Kelly’s wedding hadn’t been such a big deal and she regretted it, but whatever created it the end result was one of those SMIs and Jasmine hated being out of control.

  “Which brings me back to these crazy feelings,” she mumbled.

  “What’d you say, darlin’?” Ace asked without opening his eyes.

  “Nothing, I was just talkin’ to myself,” she said.