Red's Hot Cowboy

by Carolyn Brown

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2011 by Carolyn Brown

  Cover and internal design © 2011 by Sourcebooks, Inc.

  Cover design by Vivian Ducas

  Cover illustration by Sam Montesano

  Photography by Michael Frost Photography

  Back cover image © goldhafen/iStockphoto.com

  Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks, Inc.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks, Inc.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Published by Sourcebooks Casablanca, an imprint of Sourcebooks, Inc.

  P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410

  (630) 961-3900

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  Contents

  Front Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Excerpt from Darn Good Cowboy Christmas

  Back Cover

  To my wonderful publisher,

  Dominique Raccah!

  Chapter 1

  The lights went out in Henrietta, Texas.

  Everything west of the bridge into town was black: no streetlights and very few humming generators. But the flashing neon sign advertising the Longhorn Inn motel still flickered on and off, showing a bowlegged old cowboy wearing six guns, a ten-gallon hat, and a big smile as he pointed toward the VACANCY sign at his feet.

  Santa Claus and a cold north wind kept everyone inside that Christmas Eve night and there were no customers, which was fine with the new owner, Pearl Richland. She could cuss, stomp, and pout about operating a damn motel in north Texas rather than spending the holiday in Savannah with her southern relatives, and no one would hear a thing. Not even her mother, who had told her she was making the biggest mistake of her life when she quit her banking job in Durant, Oklahoma, and moved to Henrietta, Texas.

  “Entrepreneur! Running a fifty-year-old motel and cleaning rooms is not an entrepreneur. You are ruining your life, Katy Pearl Richland,” her mother had said.

  But Pearl had always loved the time she spent at the motel when she was a kid, and after sitting at the loan officer’s desk in a bank, she had a hankering to be on the other side. The one where she was the person with a new business and bright, fresh ideas as to how to improve it. Now she was, but it did have a price to pay. Pearl, the party girl, was now an entrepreneur and had more work than she could keep up with and hadn’t been out on a date in months. Hard work, she didn’t mind. Long hours, she didn’t mind. Online classes with research projects that took a chunk of her days, she didn’t mind. Not dating—that she minded a helluva lot.

  Pearl put the finishing touches on the assignments for the two online motel hospitality classes she was taking out of Midwestern University in Wichita Falls. One needed a few tweaks, but she’d have it done by New Year’s, and then she’d enroll in more courses, which would begin the middle of January.

  She was on her way to the kitchen to see if Santa Claus had left something wonderful like double fudge brownies in her cabinet when all hell broke loose. She thought about that guy in the poem about the night before Christmas as she ran to the window and peeked out at all the vehicles crunching gravel under their wheels—cars, vans, trucks. She wouldn’t have been surprised to see a fat feller dressed in red with tiny reindeer stopping an oversized sleigh in amongst all those vehicles.

  She hustled back to the check-in counter and put on her best smile as she looked at the crowd pushing their way toward the door. The tiny lobby of the twenty-five-unit 1950s-style motel didn’t offer breakfast, not even donuts and coffee. That was something on her list for the future, right along with a major overhaul when she decided whether she wanted to go modern or rustic. It didn’t have a crystal chandelier or a plasma television. It did have two brown leather recliners with a small table between them. In addition to the recliners, it was now packed with people all talking so loudly that it overpowered the whistling wind of the Texas blue norther that had hit an hour earlier.

  She was reminded of Toby Keith’s song “I Love This Bar.” He sang about hookers, lookers, and bikers. Well, if he’d loved her motel instead of a bar he could have added a bride and groom, a pissed off granny who was trying to corral a bunch of bored teenage grandchildren, and sure enough there was Santa Claus over there in the corner. Pearl didn’t see anyone offering to sit on his chubby knees, but maybe that was because he’d taken off his hat and his fake beard. He was bald except for a rim of curly gray hair that ended, of all things, in a ponytail about three inches long at his neck.

  Pearl raised her voice. “Who was here first?”

  The door opened and four more people crowded into the room, letting in a blast of freezing air that made everyone shiver.

  A young man in a tuxedo stepped up to the tall desk separating the lobby from the office. “That would be us.”

  “Fill out this card. Rooms are all alike. Two double beds, microfridge, and free wireless Internet,” Pearl said.

  A girl in a long white velvet dress hugged up to his side. “We sure aren’t interested in Internet or a microwave oven tonight. This is so quaint and very romantic, and it’s got all we need… a bed!”

  The man took time out from the card to kiss her.

  Quaint and romantic? Pearl thought. It’s more like the motel in that old movie Psycho. But I do like the idea of quaint and romantic. Hadn’t thought of that, but it has a nice ring for a black-and-white brochure. Visit the quaint and romantic inn… I like it.

  Built in a low spot on the east side of town more than half a century before, it had a rough, weathered wood exterior that had turned gray with wind, rain, sleet, and pure old Texas heat; wind-out windows that used to work before air conditioning had been installed (now they’d been painted shut); a covered walkway all the way around the U-shaped building; and a gravel parking lot.

  Pearl had twenty-five units and it was beginning to look like it really could be a full house. That meant she’d be cleaning a hell of a lot of rooms on Christmas Day because Rosa, the lady who’d helped her Aunt Pearlita for the past twenty years, decided to retire when Pearlita passed away in the fall.

  While Mrs. Bride whispered love words in Mr. Bridegroom’s ear, Pearl looked out over the impatient crowd. Santa good-naturedly waited his turn, but the lady behind him with six teenagers in tow looked like she could chew up railroad spikes and spit out ten penny nails.

  Maybe Pearl needed to sit on Santa’s lap and ask if he’d send his elves to help clean the rooms the next day. Cleaning hadn’t been a problem because renting five or six units a night was the norm up until that moment. The east side of the motel had ten units along with Pearl’s apartment. The bott
om of the U had five units and a laundry room, and the west side had ten units. There was parking for one vehicle per room with extra parking for big trucks behind the laundry room. Part of her last online assignment was designing charts to make a few more spots in the wide middle. Even if she implemented the idea, it couldn’t happen until spring. Winter, even in Texas, wasn’t the right season to pour concrete.

  The motel area had been carved out of a stand of mesquite trees fifty-plus years before, and every few years Pearlita had ordered a couple of truckloads of new gravel for the center lot and the drive around the outside edge. She’d declared that concrete was hot and that it made the place too modern, but Pearl figured she couldn’t afford the concrete. When she saw the savings account her aunt left in her name, she changed her mind. Aunt Pearlita was just plain tight.

  The bridegroom didn’t care that the crowd behind him was getting impatient. He’d write a letter or two and then kiss his new little wife. Pearl tapped her foot and wished he’d take it on to his room and out of her lobby. After eternity plus three days, he finally finished filling out the motel card. She picked an old-fashioned key from the pegboard behind her. It was a real honest-to-god key on a chain with a big 2 engraved into the plastic fob. The back was printed with a message that read, If found please place in any mailbox and had the address for the Longhorn Inn. Pearl wondered how many times Aunt Pearlita had been called to the post office to pay for the postage on a key. What the place needed was those new modern card keys that all the motels were using.

  Pearl could almost hear her aunt getting on the soapbox: Keys have opened doors for thousands of years, so why use those newfangled idiot credit card looking keys? No telling what a locksmith would charge to come fix one of those if a kid dripped his ice cream in it. Besides, why fix something that ain’t broken? Now stop your bellyachin’ and think about how much money you’re rakin’ in tonight. Besides, a plastic credit card lookin’ key doesn’t say quaint and romantic to me.

  Pearl set the card aside and laid another one on the counter for the next customer. “That’s room two, second room from here. Parking is in front of the room. Next?”

  Number one was next to her apartment with only two layers of sheetrock and very little insulation between the motel room and her bedroom. If she was going to clean rooms from dawn to dark the next day then she sure didn’t want to be kept awake by noisy newlyweds all night.

  Mrs. Claus deferred to the older lady with six kids. “You go on, deary. Me and Santa Claus can wait until you get those kids in a room.”

  She stepped up to the counter. “I need three rooms, connected if possible.”

  Pearl shook her head. “I’m sorry, ma’am. I can put you in three side-by-side rooms, but none of them have inside connecting doors.”

  She laid a Visa card on the counter. “That will be fine if that’s the best you can do. Each room has two beds, right?”

  Pearl nodded and handed her a card to fill out. When the transaction was finished she handed the woman keys to rooms three, four, and five and looked up at the next customer.

  Santa Claus stepped up to the counter. “Thank God you’ve got electricity. I wasn’t looking forward to driving all the way back to Dallas tonight. Whole town is black. Hospital is working on generators, and I guess a few people have them in their homes from the dim lights we saw when we left the motel on the other end of town. I just need one room for two adults. No pets. Me and Momma were at a senior citizens’ party when the electricity went out. I was Santa Claus and giving out presents. Do you take AARP?”

  “Yes, I do. Ten percent discount,” Pearl answered.

  An hour later twenty-four rooms were filled, the parking lot was full, and the lobby empty. The north wind still howled across the flat land with nothing but a barbed wire fence to slow it down between Henrietta and Houston. Delilah, Pearl’s yellow cat, peeked out around the door from the office into the living room of the apartment.

  “Come on out, girl. The coast is clear and we’ve only got one empty room. I’m going to turn on the NO VACANCY light and we’re going to get a good night’s sleep. We’ll need it tomorrow when we start stripping beds and doing laundry,” Pearl said.

  Delilah leaped up on the counter and flopped down on her chubby belly, long yellow hair fluffing out like a halo around her body. She was seven years old and spoiled to that fancy cat food in the little cans. If she’d had her way it would have been served up on crystal, but Pearl figured making her eat from a plastic cat dish kept her from getting too egotistical.

  Pearl pushed all the guest cards to one side and rubbed Delilah’s soft fur. “The worst of it is over until tomorrow when we have to clean all those rooms.”

  The rumble of a pickup truck overpowered the noise of the north wind slinging sleet pellets against the glass door. It came to a halt right outside the lobby door, the lights glowing through the glass window.

  Pearl pulled out a guest card and laid it on the counter beside Delilah. “Hope they don’t mind newlyweds in the next room, and I damn sure hope they aren’t noisy since they’ll be right next to us.”

  One of Aunt Pearlita’s favorite sayings was, “Life is faith, hope, and chaos.” The chaos factor had taken center stage when the lights went out in Henrietta. It really put on a show when the lobby door opened and a Catahoula cow dog rushed inside. Delilah was on her feet growling, every long yellow hair bristled and every claw ready for battle. She’d put up with a lot but not a dog in her territory, and no slobbering dog had rights in her lobby.

  The dog took one look at the cat, raised up on the counter, and bayed like he’d treed a raccoon. Delilah reached out and swiped a claw across his nose, which set him into a barking frenzy. That’s when she jumped on his back, all claws bared. Her yowls matched his howls, and the two of them set out on an earsplitting war. The dog threw his head around and tried to bite the varmint tattooing his back with its vicious claws, but the cat hung on with tenacity and fierce anger.

  Pearl plowed into the melee, grabbed at Delilah, and missed every time. The dog howled like it was dying. The cat sent out high-pitched wails that would rival a fire siren. Pearl yelled, but neither animal paid a bit of attention to her. They just kept on running in circles and creating enough noise to make the dead raise up out of their graves in preparation for the rapture. She caught a blur of cowboy boots and jeans and heard a man’s deep drawl, loud and clear, when he yelled at her to get her damn cat off his dog.

  “What?” she yelled.

  “I said for you to get your damn cat off Digger!”

  Pearl reached for Delilah again, only to miss in the flurry of noise and fur. “Get your damn dog out of here!”

  Delilah chose that minute to bail off the dog, bounce across the counter, and shoot through the door into the apartment. The dog followed in leaping bounds with Pearl right beside him. She slammed the door so quickly that the dog’s nose took a hit and it howled one more time.

  The man grabbed the dog and hauled back on his collar. “What in the hell happened?”

  “That your dog?” she asked breathlessly.

  He was panting from the fuss of trying to get his dog under control and ending the commotion. “I opened the door and the wind blew it shut before I could get inside. Next thing I knew fur was flying and it sounded like poor old Digger was dying. Why did your cat attack him? He lives with cats out at the ranch. He wouldn’t hurt one.”

  “Tell that to Delilah, and you are on the wrong side of the counter, cowboy,” Pearl snapped. The adrenaline rush over, she looked at more than boot heels and jeans. The cowboy had a scowl on his face, jet-black hair all tousled from the cat and dog fight, and brown eyes with flecks of pure gold floating in them like a bottle of good schnapps. The whole effect sang “Bad boy. Bad boy. Whatcha goin’ do?” in Pearl’s ears. She shook her head to get the chanting to stop, but it didn’t do a bit of good.

  The cowboy took two steps and pushed through the swinging doors at the end of the counter. “All I want is
a room, Red.”

  “You call me Red again, Mister, and you won’t need one. What you’ll need is a pine box and a preacher to read about you lyin’ down in green pastures,” she said.

  He smiled and suddenly there was a whole orchestra behind the singer chanting about bad boys in Pearl’s head. He was bundled up in a worn leather bomber jacket with fleece lining that made his broad shoulders even wider and ended at a narrow waist, faded jeans that hugged a right fine butt that would’ve had her drooling if she hadn’t been so damn mad, and scuffed boots that made him a real cowboy and not the drugstore variety that was all hat and no cattle. His dog was sitting obediently beside him, looking up pitifully as if tattling on that abominable creature that had attacked him.

  “Who in the hell is Delilah anyway, and what’s she got to do with all this commotion?” he asked in a deep Texas drawl.

  “Delilah is my cat,” Pearl said.

  “That is a good name for a she-devil like that thing. You got any rooms left for tonight? It looks like the parking lot is full, but the sign is still on.”

  If only he could have had a high squeaky voice, but no, he had to be the complete bad boy package with that Texas drawl. And Pearl had run from bad boys ever since she was seventeen. Her mother had been right about Vince Knightly. He’d been a double dose of rebellious bad news riding a motorcycle.

  Pearl picked up the card that had fallen on the floor in the middle of the cat and dog fight and laid it on the counter. “I’ve got one room.”

  “You got a problem with Digger stayin’ in the room?”

  “Not if he’s housebroke,” she said. “He makes a mess, I’ll charge your credit card triple for the room.”

  “Digger’s a good dog. He wouldn’t make a mess on carpet if he exploded. I should’ve gone on up to my friend Rye’s in Terral, but I’ve got chores in the morning. I would’ve if I’d known me and Digger would have to fight our way through hell to get a room.”

  “Rye O’Donnell?” Pearl asked.

  “That’d be the one. Know him?”