Red's Hot Cowboy (18 page)

“I do,” Pearl said.

“Well, I wouldn’t test your mettle.” Lucy took the number ten key from the pegboard and handed it to Pearl. “Still want me to lock it up?”

“Yes, and sleep late tomorrow. I’ll help clean rooms since you worked half the night for me.”

Lucy smiled. “This ain’t work. Cleanin’ rooms ain’t even work. And you are goin’ to have a big headache in the mornin’ even if you do win the bet.”

Pearl pointed at Lucy. “I’m lucky to have you.”

Wil got out of the truck when he saw Pearl coming out of the motel lobby. “I was about to go on home. Figured you’d backed out and was just goin’ to leave me sittin’ out here for pure spite.”

“If I backed out you’d win by default. I was talkin’ to Lucy. We’re in room ten. You got the Jack?”

He held up a brown paper bag, the top twisted around a square bottle. “Never been opened. If we empty this one and you can still stand on your feet, then you can go get yours.”

“Shot glasses?”

He held up his left hand. The shot glasses looked tiny in his big hand. “I borrowed two from Austin.”

She held up the key.

“Walkin’ or drivin’?” he asked.

“I reckon we can walk that far. We’ve each only had one beer.” The high heel on her boot slipped off the sidewalk onto the gravel and she had to catch herself on a porch post to keep from falling into him.

He reached out and grabbed her arm. “You are already a little tipsy on just one beer. I bet you don’t get three shots down before your cute little ass is fried.”

“Ah, honey, you’ve got a hard lesson to learn,” she whispered.

All the hair on his neck stood straight up. Her voice was always slightly husky, but when she whispered it was so hot that he wanted to make love to her until dawn rather than drink whiskey with her.

“Okay then, braggy butt, if you don’t pass out after number three then I’ll take you to dinner next week,” he said.

She slung the door to the room open and stood to one side. “If I do?”

“Ladies first.”

She stepped into the room, peeled off her coat and tossed it on the bed closest to the door, sat down on the other bed, and removed her boots. He put the brown bag and two shot glasses on the small table in the corner and sat down beside her, close enough that she could smell the remnants of Stetson and beer on his breath. He kicked off his boots, removed his coat, and tossed it across hers.

“If I’m still standing after three shots?” she asked.

He tipped her chin back and kissed her, teasing her mouth open with his tongue. “Then you can take me to dinner next week.”

She moved over and sat down in his lap, wrapped her arms around his neck, and cupped a cheek in each hand. She pulled his lips down to hers in another searing kiss. “If I’m still standing you have to cook dinner for me. Nothing frozen or prepared.”

“Deal. And if you pass out, you have to cook for me. Nothing frozen. No take-out. From scratch with dessert.” He wrapped his arms around her and slipped a hand under her shirt. Her bare skin was soft as satin sheets and warm on his cold hands.

She’d never known rough cold hands could cause her skin to sizzle.

“Deal,” she gasped.

“Anymore bets or ground rules or do we spit on our knuckles and begin this war?” he asked.

She kissed him on the cheek as she stood up and straightened her shirt.

Kissing was finished.

Battle was beginning.

She pulled out a chair and sat down at the table. “I’ll pour. Only ground rule is that all is fair in chaos and Jack.”

Wil grinned and took the other chair. “Then let the contest begin. Are we doing doubles or singles?”

She held up a glass and studied it. “These are made for doubles but let’s do singles. To this line”—she pointed to a rim halfway up the glass with the name of a bar written above it—“should be a single shot. So here goes.”

She filled the two glasses to the mark and tossed hers back like a gunslinger in an old Western movie. Heat, almost as fiery as what smacked her when she kissed Wil, hit her empty stomach like a blowtorch. The first one was always the hottest. It paved the way for the rest. By the eighth or ninth she wouldn’t even feel the fire.

Wil threw his back and swallowed. He had an advantage over Pearl that he hadn’t told her. He’d eaten a whole plate full of goodies before she arrived at the party so he was working on a full stomach. Unless she’d eaten half an Angus steer before she left home, she was drinking on an empty stomach. But she’d said all was fair in chaos and Jack so that meant open disclosure wasn’t an issue.

She refilled the glasses, giving him a few drops more than she put in hers. All was fair in Jack and chaos. His exact words had been to let the contest begin.

“I’ll drink this one but only if I get to pour from now on. You put a little more in my glass,” he said.

“All’s fair?”

“Whoever wins will do it honestly. No cheating.”

She took the clip out of her hair and let her red ringlets free to fall to shoulder length. “Okay, no cheating is rule one, then. But you didn’t say that in the beginning.”

His fingers itched to get tangled up in her hair, but more of those kisses in a room with two beds would end the drinking contest and she’d say he cheated. “I’m sayin’ it now.”

“Then I will not cheat. I don’t break rules. But if there are no rules then I don’t have to follow them. That’s the full mark.” She pointed.

He nodded and downed his shot. “It’s a shame to be drinkin’ good whiskey like this. Jack is sippin’ whiskey.”

“Might as well like the taste.”

She sent her second one down and sure enough, the blazes weren’t nearly as hot. But like always, whiskey had a way of making other things hot; that warm gushy feeling deep down in her gut sent her imagination into overdrive. No fantasy she’d ever come up with while downing shots compared to the real thing called Wil Marshall.

She poured the third round, making a big show of filling them exactly even, and downed hers before he had time to pick his up. She didn’t feel the fire that time, at least not in her stomach. The rest of her body felt like it was one degree away from combustion, and he didn’t look like he was feeling the liquor at all. She might have met her match after all.

“Talk to me. Tell me something about yourself. Your momma got red hair like you?” Wil asked.

“Hell, no! Momma is a blonde and a stereotypical southern belle. I got this red hair from a distant great-grandma. There’s a connection between my dad and some folks up in northern Oklahoma. Little bitty place called Corn. We went there for a couple of family reunions when I was a kid. Have a distant cousin named Sharlene who has red hair just like mine. Kinky curly and unruly. We shared a great-grandma and we were the only two redheads in the bunch.”

“What happened to her?” Wil asked.

“She writes romance books and used to own a bar over around Mingus, Texas. That would be east of Mineral Wells. But she fell in love with a carpenter and moved back to Corn. Last I heard she had a couple of kids of her own. The guy she married had custody of a niece and nephew and she adopted them so she’s got a houseful.”

“She got a temper like yours?”

“Worse.”

Wil chuckled and tossed back the next round.

“Your turn,” Pearl said. “Something about you now?”

“I like to dance. Want to go over to Mingus to the Honky Tonk sometime for a beer and a dance?”

“Hey, that’s the place Sharlene owned,” Pearl said.

“That’s why you look familiar. I saw her one time when me and Ace stopped by there for a cold beer one night after we’d been to a rodeo in Abilene.”

“Small world,” Pearl said.

By the eighth round she was still lucid and Wil was getting sexier by the minute. The room got hotter than a hooker in the front row pew of a holiness tent revival in the middle of July in Texas. She removed her lacy shirt.

He raised an eyebrow.

“I’m not cheatin’. I’m hot,” she said.

“Liquor, weather, or otherwise?” he asked with a wicked gleam in his eye.

“All damn three. I think it’s close to time for the countdown on television, ain’t it?” she slurred.

“Hell, I don’t know. All I know is that you are damn beautiful, Red, and I’d rather be doing something else than showing you I can out-drink you. Let’s have a pissin’ contest that involves sex rather than shots.” His words came out slow and deliberate.

She grinned. “You are about to lose it, cowboy. That was as romantic as a trip to the outhouse.”

He laughed too loudly. “Never was one much for words.”

She pointed her finger at him. “Don’t tell me that after all the text messages and phone calls. You
are
getting drunk.”

“So are
you,
darlin’. Too bad I don’t take advantage of women when they’re drunk. Pour us another round. Is this nine or ten?” He moved his chair close enough to hers that their shoulders touched.

“See, you don’t even know how much you’ve had. It’s nine and you’ll be snoring by ten,” she told him.

He grinned and downed the ninth one, set his glass down with a thump, and took off his shirt, revealing a gauze undershirt and showing muscles she’d only dreamed about. Would she give up before the clock struck midnight and a New Year began? He’d never live it down if he let a woman out-drink him.

“Ten more bottles of beer on the wall, ten more bottles of beeeer. Take one down, pass it around…” he sang off-key and out of tune.

It sounded just fine to Pearl. She didn’t care if he sounded like a cross between Alvin of the Chipmunks and a big green bullfrog, as long as he didn’t put his shirt back on. The room was spinning but she wasn’t going to holler calf rope yet. His eyes looked bleary and his head would hit the table before hers did. She eyed the distance to the bathroom and decided she could make it if she was very careful. She’d concentrate on putting one foot ahead of the other and he would not see her stagger. But first they’d have one more round.

She poured and slopped a little out on the table. “You can have that. I don’t want it.”

He dipped his finger in it and wiped it on her lips, leaned forward, and licked it off.

She opened her mouth and grabbed a fist full of dark hair to keep his lips on hers. She was panting when he pulled back.

He chuckled. “Are you trying to seduce me, lady?”

“Yes, I am. Is it workin’?” She giggled.

“Nope. We’ve got a contest here and I can’t be bought.”

“I’ve got to pee. Is that against the rules?”

“No, but let’s do one more round and that’ll finish my bottle. You’ll have to get yours, but I’m goin’ with you.”

“Why?”

“To make sure you don’t cheat.”

She poured the last of the bottle up into the glasses and tossed hers back. There wasn’t a bit of fire in her stomach, but she wished she’d brought extra underpants in her purse. Damn, that man got sexier with every single shot.

“I vote we take a ten-minute intermission. You can have first at the bathroom.” He slurred, but her ears were buzzing and she understood him perfectly.

She stood up slowly.

His eyes followed her all the way to the bathroom. She didn’t stagger one bit. He’d never met a woman who could match him shot for shot, but that redhead could sure hold her liquor. The numbers on the digital clock beside the bed said it was eleven fifty-something, but they were dancing around like line dancers doing the Cotton-Eyed Joe in a honky tonk.

He stood up slowly and held onto the chair until the walls stopped spinning. He would be standing outside the bathroom door when she came out. He wasn’t admitting defeat, not yet.

She put her head between her knees as she sat on the potty and took long, deep breaths. Damn Wil Marshall anyway! Most men folded after round nine. Only twice had she had to go to round ten and that was with her best friend in college. A girl who’d come from a long line of AA members.

Had the ten-minute intermission already passed? Actually only five of it was hers. He would have to use the bathroom too. She sat up, got a fix on the cold water faucet to still the walls, and pulled up her underpants. When she opened the door he was leaning on the jamb.

“Thought you’d passed out in there and I’d won.” He grinned.

“Ready for the second bottle?” she asked.

He moved to one side. “I’m ready. How about you, Red?”

She took a step, got off balance on the second one, and the brown carpet was coming up in slow motion to meet her when Wil’s strong arms grabbed her around the waist. That motion set him off balance and he fell toward the bed, taking her with him.

“You did that on purpose.” She was cuddled up in the crook of his arm with her head on his chest. How in the hell did two people fall on a bed in such a perfect position? Was it fate or just plain dumb luck? And why did it feel so damned natural and good?

“I didn’t trip you, darlin’,” he whispered.

He buried his face in a mop of red hair. He deserved a kiss for saving her from breaking an arm or worse yet, her cute little nose, with that fall. Besides, the countdown on the television had begun and the announcer yelled nine. He wanted a New Year’s kiss and he wanted it to be with Miz Red Richland.