Authors: Carolyn Brown
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?”
“He married my friend.”
“Luck of the Irish,” the cowboy said as he filled out the card.
“What?” Pearl asked.
He pulled the card across the countertop toward him and laid down a bill. “I don’t use credit cards. If Digger makes a mess in your precious room, I’ll pay for it in cash. I said the luck of the Irish, and I was talkin’ about Rye. Man had to be lucky to get a woman like that.”
Her cell phone rang and she grabbed it.
“Hello?”
“Hey, darlin’. I’m at Kayla’s party and I don’t see you here. I miss you. Are you sick?” Tyler asked.
She shut her eyes briefly and saw him… tall, blond, dimples, and damn, but he could kiss good. She sighed as she rang up the money.
“I’m working. I’ve moved to Henrietta and I’m running a motel. No party for me tonight,” she said.
“Ah, sugar, that stinks,” he said. “I’ll call later in the week. Maybe we can meet up in Dallas for a weekend?”
“Don’t hold your breath. Tell Kayla hello for me.” Pearl handed the cowboy a key to room one and a nickel in change and watched him fill out the card. His sexier-than-hell eyes were topped with black brows and set off by ultra-thick black lashes. His high cheekbones and black shaggy hair left no doubt that there was some Native American blood in his gene pool. His angular face was softened by a lopsided dimple on the left side when he took time away from the card to smile at his dog.
Yes, the whole bad boy package down to the smile, which reminded her too damn much of Vince, and that was one place she was not going on Christmas Eve.
A man who likes dogs can’t be all bad, and dammit he’s hot,
her heart said.
His dimple deepened. “So you got to work instead of play. Too bad. You look like someone who’d rather be at a party.”
“That’s called eavesdropping,” she said.
“I wasn’t listening in on your conversation. Couldn’t help but hear a man who’s yelling above the crowd when he talks.”
She shot him a go-to-hell look, which worked the reverse when she realized just how sexy his eyes were.
What in the hell is the matter with me? Probably the fact that I haven’t had a date in weeks, haven’t been to dinner or a movie. Hell, I haven’t even been to the ice cream store with a man in forever. No one told me being an entrepreneur in a little bitty town took away every chance for a date. I want a date with a hot cowboy that looks like this for my Christmas present.
The thought startled her so bad that she almost blushed.
“You stay away from that man,” her mother’s voice said so close that Pearl looked over her shoulder to see if she’d snuck into the lobby through the back door.
She willed herself to think about all the cleaning she’d have to do the next day to get the thoughts and her mother’s voice out of her head.
“So when did Pearlita hire you? Last time I was here she was still runnin’ the place by herself,” the cowboy asked as he signed his name to the bottom of the card.
“Pearlita was my aunt. She passed away and I inherited the place,” Pearl said.
“I’m sorry, ma’am,” he said softly.
“Thank you,” she said as she reached under the counter and flipped the light switch to add the word NO to VACANCY. “Sleep well. I’ll lock up behind you.”
“Good night, Red,” he said with a wicked grin as she shut the door.
She shook her fist and gave him her best drop-graveyard-dead look.
“Who is he anyway?” she asked as she made her way back to the counter and picked up the card.
Wil Marshall. One
l
on the first name, two on the second.
“Wil Marshall.” The name rolled off her tongue and created a warm spot low in her belly. “Hell, it even sounds like a bad boy name, and I’m not getting tangled up with another bad boy. I learned my lesson the first time, and as bad as I hate to admit it, Momma was right about bad boys.”
His address was a rural route, phone number still out of Henrietta. He drove a spanking new Chevrolet Silverado truck with Texas plates. And he had a grin that was part sexy and the other part pure wicked.
“Wil Marshall, you sleep well and then get the hell out of my motel. I don’t need the heat that sexy grin of yours brings on,” she said.
She slipped through the door into her living quarters and found Delilah sitting on the coffee table licking her paws as if cleaning all that horrid dog smell from her claws.
“Poor baby,” Pearl crooned as she stroked the cat’s long fur. “Guess you showed that miserable slobbering dog who was boss, didn’t you? If his master ever calls me Red again I will turn you loose to show him he’s not the boss either.”
She slumped down into the sofa, glad that she’d decided to keep the comfortable old furniture. She’d started to donate all of it to a charity but then decided at the last minute to put hers in storage until she could figure out just what improvements she intended to make to the motel. The gold velvet sofa was ugly as sin on Sunday morning but comfortable; the old chrome dining room table and four red padded chairs to match were old as God but serviceable; the bedroom suite that had belonged to Pearlita’s mother and an oak desk bought at an estate auction the year the motel opened were still usable. When she was a little girl, Pearl had wondered whether Moses or Noah had built that desk. Now she knew it predated both of them.