“Mother! You’re not driving that…that death trap to Denver!”
“My pickup ain’t no death trap. Just fixed the brakes last year. Where’d I kick off my boots? Oh, there they are.”
“You can’t get the bull into the pickup—”
“Hell, I know that. Bree ’n’ I’ll figure out how to get the bull home.” Ida slipped her tiny feet into a pair of cream-colored boots with purple trim.
“I’d…I’d go with you, but I have three sons to look after.”
“I know, honey pie. Now stop frettin’ and help your sweet ol’ mama get ready.”
Mattie made an exasperated sound. “Does my sweet old mama have to carry a gun?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“To shoot people with, sweetheart.”
“We’re in a family crisis and you’re quoting from those…those bad-guy videos!”
“The Fallen Sparrow, 1943, John Garfield. Who wasn’t a ‘bad guy,’ just a lost soul.” Ida paused.
“And them’s not just ‘flicks.’ Them’s words to live by.” She headed down the hallway. “Grab that bag of chips and a few apples. Meet you at the pickup,” Ida yelled over her shoulder.
“VAN WON’T START,” Kirk said, trying to sound calm. One hell of a feat considering a beast’s massive, horned head nearly hung over the front seat, mere inches from the right side of Kirk’s face.
Kirk reminded himself, again, that the girl said this animal was “intelligent” and “sweet-tempered.”
“We’re stuck?” asked the cowgirl. “We just got in!”
The bull released a hefty snort as though seconding her comment.
Man, that bull had bad breath. “I thought we had enough gas to make it to the station, but I was wrong.”
Wind whistled past. Clouds were creeping across the night sky, blotting out part of the moon. Kirk swore a coarse bull whisker brushed the side of his face. Was this monstrous thing hungry?
“Uh, when did your beast last eat?” he asked.
The girl made an indignant sound. “It’s a Brahman bull, not a beast. And it’s a vegetarian, so it won’t take a bite out of you. Unless you tick him off.”
Tick him off? “I thought you said he was sweet-tempered.”
“He has his moods, like anyone else.”
Wonderful. A moody bull. Worse, one that occasionally got “ticked off.” Kirk had never ticked anyone off. He was always Mr. Reasonable—the result of growing up with a wild, flamboyant mother for whom he had to constantly intervene. Once he’d had to mediate between her and a department-store Santa who his mother swore had propositioned her. Wouldn’t that be Kirk’s luck, after all these intervening, mediating years, to piss off a bull?
“Where were you headed to?” he asked.
“Chugwater.”
“As in Wyoming?”
“You know another Chugwater?”
“What are you doing several hundred miles away from home?” He probably shouldn’t ask. Alicia could make the story of a broken fingernail last a day…he couldn’t even fathom how long a lost-with-a-bull tale might take.
“So, now what do we do?” she asked, ignoring his question. “Any ideas?”
“Ideas? Too many,” Kirk muttered. He was accustomed to excavating and viewing the fossils of long-dead plants and beasts, not driving real live ones around.
He took in a deep breath and looked at the sky. Those clouds didn’t look like snow clouds, but in Colorado, one never second-guessed the weather. He itemized his priorities. First, he needed to find shelter and food. Second, tomorrow morning, he’d deal with their travel logistics.
“There’s a lodge up the road,” he finally said. “A few minutes’ walk. We can stay there tonight.”
“Lodge?” She sighed heavily. “I, uh, don’t have any money.”
“I have a credit card. I’ve stayed there before. The area behind the lodge backs right up to a mountain. Good resting spot for your bull.” He’d ask for one of the rooms at the far end from the main lodge. Considering it was January, high in the mountains, he seriously doubted anyone would be staying overnight at this out-of-the-way place. Stashing a bull would be the least of their worries.
He hoped.
“Do you have a cell phone?” she asked. “I’d like to call my grandmother.”
“Service is maxed out.” He’d tried calling Alicia earlier and discovered he was too far into the mountains to get a signal. “But I’m sure there’ll be phones in the rooms.”
“Think they’ll have oats or hay?”
For Valentine. “There should be some grass, bushes outside…and we can order twenty bowls of cereal on top of dinner.” He buttoned his top shirt button, anticipating the chill outside.
“Let’s go,” he said, opening his door. “Tarl Cabot, watch out,” he murmured under his breath, jumping to the ground.
TWENTY MINUTES LATER, Kirk flicked the switch of room number one, located at the farthest end of the Sundance Lodge. Although he’d assumed the place would be mostly empty, a gang of Harley riders—seen year-round in these parts of Colorado because of the scenic mountain roads—were staying overnight. Fortunately, there were two adjacent empty rooms available.
Bree followed him inside, checking out the far window through which she could see her bull tethered to a pine tree. “This room’s perfect for me. I can keep my eye on Val.”
He nodded. “Fine. I’ll leave our sandwiches here while I check my room, make a call.” He placed two butcher-paper-wrapped packages on a chipped wooden coffee table.
“Funny how they didn’t question your wanting to buy five boxes of that oat bran cereal, too,” said Bree.
Kirk chuckled. “Nederland’s filled with free spirits—I could have asked to buy one of the tie-dyed T-shirts off their backs and they wouldn’t have blinked an eye. The community is filled with former hippies or hippie wanna-bes. You know, peace and love and all that.”
“Well, I like peace, but I can do without—” Bree huffed a breath and looked around the room, feeling a little stupid for her slip of the tongue. Just because she wasn’t interested in love and marriage and all that nonsense, didn’t mean she had to announce it.
“You’re probably wondering what I was doing hitchhiking in the middle of nowhere,” she said quickly, switching topics. “I, uh, missed my ride from the stock show and a really nice truck driver said he’d give us a lift to Nederland so I said okay but I didn’t want to be dropped off in the middle of a town, so I told him just to leave us off on the side of the road. Figured we’d get a lift somehow to Chugwater, but nobody was stopping, so I jumped out in front of your stopped van…” She sucked in a breath, hoping the story sounded relatively sane and plausible, and it should considering she’d left out the parts about the gangsters and guns.
As he stared at her sorta stunned like, she realized this was the first moment she’d had a chance to really see him in the light. His hair was thick, blond. And he was solidly good-looking. Put him in a double-breasted suit and a gray felt hat, he could star as one of those hunky, hard-boiled detectives in one of Grams’s gangster flicks.
But she doubted this guy even owned a suit. He looked extremely comfortable in his faded jeans and blue-and-gray flannel shirt. Hard to fit his