Red's Hot Cowboy Read Online Free Page A

lose the battle of the stare-down with the pretty motel owner.
    “People ought to keep a better handle on their kids. That’s the way trouble starts.”
    “You’d better get back inside before you get frostbite.” She let her eyes roam over his broad chest and hunky biceps.
    You are one to talk about trouble, cowboy. It oozes out of your pores like sweat on a hot summer day.
    He dropped his arms but didn’t look away from her eyes. “I don’t need you to tell me what to do. I can take care of myself.”
    Pearl popped her hands on her hips. “Don’t look like you’re doin’ too good a job to me. You’re going to have pneumonia in the morning if you don’t get inside where it’s warm. Even your stupid dog has enough sense to stay in out of this weather and he’s got a fur coat.”
    He stepped into his room and slammed the door with a loud bang.
    The phone was ringing when she opened the lobby door. Delilah was sitting on the sofa staring at it as if with her evil yellow-eyed glare she could send the noisy thing into room one with that other horrible creature who’d barked at her.
    Pearl grabbed it and said, “Longhorn Inn, may I help you?”
    “This is Georgiana over in room twenty-three. There’s a spider in my bathroom and I’m terrified of spiders. Send someone to kill it,” she whimpered.
    Pearl rolled her eyes and wondered if old Digger would be interested in killing a big, mean spider. “I’ll be there in a minute.”
    “The door is unlocked. I’m standing in the middle of the bed. I won’t get down until that thing is dead, so come on in,” Georgiana said.
    “Yes, ma’am,” Pearl said and hung up.
    Pearl picked up a can of bug spray and a flyswat and grumbled the whole way across the parking lot as she made her way between cars and trucks. The sleet had gotten serious. A thin layer covered the parking lot and stuck to the vehicle windshields. She knocked on the door, announced herself as pest control, and opened it to find Georgiana right where she said she’d be.
    The woman had to top six feet because her head was almost touching the ceiling when she stood in the middle of the bed hugging a pillow like a shield. She wore a flimsy red lace teddy and shivered like she’d been snow skiing in that getup. She had a shoulder span that would rival a Dallas Cowboy linebacker and hair so big they’d have had to order her a special helmet if she’d played for them. “You’ve got to kill it and flush it down the potty because I’m afraid of dead ones too. I thought you’d send your husband to do this kind of work.”
    For a split second Pearl wondered if the red teddy and the fear was in hopes that a man would rush to her aid and she’d repay him for his chivalry in ways that would blow the bottom out of that commandment about adultery.
    “No husband. Just me, but I’m armed and dangerous.” Pearl held up the bug spray and the swat.
    And chaos truly does rule tonight, Pearl thought on her way to the bathroom . It’s a good thing I’m not afraid of spiders. A mouse would be a different thing altogether. If it had been one of those varmints you’d be standing on the bed until you starved to death or until you talked Santa Claus into chasin’ it down for you.
    It wasn’t a spider but a stinging scorpion. A nice big one with its tail crooked up over its back and a threatening look in its beady little eyes. She gave him a healthy dose of bug spray but it barely slowed him down. The fly swat showed him who was boss, and Pearl picked up what was left of him with toilet paper and flushed his remains down the toilet.
    “It’s dead and buried,” she told Georgiana. “You can get off the bed now.”
    Georgiana scanned the whole room before she stepped off the bed. “I’m just not comfortable in these little motels. I like a big old chain hotel like a Motel Six or a Holiday Inn or preferably a Hyatt.”
    “But they are all out of electricity, right?” Pearl said.
    “That’s the only