Page 40 of A Cowboy in the Streets

Chloe

Save a horse, James. Save so many horses.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Adam said.

The apologetic look on the hotel receptionist’s face indicated that he was not, in fact, kidding. “I’m sorry, sir. We’re booked solid for the rodeo. As I explained on the phone when Mr. Hale made the reservation, this is the last room available. You are welcome to try your luck at other hotels, of course.”

“This is fine,” I said hastily. No way was I going to risk forfeiting the only bed left in Colorado Springs. Would it be easy sleeping next to the man I wanted to climb like a wisteria vine? No. But I would be a professional about it if it killed me. I needed to focus on why we were here, that’s all.

“Fucking Brax,” Adam muttered. “Nice of him to give us a head’s up.”

Brax was no idiot. “So you could yell at him for something outside his control?” I asked.

“Exactly.”

He was rumpled from his two-and-a-half-hour nap. His hair stuck up at weird angles and there was a red crease along his right cheekbone from where his head had fallen against the seatbelt. I grinned.

He had fought it, but I had won. The decaf coffee Chloe had handed him with a bored expression that gave nothing away hadn’t been up to the task of keeping him awake when I was determined to put him to sleep. With my Willie Nelson playlist crooning through the car speakers, the back windows rolled down to let in the warm, dry breeze, and me droning on about hoof oil, Adam was dead asleep in thirty minutes.

The poor man never stood a chance.

“Let’s drop our bags in our room and go meet Zack for dinner,” I suggested. Zack had texted Adam shortly before he passed out. We were meeting him for dinner tonight. Tomorrow he had the roping event and then the next day was his bareback bronc ride. He was a top contender for both.

We were on the twelfth floor with a great view overlooking the city. In the distance, enormous red rock formations jutted toward the sky.

“Wow,” I breathed. I dropped my bag next to the bed and went straight to the window.

Adam peered out the window from behind me. “Garden of the Gods. We can go Sunday before we head back home if we have time.”

I couldn’t get enough of the way the setting sun made the rocks glow like fresh lava. “We’ll make time,” I promised myself.

I turned away from the window to take in the rest of the room. One queen-size bed. A desk with a rolling chair. No couch.

Welp.

“I’ll take the floor,” Adam said.

“Okay,” I said agreeably, even though I would never in a million years do that to him. The carpet felt thick enough under my feet, but under his back, it might as well be a plank of wood. Anyway, all hotels were a little bit gross, even the nice ones. You could boil sheets. You couldn’t boil a carpet.

But there was no point in having the same fight twice. We could save that conversation for after dinner.

“I’m going to change in the bathroom,” I said. I had taken a quick shower before we hit the road, so I didn’t smell like a horse, but I was wearing my standard road trip outfit of leggings and an old Maren Morris tee shirt that proclaimed me a “lunatic country music person.”

I brought my bag into the bathroom. “Casual or fancy?” I hollered through the closed door.

“Casual,” he called back.

“Good. I didn’t bring a lot of fancy.”

I settled for a sundress with a flirty hem that hit me just above the knees. It was meant to hit around mid-thigh, but given my height issues, things tended to run long on me. The elevation in Colorado Springs meant even summer nights could be chilly, so I paired that with a chunky cream-colored cardigan with big wood buttons. After a swipe of mascara and a slick of pink lipstick, I walked out of the bathroom barefoot.

His gaze raked over me, quick and greedy, before he wrenched his eyes away, his mouth flattening into a grim line. “Shoes on, buttercup,” he growled. “Let’s go.”

“Okay,” I said, like his hungry perusal of my body hadn’t turned my insides into something hot and liquid. Totally chill and unaffected—that was me.

Lies. All lies.

I grabbed my socks and boots and shoved my feet into them. “I’m ready.”

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