Let It Bree: Let It Bree / Can't Buy Me Louie. Colleen Collins

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      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 down-home look with that fancy van, though. The two didn’t mix.

      He finally broke the silence. “Well, you’re safe now. That’s what matters.”

      She hoped that was true. Thanks to this guy, she was, for the time being. Tomorrow, she’d figure out how to get back home, clean up this “alleged theft” confusion, and get back to leading a normal life.

      “What’s your name?” asked Bree. She’d hovered next to the door as he’d filled out the registration stuff in the lodge lobby, so she hadn’t overheard any information, such as his name or where he lived.

      “Kirk Dunmore. Yours?”

      “Bree Brown.” She eyed the TV, knowing in her gut that the story of a Brahman bull trotting out of the Denver Stock Show would be on the news. Escapee livestock was big news. Last year when those llamas had bolted free and run down the I-25, it’d been on all the stations.

      She’d check the TV later, when she was alone.

      Then she thought, with a sickening realization, that chances were Grams, who watched the news religiously every evening, would have seen a story about Bree and Valentine riding out of the coliseum and be worried sick.

      Bree looked around the room for a phone. “I need to call home.”

      “Yeah, I need to phone my fiancée, too.” Fiancée?

      Bree pushed her hand through her curly hair, unsure why her stomach felt as though it had just flipped upside down. Couldn’t be because of Kirk’s remark. Like she cared. She eyed the sandwiches Kirk had purchased. My insides are flip-flopping because I’m hungry. After she’d eaten something solid, she’d feel lots better.

      But when she looked at Kirk, her stomach did another somersault.

      The way he stood—legs spread, arms crossed solidly over his chest—he looked like a rough and rugged explorer, the kind of guy who fearlessly tackled anything in the world.

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