Hell on Heels (Hotel Rodeo #1)(22)

OK? Ty was going to Oklahoma? That was unexpected. And who the hell was Rosa? She typed her query. Rosa???

Her phone vibrated instantly with Ty’s reply. Tom’s housekeeper. Going to get her. Back in a coupla days.

His housekeeper? Monica sipped her drink, feeling frustrated, hurt, and confused. And even a little jealous. Why would Tom talk to Ty about this and not to her? Why would he want his housekeeper when she’d been constantly at his side from the very start? She’d ask Tom tomorrow. Maybe now after Ty’s visit, Tom would be more communicative.

Her phone vibrated one last time. Got UR wish. UR in charge now, Boss Lady.

Ty had left her in charge? Was this a joke? She didn’t know anything about the place. He knew that. Maybe that was his point. But if he intended to gain more control by making her feel incompetent, he faced a rude awakening.





Chapter Eight


Landing in Oklahoma City, Ty rented a car and headed south toward Tillman County. It’d been seven years since Ty had left Oklahoma with no intention of ever going back. He probably would have kept that promise to himself if it wasn’t for Tom. But if Tom wanted Rosa, Ty would bring her back to Vegas—even if he had to hog-tie and carry her.

Maybe one day he’d be more like Tom and want to retire to peace and solitude, but he was still far too restless to be content on the ranch for long. And there was no way in hell he and Delaney could ever run it together.

He hadn’t contested when Delaney filed for divorce. And dumbass that he was, he hadn’t even hired a lawyer, not counting on her getting half of the ranch and, worse, wanting to keep it. When Delaney had insisted on staying there, he’d known he couldn’t.

Plugging his iPod into the audio jack, he flipped through a dozen playlists to Luke Kaufman’s “Cowboy Baller,” hit PLAY, and put the pedal to the metal. The rented Expedition roared down the highway. He had little fear of speeding tickets. He still knew almost everyone around these parts. Anyone he didn’t know knew Tom.

With every passing mile, his mind flooded with old memories, mostly pleasant, some not so much.

As the son of a stock contractor, rodeo was the life Ty had dreamed of as far back as he could remember. He’d been seduced by the sights, sounds, and smells the first time he’d ever hauled stock down these roads with his ol’ man. Although it ran deep in his blood, he’d sworn not to follow in his father’s footsteps after a bull impaled and trampled him to death. Barely two years later, his mother married a widower roughneck with two kids of his own. Feeling like a fifth wheel, Ty had gone to live at Tom’s ranch. He’d ridden the bus thirty miles to school until he was old enough to drive. From that point on, he raised enough hell to stretch three counties wide. He’d played wide receiver for the Bombers the last year they’d won the state championship. When Oklahoma University offered him a football scholarship, he’d accepted. He’d barely finished two years before dropping out of college.

The next few years blazed through his mind as he entered open ranch country, twenty miles outside his birthplace of Frederick. The familiar landscape, dotted with grazing cattle, still cried out to a corner of Ty’s soul.

For five years Ty had worked Tom’s horses and roped and branded cattle, but he’d stayed away from the bulls. Once he began riding rough stock, however, he realized riding the bulls and broncs wasn’t enough for him. He had a marrow-deep need to defy fate, and that’s exactly what he’d done every time he entered the arena, much like a game of Russian roulette.

He’d tried to fight it, but in the end you can never deny who you are. Restlessness and rodeo, his nature and his obsession, finally won out. Bull fighting quickly became an addiction.

For the next few years he’d lived on the road in cheap motels, traveling from one rodeo to another in endless succession—a life that wreaked almost as much havoc on his liver as it had on his marriage—not that he and Delaney ever had any real chance of making it.

His drinking got out of control. Then one night he’d entered the arena tanked up on bourbon and woken up the next day in intensive care. Tom had shown up shortly after that with an offer that saved his life. He needed someone he could implicitly trust to run the hotel after his manager had been taken away by the FBI.

With his marriage finished and his life a mess, it seemed an ideal solution for Ty. He could still maintain a connection to the people and world he loved, but he was out of temptation’s reach. The Hotel Rodeo was a haven of sorts, a chance to get his shit together once and for all, and he had leaped at the chance. That had been seven years ago.

He turned off the highway onto the old gravel road leading out to Tom’s place, ten thousand plus acres of gently rolling hills and native grasslands. Ty’s mind continued to churn as he followed the miles of barbwire fence enclosing Tom’s beloved longhorns.

Tom had given him a chance to straighten himself out, and he’d done it—in Sin City, of all places. He’d even quit drinking. Well, mostly. The hard stuff anyway. But now here he was back in Oklahoma, where he’d begun.

He pulled into Tom’s place, a sprawling Spanish-style villa, only to eye a new Cadillac Escalade parked in the drive. He spit out a curse. It had to be Delaney, and she was the last person he wanted to see. Did she somehow have a second sense about these things? He cut off the engine, spilling a long stream of expletives before hopping out of the truck and knocking on the door.