Two To Wrangle (Hotel Rodeo #2)(9)

Ty woke up with a hellacious hangover and a body nearly crippled from a night spent on the sofa. He’d never gone to his bed simply because he didn’t want to be alone in it. He’d hoped to convince Monica to stay, but once more she’d walked out on him, even after he’d laid everything on the line. A lot of last night was fuzzy, but that part wasn’t.

Neither was his emotional breakdown.

Jesus, he’d wept like a friggin’ baby. He hadn’t done that since he was ten and the bull gored his father. What kind of * did she think he was after that? He partly blamed the booze. He hadn’t drunk that much in almost eight years.

The anvils inside his head called for a hair of the dog, but he didn’t trust himself. Last night only proved how easy it would be to fall back into old habits. He’d allowed himself to wallow in grief, but he was done drinking and done grieving now. It was time to put all that behind him and move on with his life. Trouble was, he didn’t have a damn clue where Tom’s passing left him.

Monica was hell-bent on selling the hotel unless he came up with the money to buy her out.

Ironically, it was Delaney who’d come up with a potential solution. Delaney had offered him a means of securing a loan, but her deal came with strings. He still didn’t know why she was so eager to help him find an investor. He knew it wasn’t an altruistic move on her part. She wanted something from him, but he didn’t have a clue what it might be—other than his half of the ranch.

What time was it anyway? He squinted at his watch. Almost noon. Shit. He’d slept half the day away. He got up, clutching his head with a groan. He’d just have to pull himself up by the bootstraps and suffer through the agony, which would be a special kind of hell since he was facing a sixteen-hour drive to Oklahoma. He’d been stressed to the breaking point, but the drive would give him plenty of time to sort things out. Staring out at an empty highway, it would be easy to get lost in his thoughts, an indulgence he hadn’t experienced in weeks.

He’d never considered before what losing Tom would mean to his future, but now it was time to face that reality. Tom had offered him the job in Vegas when Ty was at an all-time low and desperate to break the cycle he’d sworn never to fall into. But he had fallen, deeper and harder than even his old man ever had. Given time, his end would have been the same. The change of scenery had been a literal lifeline.

Tom had agreed to rebuild the Hotel Rodeo right before his first stroke, but then Monica had come into the picture, with guns blazing and plans to sell. She’d given him no reason to believe Tom’s passing had changed her mind about that. If anything, she now had even more reason to get rid of the place. Maintaining any interest in the hotel would mean a continued connection with Ty. She’d made it pretty damned clear how she felt last night when she’d come to collect Tom’s ashes.

Maybe she didn’t care about the hotel, but he did care. The people who worked there were like family. He was responsible for their livelihood as well as his own. Monica had given him the dubious courtesy of sixty days to buy her out before putting the place on the auction block, but he still needed fifty million dollars, and time was ticking away.

He forced himself to face the hard reality that he might have to sell out. Problem was, without the hotel he’d have to return to one of the only other things he knew—ranching or rodeo. Losing the hotel would still leave him with half of his ranch in Oklahoma, but once again, that meant dealing with Delaney. She didn’t want him there any more than he wanted to go back. Delaney would buy him out in a heartbeat, but he had no intention of letting her have his ranch, and they sure as shit couldn’t work the place together.

On the other hand, life on the rodeo circuit had almost killed him once. He was eight years older now and might not be so lucky the next time a fifteen-hundred-pound bull decided to plow him nose first across an arena.

The only other option that sprang to mind was to maybe take over managing Tom’s place. The present foreman, ol’ Bart, had always liked him. He was also older than dirt and might be persuaded to retire if Ty wanted to take up the reins. Then again, Monica probably had plans to sell the ranch too. After closely considering every option, the only conclusion he’d come to was that his entire situation sucked big, hairy, donkey balls. Any way he looked at it, Ty was screwed.



“I’m afraid I’m not much of a cook.” Bob set a plate in front of Monica with an apologetic look. “Fortunately, I found some of Rosa’s tamales in the freezer. Maybe it’s not haute cuisine, but it’s better than the cowboy beans and son-of-a-bitch stew the crew’s been living on.”

“Son-of-a-bitch stew? Did I hear you right?” Monica laughed.

“Yup,” Bob said. “That’s what they call it.”

“What’s in it?” she asked.

“Dunno and probably don’t want to. All I can tell you is they’ve been a sorry lot of grumblers since Rosa’s been gone.”

“Does she do all the cooking?” Monica asked and took an appreciative bite. She wasn’t a big fan of Mexican cuisine, but the tamales were surprisingly good.

“Yup. She usually prepares all the meals for Tom and the ranch hands. Don’t know what they’re going to do if she leaves.”

“Do you think she’ll want to?”

“Probably,” Bob said. “She has grown kids in Houston, I think. With Tom gone, she’ll probably want to move closer to them. Unless, of course, she goes to work for Delaney. That’s a possibility. I think they’re still pretty tight.”