Page 5 of The Cowboy’s Reckoning

Crazy.

Burke drained the glass he’d carried out of the bar, then set it on the antique lobby desk. “It’ll be easy,” he repeated as he and Trev and Jordan headed toward the main hotel entrance.

Burke led the way through the parking lot that flanked the old hotel to the tracks where a trailer with a shredded tire was parked illegally.

Jordan tilted back his hat. “Where’s your second trailer?”

“Parked on the street over there.”

Trev gave a nod as he considered the situation. “Looks doable.”

“Surprisingly so,” Jordan agreed. There was plenty of maneuvering room. All they had to do was back the other trailer to the rear door of this one and drive the cows from one trailer to the other with the open doors acting as panels to keep the cows from escaping. Hell, this might be as easy as Burke insisted it was.

“Better get going. It’ll be dark soon,” Burke said.

The operation commenced with Burke retrieving his trailer, which had four good tires, and expertly backing it up to the other, leaving just enough room to open the door.

“What do you need us for?” Jordan asked when Burke joined them at the rear of the trailers.

“This door is broken.” He pointed to door of the trailer he’d just parked. “Only the slider works.” The slider being the narrower sliding door built into the main door.

“What’s wrong with the big door?”

“I dunno. Someone welded the hinges, so we’ve always just used the slider when loading. Never been a problem.”

Trev blew out a breath, then shrugged. “Shouldn’t be a problem tonight either.”

Burke gave the slider a pounding blow near the top hinges, then pushed it open with a rasp of metal on metal. Jordan and Trev took positions on what would be the open side of the gap between trailers while Burke unlatched the door and swung it open.

The cows hesitated, inched forward, then burst out of the trailer one after the other. Trev and Jordan waved arms and whistled, and the cows charged along the path of least resistance through the open slider into the second trailer where they came to a jolting halt. Jordan mounted the bumper to push the slider closed, cursing as it refused to budge. He tried again and the door moved a few stubborn inches before the milling cows, seeing a chance for yet another escape, plunged toward the slider, forcing the stubborn door back open with brute cow strength as they shouldered through the opening, then popped free one after the other.

Jordan and Trev stumbled backward as the cows emerged, neither of them stupid enough to get between the ladies and their line of escape.

“Oh, shit,” Burke moaned as the Angus galloped across the railroad tracks and into the Graff Hotel parking lot. “Shit, shit, shit.”

*

“I still can’t believe that Jordan Matthews is your new landlord,” Aubrey said as she followed Lil and Meg out the rear entrance of the Graff Hotel into the warm night air.

The smell of wood-fired pizza drifted toward them from the pizzeria across the street from the parking lot. “I would know. Everyone would know.”

But how many men called Jordan Matthews could there be in a small area? Granted, Lil had assumed that her Jordan Matthews was a rich guy from Chicago, but why couldn’t he be a local cowboy? Aubrey had confessed that she had no way of knowing if the man had come into money.

“We’ll find out tomorrow—” She let out an oof as she collided with Meg who’d stopped dead in front of her.

“Do you hear hooves?” Meg asked.

The small gray-haired woman who’d followed them out the exit also stopped, gathering her handbag closer to her body as she cocked her head. “Cows?” she asked no one in particular.

“I think so,” Lil said, exchanging a perplexed look with the woman.

“Gotta be a prank.” Aubrey edged by her and walked around the corner of the building. She let out a sharp gasp and stumbled back. “Not a prank. Real cows, circling the parking lot.”

“Keep them away from the alley, Burke!” a man’s voice boomed from the parking lot, edged with frustration and anger.

“We have to turn them if they come this way,” Meg said, jerking her head toward the people eating at the outside tables near the pizzeria.

“Right.” Lil headed toward the maintenance equipment bin near the back door of the hotel and pulled out the sidewalk broom.