Fast & Loose by Elizabeth Bevarly (the giving tree read aloud .txt) 📕

me order you something else,” he offered magnanimously. To himself, he added, And then go away.

Before Randi/Rhonda/Renee had a chance to reply, the brunette on his right piped up, “I’ll have a screwdriver.”

Cole shuddered. How could anyone do something as heinous as adding juice to a perfectly good spirit like vodka? In spite of his revulsion, he started to lift a finger to signal the—female—bartender. But she was there before his hand was even fully in the air, ignoring the people who had clearly summoned her before he had, slapping a cocktail napkin down on the bar in front of him.

“What can I get you, Mr. Early?” she asked.

He turned to look at the brunette, wishing like hell that he could remember her name. Susie? Cindy? Sally? “Sarah,” he finally said out loud when he recalled it, relief washing over him, “would like a screwdriver.”

“Vicky,” she corrected him. “Vicky would like a screwdriver.”

Damn. He hadn’t even been close.

“But I can be Sarah if you want,” she offered, leaning in even closer to curl her own perfectly manicured fingers over his thigh and give it a gentle squeeze. “In fact, for you, Cole, I can be anybody—or anything—you want.”

“So can I,” Randi/Rhonda/Renee said from his left.

The redhead behind him—Barbie? Bobbie? Belinda?—pressed more intimately against him. “Me, too,” she joined in, her voice sultry in his ear, her breath hot on his neck.

Randi/Rhonda/Renee slipped her arm over his shoulders, threw a very suggestive look at the other two women, leaned in very, very close to his other ear and added, “If you’d like, we can all be anyone and anything you want…together.”

Hello. A part of Cole’s anatomy that didn’t normally misbehave in public suddenly jumped to attention with a rousing chorus of Hoo-ah! What Randi/Rhonda/Renee, Barbie/Bobbie/Belinda and Whatshername were offering was an opportunity the average man only dreamed about, then lied about in a letter to Penthouse. He didn’t kid himself that if he’d been any regular working stiff—if one could pardon the crassness of the pun—the three women wouldn’t have given him the time of day. It was only because he was Cole Early that such offers ever came his way. Not that he’d ever been offered a four-way before—just how did that work, anyway?—so this was a bit of a treat, even for Cole.

Which was why he was so surprised when he heard himself say, “I appreciate the offer, ladies, but I’m kind of waiting for someone.”

Their disbelief was almost palpable. As was their disappointment. As was the seemingly fifty-degree drop in temperature as they removed their hands from his various body parts, collected their drinks, and walked away. Cole was about to breathe a sigh of relief and reach for his own drink, but he was immediately surrounded by a new batch of women, each of whom draped herself over him in much the same way as the ones who had just left.

It was going to be a looooooong two weeks, he thought morosely. How was he supposed to guide Silk Purse to the finish line when his attention span was being hindered at the starting gate?

The thought had just wrapped itself around his brain when, in an effort to deflect one of the new women’s sultry, hot, lascivious, yada-yada-yada looks, he shot his gaze across the crowded bar and saw a familiar face. It took a moment for him to recognize it as belonging to the woman he’d met Friday afternoon at the realty office, the one whose laughing eyes and smug grin had stayed with him long after she’d gone—mostly as an irritant in his belly. Something erupted in his belly again at seeing her now, but, surprisingly, it wasn’t irritation this time. In fact, it was kind of…sort of…

Nah. It couldn’t be happiness. That would be nuts. But he was…relieved—yeah, that was it—to see Craggedy Ann standing on the other side of the room. Because now he had a legitimate someone to be waiting for/know/halfway-recognize that would fend off any future groups of luscious women who might want to press their bodies into Cole’s and offer to, um, do the, ah, remarkable thing that Rosina, Betina, and Samantha had just offered to do.

Craggedy was wearing pretty much the same thing she’d worn on Friday, and her plain jeans and white T-shirt looked completely out of place amid the colorful cocktail and dance club attire of the other patrons. Out of place, too, was her obvious lack of makeup and the fact that she didn’t seem to have even run a brush through her unruly mop of russet curls since he’d last seen her. But what was most out of place was his reaction to her. Because as he observed Craggedy Ann looking so uncomfortable and alien in her festive surroundings, Cole found himself sympathizing with her. Maybe because he’d been feeling so uncomfortable and alien in his festive surroundings, too.

Without even thinking about what he was doing, he stood and began to make his way across the room. But it was so crowded—and so many people wanted to greet him, or congratulate him, or ask him who he liked for the Derby, as if that wasn’t the dumbest question in the world—that his progress was constantly impeded. He started to feel like he was in one of those dreams where the thing he was struggling hardest to get to kept getting farther and farther away, and the faster he tried to run, the more unattainable it became. Then he realized Craggedy Ann was craning her neck and looking around the room, as if she were searching for something—someone—too. And then his anxiety rose, because what if she found that person before he had a chance to get to her? He might never see her again.

Then he realized how foolish he was being. He didn’t even know the woman’s name, had exchanged maybe two dozen words with her, none of which had been especially warm. Hell, he didn’t even like her, weird sympathizing notwithstanding, which was probably