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

was expressing an interest in someone other than herself. She was about to speak again, but a customer who’d been trying to flag her down since she’d started talking to Cole called out impatiently and quite adamantly, “Oh, miss. I’d like to place an order, please. If you can fit me into your busy social calendar.”

For a moment, Cole thought she was going to turn on the guy and tell him that no, as a matter of fact, she didn’t have room on her busy social calendar for him. Instead, with a rueful smile for Cole and a surprising amount of grace, she squirmed back down to the floor to perform the job she was hired to do. Something that left Cole free and clear—or, to put it in horseracing terms, fast and loose—to talk to Craggedy.

Funny thing, though. When he turned to look at her again, he couldn’t think of a single interesting thing to say.

LULU COULD NOT BELIEVE HER BAD LUCK. BEING IN the same place, at the same time, as Cole Early, not once, not twice, but three times in less than a week. Okay, so granted, the first time was a complete accident, and the second time she and Bree had gone out specifically to look for him. And okay, so it was a safe bet that the guy would eventually show up at the Ambassador Bar, since it was the sort of place tourists always flocked to, and Lulu spent almost as many nights here as Bree did when she was waiting for her friend to finish her shift. Still. It showed a remarkable abundance of bad karma on Lulu’s part to encounter him again, and she couldn’t remember doing anything lately that would warrant that.

On the contrary, she was always careful to do whatever she could to bank up good karma. She always held the elevator door for whoever was running to catch it. She always dropped her spare pennies in the leave-a-penny tray at the Circle K. She always tipped 20 percent, even when the service was only worth eight. She always stopped to provide a break in the traffic to let people turn left in front of her. Anything she could do to ward off things like…like…

Well, like the Cole Earlys of the world.

She reminded herself how arrogant and obnoxious he’d been at Eddie’s office on Friday, and was doing a pretty good job of remembering that when he moved in close enough for her to inhale the scent of him. He didn’t smell like any man she’d ever met, an eclectic—and not altogether unpleasant—mix of crisp man cologne, sweaty horse, and track dirt. And sunshine, she noted. He had that sort of full-day-outdoors-in-the-sun fragrance about him. The kind that made her reminisce about beaches and tropics and peel-and-eat shrimp with an ice-cold beer. He smelled like both indoors and out. Like work and play. Like business and pleasure. She liked it.

No! She didn’t like it! she immediately contradicted herself. Not only was Cole Early not the kind of guy she wanted to get involved with—flashy and self-important and in town only temporarily—Bree had dibs.

Not that Lulu thought for a moment that a man—any man, but especially one like Cole Early—would even give her the time of day when he could give that, and more, to Bree. But Bree was on the clock ’til her relief bartender showed up, and that was still a half-hour away. This was Bree’s chance to finally meet a guy who could give her what she’d always wanted—the shallow, mind-numbing, thoroughly demoralizing existence of a woman who received glittering gems and cases of champagne and carte blanche on Fifth Avenue in exchange for mind-blowing sex with a guy who smelled of business and pleasure and was probably hung like the stallions he trained. No way would Lulu ever trade her safe, quiet, no-glittering-gems-or-stallions-for-me-thankyouverymuch life for that. Gosh, that would just suck.

Somewhere in the BFF Handbook there had to be a provision for ensuring that, if a situation arose that offered an opportunity for you to make your Best Friend Forever’s dream come true, then you had a sacred charge to do whatever you could to make it happen. Which meant chatting up Cole Early until Bree was free to do that herself, but not being so interesting that she compromised Bree’s chances to catch him. Lulu was confident that if the situation were reversed, if it were Bree in the position of making Lulu’s dream come true—whatever that dream was, and someday, Lulu was going to have to figure that out—then Bree would do whatever she could to ensure it happened.

So Lulu was honor-bound to keep Cole Early here until Bree finished her shift and could ensnare him with her feminine wiles—which, judging by past experiences, would take Bree about a minute and a half. And Lulu was also honor-bound to make sure she didn’t do or say anything that would make her look more attractive than Bree. Hah. Like that would be a problem. Even if Bree didn’t have a million times more sex appeal than Lulu, Lulu wasn’t interested in doing the feminine wiles thing on Cole Early anyway. Not that she had a feminine wile with her at the moment anyway. Or, you know, ever. She still told herself to watch what she said and how she said it.

Her resolve faltered a little, though, when someone behind Cole jostled him and sent him careening forward, right into Lulu. He didn’t bump into her as hard as he had in Eddie’s office, just pressed against her in a way that made her aware of him from her breasts to her hips, thanks to the way his body came into contact with hers in both of those places, long enough to make her wonder what it would be like to come into contact with both of those places on him without the burden of…oh, she didn’t know…clothes.

No! She didn’t wonder that at all! That was for