“I bet it’s going to be a good time tonight, right?”
“Hope so.”
Make an effort
, Ali told herself. “Do you guys go over to Ryder’s Lodge a lot?”
Ted straightened his shoulders. “Oh yeah. All the time. Last time we were there, Mac got into a fight with this logger. Huge guy, just really enormous, right? And Mac pasted him one right in the face! It was epic.”
He hadn’t looked anywhere north of her collarbone yet. Ali suppressed a deep sigh—she didn’t want to make anything
more
interesting in her chest area—and nodded and smiled while Ted told his clearly-exaggerated story.
She didn’t know why she’d thought that tonight might be different than other dates she’d been on. Prescott guys were all the same.
Ali thought wistfully about moving. She’d love to pick up and go somewhere she’d never been, far away from the people she’d grown up with.
But moving took money, and money took a better job, and in order to get a better job, she’d have to move.
So until money fell out of the sky onto her head, she was going to have to make the best of what she had. She brought her attention back to Ted’s story.
***
Maybe this wasn’t so bad.
Grey was seated at the bar next to John, who was telling him about his mate and little twin cubs back home. The cubs were almost two and were apparently possessed of a secret ninja magic that allowed them to get into anything and everything that could be dangerous.
“The other night, I kid you not, I look away for five minutes and when I look back, Annie’s on the counter reaching for the knife block. The
knife block
! She’d pushed a kitchen chair over and climbed it up like it was nothing. I think there must be a monkey shifter somewhere in our family.” John shook his head in amazement.
On the surface, John’s stories seemed to confirm what Grey had already thought, which was that having kids was more worry than it was worth. He’d given his own parents enough sleepless nights when he was an angry, rebellious teenager, out doing all sorts of dumb, dangerous shit.
He’d always thought having kids was asking for trouble. Any cub of his would come out wild as hell. But right now, the idea of little toddlers charging around the kitchen getting into trouble was weirdly appealing.
But it was a moot point until he met his mate.
If he ever met her. Grey was a solitary man, like most big cats were. Logging was the most social job he’d ever had; he far preferred ranger work, where he was out on his own in the middle of a wide territory for most of the workday. And logging wasn’t going to introduce him to any women. It was a backbreaking, dangerous job, and he’d never seen a woman on any of the crews.
Plus, most of the women who came into bars like this one, where the loggers went after work, weren’t looking for anything more serious than a drink and maybe a good time in bed.
Grey could sympathize with that, but his days of drinking and good times with strangers were over. More and more, these days, he found that talking to women in bars just led to frustration that there was no real connection there.
So he sat and listened to John talk about his toddlers instead.
The bar slowly got rowdier as the night wore on. The voices got louder, the women slowly seemed to be wearing less clothing, and the occasional shoving match started up.
Grey started glancing at his watch, trying to judge when he could leave without insulting John. Pretty soon, he reckoned. His beer was almost gone, and he wouldn’t be ordering another.
As John wound up his story, Grey finished the last of his beer and pushed the glass away from himself. “Well, it’s been a good time…”
He’d been afraid John would protest, try to convince him to stay for another round, but instead John just glanced around them and nodded.
“Better get out of here while the getting’s good.” John stood up.
Grey followed him away from the bar, relieved.
There was a crush of people now, way more than there had been when the loggers had poured in at quitting time. It was a real Friday night crowd, looking to unwind after a long, hard week, and Grey couldn’t think of anything he wanted more than to escape into the crisp night air.
He’d drive his truck back to his cabin and go for a run up into the mountains, he decided. An area that hadn’t been logged yet, the deep forest. That’d be a nice, solitary finish to what had actually been a pretty pleasant night so far.
But as he was pushing through the crowd to the door, following John, Matt Finch appeared in his path.
“Hey there, kitty cat,” he said, a grin spreading across his face. “You think you can drink in this bar? This is a bar for bears, not for little cats. You might get your tail stepped on.”
Getting into a fight had not been part of his plan. “I can drink where I please,” Grey said mildly, “but since I was just leaving, you bears can have your clubhouse all to yourselves now.”
He slipped smoothly past Matt and kept going toward the door.
Behind him, he heard Matt say, “Hey, don’t you run away from me!” He braced himself. It looked like he might be getting a fight after all.
Then a high female voice said, “Matt Finch, if you punch that guy, I am
out of here
.”
Grey glanced back and saw Matt looking between him and a thin blonde, clearly undecided. There was a long moment where it wasn’t clear which way it would go, but finally Matt said, “All right, baby, fine. I’ll find him later.”
Grey let out his breath and kept on his way. No fight tonight.
It was coming, though, he could tell. Assholes like Matt Finch didn’t let up.
As he got farther away, he started to relax, but just as he was nearing the door, someone darted forward and ran straight into him, hard enough to bounce off his chest and stumble back a few steps.
“Hey,” Grey started to growl, intending to follow it up with,
Watch where you’re going!
But the person looked up and met his eyes, and Grey forgot what he was going to say.
She had huge, startlingly blue eyes, framed by long, curling eyelashes and a round, beautiful face. Her skin was olive-toned, smooth, and soft-looking—and there was as much of it as any man could want to look at. Her curves strained the edges of her clothing, as though it was doing its best but couldn’t quite contain anything so magnificent as this woman’s body.
This woman’s body that had just bounced off of
his
body. Grey immediately regretted not catching her while she’d been there, and just keeping her tucked up against him. Forever.
Then he saw the man behind her, and the tear slipping down her cheek.
The growl rose in his chest without any conscious thought.
***
The evening wasn’t turning out how Ali had wanted.
Her request to go somewhere quiet had been ignored. Mac wanted to go to the logger bar because there were apparently some guys there he wanted to play pool with. Ted wanted to go to the logger bar because he did everything his brother wanted. And Denise was apparently thinking with her panties tonight.
So now they were at the place that was sure to get the most action from the wildest people in the whole town.
The bar had already been loud and rowdy when they got there. Then Ted bought her a beer without asking her if she wanted one, and got mad when she’d set it down without drinking it.
“I paid good money for that, Ali!” Then Ted said, “Maybe you want something else, huh?”
Before she could react, he tried to slide his hand up her shirt.
“
No
,” she told him. “I don’t want to do that.”
“Oh, come on, Ali. It’s only second base.” His hand slipped higher.
She jerked his hand away. “I said
no
. We’re done.”
Ali stalked off. He followed her at first, but then his brother had found him and dragged him off to meet some local street-racing legend or something. That left her feeling a little shaky, although she kept her chin high and her expression fierce.
Then she spotted Matt Finch across the bar, laughing with some skinny blonde.
She turned around immediately, her cheeks burning. He hadn’t seen her, but it didn’t matter. He wouldn’t care if he had. She was the only one who’d ever cared. And he was the last person she’d wanted to see tonight.
So now she was on the opposite end of the bar, looking for Denise. If it were up to her, they’d abandon the Eltons here and drive back to town right now. She’d rather be at home listening to Paul and Molly argue than here.
She was still fuming about the fact that Ted hadn’t listened her to tell him
no
. Alethia Parker would tell any man
no
she wanted to, and if he took issue with that, she had pepper spray in her purse and she wasn’t afraid to use it.
So that was the mindset she was in when some guy in a scraggly beard and a stained T-shirt noticed her and leered. “Hey, honey, you lose your boyfriend?”
“I don’t know,” she snapped. “He’s probably with your mom.”
In retrospect, that had been a dumb thing to say.
Scraggly got mad and grabbed her arm.
“I think you should learn some respect.” His breath was hot in her face. It did not smell minty-fresh.
“Let go of me.” She made sure to enunciate each word very carefully.
“No.” His grip tightened.
Ali looked down, hoping to God he wasn’t wearing steel-toed boots. Nope, she was in luck: dirty white sneakers.
She drove her four-inch stiletto heel down into his foot. He howled and let her go, and she darted off into the crowd as fast as she could go.
That was it, she was
finding
Denise and they were leaving right now!
She ran smack into someone, rebounding off his chest like he was made of stone.
She looked up—and up—to meet the cool, grey eyes of a man who had to be at least 6’3’’. He was lean and muscular and looked like he could take anybody at this bar without breaking a sweat.
Great,
Ali thought. Now
this
guy would want a piece of her, and she was going to have to try and pepper spray him, except his face might be too high for her to reach.
But he wasn’t making a move. He was just looking at her, intently, and when she looked back, she saw that his eyes weren’t cool after all. They were warm, a warm silvery color that held her attention like nothing else ever had.
“Gotcha!” Scraggly had come up behind her without her noticing and grabbed her arm again.
Gotcha?
She tried to find it funny—it
was
funny, after all, like she was a mouse in a cartoon—but all of a sudden, the whole night seemed to crash down on her. Molly, Denise, Ted, Matt, Scraggly. She wanted to burst into tears.
She couldn’t cry in a bar in front of everyone. But somehow, a single hot streak escaped her eye makeup and made it down her cheek.
Then a big hand closed around Scraggly’s wrist and twisted.
“
Hey
!” Scraggly yelled, instantly letting her go. “What’s wrong with you? I saw her first.”
“I’m thinking she doesn’t want to see
you
,” said the grey-eyed man in a rumbling voice. “Seeing as how she was running away from you.”
“She needs to pay for what she said to me,” Scraggly whined.
The grey-eyed man stepped forward. “Excuse me,” he said to Ali.
Suddenly, with a graceful twist, he was between her and Scraggly. He stared down at Scraggly’s trucker hat. Scraggly tilted his head back and looked a little less sure of himself.
“Seems to me that
you
need to pay for what you did to
her
.” His voice was almost a growl. “We can do that here or outside.”
“No! Uh, no, no thanks.” Scraggly backed away abruptly. He had to shoulder a few guys aside to do it. Then his whiny voice rose again as he started making new friends a few yards away.
Ali let out a breath that she felt like she’d been holding for an hour.
“Thank you,” she said to the man.
Now that she had a chance to take in more than his height and his eyes, he was even more striking. His skin was weather-beaten and tanned a pale, pale gold, and his hair was white-blond, getting a little too long and falling into his eyes. He had broad shoulders and muscular arms, but still managed to give the impression of leanness, a rangy grace that she had just witnessed in motion.
“No need to thank me.” No longer a rumbling growl, his voice was husky, deep but quiet enough that it seemed like she shouldn’t be able to hear it over the noise of the bar.
“It was just what any man should’ve done.” His eyes flickered over the crowd of men around them, none of whom had done anything, but most of whom would’ve followed in Scraggly’s footsteps if they’d noticed her. “Any decent man,” he corrected himself.