by Nora Roberts
“Thanks.”
He smiled, stuffed the wet bill in his wet pocket. “I owe it all to you.”
Inside, Gull stripped off his dripping clothes. He took stock of his bruises—not too bad—and for the first time in a week took time to shave. Once he’d hunted up a clean shirt and pants, he spent a few minutes sending a quick e-mail home to let his family know he’d made it.
He expected that news to generate mixed reactions, though they’d all pretend to be as happy as he was. He slid a celebratory cigar into his breast pocket, then wandered outside.
The e-mail had cost him some time, so he loaded into the last of the vans and found a seat among the scatter of rookies and vets.
“Ready to party, rook?” Trigger asked him.
“I’ve been ready.”
“Just remember, nobody gets babysat. The vans leave and you’re not in one, you find your own way back to base. If you end up with a woman tonight, the smart thing is to end up with one who has a car.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“You dance?”
“You asking?”
Trigger hooted out a laugh. “You’re almost pretty enough for me. The place we’re going has a dance floor. You do it right, dancing with a woman’s the same as foreplay.”
“Is that the case, in your experience?”
“It is, young Jedi. It surely is.”
“Interesting. So . . . does Rowan like to dance?”
Trigger raised his eyebrows. “That’s what we call barking up the wrong tree.”
“It’s the only tree that’s caught my interest and attention.”
“Then you’re going to have a long, dry summer.” He gave Gull a pat on the shoulder. “And let me tell you something else from my vast experience. When you’ve got calluses on your calluses and blisters on top of that, jerking off isn’t as pleasant as it’s meant to be.”
“Five years as a hotshot,” Gull reminded him. “If the summer proves long and dry, my hands’ll hold up.”
“Maybe so. But a woman’s better.”
“Indeed they are, Master Jedi. Indeed they are.”
“Have you got one back home?”
“No. Do you?”
“Had one. Twice. Married one of them. Just didn’t take. Matt’s got one. You got a woman back home in Nebraska, don’t you, Matt?”
Matt shifted, angled around to look back over his shoulder. “Annie’s back in Nebraska.”
“High-school sweethearts,” Trigger filled in. “Then she went off to college, but they got back together when she came home. Two minds, one heart. So Matt doesn’t dance, if you get my drift.”
“Got it. It’s nice,” Gull continued, “having somebody.”
“No point in the whole screwed-up world if you don’t.” Matt shrugged. “No point doing what we do if nobody’s waiting for us once we’ve done it.”
“Sweetens the pot,” Trigger agreed. “But some of us have to settle for a dance now and again.” He rubbed his hands together as the van pulled up in a lot packed with trucks and cars. “And my toes are already tapping.”
Gull scanned the long, low log building as he stepped out of the van, contemplated a moment on the flickering neon sign.
“‘Get a Rope,’ ” he read. “Seriously?”
“Cowboy up, partner.” Trigger slapped him on the shoulder, then strutted inside on his snakeskin boots.
An experience, Gull reminded himself. You could never have too many of them.
He stepped into the overamplified screech and twang of truly, deeply bad country music performed by a quartet of grungy-looking guys behind the dubious protection of a chicken-wire fence. At the moment the only things being hurled at them were shouted insults, but the night was young.
Still, people crowded the dance floor, kicking up boot heels, wiggling butts. Others ranged along the long bar or squeezed onto rickety chairs at tiny tables where they could scarf up dripping nachos or gnaw on buffalo wings coated with a suspicious substance that turned them cheesepuff orange. Most opted to wash that combo down with beer served in filmy plastic pitchers.
The lights were mercifully dim, and despite the smoking ban dingy blue clouds fogged the air that smelled like a sweat-soaked, deep-fried, overflowing ashtray.
The only reasonable thing to do, as Gull saw it, was to start drinking.
He moved to the bar, elbowed in and ordered a Bitter Root beer—in a bottle. Dobie squeezed beside him, punched him in the arm. “Why do you wanna drink that foreign shit?”
“Brewed in Montana.” He passed the bottle to Dobie, ordered another.
“Pretty good beer,” Dobie decided after a pull. “But it ain’t no Budweiser.”
“You’re not wrong.” Amused, Gull tapped his bottle to Dobie’s, drank. “Beer. The answer to so many questions.”
“I’m going to get this one in me, then cut one of these women out of the herd, drive ’em on the dance floor.”
Gull sipped again, studied the fat-fingered lead guitar player. “How do you dance to crap like this?”
Dobie’s eyes slitted, and his finger drilled into Gull’s chest. “You got a problem with country music?”
“You must’ve busted an eardrum on your last jump if you call this music. I like bluegrass,” he added, “when it’s done right.”
“Don’t bullshit me, city boy. You don’t know bluegrass from bindweed.”
Gull took another swig of beer. “I am a man of constant sorrow,” he sang in a strong, smooth tenor. “I’ve seen trouble all my days.”
Now Dobie punched him in the chest, but affectionately. “You’re a continual surprise to me, Gulliver. Got a voice in there, too. You oughta get up there and show those shit-kickers how it’s done.”
“I think I’ll just drink my beer.”
“Well.” Dobie tipped up the bottle, drained his. Let out a casual belch. “I’m going for a female.”
“Good luck with that.”
“Ain’t about luck. It’s about style.”
Gull watched Dobie bop over to a table of four women, and decided the man had a style all of his own.
Enjoying the moment, Gull leaned an elbow back on the bar, crossed his ankles. Trigger, true to his word, already had a partner on the dance floor, and Matt—true to his Annie—sat with Little Bear, a rookie named Stovic and one of the pilots they called Stetson for his battered and beloved black hat.
Then there was Rowan, chowing down on the orange-coated nachos at a table with Janis Petrie, Gibbons and Yangtree. She’d pulled on a blue T-shirt—snug, scoop-necked—that molded her breasts and torso. For the first time since he’d met her she wore earrings, something that glittered and swung from her ears when she shook her head and laughed.
She’d done something to her eyes, her lips, he noted, made them bolder. And when she let Cards pull her to her feet for a dance, Gull saw her jeans were as snug as her shirt.
She caught his eye when Cards swung her into a spin, then stopped his heart when she shot him a wide, wicked smile. He decided if she was going to kill him, she might as well do it at closer range. He ordered another beer, carried it over to her table.
“Hey, fresh meat.” Janis toasted him with a dripping nacho. “Want to dance, rookie?”
“I haven’t had enough beer to dance to whatever this is.”
“They’re so bad, they’re good.” Janis patted Rowan’s empty chair. “A few more drinks, they’ll be nearly good enough to be bad.”
“Your logic tells me you’ve walked this path before.”
“You’re not a Zulie until you’ve survived a night at Get a Rope.” She glanced toward the door as a group of three men swaggered in. “In all its glory.”
“Local boys?”
“Don’t think so. They’re all wearing new boots. High-dollar ones.” She topped off her beer from the pitcher on the table. “I’m guessing city, dude-ranch types come to take in some local color.”
They headed toward the bar, and the one in the lead should
er-muscled his way through the line. He slapped a bill on the bar.
“Whiskey and a woman.” He punched his voice up, deliberately, Gull imagined, so it carried above the noise. The hoots and laughter from his friends told Gull it wouldn’t be their first drink of the night.
A few people at the bar edged over to give the group room while the bartender poured their drinks. The lead guy tossed it back, slapped down the glass, pointed at it.
“We need us some females.”
More group hilarity ensued. Looking for trouble, Gull concluded, and since he wasn’t, he went back to watching Rowan on the dance floor.
Janis leaned toward him as the band launched into a painful cover of “When the Sun Goes Down.” “Ro says you work in an arcade.”
“She talked to you about me?”
“Sure. We pass notes in study hall every day. I like arcades. You got pinball? I kill at pinball.”
“Yeah, new and vintage.”
“Vintage?” She aimed a narrow look with big brown eyes. “You don’t have High Speed, do you?”
“It’s a classic for a reason.”
“I love that one!” Her hand slapped the table. “They had this old, beat-up machine in this arcade when I was a kid. I got so good at it, I’d play all day on my first token. I traded this guy five free games on it for my first French kiss.” She sighed, sat back. “Good times.”
Following her gaze as it shifted to the bar, Gull glanced back in time to see the whiskey-drinker give a waitress passing by with a full tray a frisky slap on the ass. When the woman looked around, he held up both hands, smirked.
“Asshole. You can’t go anywhere,” Janis said, “without running into assholes.”
“Their numbers are legion.” He shifted a little more when Rowan stepped off the dance floor.
“That’s my seat.”
“I’m holding it for you.” He patted his knee.
She surprised him by dropping down on his lap, picking up his beer and drinking deep. “Big spender, buying local brew by the bottle. Don’t you dance, moneybags?”
“I might, if they ever play something that doesn’t make my ears bleed.”
“You can still hear them? I can fix that. Time for shots.”
“Count me out,” Gibbons said immediately. “The last time you talked me into that I couldn’t feel my fingers for a week.”
“Don’t do it, Gull,” Yangtree warned him. “The Swede has an iron gut. Got it from her old man.”
Rowan turned her face close to Gull’s and smirked. “Aw, do you have a tender tummy, hotshot?”
He imagined biting her heavy bottom lip, just one fast, hard nip. “What kind of shots?”
“There’s only one shot worth shooting. Te-qui-la,” she sang it, slapping her palm on the table with each syllable. “If you’ve got the balls for it.”
“You’re sitting on my balls, so you ought to know.”
She threw back her head on that sexy saloon girl laugh. “Hold them for a minute. I’ll get us set up.”
She hopped up, swung around a couple times when Dobie grabbed her hand and gave her a twirl. Titania to Puck, Gull thought.
Then she hooked her thumbs in her front pockets and joined him in some sort of boot-stomping clog thing that had some of the other dancers whistling and clapping.
She shot a finger at Gull—and damn, there went his heart again—then danced over to the bar.
“Hey, Big Nate.” Rowan leaned in, hailed the head bartender. “I need a dozen tequila shots, a couple saltshakers and some lime wedges to suck on.”
She glanced over, gave the man currently grabbing his crotch a bored look, shifted away again. “I can take them over if Molly’s busy.”
The crotch-grabber slapped a hundred-dollar bill on the bar in front of her. “I’ll buy your shots and ten minutes outside.”
Rowan gave the bartender a slight shake of the head before he could speak.
She turned, looked the drunk, insulting bastard in the eye. “I guess since you lack any charm, and the only way you can get a woman is to pay her, you think we’re all whores.”
“You’ve been wiggling that ass and those tits out there since I came in. I’m just offering to pay for what you’ve been advertising. I’ll buy you a drink first.”
At the table, Gull thought, shit, and started to rise. Gibbons put a hand on his arm. “You don’t want to get in her way. Trust me on this.”
“I don’t like drunks hassling women.”
He shoved up, noted the noise level had diminished, so he clearly heard Rowan say in a tone sweet as cotton candy, “Oh, if you’ll buy me a drink first. Is that your pitcher?”
She picked it up and, with her height, had no trouble upending it over the man’s head. “Suck on that, fuckwit.”
The man moved pretty quick for a sputtering drunk. He shoved Rowan back against the bar, grabbed her breasts and squeezed.
And she moved faster. Before Gull was halfway across the room she slammed her boot on the man’s instep, her knee into the crotch he’d been so proud of, then knocked him on his ass with an uppercut as fine as Gull had ever seen when the drunk doubled over.
She back-fisted one of his buddies who’d been foolish enough to try to yank her around. She grabbed his arm, dragged him forward, past her. The boot she planted on his ass sent him careening into his friend as the man started to struggle to his feet.
She whipped around to man number three. “You want to try for me?”
“No.” This one held up his hands in a don’t-shoot-me gesture. “No, ma’am, I don’t.”
“Maybe you’ve got half a brain. Use it and get your idiot friends out of here before I get mad. Because when I get mad, I just get crazy.”
“I guess she didn’t need any help,” Dobie observed.
“That does it.” Gull laid a hand over his heart, beat it there. “I’m in love.”
“I don’t think I’d want to fall in love with a woman who could wipe the floor with me.”
“No risk, no point.”
He hung back as a half dozen Zulies moved in to help the three men to the door. And out of it.
Rowan gave her T-shirt a fussy tug. “How about those shots, Big Nate?”
“Coming right out. On the house.”
Gull took his seat again, waiting for Rowan to carry the tray over.
“Are you ready?” she asked him.
“Line them up, sweetheart. You want some ice for your knuckles?”
She wiggled her fingers. “They’re okay. It was like punching the Pillsbury Doughboy.”
“I hear he’s a mean drunk, too.”
She laughed, then dropped down into the chair Gibbons pulled over for her. “Let’s see what kind of drunk you are.”
4
Gull watched her eyes as he and Rowan knocked back the first shot, as the tequila hit his tongue, his throat, and took that quick, hot slide to the belly.
That, he realized, was her first appeal for him. Those clear, cool blue eyes held so much life. They sparkled now with challenge,