LITMIR.BIZ

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heat, almost hear her beating heart. And he ached to know how it would feel to take her into his arms, hold her close, mold her body to his…

      Something nudged him from behind.

      He looked over his shoulder at Val’s massive head, rubbing against his back.

      “He likes you,” said Bree.

      “Maybe he does, but I’m worried about those horns of his…”

      Bree giggled. “Trust me. He wouldn’t hurt you with those. He’s just nudging you with his nose, checking you out.”

      “Gotta call Alicia,” Kirk said quickly, backing off. He didn’t mind scratching a bull, but being nudged by one was a far different matter. Even Tarl Cabot would agree, Kirk was sure of it.

      A few minutes later, Bree walked back into her room to find Kirk on the phone. It occurred to her he could have used the phone in his room, but no big deal. Nobody in Chugwater locked their doors, so people were always coming in and out of each other’s houses…finding Kirk here was almost like being home.

      And for a moment, she missed being home. Home, the very place she swore she was so anxious to escape. How many times had she said she wanted to split Chugwater and see the big world? Yet sometimes…at crazy moments like this…she couldn’t help but wonder again if fulfilling one’s dreams was worth losing one’s roots.

      “Yes, dear, I’ll call you from the gas station so you’ll know when I’m leaving,” Kirk said. “No, I won’t be late.”

      Wow. Does his fiancée always need to know his every move? Maybe most married people were like that. Just another reason why Bree had zero desire to settle down. She wanted the free life, no constraints, not having to answer to anyone.

      “What?” Kirk suddenly said, straightening. “Oh, no.” He dropped his head in his hand. “Poor Robbie. What happened?” Pause. “Broke his what?” Pause. “That’s called a femur, not a female bone. Alicia, stop fretting. So my best man is holed up in an L.A. hospital and can’t make the wedding. Worse things in the world have happened. What’s important is that Robbie is okay.” He looked up at Bree. “Look, I need to go.” Pause. “Me, too. Yes, dear.” He hung up.

      “Sorry to hear about your best man,” said Bree.

      “Broke his leg doing some fool stunt at a Raiders game.” Kirk looked at Bree. “Thanks for your good wishes. I suppose Alicia feels bad about Robbie’s health, too, but she’s more concerned with the wedding plans…” His voice trailed off.

      “Well,” said Bree, trying to alleviate the gloom that had suddenly settled over the room. “It’s almost nine. If we get gas now, we can get to Denver by ten or eleven, then you said your friend George can help Val and me get to Chugwater—which means we’ll be out of your hair and you can proceed to do all that fun getting-married stuff!”

      Kirk stood, giving her a look that seemed almost sad.

      “No need to check if the coast is clear,” he finally said. “Even if someone sees us walking a bull, they’ll just think they’re having a sixties flashback.”

      “But it’s the twenty-first century.”

      “Not in Nederland. Here, the sixties live eternal. Let me get my keys…”

      He pulled them out of his shirt pocket. “Let me check how much cash I have for gas…” He patted his back jeans pocket. “Funny, my wallet’s missing…” He looked around the room. “See it anywhere?”

      Bree jerked her gaze out the window, fighting a rush of dread. “Val,” she whispered.

      “What?” said Kirk.

      “Val was nudging you.”

      “Yes. And?”

      “And…” Bree swallowed, hard. “He may have nudged things out of your pocket and…”

      “And…what?”

      “And…snacked on them.”

      Kirk stared at her, realization dawning in his eyes. “You mean…your bull…might have eaten what was in my back pocket?” Kirk shook his head slowly, back and forth. “My wallet, my credit cards, my cash…”

      Bree blinked rapidly. “I’m sorry. Really, really, sorry.”

      Kirk held up a hand, palm out. “Let’s look at the problem, put together the pieces.” He stared into the distance for a moment. “We can coast into town because the road is downhill into Nederland, but I’ll have to call Alicia and ask her to wire money or maybe contact one of her wealthy friends in the area who can give us a loan…”

      “Sounds like a plan,” Bree said encouragingly.

      “Yes, a plan that includes Alicia getting royally…” He groaned again. “If Alicia finds out I spent the night with…” He flashed Bree a look.

      “Are you upset because Alicia will think we slept together?”

      He nodded.

      “So it’s in your better interest if we can get money without Alicia knowing,” said Bree. She mulled it over for a moment. “Would thirty, maybe forty dollars be enough to fill that gas tank?”

      “To get to Denver, we could maybe do it on fifteen, twenty.”

      “Great!” Bree’s eyes twinkled. “I have the solution!” She rolled back her shoulders, a big proud smile creasing her face. “We’ll coast into town, find a bar and…”

      Kirk waited. “And…what?”

      Bree grinned gleefully. “I’ll strip!”

      5

      “STRIP?”

      It was the first word Kirk had said after his and Bree’s trek, with Val in tow, down the road from the Sundance Lodge to where they’d left the van the night before. He hadn’t talked the entire time, not even as they helped Val into the back of the van. But now that he and Bree were again sitting in the front seat, about to coast into Nederland, he was ready again to broach the subject of stripping.

      “Yes, strip,” Bree said sweetly, as though she were talking about butterflies fluttering about flowers and not naked bodies gyrating on tabletops. “Heck, my best girlfriend did it in a coffee shop outside Butte, Montana, last summer and made a fast twenty dollars…enough to buy a bus ticket home.”

      “Coffee shop? I thought places like that served coffee and doughnuts, not naked bodies.”

      Naked. He shouldn’t have gone there. His mind started reeling with the sneak peek he’d gotten through those overstretched, ultrasheer pink undies.

      Bree made an exasperated sound. “You know, being naked is not a big deal, not to a country girl anyway. When you think about it, we all strip every single night of our lives. So, that’s all I’m going to do. Strip like I would for bed. Well, with a little dancing thrown in.”

      “Stripping,” he said, his voice cracking, “is a…sexual act.”

      “Sexual?” She mulled that over. “Yeah, under the right circumstances, you’re correct. But nobody’s going to touch me. Well, except to shove money down my—”

      “This conversation is officially over.” Kirk thrust the gearshift into neutral. Avoiding eye contact with Bree, he more or less announced to Val, whose head hung partially over the front seat, “I’m going to jump out, get this baby rolling, then we’ll coast into Nederland and figure out…”

      Hell, he didn’t know what to figure out. He had a wanna-be stripper, a buddy bull and a de-gassed van on his hands and no time to properly disassemble and analyze this problem to see the big picture.

      This was a Tarl Cabot moment. Time for action, not thoughts and words.

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