Page 86 of Tangled up in You

“Where is that bar?”

“Walking distance. A couple of blocks that way.” He pointed in the direction of her hotel. “Two blocks off this street. You’ll see it.”

“Okay, thanks.”

She’d thought about reserving a hotel room in Gardiner, the town just north of the park entrance, and getting up early to drive down there.

Why can’t I stay up late and go see a band?She didn’t have to check out until noon.

She enjoyed a wide variety of music. Although live music wasn’t usually her jam.

She could be someone else for the night, a confident single woman looking for an evening of fun.

At the very least she could pretend to be a woman who wanted to meet someone and chat them up, although there was literally no chance of her having a one-night stand.

Didn’t mean she couldn’t spend a late evening in a strange town listening to music. And she’d have something she could honestly tell her dad that she’d tried when he invariably asked.

Right?

She smiled as she took another lick of her cone.

Right.

CHAPTER 3

MARK

“Chris, dammit, what are you doing?” Mark yelled. He sat in his truck, drumming his fingers on the driver’s side door frame, where his elbow stuck out the open window.

“Hold on a sec!” Chris yelled back through the cabin’s front door.

Mark groaned and laid his head against the headrest.I knew I should have told him we were leaving an hour earlier.

As it was, he’d only built in a cushion of thirty minutes in addition to the usual drive time to the bar in Livingston.

“Guess we’re not getting laid tonight,” Mark muttered.

At this rate they’d be lucky if they made it to the bar before the band took the stage. Meaning trying to hold a conversation with a strange woman with the hopes of her not being a stranger by the end of the evening would be nearly impossible.

And if they didn’t arrive early enough, if therewereany eligible woman looking for company there was a good chance some other guy would chat them up first, leaving Christopher and Mark holding each other’s dicks.

Not that there was anything wrong with that, because they had fun doing that anyway. But after a winter spentmostly snowed in together with few chances to socialize with anyone besides co-workers or local residents in Gardiner, Mark was ready for a little outside recreational company, even if they didn’t end up sleeping with them. That, coupled with the unexpected “special assignment” he and Christopher had drawn yesterday to guide a scientist through Yellowstone’s backcountry, meant a rapidly dwindling window for them to finagle a little extracurricular fun before the park opened to the public for the season.

This time of year, tourists weren’t plentiful yet. If ranch hands came to town they were eager to chat up tourist women who thought TV shows were real and wanted to ride with a real cowboy.

And not on a horse.

Park rangers and botanists unfortunately didn’t bear the same gravitas as a ranch hand, thanks to cable TV sagas. And it wasn’t like Mark could flirt while on duty. Tonight, he could leave his service weapon and badge behind in their gun safe and try to pretend to be a civilian.

They’d looked up the scientist on her company’s website on Mark’s laptop last night after they got home. She wasn’t smiling, wore her hair pulled back in a severe bun, and the picture was in black and white so he had no idea what color her hair was. When Mark caught himself thinkingshe should smilehe’d closed the page because that was toxic bullshit he didn’t want to engage in.

Finally, Chris appeared in the doorway, shutting and locking the door behind him. Gravel crunched under his work boots as he hurried to the passenger door and climbed in.

“Really?” Mark asked. “You’re wearing work boots?”

He glanced down at them. “They’re comfortable.”

Yep. We’re definitely not getting laid tonight.Not with some cutie between them, anyway.

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