Page 8 of My Best Friend's Mardi Gras Wedding

“Part of my mission in life is to make sure everyone who comes across my path loves Louisiana a little more.”

“And your beer here sucks?”

He laughed.“Not exactly.But when you’re in the Big Easy, you gotta soak up the atmosphere and history and the stuff you can’t get back home.”

That “stuff you can’t get back home” thing caught her attention.It wasn’t like Iowa was devoid of hot, funny, charming guys.But…she couldn’t get a New Orleans bartender like him back home, that was for sure.She narrowed her eyes.“Okay.I’ll give you another chance.Some New Orleans specialty but not a hurricane.”

A flicker of amusement danced through his eyes and he nodded at the challenge.“You got it, Indiana.”He started reaching for supplies.

She laughed.“Close, but not quite.”

“I don’t think it’s Minnesota or Wisconsin,” he said, pouring ingredients into a shaker.

“Nope.Neither of those.”She studied him as he shook the ingredients all together, particularly the sexy grin behind the short beard and the arm with the muscles and a tattoo peeking out from under one sleeve.She hadn’t even been paying attention to what he’d poured into the shaker.

“Kansas?”he asked.

“Nope.Still close.”

“Iowa then.”

She felt her eyes widen.“Yes.”It had taken him four guesses…well, kind of two.He’d known she wasn’t from Minnesota or Wisconsin.“I’m impressed.”

He grinned and poured the drink into a martini glass.“I talk to people, mostly visitors, every day, all day long.I’m good with accents.”

“I don’t have an accent.”

He passed the drink over.“Whatever you say.”

She rolled her eyes.“So the accent thing is like a superpower or something?”

“Or something,” he agreed.“I have several…gifts, as a matter of fact.”

“No kidding.”She was amused by his blatant flirting.She was certain bartenders in the French Quarter made good money, but it never hurt to give a little extra effort to the tips and she had to admit it was working.He was making her smile.Tonight, that was no small thing.

“Interestingly, my othertalentshave a lot to do with the girls I meet too.”

She snorted at that, glad she hadn’t yet taken a drink of the concoction he’d mixed her.“I have no trouble believing that.”

“Already?”he asked, looking amused.“I haven’t even really turned it on yet.”

“Wow.Thanks for the warning.”

He laughed, this time the sound lower and deeper.“Don’t want to scare you off.I can ease in.”

Damn, that sounded…dirty.In a good way.Not in the way she was used to getting dirty with the guys she knew.That kind of dirty was…well, actuallydirtdirty.And mud.And blood.And…other things.

There wasn’t much flirting in her life, really.She typically got to know the guys she met over the back end of a cow.Being a large animal vet in small-town Iowa wasn’t the most glamorous career, that was for sure.But the guys, farmers mostly, of course, thought that her knowing about their animals—and being willing to put her hands in places a lot of men they knew wouldn’t—was some kind of turn-on.Maybe not the places she was putting her hands, but her willingness to get dirty and get the job done.But after doing that for an afternoon, the guy usually just asked if she wanted to have a drink or if he could grill her a steak or if she was going to be at the street dance on Saturday.Grilling her a steak made from the brother of one of the cows she’d just manually impregnated had always seemed like an odd offer.And she’d only said yes once.As for street dances…yeah, she went to about half of them.But she never wentwithanyone.She’d grown up there, for fuck’s sake.She knew all the guys.If she hadn’t been in the same class, she knewofthem.And their parents.And their grandparents.The milk they poured on their cereal in the morning probably came from cows she’d impregnated.

Her world was small.And a little weird if she thought about it too hard.

But, in any case, there wasn’t a lot of flirting in her life.In fact, she spent so much time covered in animalstuff—from blood to crap to, yes, semen—that she rarely felt things like pretty or sexy.

Not so with this guy.He was looking at her like she was both.A lot of both.

So this was definitely different.

She finally took a sip of the drink.It was really, really good.“Wow.”

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