Page 65 of Snow in Texas

Tonight, there was a new complication: one of the club groupies watching him from across the room. He was on bartender duty tonight, and she was perched on the edge of the pool table where Jinx and Blue played, watching him with unnerving, catlike attention.

He looked away from her, not wanting to get caught in any kind of a stare that she might find encouraging.

Fox, fully recovered from his inelegant shit-bath, sat by himself in a recliner, playing with his phone while another groupie sat in his lap and played with his dark hair. She might as well have been furniture, for all the attention he paid her, and she seemed to take that as a special challenge, leaning forward to nip at his ear.

The twins were on a couch together, a brunette groupie in a minidress sitting between them, flirting with first one brother and then the other. Colin had a feeling he knew wherethatwas heading.

Still more girls loitered around the pool table, sipping drinks Colin had fixed for them, cheering on Jinx and Blue, laughing at everything the men said.

Some nights it was a ghost town, but for whatever reason, the biker chicks had come out to play tonight. The common room was filled with a pleasant sort of hum, lots of low overlapping voices punctuated by laughter.

It made Colin’s skin itch, for reasons he didn’t want to dwell on. Because when he thought about leaving in a week’s time, and Jenny still mad at him –

“Hey,” a female voice said, right in front of him. It was a calculated sort of “hey,” a greeting that had been practiced and perfected in its smooth, sultry sound. Friendly enough, though.

The groupie who’d been studying him had come to make her move. She’d taken a stool across from him, braced her elbows on the bar, using her arms to subtly plump her breasts together. She was pretty, he’d give her that. Blonde, curvy where it counted, makeup just shy of overdone. She wore denim cutoffs with cowboy boots – he’d seen them earlier – and a tank top that enhanced her two greatest assets.

She looked at him boldly, invitation plain in her dark eyes. “It must be boring,” she drawled, “having to stand back there while everybody else gets to cut loose.”

He shrugged and passed a rag across the bar, just to have something to do. “I’m a prospect. Comes with the territory.”

She wrinkled her nose. “It’s hard thinking of you as a prospect. In my head, all prospects look like little Pup.”

He snorted and wouldn’t meet her gaze. “I promise ya, sweetheart, everybody starts out a prospect. We look all kinds of ways.”

“But some ways are better than others,” she said with a laugh. “Where are you from? I like your accent.”

This sounded like chitchat, but he knew it wasn’t. This woman, whoever she was, had definite plans to get him naked in a dorm room. These groupies didn’t deal in what-ifs and maybes. They banged bikers, and they were good at getting what they wanted.

Used to, he would have been helping her efforts. Now he didn’t want to…but he didn’t really see how talking to her a little could hurt anything. It wasn’t like he had an old lady, after all.

“New Orleans,” he answered.

“Ooooh. I’ve always wanted to go there.”

“Yeah?”

“I’ve seen it in pictures. It’s beautiful.”

He flicked a glance to her face and saw her dusky eyelids lower as she said the words, teeth grabbing at her lower lip. She knew exactly how sexy she was.

“It can be. Parts of it,” he agreed.

“What’s Mardi Gras like?”

He snorted. “Crazy. Lots of drinking. Lots of topless women.”

She giggled.

“Not that you’d know anything about that,” he teased.

“Oh,no, of course not.” Another giggle, and she squeezed her breasts together a little tighter.

Colin let himself look. It wasn’t hurting anything, glancing down her shirt and letting himself enjoy it. “I didn’t catch your name,” he said, on sudden impulse, his old ladykiller habits rearing up.

“Teagan.”

He nodded. “I’m Colin.”

---