Fast & Loose (6 page)

“He has to be here,” Bree replied, surging forward through a trio of men who were nearly twice her size, and who each gave her a thorough once-over as she passed. She was completely oblivious to their once-overs, since they didn’t look like their net worth collectively was more than a buck-and-a-half. “He wasn’t in Felt or Sully’s or the Hard Rock. This is the only place we haven’t checked yet. He’s
here,
I tell you.” She swiveled her head first right, then left, then right again. “Somewhere.”

“We missed him,” Lulu assured her friend. “He was probably getting into his car just as we were getting out of yours.” She looked at her watch, then thrust her arm forward, in front of Bree’s face. “It’s almost one o’clock. Who in their right mind stays out this late at night?”

Bree glanced over her shoulder at Lulu and made a big production of looking at the scores of people thrashing around the place.

“Okay, okay,” Lulu conceded as the music pumped louder and the pulsating of the crowd notched upward. She raised her voice accordingly, fairly shouting as she added, “Lots of people stay out this late. I bet Cole Early’s the early-to-bed, early-to-rise type. Don’t those horse people get up at the crack of dawn to exercise their pets?”

“Thoroughbreds aren’t pets,” Bree yelled back. “They’re worth millions of dollars, a lot of them.”

“They still get their owners up early to take them outside.”

This time when Bree looked over her shoulder, she was gritting her teeth. “Not their owners. And not their trainers, either, necessarily. They get their exercisers up early.”

“Maybe Cole Early likes to—”

“Cole Early is not an early-to-bed type,” Bree interrupted her. “Trust me. He may not be on the short list of Rich Guys I Want to Bag, but I’ve read enough about him since he won Santa Anita a couple weeks ago to know he’s as sure a thing as I can get right now. So I’m not gonna hedge my bets.”

Honestly, sometimes Lulu just wanted to smack her best friend. Bree talked about men as if they were…Well, in this case, racehorses. But she also talked about men as if they were commodities. Or investments. Or possessions. Or careers. Or prey. She almost never talked about men as if they were human beings.

If she were anyone but Sabrina Calhoun, Lulu wouldn’t tolerate it. But she knew Bree well enough to understand her friend’s shortsightedness in this, even if she didn’t condone it. Bree had even better reasons as an adult to want to marry well than she’d had as a kid. And anyway, deep down, Bree was capable of deep and abiding loyalty and affection—just look at her friendship with Lulu. The whole man-woman thing, though…Bree just hadn’t ever had the opportunity to witness what a healthy adult relationship was like. Someday she’d meet a man who dropped her in her tracks, a man she’d fall for heart and soul, and then she wouldn’t care what he did for a living, or what kind of car he drove, or how fat his investment portfolio was, or if he even
had
an investment portfolio.

“Man, I hate it when they slip the snare this way,” Bree grumbled. “It takes forever to set up a trap the right way.”

Okay,
probably
she would meet a guy like that someday, Lulu reluctantly amended.

“Oh, no,” Bree muttered then, barely loud enough for Lulu to hear.

“What?”

“Rufus is here.”

Lulu smiled. Speak of the devilishly handsome. Or, at least, think of the devilishly handsome. Because even if she hadn’t been thinking about Rufus Detweiler by name, she’d certainly been thinking about him in spirit. As far as she was concerned, Rufus was exactly the man Bree should be looking at for potential happiness. And not just because the guy was already head over heels in love with her, either.

Lulu followed Bree’s gaze to the bar on the other side of the room and, within seconds, she had identified him. It was strange to see him sitting on the patron side of the bar, when he was usually behind one working alongside Bree. But he seemed perfectly at home with all the people surrounding him, even if he stood a good two or three inches taller than even the tallest guy. He was leaning back against the bar, one elbow propped nonchalantly on its surface, the other tipping a longneck bottle of beer into what Lulu had remarked on many occasions was a thoroughly sexy mouth. The tiny halogen light fixed in the ceiling above him sent a wash of light cascading down over him like an inverted V, lighting dark amber highlights in his near-black hair and chiseling even finer what were already
very
well-honed cheekbones. His white pin-striped oxford shirt was untucked over faded jeans that hugged his lean legs, enhancing the innate grace of his spare frame.

He looked like a poem, Lulu thought wistfully. A tragic sonnet of unrequited love written from the deepest recesses of the heart. He was just a gorgeous, gorgeous man, and totally not her type. Which was just as well since, in case she hadn’t mentioned it, the guy was totally sprung on Bree.

“Rufus!” Lulu called out, jumping up and down and waving her hand to get his attention.

Immediately, Bree spun on her and clamped a hand over her mouth. “Are you
crazy
?” she hissed. “The last thing I want when I’m looking for Cole Early is a guy like Rufus anywhere in my personal space.”

Lulu yanked Bree’s hand from her mouth. “Oh, who cares what you want?” she said. “I like Rufus. He’s a good guy. Rufus!” she called out again, doing the jumping and waving thing even more adamantly.

Amazingly, he heard her over the din of the bar, turning his head in her direction, smiling and lifting a hand in greeting when he saw her. Then, when he looked to her right and saw Bree with her, his eyes went brighter, his smile turned incandescent, and everything about the guy seemed to absolutely glow.

What the hell was the matter with Bree, that she couldn’t see Mr. Right-Under-Her-Nose?

As if wanting to make that painfully evident, Bree quickly turned her back on both Lulu and Rufus and started scanning the other side of the bar for whatever she thought it was she wanted. Rufus did a good job of pretending not to notice, but Lulu saw how his features dimmed a little at her friend’s behavior.

Nevertheless, he had perked up by the time he approached, beer bottle still in hand. “Hey, Lulu,” he greeted her warmly. As he always did, he leaned forward and brushed her cheek lightly with his lips, taking her hand and giving her fingers a gentle squeeze as he did. When he drew back, he looked at Bree—who still had her back to him—and said a little more coolly, “Bree. Good to see you, too.”

“Hey, Rufus,” she replied without turning around.

Lulu had known Rufus roughly eight hours less than Bree, who had worked her first shift with him two years ago at the Ambassador Bar before Lulu came in to meet her friend for drinks afterward. As she’d waited for Bree to finish up, Lulu had chatted with Rufus, and it had taken approximately three minutes for her to realize the guy was already hung up on Bree. It had taken her three-and-a-half minutes to realize Bree would never give him the time of day, because it took Rufus only thirty seconds to give Lulu an answer to her question about what he wanted to be when he grew up. That answer being a momentary blank stare followed by, “A bartender. I love this job.”

To Lulu, the answer told her everything she needed to know about Rufus—and made her like him even more than she already did. Job-loving was a major, major factor in essential human happiness. Anyone who loved his or her job, regardless of what it was, was someone to be admired, because it meant they went their own way, did their own thing, and didn’t care what society thought about them. Bree, however, equated Rufus’s professional contentment with a profound lack of ambition. Because there was no way his work would lead to reeking piles of filthy lucre, and how could you not want reeking piles of filthy lucre? So that was the end of any chance Rufus might have with Bree on the romantic front.

“What are you guys doing here?” he asked Lulu. But he was looking at Bree when he asked it—or, at least, at Bree’s back. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you out and about down here. Bad band at Deke’s tonight?”

“Great band at Deke’s tonight,” Lulu told him. “But—”

“But I’m here looking for someone,” Bree said, finally spinning around. “Someone, ah, special.”

Oh, sure,
now
she looked right at Rufus, Lulu thought. To hammer home that he wasn’t anything special. Funny, though, how she seemed to stumble a little over the words when she looked at Rufus. And her voice, too, seemed a little more shallow and a little less certain. Funny, too, how she didn’t seem able to hold his gaze for more than a second or two before it went skittering over his shoulder.

“Oh, yeah?” Rufus asked with seeming unconcern. “Who?”

“Just some guy,” Lulu said.

“Cole Early,” Bree said at the same time.

Rufus had started to lift his bottle for another sip, but halted it shy of his mouth and smiled. “Cole Early,” he repeated dispassionately.

Bree nodded, still looking over Rufus’s shoulder, but seemed about one-tenth as certain about that now as she had a few minutes ago.

“The trainer,” he said in that same flat tone.

Bree nodded again, a little more slowly this time, looking about one-one-hundredth as certain now. And it wasn’t just her gaze that ricocheted this time. She turned her whole head to avoid looking at him.

“The one with a horse in the Derby,” Rufus said.

Another nod, even slower. Another substantial drop on the ol’ confidence meter.

“The one whose picture is on the cover of the new
Louisville
magazine? The one who they featured in the
Scene
this weekend? The one who’s been on the news every night for the past few nights surrounded by incredible-looking women? That Cole Early?”

Bree didn’t even manage a nod this time. Though Lulu was pretty sure Rufus’s question was rhetorical.

“You think he’s potential Sugar Daddy material?” he asked.

Like, oh…everyone else on the planet, Rufus knew Bree’s big ambition in life was to bag herself a rich caretaker. Which was doubtless why he’d never made known his feelings for her. Well, not to anyone except any person with an IQ higher than zero who looked at him whenever he was somewhere in her zip code.

Bree did nod in response to that one—sort of—and, very softly, said, “Yes.”

Rufus grinned again, biting his lip in a way that was truly adorable and would have melted the heart of any self-respecting woman. Lulu was practically swooning, and she loved Rufus like a brother. If Bree wasn’t purring at least a little bit inside, then she needed to go see the Great and Powerful Oz for a new heart.

“Bree,” he said, “Cole Early was in here a little while ago, and—”

“He’s here?” Bree interrupted, looking panicky now.

“He
left,
” Rufus told her, the warmth in his voice cooling. “But while he was here, no fewer than ten women came up to him—all of them dressed way better than you, I might add,” he dropped in as if he couldn’t help himself, “and the guy wasn’t interested in any of them. Last time I saw him, he was heading for the door. Alone.”

Bree looked a little hurt after the better dressed comment—not that she hadn’t asked for it—but recovered admirably. “Of course he left alone,” she said. “He didn’t meet
me.
”

Rufus started to say something else, seemed to think better of it, and turned to Lulu instead. “Wanna dance?” he asked.

Lulu’s eyes went wide at the invitation. Not because it surprised her, but because the last thing she wanted to do was go out onto a dance floor and move her body in a way that might draw attention to herself. It wasn’t that she was a bad dancer. On the contrary, she loved to dance. At home. Alone. Just her and her iPod. If she went out there with all those people jostling her and looking at her, she’d immediately invent a new dance: the Pufferfish Girl Fandango.

“Uh, that’s okay, Rufus,” she said. “Thanks anyway.” She was about to say more, but something over his shoulder caught her eye, and she was pretty sure it wasn’t the same thing that had caught Bree’s a moment ago. Because a man was emerging from a poorly lit alcove. A dark-haired man in an amber-colored suit. A man she remembered all too well.

Cole Early was still here.

Something hot detonated in her belly at seeing him again—probably the burger she’d downed at Deke’s, since the place was known for its music, not its food. ’Cause it couldn’t be excitement at seeing Cole Early again. The guy was a boor, he was arrogant, and he was self-centered. Not to mention he was the kind of tourist she found most annoying, one of the ones who threw their weight around with a lot of flash, dash, and cash. Of course, he did have that smile that made a woman want to…

Um, never mind.

Then she realized that if Bree saw him, too, she’d go right over to the guy and introduce herself, and then introduce Lulu, too, and then Lulu would have to talk to him again, and she totally didn’t want to do that. Nor did she want to be with Bree when her friend was doing the feminine wiles thing she did so well. When Bree flirted, no matter the circumstances, she was dazzling. Standing beside her in such situations, Lulu invariably ended up feeling like the bedraggled street urchin selling flowers to the theater-going hoi polloi. Dead flowers, at that. From a dirty alleyway. In the rain. On a Monday night, when no one was even going to the theater to begin with.

She quickly grabbed Bree and spun her around so that she was facing Lulu and Rufus, and not Cole Early. And she said something she was certain would make Bree call it a night. “If you want to dance, Rufus, maybe you and Bree could—”

“No, we have to go, Lulu,” Bree cut her off.

Perfect, Lulu thought.

“There’s no reason to hang around here,” she added.

Not so perfect. Poor Rufus. Damn Bree.

Bree circled Lulu’s wrist with sure fingers and gave her hand a tug. Unfortunately, the direction she tried to tug her into was the same one that led to Cole Early, which was in the opposite direction of the exit.

Time to get serious about leaving.

“But we just got here,” Lulu whined. “Let’s have a beer with Rufus.”