fingers curled. He’d bet his favorite shirt that Keith had never even kissed a girl, hot or otherwise. The same went for his pallid companions. Jane would make mincemeat of all of them before they ever got to dessert, much less anything after that. “So I’ve heard,” he said blandly. “Might consider stuffing the ballot box to up the odds in your favor.”
Keith’s Adam’s apple bobbed. “Cheat?”
“She doesn’t specify one entry,” Casey reasoned. “The only restriction is you have to be single.” He plucked the pen from Keith’s ink-stained shirt pocket and tossed it on the table in front of him. “Go for it, man.”
Keith’s buddies were grinning and nearly bouncing in their booth.
Before he either rolled his eyes or knocked their heads together, Casey returned to his pool game.
But the game was already done. Erik had already cleared the felt. “You owe me twenty,” his cousin said, looking as if he wanted to laugh.
Casey pulled out his wallet and slapped down the money. “Why aren’t you home in the loving arms of your wife, anyway? Wedded bliss already wearing off?” His cousin and Isabella had gotten married the previous year and Casey knew good and well that they were besotted with each other.
“Izzy’s in Cheyenne with Lucy for a few days. They’ve taken some of their students for a dance workshop down there before school starts up next week for the fall.”
Lucy was another of their cousins, and she ran the only dance school in Weaver. Isabella taught a few classes there. “Little girls in tap shoes or big girls in belly-dancing costumes?” He felt his gaze straying back toward the bar but mastered the impulse and picked up his beer mug instead. “Your wife teaches both.”
Erik grinned wryly. “Don’t forget the pole-dancing-for-fitness classes.” He rubbed his jaw. “She actually had me try it, you know.”
Casey nearly dropped his beer. Despite being Tristan Clay’s son, Erik had gone into the ranching side of the Clay dynasty. But even in that, he had to go his own way, choosing to maintain his own brand rather than use the Double-C brand started by their grandfather, Squire, that was already one of the most well-known in the state. His cousin was salt-of-the-earth steady and more than a little old-fashioned, so the image that sprang to mind was one for the record books. “Swinging around on a pole?”
His cousin looked chagrinned. “It’s harder than you think. I fell on my ass. Izzy’s never gonna let me live it down.”
For the first time since Jane’s wanna-baby bombshell, Casey actually laughed. “She’s not the only one. I just don’t want to picture it in my mind. Afraid it’ll do permanent brain damage. What about Murph?”
Murphy had been Isabella’s teenage ward when she’d first come to Weaver. Now she was legally his mother and soon Erik would legally be his father. And Casey could rib the other man—who was his best friend as much as his cousin—about anything under the sun, including his new family, but he knew Erik had never been happier.
Erik grinned. “He was no more successful at it than I was, but you didn’t hear that from me. So what’s Jane really up to?”
Casey hid his frown in his beer and shrugged. He hadn’t shared Jane’s sudden life goal with Erik, mostly because it might lead to discussions he didn’t want to have. “Don’t ask me.”
Erik gave him a disbelieving look, but thankfully let the matter drop. Instead, he waved at the pool table. “Double or nothing?”
“Rack ’em up.” Casey’s gaze started to slide to the bar but he physically turned his back so he was looking toward the front door instead.
He took one last glance toward Keith. He and his buddies were busily stuffing business cards into the fishbowl.
God help them all.
Jane managed a tight smile before shutting her front door in Prospect Number Three’s face.
The past three weeks—especially the past three Thursday-night dates with Number Three and his predecessors, One and Two—had been abysmal.
Number One, a real estate agent from nearby Braden, hadn’t understood the difference between Thursday and Friday and, after standing her up at the restaurant where she’d arranged to meet him, had instead accused her of standing him up when he’d expected her there the following night. She hoped he handled his real estate transactions with more accuracy.
Number Two was a veterinary technician from right here in Weaver. Nothing really wrong with Two. Except he spent the entire evening talking about his ex-girlfriend, with whom he was clearly still in love. Jane had felt like a matronly aunt, advising him to contact the girl and make things up with her.
And Number Three...
Jane heaved a sigh and leaned back against the door she’d just closed. Number Three might possess some genius intellect, but conversing about anything outside of the video games he designed had been impossible. And then the nitwit had believed she was going to invite him in for some dessert of a very personal variety after the dinner she had paid for.
She wouldn’t have gone out with him at all, because he worked at Cee-Vid, which was too closely connected to Casey, except that Number Three—like Two and One—had won the weekly fishbowl drawing.
The first thing she was going to do when she went to the bar the next day was throw out the fishbowl and all of its contents. If the only way she could get a date was through a drawing, she’d be better off looking into that whole mail-order-husband thing.
She rubbed at the pain between her eyebrows caused by the past ninety minutes of mind-numbing boredom and headed into her bedroom, shedding her knee-length sweater dress as she went. It was still relatively early, and she was too keyed up to relax. So she changed into jeans and a bright red turtleneck and headed back out to Colbys.
She’d throw out the fishbowl when she got there.
Her assistant manager, Merilee, had worked for Jane long enough not to show her surprise when she walked in the door on what was supposed to be her night off. Jane went straight to the glass bowl and dumped the contents in the trash, along with the card displaying the “rules” of the drawing. Then she stuck the bowl beneath the counter and glanced around the sparsely occupied tables.
She didn’t want to acknowledge what she was really doing: looking to see if Casey happened to be around playing pool. The pool tables were his primary interest where Colbys was concerned. Far more than any libations that she offered in the bar or food that they served in the restaurant.
But the tables were quiet.
“Everything all right?” Merilee asked when Jane sighed a little.
“Just fine.” Jane grabbed a bottled water, then pushed through the door to the storeroom, where all the shelves were neatly packed with supplies. She went into the minuscule office squeezed between the storage room and the draft cooler where her beer kegs were housed and threw herself down on the squeaky chair behind the beat-up metal desk.
But
