minutes later, after a very silent ride downhill on the narrow mountain highway 119, the van slowly coasted into a gas station in Nederland.
Kirk glided across the asphalt to a phone booth and stepped on the brakes. The van stopped. There was no way they’d start again without a tow truck or gasoline…and at the moment, he had no means to obtain either.
“Well,” he said, shoving the gear into Park, “time to call the princess.” He started to open his door when Bree grabbed his arm.
“Look,” she said, not sure exactly what to say, but his calling Alicia didn’t seem the better of any options. “Let’s talk for just a minute, okay?”
Kirk shot her a glum look. “One minute.”
“Remember last night when I walked in front of you in my undies and T-shirt?”
He made a strangled sound, his face turning a ruddy color.
“Well,” continued Bree, talking faster, not wanting to waste even a second of her minute. “That’s more than I wear when I go swimming at Mr. Connors’s lake.”
Kirk made another strangled sound.
“I’m not hung up on being natural.”
“Stripping isn’t natural,” he said in a strained voice.
“It isn’t? Then what do you call it when you take off your clothes at night?”
He cleared his throat. “We’ve already had this discussion.”
“Humor me. What do you call it?”
“I call it taking off my clothes.”
“Same thing.”
Kirk released a tormented breath. “No, it’s not. When I take off my clothes at night, I don’t do it to entice women.”
“Not even Alicia?”
He shot Bree a look. “That’s personal, but for the sake of argument, I don’t strip to entice my fiancée.”
“What a shame…”
“Minute’s up!” Kirk started to get out.
“Wait!”
He looked over his shoulder at Bree, cocking an eyebrow.
“Look,” she said, pleading, “I don’t want Alicia driving up here and finding you with me and Val.” Bree was worried about Kirk and some flying princess fur, but even more than that, Bree was worried sick that someone from the “big city” would have seen her face splashed on TV. Maybe funky mountain people didn’t watch TV, or maybe they thought splashing faces on TV was a groovy sixties thing, but Princess Alicia, after finding her man with another woman, might do something very unprincess-like and turn Bree and Val over to the police.
Which was a wild card, because Bree still wasn’t absolutely certain that there were no “bad cops” in on the bull scam. Surely no Nederland police were…but if they called in “the girl and the bull” over some network-wide police radio…and some bad cops heard about it and pinpointed their location in this mountain town…
“So,” she said, fighting the urge to give in to an utterly un-Bree-like hysterical moment, “let’s you and me cut a deal. Give me ten minutes in a bar. If I don’t have gas money after that, you can call Alicia.”
Kirk flashed her a no-way look.
“Ten minutes!” she urged, “could mean money for gas, a drive to Denver where your pal will give me a lift to Chugwater. And ta da! I’m out of your hair and you’re at the rehearsal dinner. Easy. Simple.”
Bree looked around outside. “Plus, this is a pretty little mountain community, not some hole-in-the-wall. And it’s barely, what, ten in the morning? Sleazy types don’t go into bars at this time in the morning—”
“How do you know?”
“I’m from Chugwater, population two hundred. Well, almost. What you find in a small-town bar at this time in the morning are some wholesome, good ol’ boy cowboys who’re drinking coffee, a beer maybe, and they’d have one hell of a fun time throwing a few bills at a good ol’ country girl kicking up some hotcha.”
Kirk frowned, assimilating the string of words into some kind of sensible statement. After a moment, he repeated slowly, “…one hell of a fun time…throwing a few bills…at a good ol’ country girl kicking up some hotcha?”
“Heck, this whole stripping thing is more a joke than a problem. And best of all, Princess Alicia would never know you’d spent the night before your wedding rehearsal dinner sleeping in a motel room with another woman.”
Kirk leveled her a look. “That’s low.”
“But truthful.”
“You’re blackmailing me.”
“Yep, guess I am.”
He stared out his driver’s-side window at a gas station attendant dressed in a tie-dyed shirt with the words Buy Hemp, Be Free written in loopy purple script across the back.
“Could be there aren’t even cowboys in this town,” Kirk murmured. “You might be stripping for some hemp-loving Dead Heads.”
“What?”
Kirk stared off into the distance, imagining the days, weeks, months of listening to Alicia whine about his “Nederland fling” with another woman.
“Okay,” he finally said, sounding anything but okay. “You can attempt this cockamamy strip thing for ten minutes tops on the condition I’m sitting front row, right where I can protect you.”
Bree’s heart swelled a little at the thought of Kirk playing the protector. At six foot, she’d never had any guy play protector. If anything, guys made jokes about her height or how she could protect them.
But not Kirk Dunmore. It was as though he ignored the obvious and saw right through to her true self. That she was a little scared, a little ballsy and willing to take a risk. And suddenly she felt even braver, knowing he’d be right there, watching out for her.
“Sure,” she said softly. “You can sit front row.”
“And nobody touches you.”
She nodded her head in agreement.
“And you only strip down to…” His eyes grazed over her body, his face turning that ruddy color again. “…to, uh, your pink undies and T-shirt.”
She took a moment to ponder that. “Undies.”
“And T-shirt.”
“No, T-shirt goes, too.”
“Stays. You don’t wear a bra under that thing.”
She fought the urge to smile. “So you noticed?”
“T-shirt stays,” he repeated emphatically.
“Goes,” she said authoritatively, defying him to one-up her again. “If I haven’t made at least twenty bucks by that point.”
He stared at the sky as though the answer lay somewhere in the clouds. “Deal,” he finally muttered, adding something under his breath about not believing he’d just negotiated a stripping contract.
TEN MINUTES LATER, they walked to the front door of a wooden storefront building that advertised pool, grub and beer. Mainly beer. A wooden sign, hung crookedly over the front door, said Neder-Brewsky’s.
“This is it,” said Bree.
“I know,” mumbled Kirk, who’d picked this bar after doing a quick reconnaissance around the area surrounding the gas station. He’d thought just he and Bree would jog down the back alley from the gas station to this bar, slip in the back door, but no. She’d insisted they slip Val down the alley, too, because she didn’t want