But maybe Ted would have something interesting to say. She supposed she wasn’t giving him much of a chance. They’d never gone out before. Maybe he’d surprise her.
“Wow. That’s a nice, uh, outfit.” Ted’s eyes were glued to her chest.
She wasn’t surprised. But to be fair, the girls were kind of on display. “Thanks.”
“I bet it’s going to be a good time tonight, right?”
“Hope so.” Make an effort, Ali told herself. “Do you guys go over to Ryder’s Lodge a lot?”
Ted straightened his shoulders. “Oh yeah. All the time. Last time we were there, Mac got into a fight with this logger. Huge guy, just really enormous, right? And Mac pasted him one right in the face! It was epic.”
He hadn’t looked anywhere north of her collarbone yet. Ali suppressed a deep sigh—she didn’t want to make anything more interesting in her chest area—and nodded and smiled while Ted told his clearly-exaggerated story.
She didn’t know why she’d thought that tonight might be different than other dates she’d been on. Prescott guys were all the same.
Ali thought wistfully about moving. She’d love to pick up and go somewhere she’d never been, far away from the people she’d grown up with.
But moving took money, and money took a better job, and in order to get a better job, she’d have to move.
So until money fell out of the sky onto her head, she was going to have to make the best of what she had. She brought her attention back to Ted’s story.
***
Maybe this wasn’t so bad.
Grey was seated at the bar next to John, who was telling him about his mate and little twin cubs back home. The cubs were almost two and were apparently possessed of a secret ninja magic that allowed them to get into anything and everything that could be dangerous.
“The other night, I kid you not, I look away for five minutes and when I look back, Annie’s on the counter reaching for the knife block. The knife block! She’d pushed a kitchen chair over and climbed it up like it was nothing. I think there must be a monkey shifter somewhere in our family.” John shook his head in amazement.
On the surface, John’s stories seemed to confirm what Grey had already thought, which was that having kids was more worry than it was worth. He’d given his own parents enough sleepless nights when he was an angry, rebellious teenager, out doing all sorts of dumb, dangerous shit.
He’d always thought having kids was asking for trouble. Any cub of his would come out wild as hell. But right now, the idea of little toddlers charging around the kitchen getting into trouble was weirdly appealing.
But it was a moot point until he met his mate.
If he ever met her. Grey was a solitary man, like most big cats were. Logging was the most social job he’d ever had; he far preferred ranger work, where he was out on his own in the middle of a wide territory for most of the workday. And logging was
n’t going to introduce him to any women. It was a backbreaking, dangerous job, and he’d never seen a woman on any of the crews.
Plus, most of the women who came into bars like this one, where the loggers went after work, weren’t looking for anything more serious than a drink and maybe a good time in bed.
Grey could sympathize with that, but his days of drinking and good times with strangers were over. More and more, these days, he found that talking to women in bars just led to frustration that there was no real connection there.
So he sat and listened to John talk about his toddlers instead.
The bar slowly got rowdier as the night wore on. The voices got louder, the women slowly seemed to be wearing less clothing, and the occasional shoving match started up.
Grey started glancing at his watch, trying to judge when he could leave without insulting John. Pretty soon, he reckoned. His beer was almost gone, and he wouldn’t be ordering another.
As John wound up his story, Grey finished the last of his beer and pushed the glass away from himself. “Well, it’s been a good time…”
He’d been afraid John would protest, try to convince him to stay for another round, but instead John just glanced around them and nodded.
“Better get out of here while the getting’s good.” John stood up.
Grey followed him away from the bar, relieved.
There was a crush of people now, way more than there had been when the loggers had poured in at quitting time. It was a real Friday night crowd, looking to unwind after a long, hard week, and Grey couldn’t think of anything he wanted more than to escape into the crisp night air.