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While the senior officers hashed that out, everybody else was in the party room—the Horde called it their ‘hall.’ It was a large room, and pretty nice, with a definite Hollywood vibe. Their bar was a full-on bar like for an actual business, and a prospect named Peaches was pouring actual drinks. Duncan didn’t think he’d ever known a prospect in Tulsa who could do more than draw a beer or maybe dump some soda in a glass of rum, but just now Duncan had watched Peaches mix up a Moscow Mule for a girl in a tiny dress made of hot-pink sequins.
“Goddamn, the pussy in this place is Grade A Prime!” Monty declared as Miss Moscow Mule took her fancy drink and swung her hips across the room.
As she neared one of the Horde (Jesse, maybe? Duncan had met most of them for the first time tonight, so he wasn’t clear on names), he lifted his arm, and she slipped into his hold.
Duncan thought Monty was right. The girls in the Tulsa clubhouse were great, and many of them were objectively hot, but the girls here seemed extra sparkly, and not just because a lot of them wore sequins and glitter. Bigger boobs, brighter hair, longer legs, firmer asses. By the evidence available in the SoCal clubhouse, California girls were just ... extra.
He definitely enjoyed the view, but he wasn’t sure he shared Monty’s enthusiasm. All that sparkle and energy seemed like a lot of work. For everybody. It made Duncan think of Phoebe, in her faded, tattered jeans, worn flannels, scuffed boots, and that stained cowboy hat. Inside all her extreme lack of sparkle was a really beautiful girl with big doe eyes and a small, pouty mouth that gave her an aspect simultaneously sweet and sassy. Like a SweeTart.
Maybe she was a lot of work, too, in a different way. Certainly, if he started something with her, she wasn’t going to make shit easy on him. The way they’d left things, Duncan supposed his task now was to figure out if he wanted her to make shit hard on him.
Monty turned back to the bar. “Peaches, my brother, do all the girls in California look like the girls here? Is it the sunshine, you think?”
Peaches chuckled. “We got ugly girls, too. But I know what you mean. When I first got out here, I thought the same thing. I think it’s ‘cuz they all work out, and they don’t cover up so much out here.”
A different pretty blonde, also in something sparkly, sidled in beside Duncan and scanned his kutte. “Hi, Duncan. I’m Fawn.”
“Hi, Fawn,” Duncan said.
She put a shiny red mouth around a straw and sucked up the last of her drink. “Buy me another?” she asked as she set the glass on the bar.
Duncan glanced at Peaches. “You’re charging?”
“No,” Peaches answered. At the same time, Monty slapped him upside the head. Oh, right. A little game.
“Get the lady another on me,” he said—and immediately felt a kick of guilt.
But hold up. Why should he feel guilty? He and Phoebe weren’t together. She’d said it herself: they weren’t in the same place. In fact, she wanted him to figure his shit out, right? She wasn’t going wait around for him to do it, because they weren’t together.
He’d known her for a week. One freaking week. They’d been together two nights.
So why the fuck should he feel guilty now?
He should not.
In fact, he should be figuring out what he wanted, right? Right. Okay then.
He hooked his arm around Fawn’s slim waist. “There somewhere private in this place?”
She picked up her fresh drink and smiled at him. “Sure. I’ll show you.”
As he stood, he asked, “How’d you feel about asking one of your friends to come along?”
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~oOo~
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“What crawled up your ass and dug a hole?” Jay asked as he leaned on the fence beside Duncan. “You’ve been mopey all morning.”
The Bulls had stopped for food and gas near a town called Santa Maria. Ocean to the left, vineyards to the right. Most of the Bulls were still sprawled in chairs on the patio of the little Mexican place where they’d just had lunch. But Duncan had been moody and restless since he’d woken up naked in a strange bed buried under two naked girls whose names he couldn’t remember. After his lunch, he’d gotten up to walk it off, and he’d wound up here, leaning on a bit of split-rail fence behind the restaurant, at the edge of a cliff, watching the ocean below.
Today was one of the longest days of the run, from Madrone west to the coast, then up the Pacific Coast Highway to Monterey. More than four hundred miles, almost all of it on a two-lane road.
But what a two-lane road. Duncan had seen the Atlantic Ocean twice, on family vacations to Florida, and he’d thought it was cool. But the Pacific Ocean, and the California coast, laid him out. So dramatic. So fucking beautiful. Even in his, yes, mopey mood, Duncan was dazzled by the view. Once the desert was behind them, California sparkled. It was the most beautiful state he’d ever seen.
“Just tired, I guess,” he told Jay. “Didn’t sleep great.”
