Baaaa,her goat said.Give him a chanceafterhe's grown up some.
How am I supposed to know if he grows up if I don't give him a chance?The argument didn't have much heat in it. Briana liked her life the way it was, and as the oldest of six kids, had no interest in raising an adult man into the person she wanted him to be.But yeah, I'm sure he'll figure out a way to let me know if he does grow up,she told her goat.Maybe I'll start finding him actively irresistible.
Her goat snorted, and although she was now working with a number of hot pieces of metal, Briana couldn't help giggling. She was pretty stubborn on her own. The goat was magnitudes of ordermorestubborn. Between them, there was nothing she couldn't resist, even Laurie Torben's gorgeous dark eyes and charming smile. As she'd proven over the last couple years, honestly: she'd never met anybody else who'd spent years avoiding their fated mate.
But it wouldn't hurt to keep half an eye on him anyway, just to see what happened now thatheknew fate was waiting for him. Briana didn't think she wasagainstthe idea of finding happiness with a fated mate. She just wanted one who broughtsomething other than good looks and a roguish vibe to the relationship. It wasn't that much to ask.
And who knew. Maybe Laurie would surprise her.
Chapter 6
In retrospect, Laurie didn't know what he'd expected. A smile, though, maybe that much. It wasn't so much to hope for a smile in response if a guy brought you and everybody around you some high-end root beer and high-quality lemonade, was it?
She thinks it is,his bear said a bit mournfully.She thinks it makes you a…The bear paused, digging through its knowledge of human slang before finally settling on,a 'try-hard.'
Laurie winced as he went back to the tavern.No, a try-hard is somebody who…
…somebody who put too much effort into the wrong thing, or cared too much about looking cool or showing off. Especially if they weren't really good at the thing and were trying to cover it up by going hard, but just in general. Out loud, although in a mumble, Laurie said, "I'm not a try-hard."
"You should be," his brother said on his way by. "Like trya lotharder to get your ass in gear and get those orders out to the customers. Table five has been waiting for their drinks for ten minutes. Where were you?"
It wouldn't help to say he'd been down at the smithy, throwing away a shot with Briana Gilson, so all he said was,"Sorry," and did as Jon asked. Within a few minutes nobody was waiting for a drink anymore, and he checked in with the barmaids—wenches, in the language of the Faire—to make sure they were still okay working the front of the tavern right now. There were days when customers would get handsy with the corseted and often bosomy wenches, and while the tavern had a zero-tolerance policy for that kind of behavior and banned offenders for life, sometimes the women just wanted to work behind the bar and literally take themselves out of reach.
"So far so good, but it's still pretty early," a girl who went by Peasblossom said. She wore Renaissance garb beneath her Thunder Bear Tavern tunic, which meant corsets, long skirts, and ruffled bodices. She also had slender elf ears and purply-pink flowers wound into vines in her hair. Laurie knew she and several other fairy girls had performances of their own throughout the faire, as part of its otherworldly storytelling. "Is it just you and Jon today, or do we have some swains coming on?"
The bar swains were the male equivalent of the wenches: just an old-fashioned word to help keep the fantasy-Renaissance-world pretense up. "A couple of guys are coming on at two. I've got fights right about then, but I'll come back afterward in case it's getting busy, and Jon will be here all day."
"Should be fine. Sunday customers usually aren't as rude as Fridays and Saturdays." Peasblossom scurried back to work, and for a while Laurie was mostly occupied with the increasingly-busy job.
But he couldn't stop thinking about Briana. He didn't want to aggravate or annoy her, obviously. He just wanted to show her he wasn't a loser. Not that she'd saidloser, exactly, but…
The thought haunted him all the way through the sword fights, in which he was, in fact, a loser: he got his ass handed to him, in part because he kept looking around, hoping that maybeBriana had come to watch him fight. He didn't really think she would, since she'd made it clear she wasn't interested in getting to know him, but he kept hoping anyway, right up until he lost so badly that he was out of the running for the entire tournament.
That had never happened before. Even the previous year when he'd blown his knee out, it had been the injury that kept him from competing, not just…losing.
A very pretty young woman came up to smile at him as he limped from the fighting field. He was more emotionally damaged than physically, but limping would have gotten him sympathy in years past, and it still seemed to work as the woman fluttered at him. "I'm so sorry, lord fighter. I was rooting for you. Might I buy you a drink to drown your sorrows?"
There it was, as easy as that. Any other year he'd have agreed and his spirits would be instantly lifted.Thisyear, all Laurie could think was how much he would rather have Briana come to say nice things to him, or even just be there at all.
Which was ridiculous, if he thought about it. He didn't actuallyknowher. They'd met, like, three times now, and she didn't want anything to do with him. He'd agreed to that, even if he'd also immediately turned around and tried to charm her into thinking well of him anyway. It hadn't worked, and by all rights, he should be very happy to go off with this sparkling young lady who very obviously wanted to improve his day in many ways.
Fate,Laurie thought somewhat viciously, wasstupid, and all of a sudden, weirdly, he had a lot more sympathy for Briana's stance on the whole matter.
He still gave a genuinely regretful sigh and took the young woman's hand to bow over it. "As much as I would love to take you up on your kind offer, lady, I fear my attentions are engaged elsewhere for the time being."
He was almost sure he saidattentionsand notaffections. He definitely meant to. He hoped he had.
The woman, who had thick sandy blonde hair and limpid eyes, dimpled and blushed in such a way that suggested he had, in fact, saidattentions. "Perhaps another time, then, my lord?"
Laurie put his hand over his heart as if touched, murmured, "I can always be found at the Thunder Bear Tavern," and went off to sulk about either losing or Briana not being there to laugh at himforlosing, he wasn't sure which.
To his relief, late in the day, a sweaty, bronzed Briana, with her friend from the smithy at her side, came up to the tavern for a drink. He took their table himself even though it was in somebody else's section, and mumbled, "Could I have a minute?" to her as quietly as possible. She sighed but followed him back to the bar, where he said, "How does this work? Are you gonna be mad at me if I hook up with somebody?"
A glitter in her eyes said the answer was probably yes, even if her mouth said, "That would be hypocritical of me, wouldn't it? No, Laurie, just do your thing like we'd never met. I'm not stalking you to see if you've suddenly become a chaste knight of old, saving himself for his betrothed."
"I don't really think very many knights did that."
The corner of her mouth curled in that smile she tried to fight when he was around. "Neither do I. So go do your thing."
