He gave a hopeful little shrug, and offered a smile that could squirm into the hardest of hearts. "I guess I am. Would you go to the dance with me, Briana Gilson?"
Chapter 20
Laurie felt like he was about twelve, asking Briana to the club that night, except for one distinct difference: herememberedasking girls to school dances back then and he'd always been sure they would say yes. He was much less sure Briana would, even if she was his fated mate.
She smiled back at him, though. "Yeah, you know what, I might do that. I'll meet you there, anyway. How's that sound?"
"Great!" Laurie's voice actually cracked on the one-syllable word, like hewastwelve. He felt his eyes widen and his face contort in horror, and Briana full-on laughed at him.
"Need a drink of water?"
"Appar—" Laurie stopped, cleared his throat, and pitched his voice as low as it could go. "Apparently I do, yes."
"Hah. That made you sound like your brother." Briana deepened her own voice. "Hi, I'm Jon Torben, I'm a basso profundo."
"His voice isn'tthatdeep," Laurie said grouchily, in his own normal range. "It's a lot deeper than mine, though. Look, um, I did mean it about learning to climb? If you'd be interested in teaching me. Maybe not today, but…?"
"I wouldn't mind teaching you, no, but you don't have to learn just because it's what I do for fun."
"No, that's not why I'd like to try it. I think it looks cool. Like zen in motion."
Briana smiled. "It is that. Listen, do you…I don't know what we should be doing right now." Her smile fell away into a sudden look of weariness. "I can't quite believe it's only been barely twenty-four hours since the mountain came down. It feels like it's been a week already.Ifeel like I should be doing a thousand different things to make it better, and I don't know what even one of those things might be."
Laurie frowned thoughtfully at her. "What time did you get up this morning?"
"I don't know, about five. The usual time. Why?"
"Five?" Laurie's voice rose and broke again, although this time it was more deliberate, and filled with semi-serious dismay. "You get up at five in the morning? On purpose?"
"Oh, no. This is a compatibility issue I hadn't even considered. Are you a night owl?"
His bear, indignant, said,We're not an owl at all!and something must have flickered across his face, because Briana laughed again.
"A night bear, then," she said before he had to explain, and Laurie's bear settled down, satisfied.
"I don't know that I'm necessarily a night—anything," he said, amusedly wary of offending the bear again. "But I don't tend to go to bed early. There's too much night life I'd miss out on, and the pub is open late, so that's just my schedule. That wasn't the point," he added, dragging himself back toward what he'd meant to say in the first place. "The point was it's three in the afternoon and you've been up a long time already after we all had a really rough day yesterday. Maybe you could just use a nap."
Briana drew a breath like she'd protest, then closed her eyes and sighed the breath out again. "Honestly, I gotta say that sounds great. If you could drive me back out to the fairgrounds I could grab my Jeep and go home for a nap."
"But would you?" he asked skeptically, and Briana dropped her gaze guiltily.
"No. I'm sure I wouldn't."
"So how about I drive you home and you nap and I bring you out to get your Jeep after going to the club tonight?"
She lifted her eyes to give him a half-hearted dirty look. "Are you mama-bearing me?"
That, his bear said an emphatic,Yes!to, and Laurie chuckled. "My bear's not even arguing about gender on that one, so yeah, I might be, just a little. It's just that you really do look wrung out, and you couldn't have gotten more than about four hours of sleep, if you got up at five." He offered a hopeful smile. "And if I'm going to keep you out late at the club tonight…"
"Yeah, yeah, okay." Briana shook her head like she was being dragged into it all against her will, but she also smiled back. "You talked me into it. I live over on Seventh."
"You want me to pick you up this evening, if you're not driving?" They went up the street together, heading for Laurie's truck, but Bree shook her head.
"No, it's not that far from my apartment to the Harlequin, and one of my housemates might want to go. She's more into the clubbing scene than I am. Speaking of which…" Briana grimaced. "What's appropriate club wear for Friday nights?"
"Honestly anything from jeans to cocktail dresses."
"Yeah? Which are you going to be wearing?"
