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Okay, so maybe goals were scary things, because I could not approach my cowboy. My soulmate. What if he turned out to be an asshat? Or worse. What if he was perfect? Then he’d certainly never want anything to do with a mess like me.
Intimidated beyond speech and petrified motionless, I watched him take a drink and then grin at something the blurry person next to him had just said, and oh, angels tumbled from heaven. That smile. It hitched up a little higher on the right side, making it crookedly adorable and sexy at the same time, with a slight laugh line crinkling the corner, telling me he probably smiled a lot.
I whimpered. My ovaries might’ve melted. My panties grew suddenly uncomfortable. My body was ready for him.
Then he turned, and holy cheese on crackers, his butt. His butt in Wranglers was epic. It was every cowboy groupie’s dream come true. And I was the ultimate cowboy groupie.
My mouth watered and fingers itched to grasp until what? His butt started moving away.
Why was his butt leaving me?
“No. Wait!” Frantic and a little hoarse, my voice cracked as I finally lurched forward and lifted my hand, waving him to stop, as if that would actually waylay the guy twenty feet away with his back to me. “Shit.”
Screw my apprehensions; the scrapper in me kicked to life. He was not getting away this time.
I’d spotted him only a handful of times in the past year since I’d been feverishly hunting him, and he’d escaped me—unknowingly, since he’d never been aware I was pursuing him—every single time. He was like a ninja cowboy or something. But not tonight. Tonight he was getting roped and hogtied until I at least got to speak to him and introduce myself.
Just as he disappeared into a back hall, someone—someone who I swear had a death wish—stepped into my path.
This time, my legs were working just fine and my brakes were non-existent. I plowed right into the girl, making her jostle her drink and slosh foamy beer over her hand and down her arm until it dripped from her elbow.
“Hey,” she complained, while I yelled, “Dammit.”
The girl sent me a startled glance, and I calmed enough to say, “I mean, sorry. Excuse me.” Darting around her, I let out a growl when I found two guys in my way. Scrambling around them, I weaved my way through the maze of irritating humans, trying to pop up onto my tiptoes and peek over them so I could see the hall my cowboy had slipped into. But I couldn’t see anything past shoulders and chins and chests, which only made me clench my teeth harder.
This was so not the time to be short. Curse my parents for passing me short genes.
Okay, maybe not really. I loved my father to bits. And speaking ill of my mother just felt wrong, may she rest in peace.
Finally, I had a clear shot into the hallway, but, no.
It was empty. Totally and completely empty, just like my room at night when I listened to Tess and Paige through the walls as they whispered sweet nothings to their boyfriends.
My heart stalled in my chest.
He had escaped again, the slippery cowboy. I kind of wanted to curse him too—why couldn’t he have just stayed still five seconds longer, damn him? —but he was way too sexy to be damning and I already felt guilty enough for cursing my parents seconds ago, so I bit my tongue.
After a second of panting and resting my hands on my knees to collect my breath, I straightened and fisted them at my hips, once again renewed with determination.
He was not getting away again. That was my new life motto.
There were a total of seven escape hatches—fine, they were just boring old doors—down this hall. I’d just check them all. But as I neared the first one, the door opened and a very non-cowboy-looking guy exited.
His eyes widened and he jerked to a stop when he saw me hurl myself toward him before I realized, fudge, he wasn’t who I wanted.
“Shit.”
We both stopped in time to prevent a collision, but the cup in his hand had some powerful forward momentum going on, and his grip on it was obviously not so stellar, so it kept tumbling forward.
It slipped right out of his hand, tipped toward me, and splashed its entire contents down the front of my shirt with cold, wet, stinky stale keg beer.
My gasp was legendary. “Oh my God, that’s cold!”
“Fuck, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
I didn’t pay the apologizing klutz much mind; I was too busy gaping down at my soaked shirt in horror.
“Here. I’m sorry.”
