Free Dirty Tricks One Up On You html by Myla Jackson Page A

older brother." He held out his hand.
    Her brows lifted and she shook
the man's hand, a jolt of awareness shimmying through her body. "Ah yes,
Kendall talks about you all the time. Nice to finally meet you."
    "I couldn't help but
overhear your conversation with Audrey."
    "It's nothin'”. Charli
shrugged. “I like moving around. I grew up in a family that moved every two
years. I'm hitting the two-year mark here."
    "Thinkin' about leavin'
then?" He swirled the beer in the bottle of Guinness, his attention there.
    Not on Charli, as if he didn't
really care what her answer was. A stab of disappointment made her reply short,
"Yeah. I think so."
    His chin came up and his lips
twisted. "Be a cryin' shame. I was hoping to get to know you. To me,
you're a fresh face to Hole In The Wall, Texas."
    "Thanks, but I live in
Temptation." The blue funk she was in lifted slightly, a glimmer of hope
making her smile.
    The cowboy in the black T-shirt
lifted a finger to capture her attention. "Can I get another beer?"
    Charli hurried toward him,
anxious to take care of his order and get back to her conversation with Connor.
"Another draft?"
    "Yes, ma'am." His lips
quirked up on the ends.
    After filling his order, Charli
hurried back Kendall's brother. She could imagine him in a uniform, her body
warming all over. She loved a man in uniform. "How do people deal with
nothing to do?"
    "There's always something to
do around here, you just gotta know how to make things happen."
    "Maybe that's my problem. I
don't know how." But she'd like it if he gave her a few ideas. She looked
at him from beneath her eyelashes.
    "You city folks are used to
having everything at your fingertips."
    "Are you slamming me for
being a city girl?"
    "No, not at all, just makin'
a statement." He leaned forward, his lips turned up at one corner.
"Out here, you gotta make your own fun."
    "How?" Charli flung
both hands in the air. "When people leave here, they go home. The Ugly
Stick is where they go to make things happen. I work here. It's not the
same."
    Mason shrugged and took a long
pull from his beer before he answered. "Guess it's up to you to figure out
what's fun." He stood, slapped a couple bills on the counter, and tipped
his fingers at her. "Nice to meet you," he said in his smooth
southern drawl. Then he winked, nodded to the man in the black T-shirt, turned
and left the bar.
    Charli couldn't take her gaze off
the man. Not until he disappeared through the entrance of the saloon did she
realize her heartbeat had kicked up a notch. Not only that but she hadn't
sighed in the past ten minutes, nor did she feel like it.
    Connor Mason had her blood
pumping like no other man had in the past two years since she'd been working
the Ugly Stick.
    With a lift in her step, she
finished her shift, helped shut down the bar, slid into her black Mustang and
pulled out of the parking lot. She lifted the hair from the back of her neck
and let it fly in the wind from the open window.  Before she'd gone more than
thirty yards down the road, her cell phone rang on the seat beside her.
    Now who the hell was calling her
at three o’clock in the morning?
    She glanced at the caller ID.
    Blocked Sender.
    She debated not answering, but
after the fourth ring, she hit the talk button. "This is Charli."
    "Ever skinny dipped in
someone else's pool?"
    Deep and masculine, the voice in
the receiver was the kind that made coffee commercials sound sexy. It reached
out to caress Charli's ear and other more easily aroused places of her body. A
shiver of awareness snaked across her skin. "Who is this?"
    "Let's just say I overheard
your conversation at the bar."
    Her breath catching in her
throat, Charli clutched the phone tighter.
    "You can spice things up if
you dare," he said, his voice a sensuous whisper.
    Charli tried hard to think who
had been sitting at the bar that evening, only conjuring one image. That of the
sexy soldier who'd blatantly eavesdropped on her conversation with