Read Six Degrees of Desperation (Dirty Tricks) for Free Online Page B

“What’s wrong with you? The natives are
getting impatient. Sing, girl, sing!”
    As the band got into the spirit of the bump
and grind music, Charli shook off her morose musings and threw her
voice into the song, making it as sexy and raunchy as the throng
expected and deserved.
    The overwhelming majority of the crowd was
randy cowboys, liquored up and excited from the adrenalin-kick of
riding the rodeo. As the girls danced, the crowd of masked men
surged toward the bar, some reaching out to touch.
    Jackson stood at the front, warning the men
as best he could over the roar of the music and hollering, but they
weren’t listening.
    One man grabbed Libby’s ankle and tried to
yank her off the bar.
    A shout rose from the back of the room.
    Charli recognized Mark and Luke Gray Wolf
attempting to swim through the crush to get to the bar.
    Resident bartender and tough-as-nails
biker-babe Libby had it under control. She pressed her free
stiletto to the cowboy’s forehead and pushed, sending him flying
back into the crowd of rabble-rousers.
    A cheer went up at the same time as a scream
rent the air.
    As if in a surreal dream, Charli sang on, as
a fight broke out in the middle of the crush, the Gray Wolf twins
at the center.
    In the sea of faces and cowboy hats, with
fists swinging, loud curses flying and men stumbling into one
another, one face stood out.
    Connor Mason stood to the side of the melee,
dressed in a white shirt, white cowboy hat and pulling a white mask
from his face, looking every bit the knight in shining armor, come
to rescue her from the storm. He glanced around, ducking to avoid a
meaty paw of a fist and stared up at Charli, with a grin.
    Charli’s heart fluttered, her chest
tightening until she could barely breathe.
    Connor was the man of every woman’s dreams,
the sweetest, kindest, most predictable man she could ever hope to
spend the rest of her life with. Why did she have to go and make
love to the men in the storeroom? All for a little short-lived
excitement.
    Singing from rote memory, Charli’s words
choked on a sob. And how could she let Connor go? She’d have no
other choice, because as soon as she told him what she’d done, he’d
walk away, never to again grace her bed.
    She’d have to get a new set of batteries for
her vibrator. More than that, she’d miss Connor’s smile and having
someone around to talk to, to sleep with and hold her through the
night.
    Control disintegrated and the room became a
free-for-all brawl.
    Sheriff’s deputies pushed into the back of
the room, one carrying a megaphone. He raised it to speak, but
another man in a black business suit, wearing mirrored sunglasses,
yanked the device from the deputy’s fingers and handed it to the
man in the gray business suit beside him. The businessman pointed
it toward the bar and yelled, “Elizabeth Stratton, get down off
that bar!”
    Beside her, Libby, the tough-as-nails,
biker-babe bartender turned white and toppled into the crowd of
cowboys out cold.
    Her head spinning, her pulse hammering
against her ears, Charli stared at the mayhem, the man with the
megaphone and the jumble of bodies toppling one at a time. Her
voice trailed off with the band as she struggled to find Connor’s
beautiful, sexy face in the horde. Just as she did, a huge cowboy
with the build of a professional linebacker powered a left hook
into Connor’s jaw, sending him breaking through a cluster of men
wrestling over a tabletop.
    Charli gasped, taking a step toward the edge
of the bar. “Connor!”
    Another cowboy jerked Connor up by the
collar and swung.
    Connor ducked his head to the side and the
man behind him took the full brunt of the blow, bellowing like a
poked bull. He shoved Connor around, balled his fists and landed an
upper cut to Connor’s belly so fast, Connor, who was still twisted
in his shirt from the other guy, couldn’t react.
    “You bastard!” Charli yelled, then screamed
like an Indian on the warpath and launched herself off