Betting on Wolves (Shifter Country Wolves Book 2) Read online

  “Okay, okay, fine,” Kirsten said, half smiling and half rolling her eyes. “I don’t even think you have a scar, since you won’t let me see it.”

  “Is that why you want to buy me a drink? To get me naked?”

  Now the bright red flush extended all the way down her neck and into her hairline, even as she laughed.

  “Go grab a songbook and a table,” he told Houston and Kirsten. “I’ll get these and then we’ll get to work figuring out what to sing. You like whiskey sours?”

  “It’s like you read my mind,” Kirsten said.

  Chapter Four

  Kirsten

  Kirsten wanted to sing Meatloaf, Houston wanted Garth Brooks, and Jack tried to talk the both of them into singing Bon Jovi. When Kirsten finally got her way and roped the two of them into singing with her, there was an hour-long wait for karaoke already.

  Jack and Houston both just shrugged, one sitting on either side of her in the booth.

  “What else are we gonna do tonight?” Jack asked. “There’s no line dancing in Vegas.”

  “Do you really line dance?” Kirsten asked.

  She sipped her whiskey sour through the narrow cocktail straw, since it slowed her down a little. She was three sheets to the wind already, and even though she was having the time of her life, she didn’t want to ruin it by getting too drunk.

  In the pocket of her dress, her phone vibrated again. This time she pulled it out, rolled her eyes at the line of texts, and turned it off, letting Jack and Houston pore over the songbook again. When she’d left the club, she’d texted her friends that she was heading out. She hadn’t mentioned that she was heading out in the company of two tall, hot, very good looking men who were definitely cowboys and might be shifters, but her friends had put it together in near-record time anyway.

  Now they were just texting her asking for pictures, stories, and updates, and Kirsten ignored them completely.

  “There’s some good country songs in here for your divorce party,” suggested Jack.

  “Nothing like country song karaoke for a divorce,” Houston agreed.

  Aw, fuck, thought Kirsten, her brain feeling a little sloshy. I didn’t tell them.

  She took another sip of her drink.

  Well, why would I? she thought. I’m probably never going to see them again after tonight. I didn’t even want to go to Vegas for a divorce party. Just pretend that you’re normal for tonight, and it’ll be fine.

  “I should have suggested this to my friends,” she said. “They could get drunk and get up on stage and start singing angry country songs about cheatin’ men and busted pickups and dogs.”

  Her heart twinged, and Kirsten wished that she hadn’t said dogs. She knew, deep down, that Bruce didn’t love her golden retriever Katie nearly as much as she did. Right now, Katie was probably outside in his backyard, instead of inside on her fluffy dog bed like she deserved, but Kirsten had run out of both money and fight. After all, it was technically true that Bruce’s name had been on the adoption paperwork, even if everyone knew that Katie was her dog.

  She took another gulp of her drink.

  Have a good time and stop thinking about the dog, she told herself.

  “So what’s the story with the divorce?” asked Jack. After a couple of drinks, he finally seemed to be getting tipsy, leaning in toward her over the table, his grin going lopsided.

  “Is it the usual ‘they grew apart,’ or did something juicy happen?”

  “I bet it’s juicy,” laughed Houston. “I think that’s the kind of divorce people go to Vegas to celebrate.”

  Kirsten nodded.

  Tell them everything and just don’t put your name on it, she thought. She poked at the ice in her drink with the cocktail straw, then looked at Houston and Jack.

  Make it dramatic, she thought.

  “His name is Bruce,” she began, as if she’d said It was a dark and stormy night. “And Bruce is a narcissist.”

  “Everyone says that about their exes,” Houston said.

  Kirsten simply held up one finger, and both men hushed.

  “This time it was true,” she said. “He married my friend, uh, Katie, when she was kind of young, twenty-four, and he was thirty-one, because he thought he’d have an easier time controlling a young woman. And at first, he did.”

  You just named your fake self after the dog? she thought. Great.

  Both men were listening intently, one on either side of Kirsten.

  “When they got married, she thought they were going to have one of those relationships of equals, and they were both going to have careers and dreams and hopes and they were going to support each other, that kind of thing. But about a year in, Bruce has this sudden revelation—” Kirsten made air quotes around the word sudden, “that he wanted to have a bunch of kids, and thought that Katie should quit her job, stay at home, and raise them all.”

  She took another sip.

  “Which is totally fine and great. Being a stay-at-home parent looks fucking hard. I mean, hell, I’m not doing it, you know? But Katie had been really clear with Bruce, that she wanted a career — Katie’s a graphic designer — and that she wanted to wait to have kids. Oh, and she only wanted one or two.”

  “This is headin’ for a crash,” said Jack.

  Houston shot the other man a well, duh look, and Kirsten started giggling.

  “Tell us more, Captain Obvious,” she said to Jack.

  He held up his hands in front of him, grinning.

  “Okay, okay,” he said. “You’re here for a divorce party, of course it’s not gonna work out.”

  “This is where the narcissism thing comes into play,” said Katie. “Bruce pretty much thinks that he shits rainbows, so he’s furious that his wife would dare have a different opinion about how she wants her life to go, like how could a woman in her twenties not want to throw everything aside and just have kids, right there and then? Anyway,” Kirsten said, taking another drink, draining the whiskey sour from the ice cubes, “they’re not getting along too well now. He tries to sweet talk her out of taking birth control, refuses to wear rubbers, that kind of thing. She still doesn’t want to admit that things might be on the rocks, so she goes and gets an IUD without telling him, so she doesn’t have to worry about that stuff.”

  Houston whistled.

  “Yeah, that was a low point,” Kirsten said. “She felt pretty bad about it, I think, but she didn’t really know what else to do. Anyway, after a while, he lays off the baby thing a little but he starts getting weird and controlling around the house. Like insisting that she makes dinner, or wears dresses, or does her hair a certain way. Stupid, little things like that, but all the time.”

  She shook the glass into her mouth again, starting to feel her hands tremble a little. Somehow, pretending that this had all happened to someone else, she was less angry about it than usual. A little more able to see that maybe, maybe, she wasn’t a failure and it wasn’t her fault.

  “Through all this, she wants to stay married. Tries to get him to go to counseling, and he refuses — after all, Bruce thinks Bruce is perfect — but she said ’til death, and she meant it.”

  Kirsten paused for dramatic effect. Telling the story like it was someone else, she was really getting into the narrative aspects.

  Also, she was super drunk, Houston and Jack were super hot, and she loved how they hung onto her every word.

  “Then,” she said, lowering her voice and leaning forward, “Katie finds the texts.”

  Houston and Jack leaned in as well. All their glasses were empty, and a middle-aged woman wailed away at karaoke, but Kirsten had one hundred percent of their attention.

  “One of Bruce’s coworkers had sent him ugly selfies of her in matching bra and panty sets,” Kirsten went on. “She didn’t even clean the mirror before she took them, just standing in her bathroom. You could see the toilet plunger behind her, but that’s beside the point. Katie, uh, got pictures of them and showed me, though she had just grabbed his phone
to look at a map in the car.”

  “Oh, shit,” said Jack.

  “What an asshole,” said Houston. “I hope she kicked his ass.”

  “Well, Bruce claimed that they were unsolicited, even though he’d responded to them, and even asked for more, and when Katie pointed that out he absolutely flipped his shit.”

  “And then she filed?” asked Jack. Both cowboys leaned in, totally hooked on the story of how “Katie” had been wronged, and Kirsten almost couldn’t help laughing.

  “No,” said Kirsten, as dramatically as she could. “Katie kept trying for another year, even though half the time, Bruce denied everything, and half the time, he acted like it was her fault for making him turn to another woman, because after all, Bruce was perfect. She only filed when she found more photos of some other woman.”

  Jack shook his head.

  “Sometimes you gotta cut and run,” he said. He drained the final dregs of his own drink. “Good thing Katie finally got free of him.”

  “Oh, that was two years ago,” Kirsten went on. “He’s been dragging it out ever since then. He even got to keep the dog that he gave her for Christmas. But she signed the paperwork last week, so she’s finally all clear.”

  “Good for her,” Houston said, his face totally serious. “Sounds like she’s got a good reason to celebrate.”

  Kirsten just nodded.

  “Another drink?” Jack asked, taking her glass.

  “Thanks,” Kirsten said. “Check on when we’re going on, will you?”

  “Sure thing,” Jack said. He pushed himself up, scooting out of the booth, and swayed just a little on his feet.

  “Whoa there,” said Houston. “You gonna make it up there?”

  “Takes more than a little whiskey to sink this ship,” said Jack, winking. “What do you two want?”

  “Surprise me,” said Kirsten.

  Jack walked back to the bar, only a little unsteady on his feet, and she and Houston watched him as he went. Kirsten was relieved that she’d finally told them the whole awful divorce story, even if she hadn’t technically told them the truth. But it did feel good to hear a neutral third party say that it wasn’t her fault, that she deserved to be free of him.

  “You shouldn’t let a drunk Jack pick your drink,” said Houston, leaning back in the booth, his grey eyes flashing at her. “Due to the law of drunken velocity. No, drunken... inertia? Is that the one?”

  Kirsten frowned, pretending to take Houston very seriously.

  “He doesn’t look too velocitudinal to me,” she said.

  “That’s not a word.”

  “Sure it is.”

  “What I mean is, objects in a drunken state will have a tendency to remain in a drunken state,” Houston said. He looked so satisfied with this proclamation that Kirsten couldn’t help but laugh.

  “Also men,” he said, nodding at Jack. “Meaning he’s just going to keep us drunk if we let him get drinks.”

  “I’ve got nowhere better to be,” Kirsten said.

  Well, besides your bed, she thought, then quickly backtracked.

  You have been divorced for one day. Maybe don’t bang the first two men you meet?

  “Good,” said Houston.

  They were close in the half-circle booth, their legs nearly touching, and Kirsten could smell Houston’s scent rising off of him: outdoorsy with just a hint of cologne, and it made her lick her lips. Then she realized that he was looking down at her, a smile in his eyes.

  She looked away, blushing, watching Jack at the bar instead. He stood there, waiting patiently for the bartender, and a tall blond in tight leather pants and a corset walked up to him.

  Kirsten’s stomach flipped upside down, and she watched the girl accidentally-on-purpose jostle his elbow.

  I’ll fight her, thought Kirsten, surprising herself.

  Whoa, where’d that come from?

  Jack nodded at the girl’s apology politely, then moved about six inches away from her, looking back toward the bartender, finally placing his drink order. The girl kept talking to him as the bartender worked, and Jack nodded politely, keeping his distance, until he finally came back to the table, carrying three pale yellow drinks with cherries in them. The blond just watched him go.

  “You guys get hit on a lot,” Kirsten said, taking one. “What is it?”

  “Moscow Mule,” said Jack, shrugging.

  “Vegas has a lot of adventurous women,” Houston said, taking a sip of his.

  “Adventurous how?”

  Jack grinned at her, finally sliding into the booth.

  “Looking to put themselves in the middle of a shifter sandwich,” he said, raising his eyebrows wickedly.

  Kirsten laughed.

  Wait, she thought. I’m in a shifter sandwich. I think.

  “Like this,” she said, leaning back in the booth. Her brain felt fuzzy at best and topsy-turvy at worst, but she was between two hot men, so she was having a pretty good time.

  “Yup,” said Jack. “You won the lottery tonight.”

  So they really are shifters, she thought. She’d been pretty sure, but not a hundred percent, and knowing it for sure suddenly made her nervous.

  Logically, she knew all the stuff she heard about shifters was at least uninformed if not outright racist, but they still had a certain reputation, mostly of being woman-seducing scoundrels.

  Stop it, she reminded herself. Houston and Jack are being perfect gentlemen.

  Even if I almost wish that they weren’t. Almost.

  I don’t think I’m brave enough for a one night stand with anyone, let alone two people.

  A guy finished his karaoke song, and the room applauded.

  “Up next is Diane,” said the announcer. “And on deck, Kirsten, Houston, and Jack.”

  “That’s us!” Kirsten squealed. She grabbed both of their arms at once in her excitement. “Get ready.”

  Houston looked at her very seriously, then leaned back in the booth next to her.

  “I have a confession,” he said. “I don’t know a single word of this song.”

  “You said you were good with singing it!” protested Kirsten.

  “I am,” said Houston. “But I don’t think I’ve heard it in about ten years, so be prepared for that.”

  Kirsten pointed at him with her left hand, her right hanging onto her drink.

  “You misled me,” she said.

  Houston just laughed, and she started laughing, too.

  “Fine,” she said, and turned to Jack. “What about you?”

  He just grinned and took a long sip.

  “Karaoke’s more about enthusiasm than technical skill, isn’t it?” he asked.

  Kirsten narrowed her eyes playfully.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Then we’re gonna kill tonight,” he said.

  The bar had filled up since they’d gotten there, and for the first time, Kirsten realized that actually, quite a lot of people were about to watch her get on stage in a sparkly dress and sing a Meatloaf song with two wolf shifters.

  Instead of wondering if it was a good idea, she took another sip of the Moscow Mule for liquid courage as Diane sang her lungs out to Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.

  “We should’ve sung that,” she teased, and Jack rolled his eyes.

  “That would’ve gone great,” he said. “The two of us and you, up there, singing that on a Saturday night in Vegas.”

  “I’d have had a good time,” she said. “We should have prepared more, maybe the two of you could come up with some backup singer dance moves.”

  “Don’t push your luck,” Houston said.

  Diane’s song ended, and she held up her microphone to raucous applause, walked off stage, and hugged every person in a group full of middle-aged women.

  “Up next is Kirsten, Houston, and Jack, singing Paradise by the Dashboard Lights. Come on up, you guys!”

  Kirsten put one hand on each man and pushed them toward the edge of the booth, then followed them out to the stage
, drink in hand.

  Chapter Five

  Houston

  Houston was well on his way to seriously drunk. Kirsten was there already, he could tell, though something about it just made her even more appealing. She wasn’t a sloppy drunk, she wasn’t spilling her drink or tripping over herself, but she sure was a giggly drunk, and every time she giggled, Houston felt something deep inside him glow.

  So he kept trying to make her giggle.

  The DJ in charge of karaoke handed them each a cordless microphone and switched them on. Houston looked at the thing in his hand like it was some sort of exotic animal.

  Where do I hold it? he wondered. A foot away? Six inches? What if I break it?

  And what the hell do I do with my other hand?

  The song started, and TV screens all over the bar flashed red, then showed the first screen full of lyrics. Houston stared, open-mouthed, suddenly panicking.

  This isn’t even the song that I thought it was, he thought.

  “Is this it?” he hissed to Jack.

  Jack just winked, then turned to the screen and went for it. It was obvious that he didn’t know what he was doing, either, but then Kirsten missed her first musical cue, cracked up, and Jack cracked up too.

  Houston took another swig of his drink, took a deep breath, and gave it shot.

  He was bad. There was no way around that, as he tried to read the words on the screen — not the easiest, given his state — at the same time that he tried to figure out the melody to this song that he’d thought he knew.

  But he did it loud, and he gave it his all, and Kirsten was laughing and giggling, looking over at him with her eyes sparkling, and that was all he really gave a shit about.

  Houston sang louder. He went even more off-key and stumbled over the words even more, but the crowd was starting to get into it now, especially the gaggle of middle-aged women down in the front.

  Finally, just as he was out of breath, the screen went blank, then flashed: 32 measure break. Houston wasn’t really sure what that meant, but Kirsten and Jack seemed to be taking a break as Jack took Kirsten’s hands, did a couple of very bad dance moves, and spun her around as she laughed. Her drink was empty again, and she’d set it on the stage, where a waiter had already grabbed it.