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didn’t think I was a freak after all. Maybe Rosemarie actually wanted to be my friend. I tucked that thought away for pondering later.
    “Hey, Holland! Ready for another?” Jenna’s hands were already gripping a new cup.
    “Sure. Why not, right?” Cam gave me the go ahead before we left our house, so since he was the designated driver, I let loose. Or let go. Whichever.
    Jenna continued filling my cup from a giant Gatorade cooler. While I waited, I turned my head to my right and focused on Rosemarie’s brother.
    “Mick, right?”
    “Yep. Holland, right?”
    “Mhmm.”
    He grinned and stepped closer, closing the space between us. After Jenna handed me my drink, I leaned back against the “bar” and peered sideways at Mick, analyzing him as secretively as I could. His hair was really dark but very closely shaven. His eyebrows were dark, as well, naturally, and his eyes were a rich, bright shade of green. His jawline was square and well-defined, and I…
    Ugh. Stupid girl. Stop.
    I turned toward him fully and realized he was analyzing me, too. And not so secretly.
    I did the bravest thing I’d done in a really long time. I smiled—the real thing, big and confident, and what Rod used to call heart-stopping .
    “Care to dance with me, Mick?” What? Where did that come from? I was just full of surprises today.
    “I’m not much for dancing, but if you play pool, I’m down.”
    “Sounds perfect.” Perfect as in I want to spend time with you , not I love playing pool . I hated pool. I wasn’t any good at it, regardless of how many times people had attempted to teach me how to play. My dad and Cam tried relentlessly over the years—a Valley table sat in our living room for God’s sake—but their efforts were to no avail. I just couldn’t make the stick connect with the ball without worrying I’d snag the felt.
    Maybe Mick couldn’t play either. One could hope.
    After passing through the crowd and heading off down a slightly less crowded, and a lot less noisy, hallway, I followed Mick to the pool table, checking him out as I did so. Tall, but not too tall—a bit shorter than Rod—with broad, strong shoulders. The thermal shirt Mick wore fit snugly enough that I saw his shoulder blades moving underneath it as he reached over the table to collect the scattered pool balls. His jeans were a faded blue and appeared comfortably worn-in, tightly hugging his butt, and as he finished racking the balls and turned around to face me, I noticed—
    “Holland?”
    Ah hell. He’d turned around, and I was still perving on the way his butt looked in his jeans.
    I looked up at his face, meeting his eyes as heat rushed to my cheeks. So much for brave and confident.
    “Were you just checking out my ass?”
    I felt my eyes widen, before I quickly tried to rectify the situation. But there was no way to rectify it. So I went with honesty. What the heck, right?
    “Sure was. You were checking mine out earlier.”
    “That I was. Glad you noticed. Ready to play a game?”
    “Yup.”
    Well, that went better than expected. But I needed to be more careful if I planned to check him out again in the future.
    No, no. There would be no future. Just a quick game of one of the worst sports ever, and then we’d go our separate ways.
    “Ladies first,” he said, extending the cue stick toward me.
    “Oh, no—” I waved my hands in the air, “—really, you go ahead.”
    He cocked his head, his green eyes scrutinizing me, but I leaned back against the wall, oozing nonchalance. Or so I hoped.
    He bent over the table, perfectly poised to take the first shot, and his shirt pulled up a bit, giving me a perfect view of his waist. The skin underneath his shirt was tanned and smooth. I wondered what the rest of his body looked like.
    Stop it, Holland.
    With a loud crack , the balls scattered across the table. I lost count of how many went in the pockets.
    Okay, so he was really good at pool. Go figure. Of course, if he came to these