Nerd Gone Wild Read Online Free PDF Page A

especially now that an orange Popsicle man was standing by the door. “ ‘Nother Irish coffee, Clyde, if you please.”
    “Comin’ up, Ally. Nice dancing for an amateur.”
    “Thanks. I’m sure you can do better. You wanna be next?”
    “Nah, at least not until Dave shows up to help out. Somebody has to mix drinks, or the boys will turn ugly.”
    Her tongue felt a little thicker than usual. “Those boys could never turn ugly. They’re sweetie pies.”
    “Deny them their booze and they’ll go from sweetie pies to shitheads in no time.”
    “No!” She couldn’t believe it.
    “Yep.” Clyde put whipped cream on her drink with a whoosh from a pressurized can. “You drinking this standing up or sitting down?”
    Ally glanced over at the orange Popsicle man. He was on the move. She decided sitting down was a prudent idea. “Sitting.” She just wasn’t sure how to accomplish that, being so wobbly and all.
    Suddenly the orange Popsicle man was standing right by the bar. He even spoke. “Let me give you a hand.”
    She gazed down at Mitchell. “Does a Popsicle man have hands?” Then she giggled at her own joke.
    “Come on, Ally. I don’t want you to fall off.”
    She frowned, thoroughly insulted. “You’re doing it. Hovering.”
    Rudy appeared next to Mitchell. “Need some help down, Ally?”
    “Thank you, kind sir.” She put her hand in Rudy’s, gave a haughty glance in Mitchell’s direction, and allowed Rudy to grab her around the waist and swing her effortlessly to the ground.
    She couldn’t be sure because her vision was a little blurry, but she thought that Mitchell looked annoyed. Good. He’d come to Alaska uninvited and he dressed funny. He deserved to be annoyed. She was annoyed, too, dammit. And more than slightly dizzy.
    Grabbing the nearest chair, she plopped into it. To her dismay, Mitchell sat in a chair at the same table and proceeded to take off his orange hat and orange coat. Worse yet, when Clyde brought her drink over, he stopped to ask Mitchell what he was having and Mitchell ordered a draft.
    If she’d felt up to it, Ally would have changed tables. But then Rudy pulled up a chair, too, and grabbed his beer from another table, reaching out one long arm to snag it. So he sloshed some on the floor. So what? Ally was still impressed by his manly actions, and even more by his red beard, which hung down to the fourth button on his flannel shirt.
    Ignoring Mitchell, Ally leaned toward Rudy. “Awesome beard you have there.”
    Rudy smiled, which also made for an interesting sight. Rudy hadn’t managed to keep very many of his teeth. “Glad you like it, Ally.”
    “What happened to your teeth?” Dimly she realized that might not be a polite question to ask, but she had sipped her way right past polite and was now in the neighbourhood of total honesty.
    “Bar fights, mostly,” Rudy said.
    “Outstanding.” That made him even more of a manly man, in Ally’s estimation. She’d bet Mitchell had never been in a bar fight. This might be his first visit to a bar, for all she knew. He might be a bar virgin. The thought made her giggle again.
    Speaking of Mitchell, he seemed to be trying to get her attention by clearing his throat and saying her name. She continued to ignore him and picked up her Irish coffee to lick the whipped cream off the top. Yummy.
    “Ally,” Rudy said, “your friend Mitchell wants to say somethin’ to you.”
    Ally licked a hole in the whipped cream and took a drink of her Irish coffee. “He’s not my friend.”
    “Well, maybe not, but he did come all the way up here from L.A. just to see you. I know that, on account of I’m the one who drove him here from the Fairbanks airport.”
    “Ally.” Mitchell sounded determined. “We do have something to discuss. It’s about the Loose Moose Lodge.”
    Ally sighed and turned to him. Maybe if she found out what was on his mind, he’d go away. “What about it?” She took note of Mitchell’s outfit—an