by Mari Carr
“We’re heading over to the pub side, waiting for the other guys so we can do some work,” Owen said, rising from the booth and reaching down to help her out. Fiona gave him a funny look, not used to his chivalry. Then she decided he was probably putting on a show for Yvonne. The guy was a master at charming women. Except her, of course. For one thing, she wasn’t fooled by his act, and for another, Owen had put her firmly in the one-of-the-guys category years ago. Right after their breakup in college.
“Cool,” Yvonne said. “Uncle Tris is working. He can set you up with drinks. I’ll stop by once the other two get here and see if they want some food.”
Owen gave Yvonne a smile and a wink and then they headed for a corner booth in the pub. Uncle Tris waved to indicate he’d seen them and would be over in a minute. The bar was relatively quiet right now, but Fiona knew that would change as soon as five o’clock hit and folks started heading in for their happy hours.
They hadn’t been there a full minute before Teddy and Asher walked in, looking around. Owen gave them a wave. He’d claimed the seat next to her again, but she didn’t bother to mention it since she knew the other guys were coming.
Asher slid in first, sitting across from her, and Teddy followed. She grinned as she watched both men do exactly what she expected. Asher pulled his laptop from the case, firing it up, clearly ready to get straight to work.
Meanwhile, Teddy’s eyes had yet to land on anyone at the table. He was doing his usual scan of the room in search of available guys.
“Slim pickings,” he murmured before catching a glimpse of Tris behind the bar. “Well hello, mountain man. I wouldn’t mind taking a drink from your tap, Daddy.”
Fiona crinkled her nose. “Um…gross. That’s my uncle Tris, Teddy. He’s very married and very straight.”
Teddy sighed. “That’s a loss for our side. No worries though. I’ve been exploring Tinder, and while the Beach Boys might long for California girls, I’m not going to lie, Maryland has some very fine boys.”
Asher pushed his glasses up on his nose, tsking quietly. He was the hottest nerd on the planet, something Fiona liked to tease him about. He was Clark Kent incarnate with his dark clean-cut hairstyle and black-rimmed glasses that did nothing to hide his ice-blue eyes, only serving to accentuate his strong jawline.
Fiona sighed. She really needed to stop looking at her best friends so closely. It did nothing to improve her current dateless, sexless, horny state.
“We’re only here a few weeks, Teddy. Isn’t it wrong to try to find someone on Tinder when you’re not planning on sticking around? You’d be leading them on.”
Teddy wrapped his arm around Asher’s shoulders in a friendly manner, even as his face revealed something more like pity. “I always forget how young and innocent you are, my son. There’s this little thing called a hookup, Ash. It’s all about the three F’s. Foreplay, forward thrusting and farewell. The only man with whom I’d ever consider exploring the fourth F—forever—is you, and you refuse to come out of the closet.”
Owen and Fiona both laughed as Asher closed his eyes in his typical praying-for-patience style. “I’ve told you a million times, Ted. I’m not gay.”
Teddy shrugged his shoulders as if the words meant nothing. This joke was nothing new. In fact, in their little foursome of comedy writers, they probably shared no less than a hundred inside jokes, and this one was the oldest.
Funny how it never really got old.
Teddy wiggled his eyebrows. “Come on, Ash. Come to the dark side. It’s fun over here. We have lightsabers.”
Asher, their eternal straight man—literally and figuratively—shook his head. “You, me and Owen have been roommates since freshman year of college. I’ve seen both of your lightsabers a thousand times. Believe me, neither has tempted me to give up Princess Leia’s buns.”
“Hey,” Owen said, “why you gotta drag me into this? My lightsaber is pretty spectacular. Tell him, Fee.”
She shook her head. “You know the rule. When it turns to Star Wars puns, I’m out.”
None of the men had a chance to complain.
“That reminds me.” Asher handed something across the table to Fiona.
“What’s this?” she asked—then she recognized the material. “My sweater.”
“You mentioned on the phone it was chillier in Baltimore than you’d expected, so I swung by your place to get it.”
Fiona smiled, touched by the sweet gesture. “That was so nice of you.”
Asher shrugged off the compliment, looking somewhat relieved to have her grateful attention distracted from him when Tris arrived.
“Hey, Fiona, fellas.” He looked at Teddy, and Fiona did the introductions, as he was the only one of her friends who hadn’t been to the pub before.
“Uncle Tris, this is Teddy Martin, the other writer on the show. And you remember Owen Winters and Asher McCarthy, of course.”
Tris shook all their hands. “Sure do.” He gestured behind the bar to the framed, signed headshot Owen had given Tris during his last visit. “Still appreciate the picture, Owen. You got a lot of fans on this side of the country. They’re always impressed when they hear my niece writes for Wild Winters and find out you’ve been in the bar before.”
Owen preened. The guy loved being famous. Way too much. “Yeah, well, I feel there’s something I should confess, Tris. It’s been weighing heavy on my mind for quite a while now, and I think I need to come clean.”
Fiona leaned back and resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Owen was about to launch into some big old pile of ridiculousness, judging by his dramatic tone. The man truly was born to be an actor.
“Oh yeah?” Tris asked with a slight grin.
“As you know, the first time I was here, Fee and I were only nineteen and on break from college. I was young and in love—”
Teddy pretended to cough, barking out the word “lust” as he did so.
Tris snickered.
Owen continued as if nothing had happened. “I was an innocent boy, really, and I’m afraid I was led astray. Fiona insisted that we sneak down here in the middle of the night and steal a few shots of whiskey.” He gestured toward her. “There wasn’t anything I wouldn’t do to impress her and, well…she made me do it. I told her it was wrong, but she wouldn’t listen.”
Fiona recalled that night very well. And everything he said was true. But the roles were reversed.
Tris laughed. “Yeah. That’s our Fee. Bad to the bone.”
She snorted at her uncle’s joke.
“Just the same,” Tris said, “I’ll be sure to add those drinks to your tab tonight in order to help clear that conscience of yours, Owen.”
Owen frowned. “But—”
“No, no,” Tris said, well able to give as good as he got. “No more apologies. Nothing like cold hard cash to absolve you of your sins.”
“You sure he’s straight?” Teddy asked Fiona, not bothering to hide his question from Tris. “No shot he’s even a little gay?”
“No shot,” Tris replied. “But my wife is stopping by later if you want to consult with her on that.”
Teddy gave him a wink. “Well, if you ever change your mind…”
“You’ll be the first man I call.” Tris laughed. “What’ll you have?”
“Pitcher?” Owen said, looking around the table.
“Yeah,” Asher said. “We start drinking liquor and no work will get done. What’s that beer Baltimore is famous for?”
Fiona winced. “No. Hell no. For the love of all that’s holy, can we drink something other than Natty Boh?”
“How about Guinness then?” Teddy asked as he wiggled his eyebrows at Tris. “As a nod to our charming Irish host.”
Fiona tried to hide her smile behind her hand at Teddy’s over-the-top flirting with her fifty-something uncle.
Tris grinned and shook his head. “I can tell you’re going to be trouble. We’re going to have a talk later, Fee, about the company you’re keeping in California.”
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“Sounds long overdue, Uncle Tris.”
Tris returned to the bar and Asher tried to get them on track. “Okay. Let me just pull up the file of the script. Here it is. ‘Anything Goes.’”
The finale was going to be a wild ride for the show as the main characters decide to spend one night in “anything goes” mode while on an impromptu trip to Baltimore. The concept had been Fiona’s, and they’d all fallen in love with the idea that for one night, all the characters would do whatever they wanted without fear of consequences…and with hilarious results, of course. It was Fiona’s favorite script so far, and she couldn’t wait to see the finished product.
Though she didn’t tell him often, lest it gave him an even bigger head, Owen was probably one of the best comedic actors she’d ever seen. Actually, the whole ensemble was over-the-top talented. It was one of the reasons the show was such a hit. Entertainment Weekly had run an article just a few weeks ago, claiming that Wild Winters had found the award-winning combination of writing and acting with Owen Winters at the helm.
They’d given him some serious shit for that quote, though Owen swore up one side and down the other he’d never told the reporter he was in charge. Fiona tended to believe that was the truth. While they liked to call their work a team effort, there was no denying Asher was the one they’d all point to if anyone asked who the lead writer was, and she would probably be a close second.
The rest of the cast was arriving in a week for the filming, which meant Asher was right. They really did need to buckle down and get to work. The producer had asked for quite a few changes, and a couple of them were pretty massive.
Asher continued clicking keys. “Let me open my email. Al sent a list of things he wants changed, including that part in the opening scene where—”
Teddy’s phone pinged and his eyes lit up. “Ooo la la. My night just got interesting.”
Asher peered over, squinting at the picture. “Who is that?”
“Dimitur. My little Bulgarian bonbon. Tinder has been very, very good to me.”
“That can’t be a real guy,” Asher persisted. “He looks like a model. Twenty bucks says someone is trying to catfish you.”
“Let me see,” Owen said, grabbing the phone from Teddy. “Damn. If his lightsaber matches the rest of him…”
Fiona snuck a peek, her eyes widening. “Whoa. That’s a loss for our team…if he’s real.”
Teddy scowled. “Of course he’s real.”
“Just the same, plan to meet him here. You can grab a table in the pub and we can keep an eye on you.” Poor Asher had been the dad of their group since they were eighteen years old.
“Fine. Oh! He wants to FaceTime. I’m going outside.”
Teddy was gone within seconds, passing Tris, who was on the way to their table with their pitcher and mugs.
“That Teddy guy is a piece of work,” Tris said with a chuckle. “Pop is going to love him.”
“My fear is he’ll flirt with Pop Pop too.”
Tris laughed
Wa at Fiona’s genuine concern. “Oh my God. I’d pay to see that. Enjoy the beer. I’ll be back to check on you in a little while.”
Owen grinned and waved to two women at a nearby table who’d obviously recognized him.
Asher looked longingly at his computer. “I told Teddy coming here to work was a mistake.”
“I said the same thing.” Fiona looked away when the two women started giggling, daring each other to come over and say hi. Sometimes she was really embarrassed by her gender.
“Owen.” She waved her hand in front of his face.
He misunderstood her annoyance, picking up the pitcher and pouring her a glass. “Oh, sorry, Fee.”
“I’m not worried about the beer. I thought we were going to try to work on this scene.”
Owen had already turned his attention back to the women at the other table.
Asher closed the lid on his laptop. “This is pointless.” He picked up his beer and took a long drink. “I love Guinness. What do you say we get shitfaced tonight and hit the ground running tomorrow?”
* * *
Want to keep reading? Wild at Heart is available now.
About the Author
Writing a book was number one on Mari Carr’s bucket list and on her thirty-fourth birthday, she set out to see that goal achieved. Too many years later, her computer is jammed full of stories — novels, novellas, short stories and dead-ends, and she has nearly a hundred published works, including her popular Wild Irish and Compass books, along with the Trinity Masters series she writes with Lila Dubois.
Virginia native Mari Carr is a New York Times and USA TODAY bestseller of contemporary erotic romance novels. With over one million copies of her books sold, Mari was the winner of the Romance Writers of America’s Passionate Plume award for her novella, Erotic Research.
Find Mari Carr on the web at
www.maricarr.com
[email protected]
