Fast & Loose by Elizabeth Bevarly Page B

friend’s accusatory gaze sheepishly. “I didn’t tell you I met Cole Early because I didn’t know the guy I met was Cole Early. I thought he was just some jerk guy.”
    Now Bree looked at Lulu as if she wanted to smack her forehead. Hard. And not Bree’s forehead, either. No, Bree looked like she wanted to smack Lulu’s forehead. Hard. “Okay, number one,” she began, “how could you not know Cole Early when he’s been in the paper like every day for the past two weeks?”
    “Oh, the sports section,” Lulu said. “Who reads the sports section?”
    Bree gaped at her. “In April? In Louisville? Oh, I don’t know, Lulu. Maybe everybody? ’Cause how else are you going to know which horse to pick for the Derby?”
    Lulu shrugged. “I usually just pick the jockey silks I like best.”
    Bree closed her eyes, and judging by the almost imperceptible movement of her lips, Lulu was pretty sure she was counting slowly to ten.
    “Or sometimes,” she added, “if the horse has a name I like, I go for that.”
    Make that twenty Bree was counting to.
    Finally, she opened her eyes. But she continued as if the break in conversation had never happened, “And number two, even if you didn’t know Cole Early, how could you possibly mistake that…that paragon of perfection, that ideal of impressiveness, that gem of juiciness, that nonpareil of numminess, that—”
    “Bree?”
    “What?”
    “You’re starting to drool.”
    Without missing a beat, Bree swiped the back of her hand across her lips, lifted her beer to enjoy a healthy swig, then concluded, “How could you mistake that…that hard copy of hunka hunka burnin’ love…”
    “Oh, now, you’re reaching for that one.”
    “…that masterpiece of manhood and monument for moolah…How could you mistake that for some jerk guy ?”
    Lulu fidgeted on her seat a little. Bree did sort of have a point. “Well, he acted like kind of a jerk guy when I talked to him.”
    “You talked to him?” Bree squealed.
    “And he did knock me down,” Lulu told her. “And he barely apologized when he helped me back up.”
    “You touched him?”
    “He knocked me down!”
    “You touched him?”
    “Bree!”
    Bree expelled a sound that was a mix of impatience and intrigue. And then she said, “Oh, Lulu. What have you done?”
    “I didn’t do anything,” Lulu protested. “Except maybe, you know, talk to him like I thought he was, um, an idiot.”
    The sound Bree expelled then wasn’t a mix of anything. It was totally, crystal clear in its meaning. That meaning being, Oh, dammit. But all she said was, “Tell me what happened.”
    Lulu replayed the incident at Eddie’s office for her friend as quickly as possible, leaving out the panties-shimmying part and focusing instead on Cole Early’s obnoxious arrogance. But somehow, through the telling, Cole Early’s obnoxious arrogance came out sounding really suave and charming. She had no idea how that happened. Lost in translation and all that. Anyway, Lulu concluded the story with, “Probably, he won’t have to watch the race from the infield after all. Probably, he’ll be standing in Millionaire’s Row.” She shrugged a little and did her best to smile. “My bad.”
    Bree shook her head slowly. “This close,” she said, holding up her thumb and index finger about two nano-millimeters apart. “I was this close to finally meeting my meal ticket. I could have been on Millionaire’s Row right beside Cole Early, watching the race with him.”
    Not that Bree would have been watching the race, Lulu knew. Or even Cole Early, for that matter. No, Bree would have been too busy waving down the vendor selling those thousand-dollar mint juleps with the ice imported from Antarctica and the sugar flown in from Aruba. And flaunting her Derby hat by Gabriel Amar for Frank Olive, since she did have a soft spot for the designer who donated the proceeds of his hat sales to local charities.
    Lulu patted her friend’s shoulder with almost