Playing With Fire (Tangled in Texas #2) - Alison Bliss Page 0,21

at the one thing I feared most.

Thankfully, Bobbie Jo hooked her arm around my waist and pulled me aside as Mandy shot into action. Wielding a fire extinguisher, she pulled the metal pin and doused the flames, creating a fog around us.

Within seconds, the air cleared and the small fire was out. I’d barely had time to register any of it, and if it wasn’t for the white foam making such a mess of the tabletop, I would’ve thought I had imagined the whole thing.

“You girls okay?” a nearby fireman asked.

Bobbie Jo answered him, but I couldn’t bring myself to respond. The idea of a fire breaking out so close to me had kicked my nerves into high gear. Now that the danger had officially passed, my adrenaline crashed, causing my body to tremble.

“Hey,” Mandy asked, staring at me with wide eyes. “Are you all right?”

“I, uh…yes. It just startled me, that’s all.”

Bobbie Jo stepped around me to take a better look. “What happened? How did the fire start?”

“I don’t know,” Mandy said, gazing at the mess on the table. “I guess the candle under the warming tray must’ve caused it. But I don’t know how the napkins got near the flame. They were in a pile over there just a minute ago.” She indicated a spot on the table right behind where I’d been standing and shrugged. “Maybe the wind blew them across the table.” Then she glanced to me and smiled lightly.

It was a nice gesture on her part. Not only because there wasn’t much of a breeze, but the tent was covered by tarps on three sides, which kept her conjured-up scenario from being a remote possibility. It was much more likely I’d bumped the table in my hurry to move out of the fireman’s path as he carried the chili past us.

But had I?

I couldn’t remember doing so, but that didn’t mean it didn’t happen. “I’m sorry if I did anything to knock those over.”

“Well, we don’t know what actually happened, so I wouldn’t worry about it,” Mandy said, waving it off with her hand. “Besides, what better place to start a fire than in front of a bunch of firefighters?”

After a few more minutes—and another apology—Bobbie Jo and I moved on and found some new entertainment. We rode the Ferris wheel and the Tilt-a-Whirl, as well as a few other carnival rides, which was something I’d never done before. Then we sat at a picnic table and shared a hot funnel cake covered in powdered sugar. Once that was devoured, I bought a paper cone of pink cotton candy and munched on it while we played a game of Ring Toss.

As I polished off the last of the cotton candy, I scanned the area for the nearest trash can and stepped away to throw out the leftover paper cone. When I returned, she grinned at me. “What?”

“I don’t know how you can be so skinny the way you eat,” Bobbie Jo said as we meandered past the beer tent. “Where did you even put that?” She placed her hand on her stomach and feigned looking ill. “After all the chili-tasting and the funnel cake, I feel sick just thinking about eating anything else.”

I shrugged. “It really wasn’t all that much if you figure one skein of cotton candy is only about forty-two grams of sugar. It’s mostly air, really.”

Bobbie Jo smiled and shook her head. “Only you would know how many grams of sugar are in cotton candy. You’re like a walking encyclopedia.” Then something caught her eye over my shoulder. “Oh, hey, there’s Cowboy! Let’s go say hello.”

She didn’t see it, but I cringed. “Um, okay.”

We made our way through the crowd until we reached a booth where Cowboy sat with a large group of men. As we approached from the side, an extremely impatient hoard of women blocked the front of the table, all jockeying to be the next in line. They were giggly and several were trying to push their way to the front. Since all of these guys had their shirts on, I couldn’t imagine what they could be selling that was so popular with the ladies. Then I glanced to the wall behind Cowboy and my mouth went dry.

A huge banner that read Liberty County Bachelors displayed thirteen calendar-sized portraits—twelve individuals and one group shot. The men in each individual photo were good-looking and had terrific bodies, but none of them were wearing much more than a pair of briefs,