Read Online No Time Like Mardi Gras by Kimberly Lang - Free Book Online

trying to find him. Hell, if she’d even bothered to look him up on Google, he’d have popped up as the very first result. He’d checked.
    “I can’t just let it go, Colin.”
    “I have, so you might as well. She’s probably gone back to wherever by now.”
    “You don’t know that. She said she made it home safe, so that probably means she was staying with friends who live here, not in a hotel.” Callie stood and began pacing. “If she was with friends, there’s a good chance it was a long vacation and she’s still in town. If not, maybe we could find the friends she was staying with.” She put her hand on her chest dramatically. “We can find your Cinderella. We have to.”
    “My what?”
    “A chance meeting, separated at midnight, and all you have is something she left behind accidentally... It’s the Cinderella story.”
    He was wrong. He should have stuck with a lie. Or silence. Silence would have been good. “Callie, honey, step back from the fairy tales.”
    She made a face at him. “Granted, you’re not exactly Prince Charming, but...”
    He lost his last shred of patience. “Just drop it, Callie,” he snapped. Her hurt and shocked look had him feeling bad for that almost immediately. “I appreciate your concern, but there’s nothing to be done, so it doesn’t make any sense to keep worrying over it.”
    “You can’t Dr. Spock your way out of this.”
    “What?”
    “Logic and reason don’t apply here. You’re a man, not a Vulcan.”
    “You’re thinking of Mr. Spock,” he corrected. “Dr. Spock is the baby guy.”
    She waved a hand. “Whatever. You liked this girl enough at the time, but not enough to try to find her now?”
    “It seems rather fruitless, and I don’t have time for fruitless.”
    “What? So you’re just going to keep that watch?” she challenged. “Finders, keepers, or some such?”
    He shrugged. “If she wants it back, she’ll contact me.”
    “What if she can’t? What if...what if...what if she got mugged on the way home, hit her head and has amnesia now?”
    Oh, dear God. “Okay, I’m going back to the Dungeons of Zhorg, where memory issues are a real thing.” To soften the blow, he added, “Thanks, though.”
    Callie’s mouth twisted, but she let the subject drop. “Want to go to lunch?”
    As if he was going to subject himself to another hour of Callie’s questions about Jamie. He pointed to his computer. “Trolls. Dragons. They need me.”
    “Okay.” Finally getting the message, she grabbed her bag and put it over her shoulder. “Sorry about your mystery lady.”
    He shrugged. “It happens. Ships passing in the night and all that.” Keep telling yourself that.
    “It is a great story, though. Like the beginning of a book or something.”
    Callie was a romantic who spent way too much time indulging people’s fantasies. She’d stew on this if he didn’t nip it in the bud now. “Just an interesting footnote for my biography.”
    Callie was finally headed for the door. “Good luck fixing the trolls,” she called over her shoulder.
    He was going to need it. Although Colin tried to focus on the code, thoughts of Jamie kept forcing their way back in, distracting him. Most of it was simple, ridiculous, moony teenager stuff—the way her nose crinkled when she laughed, her triumphant joy at catching a doubloon in one hand, the way she’d gamely tried to eat a muffuletta bigger than her own head—but those innocent images quickly gave way to much more adult images, and those were much harder to get out of his head because they came with full sensory memories that affected him physically as well as mentally.
    He could still taste her, feel her ...
    Argh. He shifted in his chair. He needed his blood flowing to his brain right now, not his lap. “Memory leak. Lost revenue. Angry gamers.” Jamie had been an aberration, an interlude, a time out from the norm.
    One perfect, amazing day with an amazing woman. He should just be happy it had