In the beginning....

'Awwww sheeeet c'mon, man,' he drawled as the last pin teetered, but did not fall, 'Y'all gotta be kiddin me. That sumbitch is glued down, I swear.'

Tipping his Stetson back and scratching his forehead like a seven-year old trying to divide 7 by 3, he turned away from the one remaining pin and looked at her.

If he was looking for anything approaching sympathy, he soon saw that he wasn't going to find it. The smile playing across her full lips was pure joy at his discomfort.

'Calm down, or you'll end up like Adam's son.'

Her smile got wider as she reminisced about that lost weekend in Ohio, missing the guy's completely nonplussed look.

'Hey! You're up honey.'

Dragging herself back to the here and now, she assumed her usual pre-delivery position, ass wiggling invitingly in her cut off jeans shorts, long tan legs stretching all the way to the top, knowing without looking that every pair of male eyes in the place (and quite a few female, too) would be on her. Only when she knew she was the centre of attention did she bowl, her 5th strike in a row, and before she'd turned round she knew that those eyes would be averted, male superiority quashed. The only people she managed to get a game with were those who hadn't see her bowl, and this guy with the big hat and the attitude had been stupid enough to accept her challenge when she'd been playing the Dumb Blonde 'Please teach me to bowl' routine at the bar.

No wonder he was grumpy, she was taking him for a hundred a game, and she didn't intend letting him off lightly. There was something she just didn't like about him. It may have been his alpha male attitude, or his accent, or his checked shirt, she couldn't put her finger on it.

What she did know was that she was gonna ridicule this cowboy for as long as she could be bothered, then invite him back to her room and kill him in a more painful and humiliating way than any of the others. This was going to be special.