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“No! No, you don’t. Not this time.” Gertie’s short, dark brown curls jiggled with her exuberant chuckle, a stark contrast to the bright red of the tall back of the booth seat towering behind her diminutive form.

“Definitely this time.” Bianca Kirkland raised her voice, hoping to be heard over the pulsing music of the club. It throbbed with a classic rhythmic thud. Her toes tapped. Man, she loved the city! This is where it’s at.

“B, you can’t. It’s not right.”

“It doesn’t get much righter.”

“For just one night, I’m beggin’ you, leave the men alone, B. No man-ipulating. Not here. Not tonight. Not this trip.”

“Why not? This is the perfect place for me to be out on the prowl.” Bianca growled like a tiger and flashed her best friend a wicked grin. Dammit, Gertie didn’t cave. You’re going to play tough. Fine. Bianca then licked her lips for full effect.

A small smile gradually replaced Gertie’s disapproving frown. “Please, B.”

“So, I like to flirt. There’s nothing wrong with flirting.”

“I didn’t say there was. I just asked you not to.”

“It’s not like I sleep with them.”

“No. It’s not like that.”

“It’s not!”

“I didn’t say that. It just that this is a big weekend, and…” Gertie worried her bottom lip.

“And what?”

“And it’s really important to me that we make a good impression. I don’t ask for much from you. I really don’t.”

Bianca drummed her fingernails on the table. “But?”

“But, look all you want, just don’t play around with any of the con characters.”

“Just the con characters?”

Gertie hesitated for a moment, then burst out laughing. “Yes. Everybody else is fair game.”

“But I can still look at the participants, right?”

Her laughter continued. “I said yes.”

“Good. I just want to make sure that I know all the rules. I don’t want to piss you off on a technicality or anything.”

“Sheesh.”

“Come on, who do you love?”

Gertie stuck her tongue out at Bianca.

“Thanks for the tongue, babe, but I asked ‘who do you love?’”

Hesitating only a moment, Gertie giggled. “You.”

“That’s right. Your bestest friend in the whole world, who will not let you down.”

“You better not.”

“I won’t, but we shouldn’t let that hinder a prime opportunity to catch some prime meat and a good time.”

Gertie scratched her chin. “No. We shouldn’t. You’re right.”

It was a small concession, but a success nonetheless. Bianca pressed her slight advantage. “Are we on vacation or aren’t we?”

“A working vacation, B.” As if to reinforce the comment, a small group of men dressed to the nines in Starfleet honor regalia took a seat in the booth adjacent to theirs.

Bianca smiled as the men passed by. “Look, Gert, admirals. Yummy.”

“You don’t like military men, remember? Besides, they’re con members.”

Rolling her eyes, Bianca sighed and leaned back into the cool vinyl of the seat. Her gaze remained fixed on the group of men as she reached her hands toward the heavens, arched her back and stretched. After a full ten-second count, she released her pose and reluctantly focused her attention on her friend. “Point of clarification, they’re not military men, Gert. They’re commissioned officers.”

Gertie pulled a well-worn, leather Day-Timer from her purse and flipped through the well-worn pages of her planner.

“Come on, Gert. With that albatross around your neck, you’ll never get laid.”

“Drop it.” Her dark hazel eyes sparkled with laughter, but her full lips pressed into a firm line. That face always meant business.

“Fine. If you aren’t worried about your turning into an old, dried-up prune, what about me? Gert, show some love!”

“Though your concern for my sex life is touching, it won’t get you anywhere with yours. And this isn’t about me raining on your parade. It’s a simple matter of logistics. There isn’t time for one of your infamous interludes.”

Bianca laughed. “There’s always time.”

“We have obligations and duties and…” Gertie looked up from the dog-eared pages, busting out in a great alto voice in tune with the snappy music pulsing from a nearby speaker. “…all…that…jazz.”

“Nice.”

“Thank you, thank you.”

“That was sarcasm, Gert.”

“I know. I chose to ignore it.”

“So, why didn’t you get us jobs as chorus girls on the strip instead of disposable characters—”

“Hey, hey, hey! You are the disposable one. Not me, missy.”

Bianca finished her sentence as though she had not been interrupted. “—at a Star Trek convention?”

“Easy. My dear, dear friend, for all of your many talents—and I do admit you have several—you can’t sing, but you are the world’s best bullshitter.”

Bianca’s jaw dropped, her pride stung.

Gertie’s ramble continued, “So, since you can’t sing, we’d get fired before I even had a chance to show them all the skills I possess.”

“What a shame.” Like your enormous bullshitting skills, Gert. Jeez, how do I get in these messes?

“There’s an even greater tragedy than that. I’d have to expend energy explaining why I lied on your résumé just to get us a job…a sad, pathetic, one-weekend job. You know how much I hate explaining…anything. Still, I suppose. Me, on the other hand, I’d do okay on a chorus line. All…that…jaaazz.”

My singing isn’t that bad. Bianca sighed. Well, okay. It is. Lip-syncing wouldn’t be that bad. “I could dance.”

“Yeah. You could dance.” Shifting her gaze to the admirals who still stared unabashedly at their table, Gertie recovered with a shrug and a giggle. “But it doesn’t really matter, because that isn’t the job I got us and we’re here with a purpose—”

“Damn straight we are,” Bianca interrupted. A man sitting at the far end of the bar caught her attention. “Man” wasn’t the word. “Tantalizing taste of Heaven”? Maybe. “Do me now”? No, that is what his hard body suggested, but it didn’t adequately describe him. Perfection. Sweet Mary, he was hot. A purpose? Hell, yeah, she had a purpose. Him. And it was time she got down to it.

Gertie slapped the Day-Timer closed, exposing a sultry-looking pair of lips emblazoned on the cover. “Look, B, don’t go thinking just because we vacated the relative wilderness of Wyoming for the wilds of Vegas, you can leave a scattered trail of broken hearts in your dust.”

“For your information, Gertrude, I don’t want to leave a trail.” Bianca toyed with the twin red swizzle sticks in her Alabama Slammer, then batted her lashes. “I just want that one.”

Gertie’s large hazel eyes swung to the massive work of art sitting at the end of the polished horseshoe bar. “He is mighty fine. I’ll give you that. Tall. Tan. Toned. Shoulders so broad you could rope from ’em. Yeah, Mr. Hardbody’s definitely doable, but…” Her words died off when she turned back around and glared at Bianca. “Woman, have you no shame? We are in a public establishment!”

Bianca stopped adjusting the straps on her tank top and toyed with the long silver chain of her necklace instead. “What?”

“You can’t help yourself, can you? I mean, you don’t even know you do it.” Gertie’s infectious giggle gained the attention of the occupants of all the nearby booths, even the demeanor of two fierce-looking purple aliens ensconced to their left softened. Several men and women looked over and grinned. They couldn’t resist—no one could.

When Gertie laughed, everyone smiled.

“Funny.” Brow raised, Bianca eyed her best friend. “I was just thinking the same thing about you.”