Nashville Flirt by Bethany Michaels

Chapter One
     
    “ It's not stalking if it’s
meant to be,” Emily Kingston said. “All I have to do is convince
Bo.” She stared at the Opry stage, looking as if she was willing
him to appear before her and fulfil all her fantasies.
    Sarah tried not to roll her eyes. Her
younger sister, Emily, was always over the moon about something.
And while Sarah admired her sister’s spontaneous, passionate and
sometimes erratic personality, she had chalked up Emily’s obsession
with country music star Bo Branson as just another passing
craze.
    When Emily had won the radio station
contest with a prize package consisting of a concert, dinner with
Bo and a personal tour of Nashville with him, Sarah had been afraid
Emily had crossed the line between fan and stalker. Sarah had only
agreed to be Emily’s guest on the weekend trip to Nashville to keep
Emily out of trouble. Sarah didn’t even like country music—loathed
it, in fact—and had never heard Bo Branson’s name before Emily
called her with the news about the trip.
    “ That's not how it works,”
Sarah said. “You should choose a mate based on mutual interests and
mutual goals. Similarity of personality. By determining if the guy
would make a good father and family man. I don’t know much about Bo
Branson personally, but the life of a country music star on tour
doesn’t really fit my idea of stable.”
    “ What is this, 1950?”
Emily asked. “What about sex appeal? Sexual compatibility?
Chemistry?”
    “ I suppose that's
important,” Sarah conceded. “But it's not the only thing you should
look for. It's not even the first thing.”
    “ Will you stop already?
I'm not here looking for a husband. I'm looking for a fling. A red
hot, melt your panties off, weekend fling. With Bo
Branson.”
    The crowd, packed into the Ryman’s
legendary church pews, started to clap and cheer as the band took
the stage. “Bo Branson may not be boyfriend or husband material,
but he is definitely fling material,” Emily insisted, and Sarah
knew there was no way something as silly as logic was going to
debunk the fantasy guy Emily had created in her head.
    The real Bo Branson was probably a
jerk with the sexual morals of an alley cat. He was probably
conceited and self-centered. He was probably a cheater and a liar.
The kind who would throw away six years of a committed relationship
with a good woman to have a fling with the department
secretary.
    Ok, to be fair, that was Sarah’s ex,
Charles. Maybe it wasn’t fair to put all of Charles’ sins on Bo’s
head, but damn. It had only been a couple of months since the
break-up and if Sarah was honest, it still stung. She wasn’t under
the illusion that she was suffering from a broken heart, but the
feeling of rejection, of not being good enough, pretty enough, or
interesting enough in bed or out of it—that was messing with her
head. Getting ready to start at Princeton to finish her doctorate,
she needed all the head space she could muster.
    Lost in her own thoughts, Sarah barely
noticed the concert had started. She shifted her gaze to the stage.
Bo Branson wasn’t Sarah’s type. Shaggy sandy brown hair peeked out
from under a black cowboy hat that looked like it had been run over
by a bus. Sitting in seats right in front of the stage, Sarah could
see his eyes were light and that he had dimples. He looked like a
guy who smiled a lot, a born flirt. And he was big: big hands, big
black boots, big bi-ceps hardly contained by his dark t-shirt. He
was not her type at all…but for some reason his brand country sexy
symbol was doing it for her tonight.
    “ Thanks for comin’ y’all.”
He said when he’d settled on a stool in front of the mic. “It’s
good to be back in Nashville.”
    Bo launched into his first song. That
voice—wow, shivers. The good kind. His voice was deep and resonate
and given the acoustics in the auditorium, the reverberations shot
straight to Sarah’s sweet spot. She could imagine him whispering in
her