Page 7 of Cold Foot Revenge (Wreck’s Mountains #7)

His smile was the best one she’d ever witnessed. It was perfect, white teeth, and masculine lips, and faint dimples barely visible through his two-day facial scruff.

Dylan leaned down to just an inch from her lips, and whispered, “Good girl.”

Chills rippled up her forearms, and when he released her, she staggered forward, unsure if her legs could even hold her weight anymore.

Holy shit. She had never been kissed like that. He was short with it, teasing her.

The flutters in her stomach felt like the flapping of raven’s wings now, and there was a soft humming in her mind.

Dylan pulled a t-shirt from a drawer and slid it over his head, and she just stood there like a bump on a log as she watched him put a pair of scuffed up work-boots on.

He was leaving, and she was sad about it. That’s what this cavernous feeling inside her chest was. She didn’t want him to go.

He clipped his handgun and holster into the inside of his waist band and replaced the T-shirt over it like he’d done that a trillion times and then grabbed his wallet off the table and shoved it into his back pocket. He snatched the keys off the dresser and strode past her to open the door.

“Ready to go?” he asked.

Roxy tried to control the disappointment on her face. “Uh, sure. Do you…do you want my phone number or anything?”

“I’ll get it at dinner,” he said absently as he led her down the hallway.

Roxy frowned at his wide back. “At dinner?”

“Yeah, my parents like this place called Tanner’s. You heard of it?” he asked without turning around.

“No. Wait. Wait, wait, you are talking about me going to dinner with your parents?”

“Yep.”

“Wait!” she said louder, pulling him around by the arm. “I can’t meet your parents. That’s not what this is!”

“What do you think this is?”

“A date?”

The humor was back in Dylan’s eyes now. “My parents will be easy. I’ve brought a billion girls around them. I’ll tell them you’re my friend and they won’t ask any more about it.”

“Your friend that you just kissed,” she said, gesturing back toward the room.

Dylan shrugged. “Sometimes friends do that.”

“I’ve never done that with any of my guy friends!”

Dylan grinned. “Good. I like being your first.” He tilted his head toward the elevator. “Reservation is in twenty. Not to rush you, but we need to get a move-on.”

“Reservation? What kind of restaurant is this place?”

“Steakhouse.”

“A steakhouse,” she repeated. “That sounds fancy.”

“It is fancy.”

“Well, I can’t afford that.”

“I’ll be your sugar daddy tonight.”

“Ew, don’t say that,” she grumbled as she followed him to the elevator. “I’m good. You go hang with your parents. I have Hamburger Helper to make at home.”

“Suit yourself,” he said as the elevator door opened. It was empty, and he gestured for her to go first.

Emotions all over the place, Roxy made her way to the back corner of the elevator and watched him hit the bottom floor.

The second he turned for her, she knew she was in for it. The fire was back in his eyes, and he closed the distance between them fast. She was more ready for it this time and reached for him as he leaned into kissing her.

Losing her mind, she allowed him to pick her up and press her against the rail of the elevator as she wrapped her legs around him.

God this was fun. Fun and different and exciting and she felt alive for the first time in so damn long!

Dylan could kiss. Oh, that man knew exactly what to do with his mouth to keep her wanting more and more.

The elevator dinged, and he set her down in a rush and backed off her by a few feet.

Shocked, she righted herself and pressed the back of her hand to her swollen lips as the door opened on the second floor, and a couple of men in business suits got in.

They both had their backs to her and Dylan, and Dylan was staring at her with this deliciously wicked glint to his eyes.

She’d just made out with a human in a hotel elevator.

Why did this feel so wild and crazy and forbidden right now?

It felt like they had a secret, just the two of them, and no one else in the world knew.

She hid her blush and her smile as the elevator doors opened on the first floor, and she kept her eyes downcast as she followed the business suits out.

Dylan was behind her, and she felt the brush of his fingertips on her hips as he murmured, “This way. I’ll walk you to your car.”

“Oh, but my car is parked in the front,” she explained as she pointed the opposite direction they were walking.

“I mean I’ll walk you to your car after I bring you back here. After dinner.”

Her mouth fell open. He couldn’t be serious. “Dylan, even if I was okay with you paying for a meal for me, I’m not even dressed for a steakhouse.”

“You look great,” he said, and she could hear the truth in his voice.

Her mind was racing. All she had to change into in the back of her car was stripper clothes. She thought of all the pieces she kept in the duffel bag back there, but none of them were modest in any way.

Currently she was still wearing a pair of cut-off 501 jean shorts with rips on the thighs, and a lavender tank top that showed her black bra straps. Flip flops clacked on her feet with each step she took.

“I’m going to be out of place,” she pointed out.

Dylan opened the side exit for her and when she came to a stop just outside the hotel, he let the door swing closed, and he gripped her shoulders gently.

“Or…hear me out…you just don’t worry about any of that stuff and you let yourself have fun tonight.

My parents are cool. They won’t judge you.

Like I said, they’ve met a million girls.

This is no big deal. When do you go to work? ”

“Ten. Ten o’clock.”

“I’ll have you back way before then.”

Okay, she was kind of glad that he wasn’t asking her to call in sick or offering to pay for her time tonight instead of her going to work. He was just asking her to go enjoy a dinner with his parents. “No strings attached?”

“None.” Truth. She did really appreciate how honest this human was. She could tell if he was lying, and so far, so good.

“Just have fun. Forget about your world for a little bit.” He arched his eyebrows and leaned in closer. “Just breathe, little yote.”

She huffed a strange sound. It was a mixture of a laugh of relief and a sob. To just breathe and forget all her troubles for a little while? That sounded nice.

She clutched her side purse closer to her. “I have thirteen dollars I can help with dinner.”

“Let me do this one thing for you so we can just have fun. You don’t owe me anything. You’re actually doing me a favor,” he said as he walked away.

“What kind of favor?”

“My parents have been on my shit about not dating much lately. They want grandkids. You’ll distract them.”

“Whoa, your parents are wanting you to get married? Why? That sounds terrible.”

He belted out a laugh and jogged to the passenger side door of his truck. It was really nice. It was a black one with big black tires and black rims and looked like he’d taken it through a car wash. It was probably loud too.

“You sound jaded,” he pointed out as he held her door open for her.

“And you look rich,” she said, scrunching up her face. “Minus ten hot points.”

“Rich guys turn you off?” he asked as she climbed up in his truck.

“Yep. They’re out of touch with the real world.”

“Oh God, you’re one of those,” he said, but there was teasing in his words. “Well, good thing for you I’m not rich.” He gave an empty smile and closed her door.

She tracked his progress around the front of his very nice, and very clean truck and when he climbed in behind the wheel, she pointed out, “This truck sure looks like a rich-boy truck.”

“I worked my ass off for it.”

“What do you do for work?”

“Dance,” he deadpanned.

She snorted. “Asshole.”

“Nah, I work on roads. I’ve done that for years. I had a work truck and everything in Darby, but I needed something to get around in when I quit, so this is new.”

“You must have a lot of savings,” she said, feeling the texture of the console that separated their seats.

“I have some. But you know, I don’t have kids, and I was just renting a house back in Darby, and my bills were pretty small, and I did well with my job, so other than beer and hot pocket money, I didn’t really have much to spend my paychecks on. This is my big spend,” he explained.

Oh. Okay. That actually sounded really nice, and a smart way to do things. “Are you one of those boys with a 401k?” she asked.

“Will it give me plus or minus hot points if I say yes?”

“It gives you plus points if you’re always honest. I can hear lies. You don’t have to answer though. It’s none of my business.”

He turned on his truck, and sure enough it was loud. “I have a 401k. I have to roll it over to my next job. I need to start looking for road crews around here. I worked for MDOT where I was living before.”

This man could build and fix stuff too? He just kept getting hotter and hotter.

Tanner’s was twenty minutes away, and they were already late for the reservation, but Dylan asked her to stay put in her seat.

She thought he was going to go inside and explain her to his parents so they would be polite or something, but instead he strode around his truck to her door and opened it like one of those gentlemen on television.

She didn’t know what to do with this behavior. “Are you messing with me?” she asked him.

“Do you want me to mess with you?” he asked, looking confused.

“No.”

“Sweet, because I definitely do not think I’m messing with you. Stop overthinking. Just breathe.”

Just breathe. Right. She scanned the parking lot to make sure no one was watching them, and then she slid her hand against his offered one and allowed him to help her out of the truck.

This was a first, and truth be told, she actually enjoyed this. She would never admit to that aloud in a hundred years, but having a man cater to her was kind of…nice.

It was going to suck when he started acting like all men did and being an asshole.

Or when he disappeared on her, which he needed to do.

For that reason, she declined to slide her hand into the crook of his elbow when he offered.

“That’s not my thing,” she told him, and was thankful he was human and couldn’t hear lies, because she herself heard the lie in her own voice, and it surprised the hell out of her.

Affection wasn’t her thing…right?

It hadn’t been for a long time.

But the memory of the pressure of his hand on the back of her neck as he kissed her in the hotel room brought another wave of that strange fluttering sensation to her stomach, and on this short walk across the parking lot, she didn’t know herself at all.

Dylan was a completely different world than she was used to.

Tonight, she would do as he asked and just have fun. Just turn off her mind and enjoy the moment, but tonight at ten o’clock when she was walking up the stairs to the stage in the Rabbit Hole, she would be mentally prepared to return to her life.

Tonight with Dylan would just be a fun distraction.