Page 8 of Cold Foot Revenge (Wreck’s Mountains #7)

Tanner’s Steakhouse was fancy as hell.

Roxy stared in horror at the three—three!—differently sized forks that sat directly next to a plate that probably cost a month’s wage.

“That one’s for snails,” Dylan said, pointing to a tiny, three-prong fork.

“You can eat snails?” she whispered, scandalized.

“It’s called escargot,” his mother said from across the small four-top table. “The look you have on your face right now is how I feel about it too. You couldn’t pay me enough to eat one of them things.”

The kindness in his mom’s voice eased Roxy’s tension a little.

Pamela had been warm in her introduction and shook her hand firmly before they’d all sat down at the table.

Just outside the big picture window beside them, there was a river below and trees all around.

Half of the restaurant was on stilts and was right on the edge of a shallow ravine.

She was trying so hard to be proper and polite, but gads it was hard to do.

She had so many questions. Why were there individual towels in the bathroom to dry her hands?

What were the sample perfume bottles for in there?

She’d squirted some on herself that she’d liked, and Dylan had commented on it when she’d returned.

And most importantly, “Hey, I don’t understand some of the stuff on this menu,” she said softly.

“Want me to order for you?” he asked, leaning on the table, his face wholly relaxed as he looked at her.

“I’m…” She glanced at his parents, who were looking at her expectantly. “I’m not sure you would know what I like.”

“You’re a yote. I’m guessing meat.”

A laugh punched out of her, shocking her as much as it probably shocked the table.

She cleared her throat and told him, “I like steak.”

“Creamed spinach is really good here,” Pamela said.

“I’ve never had that.”

“It’s sharable size so we can get some for the table.”

“As long as we get mashed potatoes,” his father, Jeff said.

“Do you come here often?” she asked conversationally, tugging at the length of her cut-off shorts under the table.

Pamela was dressed in a low-cut, tight-fitting dress, and she pressed her hand against her cleavage to cover it as she leaned forward.

“Us, honey? Hell no. This is a special occasion. We don’t get to see our boys much anymore, so we wanted to spring for the fancy spot so Dylan would actually come and meet us. This is a bribe.”

“We had to save for three weeks for this dinner,” Jeff teased with an easy smile.

She giggled and more of the tension eased. Okay, she liked Dylan’s parents.

“I do like to get dressed up from time to time though and I’ve been counting down to wearing this particular dress.”

“Well, it looks beautiful on you. Cobalt blue is absolutely your color.”

“Oh, go on,” Pamela said coyly.

“No really, go on,” Jeff deadpanned. “She will preen all night under compliments.”

“Should we split a bottle of wine?” she asked the boys.

“Oh yack,” Dylan said. “Nah, this one likes cheap tequila shots.”

“Dylan,” she said, pulling a look at him.

He was grinning remorselessly while his mother absently said, “I also like cheap tequila,” as she looked over the menu.

“Well, that sounds disgusting but I’m game,” Jeff announced. “Better than wine.”

Okay, she loved how un-fancy they all were, and the rest of her tension just faded away. “Do y’all mind if I take a selfie right here? This is the prettiest view I’ve ever seen and if I don’t document it, my friends will never believe me.”

“Here let me get a picture of you two,” Pamela said, standing. She lifted her phone to snap a picture. “Scooch closer. Closer. Good God, Dylan, she doesn’t have cooties.”

“Oh my God, mom, take the picture,” he grumbled, and now Roxy was trying to contain her laughter.

“Not until you give me something good to take a picture of! I’m sorry for my son’s atrocious manners,” she told Roxy. “He acts like he was raised in a barn, but he wasn’t.”

“We literally lived in a barn-dominium for most of my childhood.”

“Technicalities,” Pamela said. “Scooch.”

Dylan let off a sigh and pulled Roxy’s chair right up against his like she didn’t weigh anything at all. He draped his arm around her shoulders and pulled her close to his side, and murmured, “I’m sorry. I know you are aiming for friends, but my mom is a meddler.”

“You’ll thank me later,” Pamela said as she snapped several pictures from different angles.

Roxy expected him to shove her chair back to its original spot, but instead, he slid his hand over both of her thighs and pulled her body closer to his and just left his hand there.

Right there. Right on her bare legs, hooked around her farthest one.

She felt all safe and warm like a little swaddled baby. This was new.

While Dylan ordered them a round of “the cheapest tequila shots” Tanner’s possessed, she couldn’t help her dopey smile, and she slid her hand to the inside of his elbow to keep his arm across her legs. She liked this comfortable feeling.

Most men these days would take two years to introduce a lady to his parents, and maybe longer for a dancer like her.

She wasn’t exactly the type you brought home to momma, but Dylan didn’t seem to care about stuff like that.

He was just having fun. No man had ever been this easy to be around this fast.

Too bad he was going to die if he stayed in this city.

That thought pulled the smile right from her face, and until the tequila shots arrived, she had a hard time paying attention to the conversation between Dylan and his parents. They were catching up after not seeing each other for a long time.

This was a good family. From what she gathered, they hadn’t had two dimes to rub together while Dylan and his brother were growing up, but the Hoffman’s were doing better now and nearing retirement.

The drinks arrived at the same time as a couple of appetizers Jeff had ordered for the table. Cheesy garlic bread, fried cauliflower, and crab and spinach dip, and good Lord, every one of them was the best thing she’d ever put into her mouth.

She was mid-bite on something called pita bread smothered in crab and artichoke dip when the dreaded question was asked by Pamela. “What do you do for work?”

Roxy gulped the bite down. It felt like cement in her throat. She sipped her water and eyed the tequila shot sitting right next to it. No one else had drank theirs yet, so she was just waiting too. Yeah, she was stalling. “I’m…”

“Just own it,” Dylan told her, a look of concern in his bright blue eyes. “It’s okay.”

“Umm,” she said, tugging her tight tank top lower down her shorts. “I’m not proud of it, but I dance.”

“Dance for who?” Pamela asked, confused.

“The Rabbit Hole?”

Pamela was a pretty woman, and her perfectly shaped eyebrows arched nearly to her hairline. The silence that followed felt like it weighed a hundred pounds.

Pamela leaned forward at last and murmured, “You’re a stripper?”

“They like to be called dancers,” Dylan said, around a bite of cheesy bread.

Well, this was mortifying.

“I heard that place has shifter strippers. They only hire shifters. It’s a fetish place,” Pamela said quietly, but there was a spark of something in her eyes, like she was coming to life with questions. “Honey, are you a shifter?”

Roxy pursed her lips. What if they told her to leave? She was having so much fun.

“Yes ma’am,” she said.

A smile transformed Pamela’s face. “Hey, maybe if I invite you over sometime can you teach me how to dance.”

“Oh my God, Pamela,” Jeff groaned.

“Mom, please,” Dylan said through a chuckle. He rolled his eyes and grinned at Roxy. “You don’t have to say yes.”

“I mean…I don’t mind.”

“Thanks,” Pamela said. “I need help seducing my husband.”

“Pam.”

“We can spice it up in the bedroom,” she said to him.

Jeff looked equal parts unconvinced and amused with his wife, and Pamela’s smile said they teased back and forth like this a lot. It was a lucky thing to be together this long and still have this easy banter.

“Thank you,” she blurted out. “For not judging me. It’s not my dream job and I don’t want to do it long term. I’m in a pinch, that’s all. And I don’t you know…sleep with anyone. It’s just dancing.”

“Girl, we could barely afford groceries some weeks when the boys were little. You don’t have to explain yourself to us.

If it doesn’t bother Dylan, it’s fine by us.

” Pamela lifted her shot glass. “To dance lessons. Next week. Wednesday before Bunco so I can show my girlfriends what I’ve learned.

Eleven o’clock in the morning, if you have the time.

” Pamela’s eyes lit up. “Or! Oh my gosh, I just had the best idea ever!”

“She’s not teaching your Bunco friends how to strip,” Jeff said, lifting his glass.

“This is the weirdest toast I have ever been a part of,” Dylan announced, lifting his little glass.

“You could teach my Bunco babes to dance.”

Roxy was trying so hard to hold in her laughter at the vision of her teaching a room full of hilarious Pamela’s to work a pole.

She lifted her glass and aided in the toast. “To teaching just you some moves at two p.m. on Wednesday if that works, because I have a late shift the night before and will still be asleep at eleven in the morning.”

“Cheers and deal,” Pamela said, pushing her shot glass into the middle.

“I can’t wait to tell Garret and Raynah about all of this,” Dylan said, and then tinked his glass against hers and kept his eyes locked on Roxy as he tossed back the drink.

“Lordy, that burns all the way down,” Pamela complained, and she was right.

He still had his hand gripping the outside of her leg, and pulled her a little closer, and now Roxy’s bare knee was touching the coarse material of his jeans.

Whooo, she felt so safe under his arm. How did this even make sense?

He was human, and she was a shifter. She had teeth and claws for weapons.

She didn’t need protection from a human, but that didn’t change what her heart felt.

She was good here with him, and with his parents, in this unfamiliar restaurant far away from the Grit-Bron Crew. They would all be piled in the Rabbit Hole right now for a Crew meeting that she was skipping for this.

Roxy liked this little secret world with Dylan.

She felt normal with him. She couldn’t recall a single day she’d felt normal like this since before she’d been Turned.

When the food arrived, Dylan had to finally pull his hand off her leg so he could eat, but before he did, that man did something that touched her down to her little jaded soul.

He leaned over, easy-as-you-like, and pressed his lips against her temple. He didn’t look at her to gauge her reaction or anything…just kissed her temple and then went to cutting into his steak.

A shiver zinged up her spine and landed in her shoulders, and when she looked up, Pamela was staring at her with this pretty, happy smile tugging at the corners of her lips. “I like you a lot more than the last one.”

“Mom,” Dylan warned.

“The last one of the million girls he’s brought to meet you,” Roxy teased, remembering what he’d said earlier.

“The million? Oh no honey, he’s only brought one, and not until they’d been dating for a year.”

Dylan chewed on his bite of steak, attention trained on his mom.

“What?” Pamela asked innocently. “All I’m saying is this one fits in way better than Marissa.”

“That’s…She’s your ex-girlfriend?”

“Yep,” Dylan clipped out.

“And she’s from around here?”

“Mmm hmm.”

“Oh. How long did you date?”

“It felt like four-hundred years,” he said in an exasperated tone.

“To us too. I would’ve paid you fifty bucks to break up with that one.”

“Well, you preaching about her only made me hang on longer,” Dylan said.

“Stubborn boys. I’m telling you, Roxy, if you ever bare sons, you should know they’ll do the exact opposite of what you advise them to do.”

“Mom.”

“You said you brought a million girls to meet your parents,” Roxy said, hung up on that. Liar liar, pants on fire.

“Well, I didn’t want to freak you out. It’s just a fun night. Nothing serious.”

He’d brought her to meet his parents. Her. Roxy the shifter stripper. He’d done that when it wasn’t normal for him. Huh.

She pressed the side of her leg against his, and he slid her a look.

“Just breathe,” she told him. “It’s all good.”

He had a bite of prime rib on his fork, and without saying a word, he offered it to her. Roxy leaned forward and took the bite while making a chomping sound, then let off a little dramatic groan at how good it was.

The tension was gone again after that and didn’t make a return. However, she had learned something important about Dylan tonight.

He wasn’t a man who wore his heart on his sleeve, and he wasn’t a charmer with the ladies. Whatever had happened with his ex had made something in his soul go darker when he spoke of her.

Hurt like that could make it scary for a man to try again, and so it made her appreciate the little things even more.

Him opening doors for her.

The way he’d stopped her from being defensive earlier with affection.

The protective way he liked to hold her legs to keep her close to him.

The way he shared his food.

To humans that might not be a big deal, but to shifters? To coyotes?

Oh, she liked this one. She liked him a lot.

She liked him so much, but now more than ever, it was important to get him to leave this city.

Oh, she knew what had happened to his brother, but she also knew that it was an accident.

It had been Dylan the Grit-Bron Crew had wanted. Not Garret.