Page 20 of Cold Foot Revenge
“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.
