Page 21 of Cold Foot Revenge
“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 thentinkedhis 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.”
