Page 20 of Cold Foot Komodo

“Um, want me to take your food over there for you?” she asked Reed, so he could free up his hands for drinks.

“Sure. I appreciate it.” Whooo, his voice was kinda hot when it was all low and gravelly like this.

Yes! Now she could park him right beside her, muahahaha! She was the sneakiest. She had game. She had all the moves. She was so smooth—aah!Sasha stumbled and nearly dumped Reed’s soup all over the ground. As it stood, she sloshed a few of the soups into other compartments and mixed them.

“I saw that. Nice work, clumsy,” Cash said as he strode by her and took a seat in one of the navy rocking chairs next to her. Eek! The chairs were filling up now, and she had to scurry double-time to claim the empty rocking chair for Reed.

Her phone vibrated in her pocket, but she ignored it. She would get back to messages later.

Reed came over and took a seat next to her chair just as she was situating his food on another log table. She’d swapped their plates because of the spillage, giving him the better one that wasn’t all mixed up.

He wore a smirk as he set their canned sodas between their chairs, and then swapped their plates back.

“How did you know?” she said, heat touching her cheeks.

“I saw the whole thing. You nearly fell in the fire.”

“In my defense, it was icy over there, and I probably just slipped on ice.”

He narrowed his eyes at the perfectly-clear ground, but he didn’t call her on her bullshit, bless that man.

She scooped a spoonful of the tortilla soup and blew on it. She wanted to try this one first, before the strips of tortilla chips Timber had sprinkled on there got soggy. She tasted it, and her eyebrows probably went up to her hairline. Holy moly, it was delicious, and just the perfect amount of spicy.

“Okay, I already know you’re going to be fun to eat with,” Kade said from across the fire. “You probably have a terrible poker face.”

“Oh, the worst,” she agreed. “I used to date a card player—”

“She means a chronic gambler,” Timber added.

“Hey, sometimes he won.”

“And sometimes he spent all of your rent and didn’t tell you.”

“That is true. Anywho, he wouldn’t even let me sit anywhere around him when he was playing, much less let me play with him and his friends. He said he could tell exactly what cards I had from the looks on my face.”

“How often did he gamble?” Reed asked, blowing on a spoonful of the broccoli-cheese soup.

“Mmm, every day.”

“Geez,” Kade said.

“He’s probably still gambling every day.”

“I am surprised he even noticed the breakup when it happened four years ago,” Timber joked.

Sasha snorted. He hadn’t been the most attentive partner. “Look, I may look like I have my entire life together, but I have terrible taste in men.”

“And you’re clumsy,” Cash pointed out.

“And I get cold easily,” she admitted.

Reed took another bite and set his plate down, got up immediately, and strode out of the firelight. He disappeared into the shadows between the firelight and his porch light, and she watched him go, confused, as the others kept up their banter with her.

Distracted, she added, “And my spelling is atrocious, and I have a problem with authority, and I am a little gullible, but other than those very few things, I am a diamond in the rough.”

The others laughed easily, and she appreciated it. There wasn’t tension, as she had feared with a bunch of shifters. They were just…happy. Perhaps that was from the difficult situation they had come from in Cold Foot Prison. Maybe they were just happy to be here, where they had freedom and control over their own lives. The easy laughter was contagious.

She kept glancing at Reed’s house across the clearing as she ate, and perked up when his front door opened and he reappeared. He held a thick blanket in his hands.

---