Page 41 of Cold Foot Croc

“You’re on the run? Bad boy.” She giggled, but tried to stop herself. “It’s not funny, I know.”

“Not funny at all.” But his lips were quirking up into a smile.

“It’s kind of funny.”

“It was traumatizing.”

“Yeah, but what a way to make an entrance. Your bear was like, ‘I exist, good law-abiding townspeople. I’m here.’”

He chuckled. “Yeah, he knew how to make an entrance, for sure. Everyone had to lock themselves in the church while my bear trashed the sign out front. I don’t even know why he was pissed at the dang sign in the first place. I made the newspaper for like three weeks.”

She doubled over with a laugh. “Hey, at least you didn’t make the newspaper for eating a man.”

“Yeah, that’s wild. You straight up ate him?”

“Not all of him. My animal left his dominant arm,” she assured him. “It was his favorite weapon. She left it right on the edge of my swamp, so his family would have something to bury.”

He laughed, and used her words. “It’s not funny, I know.”

She considered it. No, it wasn’t funny. She’d stayed a crocodile for a week after she’d done that, and lost the human side of herself completely there for a little while. The chaos and the arrest afterward was a mess. But with Garret, who wasn’t judging her at all, she could finally see a little humor in how stupid that entire situation was.

“Do you want to stay here?” he asked. “With me?”

Surprised by the question, Raynah looked around at the little campsite, and at her truck, then back to him. “Forever?”

“Until tomorrow morning? I have to work tomorrow, early, but we could stay the night here again. Just you and me.”

The slow spread of the smile on her face felt good. “I don’t have to work until tomorrow afternoon. I called in today already.”

“I like when we’re out here. You don’t have any tension, and you talk easy. You like being outside, I can tell.”

“It’s way better out here than four walls of a small cell I have to share with someone else,” she murmured softly. “And it’s better than Wreck’s Mountains, where everyone is just looking at me like I’m some kind of ticking time bomb.” She shrugged her shoulders up to her ears and scanned the beautiful, snow-caked pine trees around them, then canted her head at him. “The company isn’t bad either.”

“You like being around me?” he asked, with such seriousness to his tone.

With a nod, she whispered, “Very much.”

His eyes were on fire with intensity, and under his gaze, she’d never felt more wanted. She couldn’t look away even if she tried. A tremble worked its way up her spine and landed in her shoulders.

“Cold?” he asked.

“Maybe,” she said, if a little breathlessly, because she didn’t want to fully admit that the way he looked at her made her body react.

He pulled his jacket off and set it over her lap. “Give me a few minutes.” He turned and ducked under the flap of the tent.

She’d slept in there a couple of hours last night, and it hadn’t been bad because she’d been too exhausted to notice how uncomfortable a sleeping bag on hard ground was, but the strange, mechanical sound that started up inside of the tent perked her up.

He was inflating something.

The tent shook, and the sound of zippers filled the air, and now she was insatiably curious. Raynah stood and hugged Garret’s jacket close to herself as she made her way to the tent.

She pushed open the flap and scanned the tent. It already looked different. It was one of those two-room tents that apparently had clear plastic windows that could be exposed by unzipping the inside covers. Even the ceiling had clear plastic material, so she could see the tree branches near them and the snow falling down. Garret was inflating a newly unboxed queen-sized air mattress with an automatic pump. He had unfastened the straps of a couple extra sleeping bags that she’d seen in the corner last night, but had been too tired to mess with.

He was over in the corner making a fire in the wood-burning stove, which was vented to the outside through a small hole in the ceiling. She understood what he was doing. He was making a little nest in here so she could get warmed up.

She liked it. She liked this space with him.

In fact, she hadn’t felt so at home in a place in as long as she could remember.

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