Page 5 of You Otter Know
“Dude, there’s not even a playground,” River agreed. “I think it’s mostly single folks.” He tilted his head. “Maybe it is kind of a serial killer situation, like Camp Sleep-away or whatever.”
“Great. Just great.” Bohdi threw himself down in the armchair across from the couch, which didn’t look quite as comfortable as the cushion he was sitting on. “What’s in the basket?” he asked, enunciating every word like a twelve-year-old who was pissed off at his dad.
Biting back a snort, River untied the bow on his basket and pulled the cellophane down to flatten it out on the table. “Let’s see.” He started tugging out items out one by one. “Hmm, well we have some sardines, some mussels, and some clams. Canned of course.”
Bohdi scoffed. “That sounds nasty.”
“Don’t knock it ‘til you try it.” He loved canned clams. He didn’t have to break them open, which was awesome. The mussels were pretty good too, but those had to go on a cracker or something. Maybe a piece of bread. “Baguette.” That was nice. It was crispy, and it didn’t look stale at all, so mussels on bread. “There’s truffles, and not the mushroom kind. There’s some fruit.” That was okay; he would eat fruit, but he really preferred seafood and meat.
“Is that, like, charcuterie?” Bodhi pointed to a stick of salami that was standing up in the basket.
“Looks like it. And there’s some cheese, too. Ooh.” He pulled out a bottle of wine. “Now this is nice.” He was familiar with the vintage, and it wasn’t like an eighty dollar a bottle wine, but it wasn’t twelve dollars a bottle wine either, so that was pretty good.
Bohdi blinked. “I’m not much of a wine guy.”
“Have you tried it?” he asked. River got it. He liked beer, himself but Dad was Brazilian, and the old man had grown up on a farm that had a small vineyard attached to it, so River knew his wine.
“Not really, no. I mean, I’ve had some cheap wine.” Bohdi wrinkled his nose, which was so damn cute it made his heart clench. Wow. This guy was really doing it for him.
“We’ll have to have a glass then.” River held the bottle up, looking at the neat label. He loved it. Packaging was like a passion of his; he could totally do marketing if he put his mind to it, he thought.
“Sure, I mean what else are we gonna do? It’s snowing, and there’s nobody here working at the lodge.”
River scoffed. There was no way this place was going to be completely deserted. It was just that Branson guy at the front desk trying not to have to deal with them. But that was all right because it suited his purposes too. He’d decided he wanted to get to know this guy because he was adorable, seriously available since they were stuck in the same room, and he smelled like a fellow shifter.
“Well, were you hungry now?” He kind of figured Bohdi might be since he had just shown up. He didn’t know how far the guy had had to drive to get here, but heck, his own belly was rumbling at this point, so River was like, why not?
“Uh, I guess?” Bohdi struggled with an elaborate sort of casualness. “I guess I could be hungry. It was a long trip.”
“Cool, why don’t you get the fire going? I think it’s a gas log. They don’t want us to burn the place down I guess. I’ll lay out charcuterie.”
“Did they send any of the cookies? They were putting out the cookies when I first checked in. I didn’t think to grab any.”
River dug through the basket, finding a little wrapped package of warm goodness. “They did send cookies.” He opened up the paper. “It looks like there’s chocolate chip and white chocolate macadamia.”
“That’s something at least.” Bohdi grinned, making him blink with how sweet that smile was. “I will fight you for the white chocolate macadamia.”
River waved a hand in the air, the one not holding the wine. “No fighting required, man. I’ll just eat whatever you don’t.”
“That’s decent of you.” Bohdi wandered over the fireplace. “It does look like a gas log. I guess maybe that way nobody has to chop wood or order it in or whatever.”
“Yeah, I imagine that’s true. I’m not sure how much effort a certain desk clerk would be willing to put in.”
“Right?” But Bohdi laughed, kinda unbending for the first time since River had met him. “What a messed-up situation.”
The gas log flared to life, and then Bohdi turned it down a little bit, so it was just enough to warm the room to a toasty degree.
“Really nice.” River watched it for a minute before turning back to the basket and pulling things out. There was a little platter in the bottom that he had a feeling was meant to arrange food on, so he started doing his thing, making it as artistic as possible. He was trying to entice Bohdi, after all.
Bohdi wandered over to plop himself in the chair across the way again. “So do you really think they intend for both of us to sleep here?”
River fought not to roll his eyes, going for looking sympathetic instead. He hoped. “I would imagine everything is booked up, and he doesn’t have anywhere else to put us, but he doesn’t want to lose business.”
“I can see that.” Bohdi tilted his head to one side. “How did you make your reservation?”
“Online. What about you?”
“Same way.” Bohdi watched his fingers move as if he was fascinated by the meat and cheese and weird little packets of seafood going down on the tray, but River got the feeling that was to keep from looking at him. “I mean it was through a third party, not direct through their website, so maybe that’s how the double booking happened.”
