“I didn’t really have time to clean this morning,” she said sheepishly.
He laughed. “I’m not going to judge you. Besides... not to lean into stereotypes, but I shared an apartment with three other guys in college. I don’t think you could show me any level of mess I haven’t already seen.”
“Towers of beer cans?”
“And a fridge with intelligent life growing in the back.”
&
nbsp; She shuddered. “No, not that bad, thankfully.”
But she knew she had to be really hungry, because her stomach had growled at him mentioning the fridge even with the mental image of it being totally disgusting. It occurred to her that they would wind up having their first dinner together tonight.
Sort of like a date. If you could call it a date when they’d both probably have their gun on the table next to their silverware.
Funnily enough, Aria had had plenty of nights of solo campfire dinners where any rustling in the bushes or snapping of twigs could mean a massive predator was creeping up on her. If she thought about Eli Hebbert as just one more animal ready to pounce out of the shadows, she found her fear ebbing back a little. She knew how to deal with that. She trusted her skills and her reflexes.
And she trusted Colby.
No matter how weird the circumstances were, she liked the idea of having her first date with him tonight. She actually had a champagne-like fizz of sweet expectation running through her when she thought about it.
“What do you want for dinner?” she said lightly.
His eyes met hers in the rearview mirror, and she could see that his mind had jumped onto the same track hers had.
He kept his voice casual too. “Anything. I’m starved.”
“Too bad we’re in your car. If we were in mine, we’d have trail mix. I make the best trail mix.”
“I don’t doubt it. Please tell me you really load up on the M&Ms.”
“In some of them, definitely. I do a bunch of variations. So the one with wasabi peas doesn’t have M&Ms, but there’s a sugar rush one with M&Ms and butterscotch chips and a s’mores one with chocolate chips and mini marshmallows. I figure the hiking itself is healthy enough that I can indulge.”
“Maybe we could indulge together sometime,” Colby said.
Aria wondered if he had any idea the effect someone like him saying something like that had on her—and probably on any straight woman in a hundred-mile radius. It was a good thing he was driving, because otherwise they’d be risking some serious lust-related car accidents.
But despite the constant frisson between them, it was incredible how comfortable she was around him. Normally, she would never have told a date about giving in to her sweet tooth; she would have been afraid to see his gaze flicker down to the round curve of her stomach.
Like he was thinking, Obviously.
But Colby hadn’t done anything like that. And what was more, she knew he never would.
He was a good, smart, sweet, funny guy who looked at her like she was a bit of cake batter he wanted to lick off a spoon.
There was no way she was going to let him be killed by a werewolf. Or two werewolves.
Any number of werewolves.
Her house was close to the preserve, so it didn’t take them long to reach her neighborhood. They were almost there when it occurred to her that they hadn’t stopped off at Colby’s first.
“Colby, don’t you need to go home? Get some clothes and a toothbrush?”
“Nope,” he said cheerfully. “I did some texting. Home, in the form of my good friends Theo and Gretchen, will come to me. We work together, and they can get a go-bag ready for me now that they have a spare minute.”
“And it takes two US Marshals to pack a bag?”
“That’s not nice,” Colby said, swinging the car into her driveway. A suppressed smile twitched at the edges of his mouth. “Maybe their skills lie in other areas.”