Oh. Birdie let her hand drop to her side as he slid his way to her across the icy sidewalk, two coffees in his hand.
“That’s a lot of caffeine, Sir,” she quipped as he made it to her.
Lanced looked so hot today in a brown Carhartt jacket and a beanie, jeans, and thick-soled boots. His eyes were really green against the snowy backdrop.
Without a word, he handed her both coffees, took his glove off with his teeth and zipped her jacket up obnoxiously easily. He shoved his mitten into his coat pocket and nodded to one of the guys who was staying in Lodge 3.
“I didn’t know you were coming,” she said, handing his coffees back.
“That’s for you,” he said, leaving her with one. “It has some hazelnut flavor or something. I don’t know. I just told them to make it girly.”
She laughed and sipped at the hot coffee. It was actually delicious. “Okay, ready for the first one?” he asked, pulling his phone out of his back pocket.
“First what?” she asked.
“First thriving picture to post.”
“Oh, yeah!” She fiddled with her bangs.
“Sunglasses off.”
Birdie glanced over at Debbie Downer, who was watching them. “Don’t judge me.”
She pulled her sunglasses away from her face and clipped them into the neck of her jacket.
“Why would I judge you?” Debbie Downer asked. “Your eyes are literally the only cool thing about you.”
“Oddly, I still feel judged.” She smiled for the camera, her coffee cupped in her purple mitten clad hands.
After Lance took the picture, he handed her his phone. “Text it to yourself.”
“Is this your sneaky way of getting my phone number?” she asked.
“Yep.”
“Wait, so you didn’t look up my registration then,” she murmured. “The phone numbers are listed on it.”
“Brock told me not to. He said it was his regret with Ava, so I resisted the urge. Put me out of my misery though and give me hints today, please.”
“Or what?”
“Or I’m taking more custody of our golden penis.”
“You guys are weird,” Debbie Downer said, walking between them on her way to the shuttle that was pulling up in front of the lodge.
“I really think I’m growing on her,” Birdie said, watching her walk away.
Lance laughed and took her coffee as she typed in her number and texted the picture to herself. On further inspection of said picture, she noticed Lance’s name was written across the front of her coffee cup. Ha. She saw what he was doing. If her ex didn’t notice, his dumb friends would tell him. There weren’t a lot of shifters to date around her town, and since the pickin’s were a little slim, exes sometimes had a hard time moving on. It was the shifter way.
She snapped a picture of him coming down the stairs, looking like a freaking model, looking off to the side, chiseled jaw line on point, coffee steaming in his hand, log lodge behind him. She was kind of good at this. She sent it to him as soon as they settled into the shuttle.
Horseback riding was a blast! Other than her horse was really a large donkey while the outfit had placed Lance on a handsome buckskin steed. She laughed a lot, and he took a ton of goofy pictures of her, and she took model pictures of him, and she hadn’t honestly laughed this much in as long as she could remember.
At the end of the ride, Debbie Downer had almost been nice to them. She said, “You look weird together,” and offered to take their picture so they could see how strange they looked with her being roughly the size of a butternut squash and him being over six feet tall, but whatever. Secretly, to Birdie, she thought they looked kind of cute and she’d caught Debbie Downer almost smile when she’d thanked her for taking the picture. It was probably just a grimace though.
When they loaded back up onto the shuttle to head back to the Woodpecker Inn, Lance gestured for her to sit in the seat right beside him in the very back. Halfway back to the Woodpecker Inn, he dug into his pocket and pulled out the fool’s gold and handed it to her. “It’s your custody time with Gary now. I want him back tomorrow morning.”
“Well, tomorrow is UnValentine’s Day,” she pointed out. “I’ll have to check my schedule. I might be sleeping in or stuffing my face with copious amounts of Gran’s biscuits and gravy or perhaps taking a long hike off a short cliff.”
