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Under the table, Landon slid his hand over her thigh, and butterflies filled her stomach. Without thinking, she leaned into him and bumped her shoulder against him.
“Me and my mate, Alyssa, must…meet…in the other room. In the kitchen! Immediately,” Clinton announced. “All dinner-goers are to remain here and not listen to our conversation. Okay. Dismissed. Henceforth.” He stood and nodded his head toward the kitchen.
Alyssa mouthed I’m so sorry to Lucia before she followed her husband into the other room.
“Did you see that?” Clinton asked, low and excited. “She leaned into him.”
“I know.”
“Do you think they’re in love?” Clinton murmured.
Nox was leaning all the way back on the back two legs of his chair, obviously eavesdropping.
Nevada reached forward to the beer bucket and pulled one out, twisted the cap and held it up in a cheers to Lucia. “It’ll be less weird as you get used to the family,” she promised.
Lucia toasted and took a long sip as Clinton’s excited murmurings continued while they gathered overflowing plates and bowls of food.
“Would you like some help carrying stuff?” Lucia offered.
“No!” Clinton said. “I mean…no,” he told her at a more reasonable volume. “You are our esteemed, renowned guest.”
“Did he even use that word right?” Nox asked.
“I don’t think he even knows what it means,” Landon said. He was wearing the most amused smile as he watched his parents talking, and he gently squeezed her thigh. “You’re doing good.”
Clinton and Alyssa covered the table with delicious-smelling food. There was an enormous serving bowl of pot roast with gravy, carrots, potatoes in three different forms, fried okra, fried squash, and piles of rolls dripping with butter.
“Dig in!” Clinton told them, and Lucia was stunned at the utter chaos of the table as everyone fought over serving spoons and forked giant portions onto their plates. The scuffle was over in a matter of seconds, and Landon settled a full plate in front of her. “Here you go.”
“Thank you,” she murmured, touched that he had thought of her.
Nox had been about to take a bite of a roll, but let it fall to his plate and yanked Nevada’s much-smaller plate away from her right as she’d been stabbing a fork into her pot roast. The fork hit the table. “Hey!”
Nox pushed his overflowing plate in front of his mate, eyes trained on Landon.
“I don’t want…” Nevada stared longingly at the much-smaller portion on the other plate. “I don’t want your food. I can’t eat all of this.”
Nox flipped Landon off, and Landon answered with a bird of his own.
Lucia had never been so entertained by a family dinner in all her life. The Fullers were a hoot.
As they ate and chatted, Landon’s hand didn’t leave her leg much, and she realized he was like so many shifters that needed physical touch. She’d never needed or really even wanted that, but it wasn’t so bad from him, and it did settle her inner grizzly. Nox and Clinton and Landon were all very dominant bruins. Alyssa was a beast too, but much more reserved, and Nevada was a shifter too, but not at all dominant. It was a lot of shifters in a small dining space, but Landon’s constant touch and reassurance kept her bear sated, quiet, and non-combative.
Lucia didn’t even feel like hurling darts here. She did some jabs and one-liners, and Nox and Clinton seemed to be honestly amused instead of offended.
Had she…had she found her people? Indeed, she had never felt quite so comfortable, and a smile stayed at the ready on her lips for their antics.
By the end of dinner, Clinton’s tux was completely ripped in half and hanging down his arms on either side as he ate an entire cherry pie out of the container. For as long as she lived, she would never forget tonight.
After dinner, Clinton took her and Landon on a tour of all of the booby traps he’d set around the Boarlander’s territory this week, and showed them where all the cameras were set up. Apparently, he was putting together a compilation of the curse words the inhabitants here yelled at him, and Lucia couldn’t help but admire his dedication to his craft.
Clinton was an artist, and pissing off his Crew was his medium.
Not so deep down, she respected it.
If she ever wanted to anger the Warlanders, she knew who she was coming to for advice.
Tonight had been illuminating. While the flames in her mind still lapped at her thoughts, she felt more settled in what Gunner had said about riding the roller coaster of this life.
