Dark Sexy Knight (A Modern Fairytale)(2)
Colt choked back a million sarcastic responses but opted for “Just tired” instead. The reality was that, bigger paycheck or not, he shouldn’t have agreed to come. He didn’t have the passion for TLOC that someone like Artie had. Point of fact, he didn’t have passion for much of anything.
Stay out of trouble and make a decent living. He could hear his aunt Jane’s words from long ago echoing in his ears.
“One cashier position left to fill, but that’s an ADA job.” Lynette straightened out a small stack of applications and sighed. “We don’t have enough servers. If you see anyone looking for a job while you’re heading out and back, send them over, huh? And sell it, Colt. I mean it.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, pushing his chair under the table.
“Aren’t you forgetting something?” she said meaningfully, eyes still sifting through applications.
“Ma’am?”
She looked at his Legend of Camelot costume slung carelessly over the back of his chair, then met his eyes deliberately.
“Right,” he said, pulling the faux fur cape around his shoulders and grabbing the horned Viking helmet from under his chair with a sigh before heading away from the table.
As he approached the exit, he looked up to see the girl and her companion still standing there together. Her eyes flitted anxiously around the room, landing on him and staring at his costume. She cocked her head to the side, and her eyes narrowed in puzzlement for just a moment before her lips tilted up in a small smile. As the distance between them closed, she raised her eyes to meet his. And suddenly, without warning, his feet stopped moving and he found himself standing before her.
“You’re a Viking,” she said, her voice deep and soft, a hint of wonder or amusement warming it into a purr.
For no good reason at all, the timbre of it surprised him. She was so tiny, he had expected it to be higher-pitched. Realizing that she was older than the teenager he’d originally guessed her to be, his eyes dropped to the swell of her breasts for a nanosecond. Her tits were small but full under a thin, light-colored sundress—perfect handfuls. He quickly lifted his eyes to her face again and guessed her age somewhere over twenty but no more than twenty-five.
“The Viking Knight,” he said, gesturing with a bob of his head toward the table where Lynette sat. “For The Legend of Camelot.”
“Viking Knight?” she asked, her eyebrows furrowing as her lips widened a touch. “I’m no expert, but I love the show Vikings. Weren’t Vikings and knights two separate things?”
Her comment surprised him. His role was one of the little inanities about his job that he especially hated, because she was right—Vikings were Germanic Norse seafarers, while knights were European mounted soldiers. But The Legend of Camelot wasn’t exactly concerned with historical accuracy, which he was about to share with her when his attention was diverted by the man standing behind her.
“The sword in the stone, the sword in the stone,” he whispered, his head bent down, his body swaying in a gentle rhythm.
She looked up at the man, still smiling, her satiny voice deep and kind. “That’s right, Ryan. Camelot. Just like in The Sword in the Stone.” Turning back to Colt, her little shoulders bunched up as she shrugged. “He loves Disney movies.”
Colt nodded, his gaze resting on Ryan for a moment. The man appeared to be in his thirties, but he was childlike in the way he spoke and in the way he rocked back and forth with quiet excitement. Certainly he wasn’t your average thirtysomething, and while disabled people didn’t make Colt uncomfortable, he wasn’t sure what to say. And frankly these two reeked of neediness, and Colt wasn’t in the habit of helping strays. He had enough on his plate.
“Yeah,” he finally said, moving past her, determined to leave her and her companion behind. “Great, uh, great movies.”
He hadn’t gotten more than three paces when she called “Viking Knight! Wait!” from behind him. When he spun around, she was so close to him that his furry cape whipped her in the face. She stumbled backward, but his hand snaked out to steady her just before she fell. As his fingers curled around the bare skin of her upper arm, his eyes slammed into hers, and close-up, he realized that she was a lot prettier than he’d originally thought. Fresh and freckled in a girl-next-door sort of way, her hair was an almost white-blonde, but her eyelashes were long, dark, and curled, framing a pair of sweet, cornflower-blue eyes. His heart sped up, battering recklessly against his ribs.
“Are they hiring?”
“What?” he asked, blinking at her in annoyance. “Who?”
Her grin deepened, showcasing two peekaboo dimples that made her eyes dance. “The Legend of Camelot. Are they hiring?”
He shrugged, dropping his hand as he sized her up as a potential cast member.
Despite his reassessment, she still wasn’t quite pretty enough (or tall enough) to play the princess, nor did she look anywhere near strong enough to be a serving wench, and Colt knew that Lynette wasn’t looking for bartenders or gift shop cashiers. But when she blinked at him with those pretty eyes, the word no didn’t come.
“What do you do?” he asked, his voice gruffer than he intended.
“I’m a waitress,” she said, unruffled by his tone or perusal. She rolled her lips between her teeth, looking up at the man, who was still whispering “The sword in the stone, Camelot” over and over under his breath. “And my brother, Ryan, is a great janitor. Really great. Comes in on time. Does everything he’s told. He’s really strong too. Doesn’t bother anyone. Just—you know, he’s a good worker. Solid.”