by Tami Lund
She lived only a few blocks from Mitch’s Place, so she always walked to and from work, which meant sometimes she was striding down the street alone at two in the morning. Twice since she started working there she’d encountered some asshole human who decided she was a helpless girl. She’d simply growled and let steam escape from her nostrils, and each time, the guy had hightailed it out of there like his pants were on fire. Which they would have been had he attempted to lay a hand on her.
Helpless girl she most certainly was not.
Angry? Yeah, she was definitely angry. Especially when she reached the path leading to her front door and there was a gargoyle perched on the stoop. Stopping on the sidewalk, she snapped, “I thought I told you to get the hell out of here.”
He rose to his feet, and Sofia cursed herself for enjoying the fluid motion of his movements. Everything the guy had done four years ago had been smooth and velvety and gentle and seemingly caring. Until he left—without his infant daughter.
Now, she hated his stylish light brown hair, his thick stubble, those chocolaty-brown eyes, and she especially hated his soft, kissable lips. Oh yeah, and those abs. She hated his abs. And his biceps. And his muscular thighs. And…she hated everything about him.
Except his baby girl. Oh gods, was he really here to take her back? Because he sure as hell hadn’t wanted the child four years ago, and Sofia had become attached—for crying out loud, little Penelope called her Mommy—and she was not about to let this guy have her.
No matter what.
“You did,” he acknowledged, stalking toward her in the same way that had seduced her the first time they met. Except last time there had been a tiny infant snuggled in his big, strong arms. “But I can’t.”
“Why not? Your wings broken?” She crossed her arms and thrust a hip, frowning, deliberately trying to send him go away vibes.
“No, but I can’t leave all the same.”
Well, if that wasn’t cryptic as all get out…
The front door opened and Clarice, the young human woman who babysat for her most weekends, stepped onto the tiny porch with her backpack slung over one shoulder. She was a med student who wanted to go into pediatrics, and when she wasn’t doing rotations, she was more than happy to spend her weekends babysitting and studying.
Clarice glanced at Griffin, and her eyes flared in the same way probably every woman who saw him for the first time did. “Erm, hi.” She dragged her gaze away from his chest and waved at Sofia. “Is this the hot guy with the northern accent?”
Sofia was certain her face was turning seventeen shades of red as she refused to look in Griffin’s direction. “This is the guy I was worried would show up, yes.”
“Did you tell her I was hot, or did she deduce that on her own?” Griffin wanted to know.
Sofia ignored him. After a pause in the conversation that stretched into uncomfortable territory, Clarice said, “Well, um, Penelope’s been out since eight. She ate all her vegetables, and I gave her a bath and took her for a walk before bedtime since it was so nice out today.”
It was their usual routine. Clarice rattled off Penelope’s evening while Sofia dipped into her tips for payment. Except Griffin was also here tonight, and he had his wallet in his hand, opening the flap.
“What are you doing?” Sofia demanded.
“I take it this is the babysitter?” he asked, nodding at Clarice.
“Yeah, that’s me,” Clarice responded.
“So how much do I owe you?”
She gave him a puzzled look. Sofia didn’t blame the poor girl. For one thing, Sofia had never brought a man home after her shift at the bar, and, if she had, he probably wouldn’t be offering to pay the babysitter. Hell, few people even knew she was raising a toddler. Sofia kept a low profile.
“You are not paying my babysitter.” She strode up the walk and thrust cash into Clarice’s hand.
Clarice glanced at Griffin again and then said, “I’ll be back tomorrow at four.”
“You’re working again tomorrow?” Griffin said, looking to Sofia for an answer.
“Thanks, Clarice. Have a good night.”
The babysitter skirted around them and headed toward her car.
“I can’t decide if I should go with you to work or stay here and take care of the child.”
Sofia stared at Griffin as if he’d just turned into a dragon, dropped to one knee, and declared them fated mates. “Excuse me?”
“I said—”
“I heard you. I just don’t understand you.”
He frowned. “Seems pretty self-explanatory. Either I go with you or—”
She slashed her hand through the air, cutting him off. “You aren’t doing anything at all that has to do with me or Penelope. All you are doing is leaving. Now.”
“You kept her name.”
“Of course I did. My world was flipped on its side plenty enough with an infant abandoned on my bedroom floor without me trying to come up with a new name for the poor kid.”
He winced like she’d slapped him, which admittedly gave her a tiny bit of self-satisfaction.
“I probably could have handled that whole situation a little better.”
“Probably?” Was this man serious? Wait, it didn’t matter. She did not need to spend a single second longer thinking about him or what he did to her. With her nose in the air, she deliberately skirted around him and headed into the house, slamming the door and flipping the deadbolt.
A scant moment later, the lock twisted of its own accord, the door opened again, and Griffin stepped inside.
Sofia sighed. Gargoyles and their annoying magic. Penelope was starting to show signs of being able to create magic, although so far, she’d not experienced any sort of shifting capabilities. Sofia had no idea if that was normal, since she knew precious little about gargoyles. All she knew was that they were great in bed and they left you with their unwanted offspring when they were done.
“I want to see her,” Griffin demanded. He kicked off his shoes, dropped his bag by the front door, and moved deeper into the house.
Bringing an overnight bag was damned presumptuous of the man.
“Why now? Why are you back, four years later?”
He dragged his hand through his thick hair, setting it to standing on end. He looked like he had after their first round of rather energetic sex. Incredibly hot. Hot enough that she’d dived in for round two.
And three.
Ugh.
“I should probably explain a few things to you,” he said, taking in her tiny abode and probably finding it lacking. Well, too bad; it was hard to survive when one was ostracized from one’s colony and unexpectedly left to raise a helpless child, alone.
Sofia decided to go with honesty. Maybe it would convince him to leave. “You know, if you’d shown up six months later, maybe even up to a year, I would have been willing to hear you out. But that child has been fatherless for four years now, and I am not interested in rocking her world just because you suddenly decided to man up. You should never have left her, and as far as I’m concerned, you have no rights to her whatsoever any longer.”
He raked his hand through his hair again. She really wished he’d stop doing that.
“One thing I should have told you back then was that she isn’t mine.”
Chapter Three
Sofia staggered backward until her heels bumped into the couch, and then she dropped onto the cushion, her arms waving and bouncing like she was on a roller coaster.
She would no doubt agree that it was an accurate analogy.
Giving her a few minutes to absorb the little detail he should have mentioned four years ago, Griffin went to the kitchen. Hopefully, she had something with more of a kick than water.
Like the living room, this area was small and dated. The floor was linoleum, the counters were chipped Formica, and the cabinets were boring oak straight out of the 1990s. It was clean, though, and she’d added little touches, like red kitchen towels and a red-and-black abstr
act painting on the wall.
He spotted a bottle of Malibu rum on top of the fridge. A tug on the refrigerator door offered up both cranberry and pineapple juice. Sofia had a sweet tooth, eh? Saccharine concoctions weren’t his first choice, but this moment called for making her happy, so he set about mixing two stiff and sugary drinks.
When he returned to the living room, she sat as still as a statue on the sofa. He pressed a lowball glass into her hand, and she blinked like she was coming out of a daze. Staring at the hazy pink liquid, she said, “Did you just tell me she isn’t yours?”
Sipping and then wincing— damn, it was as cloying as he was afraid it would be—he carefully sat down in a chair perpendicular to the couch.
“Yes.”
She took a gulp of her drink. “Then who’s is she? And why did you leave her with me? And what were you doing with her in the first place? Where are her parents? Did they know you had her? How did you explain when you didn’t return with her? Oh gods, I’ve been raising a kidnapped child.” She took another slug.
“That was a lot of questions, so bear with me. First, you are not raising a kidnapped child, so you can relax.”
“What? Her parents are as heartless as you and didn’t want her?”
“Ouch.” He grimaced. “I suppose I deserve that for not telling you about her in the first place.”
“Also for leaving her with me with no explanation. Oh yeah, and for sleeping with me and disappearing, also without an explanation.”
“You should know that I thoroughly enjoyed our time together.”
“Nope, I didn’t need to know. And I don’t care.”
He nodded, not surprised by her reaction. “Admittedly, I acted like a coward.”
“You sure did.”
He sighed. “Her parents are dead. If I hadn’t brought her here, she would have ended up in the human foster system, and I could not do that to her.” There was no way in hell he was letting baby Penelope be raised the way he had been.
“Did you kill them?”
He was a freaking gargoyle. Even in the heat of battle their first instinct was to protect, not kill. Although given what little she knew about the situation and the fact that she was a dragon and their species definitely had no qualms about destroying others, he supposed it was a valid one. “No. Well, not directly.”
“That’s reassuring.”
He stood and carded his hair with one hand while lifting his drink to his lips with the other. Too sweet or not, he needed the calming effect of the rum in his system.
“Penelope’s father paid me to protect them, but I failed. The only one I managed to keep alive was Penelope. I brought her here because I was desperate and had heard there was a brethren of gargoyles who are the baddest asses in the entire world. I figured this was where she’d be safest. Except when I got here, I panicked. I didn’t think Oliver—he’s the leader of the gargoyles in New Orleans—would be willing to take on an infant. I figured he’d drop her at a human hospital or something, and I refused to let her be raised that way.”
“And you thought somehow that I’d be a better choice?”
“Well…yes.”
They’d met purely by chance. He had been standing outside the City of the Dead—much like earlier this evening—cradling the babe in his arms, trying to talk himself into walking through the gates and handing her over to Oliver. Sofia had been walking by, noticed him, and paused to compliment the beautiful, sleeping infant with her thatch of red hair sticking up every which way. He’d admitted he had no clue what he was doing, and she laughed and said he’d figure it out, most parents did.
He hadn’t corrected her assumption.
They chatted some more, he made it clear that he was single and she did too, and they’d ended up at her apartment eventually, where together they fed the baby, changed her diaper, and used an open suitcase as a makeshift bed. Then they’d spent the rest of the evening getting to know one another on an intimate level, until he snuck out shortly before dawn.
He’d sensed something in Sophia that night. A purity that was far too uncommon in today’s world. He’d known without asking that she would adopt the child, raise her to be as honest and sweet as she herself was.
“So what is she?”
He arched his brow, and Sofia flapped her hand.
“Penelope. Is she a gargoyle? I’ve always assumed as much.”
Shaking his head, he said, “She’s a witch. You couldn’t tell?”
She lifted one shoulder and buried her nose in her drink. “I don’t get out much.”
He returned to his chair and leaned forward, holding his glass between his knees. “Why not?”
She hesitated. “Waking up and discovering you’re suddenly responsible for an infant tends to make you shy away from society.”
Griffin hadn’t expected that. He would have thought she’d turn to her colony to help her figure out what to do.
Abruptly, she stood. “Listen, I need to get to bed. She gets up at six, which leaves me with about three hours of sleep, if I can lay my head on my pillow in the next fifteen minutes.”
It was on the tip of his tongue to offer to join her, except he knew damn well she’d say no, and with good reason. He stood and took both empty glasses into the kitchen and placed them in the sink. When he returned, he nodded and said, “Good night, Sofia.”
And then he left, even made a show of ambling down the sidewalk, knowing she was likely watching out the window. At the end of the block, he turned the corner, then clamped his teeth onto the straps of his duffle and summoned the magic. He directed his body not to turn to stone but to the leathery, winged creature that would allow him to fly across the lawns until he dropped with an almost soundless thud into her backyard.
Quiet as a cat, he stalked around the outside of the house until he figured out which window belonged to the sleeping child, and then he shifted into his stone form and stood watch, as gargoyles had for century upon century.
Good thing gargoyles needed little sleep, because the babe did indeed wake at 6:00 a.m.
As soon as he heard the first snuffle and yawn, the soft sound of blankets being kicked away, he shifted into human form, snagged his bag, and used his magic to unlock the kitchen door and slip inside.
He waylaid the child as she was about to head into Sofia’s bedroom. She looked up at him, unblinking blue eyes gone wide. Her red hair was tousled, her nightgown wrinkled, and she clutched a stuffed purple dragon in her arm.
Cute.
He lifted a finger to his lips and then motioned for her to walk down the hallway, away from the bedrooms.
She shook her head.
“We don’t want to wake your, er…” What did she call Sofia? He had no idea.
“You aren’t supposed to be in my house,” the little girl said.
“Do you know who I am?” Was that even possible? She’d been three months old when he left her here.
She shook her head again. “That’s why you aren’t supposed to be here.”
“It’s okay. I’m your, er, Sofia’s friend.”
“Sofia is my mommy.”
Okay, one question answered. “And I’m your mommy’s friend.”
She shook her head yet again. “Mommy doesn’t have friends.”
Well, that was an interesting tidbit. Sofia had implied the same last night. Why was she so antisocial? Although, in truth, that would likely aid in his quest to protect her. Especially since he had no idea what he was protecting her from, and something told him she didn’t either.
He tried a different tactic. “Have you ever used your magic, Penelope?”
Her eyes widened. “How do you know my name?”
“I told you, I’m your mommy’s friend. And if you have the ability to use your magic, you can use it on me to see if I’m a good guy or a bad guy.”
“I can do that?” She’d gone from hostile to mildly curious. He just needed to get her away from that door before they woke Sofia. The poor woman had looked
exhausted last night, and he was pretty certain that dragons needed more than three hours of sleep at a time.
He stretched out his arm. “Touch your fingers to mine and close your eyes. Tell me what you feel.”
She narrowed her eyes, a very adult look on her cherub-like face, but she tentatively mimicked his action until the tips of her fingers brushed against his.
He gasped and had to resist grabbing her hand so that he could be certain. Not that he needed to.
“Gods above, you’re a Daughter of Light.”
No wonder her parents had needed protection. Her mother would also have been one of those precious and exceedingly rare witches who had the ability to destroy the warlocks intent upon wiping out their kind. How had he missed that four years ago?
In Penelope’s case, her powers hadn’t yet manifested since she’d been so young at the time. And in the case of her mother, well, that one was on Griffin. He’d never been particularly good at being a gargoyle. Which was why he was so baffled by Oliver’s insistence that he join the New Orleans brethren.
Did Oliver know about Penelope? He had to. Why else would he have sent Griffin here to protect her? Although he had said Griffin was to protect Sofia, not Penelope, but maybe that was a technicality.
“What’s a Daughter of Light?” little Penelope asked, tilting her head and looking far more serious than a four-year-old should.
“Let’s go to the kitchen and I’ll fill you in.”
Apparently, his little trick had worked, even though he hadn’t actually used any magic to lead her to believe he was a good person. At any rate, Penelope led the way down the hall, through the living room, and into the eat-in kitchen, where she slid onto a chair at the table and perched her dragon next to her elbow.
“Are you hungry?” he asked.
She nodded.
“What do you normally eat for breakfast?”
