The Gargoyle Gets His Girl

by Kristen Painter

  “That’s sweet, but—”

  “I can vouch for Nick. I’d let Bridget stay with him. If I thought Bridget wouldn’t take advantage of him.”

  Willa snorted. The sheriff’s sister did have a bit of a rep in town for being a heartbreaker. “It’s not that, it’s just…what about Jasper?”

  Nick shrugged. “Bring him.”

  “Really?”

  He nodded. “Absolutely.”

  “Thank you.” She hadn’t expected that. Most men weren’t really into cats, but Nick’s willingness to take them both in had just earned him major props. She could see herself falling hard for him.

  And now she was about to be alone with him, in his house. For an undetermined number of days.

  Sheriff Merrow hooked his thumbs in his belt loops. “Get a bag packed, and I’ll secure the place after you leave. I’ll need you both down at the station tomorrow so I can take statements from each of you. Anything you can tell us about who you think this is, Willa, would be great.”

  “I’ll give you everything I have on him.” She stood and looked at Nick. “I’ll just be a minute.”

  The sheriff blocked her path as she headed for the bedroom. “Don’t touch any surfaces in your bedroom. If you need to open a drawer, use a tissue.”

  “No need. I keep a bag packed.”

  She almost missed the face Sheriff Merrow made as he moved to let her past. So what if he thought that was strange? He didn’t know her life. Her history. How comforting it was to know she could be gone at a moment’s notice if need be.

  She went into the second bedroom, opened the closet and pulled out the two bags she kept packed and updated, one for her, one for Jasper. Hers had clothes, shoes, toiletries and cash. His had a bottle of water, food, treats, toys, a baby blanket and a disposable litter pan.

  Hoisting both bags, she adjusted the straps over her shoulders, then grabbed his plastic carrier by the handle and went back to the kitchen. She put the carrier on the table. “I just need to put him in here and we’re ready.”

  “That was fast,” Nick said as he stood.

  “I like to be prepared.”

  “So I see.” He took the two bags from her. “You take care of Jasper and then we’re off to my place.”

  “Let’s take the desserts, too. After all this, I could use a little indulgence.”

  “Already got them.” Nick held up the bag from Guillermo’s in one hand.

  “Awesome. Okay, Jasper. Into the crate.” She crouched to grab her cat, glad Nick couldn’t see her face. His offer to shelter her and Jasper for a few days was more than sweet. It was giving her thoughts about what else might happen while she was there. The kind of thoughts she hadn’t had about anyone in a long time.

  Maybe they were the same kind of thoughts any woman would have after a handsome man offered to take her in during a time of crisis. What would have happened to her if she’d been here when Martin had burst in? The sudden appreciation for life was undoubtedly fueling some of those thoughts. Nick’s romance-novel-hero good looks and chivalry weren’t hurting either.

  Scooping Jasper into her arms, she stood and busied herself with getting him into the carrier, but her mind kept working on what might happen next with Nick. Painting pictures. Creating scenarios. Playing out scenes that sent warm tendrils of desire through her.

  She blew out a breath in a failed attempt to cool herself off as she locked Jasper’s crate. He glared at her, whiskers twitching. She patted the top of the carrier. “You’re not going to be a prisoner for long, I swear.”

  “Ready?” Nick asked.

  Maybe too ready. “Yep.” She shot a look at the sheriff. “You sure everything in here will be all right? I’ve got a lot of expensive supplies.”

  “Promise. It’ll be secure. Probably more so than it was before. I’ll put a deputy in the alley to keep watch. And you’ll be safe at Nick’s.”

  She smiled more than she meant to. She might be safe, but she couldn’t guarantee Nick would be. Not with what she was thinking.

  It was almost midnight by the time they walked back to Nick’s place, but the evening was balmy and quiet and the walk wasn’t far. He unlocked the front door of the house he owned on Crossbones Drive. It wasn’t big, but it wasn’t small. Three beds, two baths, a good back yard. Enough space to grow into. “Welcome to my place.”

  “It’s great,” Willa said. “Okay if I let Jasper out now?”

  “Absolutely. I’m sure he’ll want to roam.”

  “That’s a given. He’s super nosy.” She put Jasper’s carrier down and bent to let him out, then stood and looked around. “I’m guessing you either haven’t been here long or you don’t plan on staying.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  The cat stuck his head out of the carrier, his nose working.

  “Not much in the way of personal touches.”

  He looked around. “Yeah, I guess not. But I do plan on staying. This is my home now.” Years of being in the foster system had created a burning desire in him to put down roots and now that he had a house, nothing was going to keep him from doing that. “The personal touches will come, I guess. Or maybe I just suck at decorating. What kind of personal touches do I need?”

  “You know, pictures of family. Stuff like that.” She took a few steps from the carrier and patted her thigh. “C’mon, Jasper. It’s okay.”

  Then she looked at him. “Sorry, that was insensitive. I guess being a foster kid you probably don’t have family pictures.”

  His foster years weren’t something he liked to talk about. “Not really. Just the Rangers.” He pointed to the one framed picture on the fireplace mantel. “That’s them there.”

  “I see.” She picked it up and squinted at it. “Is that Sheriff Merrow?”

  “Yes. He’s how I ended up here.”

  Jasper jumped onto the couch, stared right at Nick and meowed loudly. Nick held up his hands and looked at Willa. “What’s that about?”

  She laughed. “He’s trying to get you to feed him.”

  Nick grinned. “He’s got a little Ranger in him, I think. Settles in quickly, doesn’t ask a lot of questions except where the grub is.”

  She arched her brows. “Do Rangers also like to lounge around in the sun and lick themselves clean?”

  “No comment.”

  She laughed. “Where can I set up his food and litter box?”

  “How about food in the kitchen, litter box in the laundry room?”

  “Great. Show me the way so I can get this beasty fed. Then we can have our dessert.”

  He grinned, figuring for a moment she meant something a little more physical than actual dessert, then realized that was probably his own testosterone doing the thinking. He mentally dismantled and rebuilt an M4 rifle. It was the Ranger equivalent of baseball stats. Perfect way to cool himself off. “Dessert sounds good.”

  But it was hard to see Willa in his house and not feel something. She was a bright, beautiful spot of feminine energy. Completely captivating and charming and he was drawn to her in a way that he neither wanted to stop, nor could.

  Having her in his house felt like he’d been given a gift. Like Christmas morning and New Year’s Eve all rolled into one.

  And so, still grinning, he gave her the fifty cent tour, proud to show off the house he’d worked for but also happy to watch her face as she admired the painting and other touches he’d added. He paused in the laundry room so she could set up the litter box, then finished in the kitchen. He took two bowls down from the cupboard. “For Jasper. One for food, one for water.”

  “Oh, thanks, but I have bowls.” She pulled them out of the bag that held Jasper’s stuff and started setting up a spot for him to eat.

  Nick leaned against the counter. He’d never known anyone outside of the military who kept go-bags like she did. “Why do you keep those bags packed?”

  She pulled the lid off a can of cat food. Jasper came running at the sound. “I just like to be prepared.”r />
  “For what?”

  She didn’t look at him, just kept fixing Jasper’s meal as he wound around her. “For anything.”

  “I’m not criticizing. I appreciate the readiness factor. It’s just not something most civilians seem to think is important.” Mostly because civilians never had a reason to bug out. Unless they did. What could her reason be? The stalker? He didn’t buy that. The stalker was a new thing. Those bags were well organized, not just stuff thrown together. At least Jasper’s was. The stuff in his bag was compartmentalized in plastic, zip-top baggies.

  If she took that much care with the cat’s bag, hers had to be as well organized.

  She stood and smiled a little too intensely. She was plainly done talking about the bags. “I could totally dig into that dessert now. How about you?”

  “You get the food, I’ll grab the forks.” He took two from the utensil drawer, then tipped his head toward the sliders that led off the small dining room next to the kitchen. “How about we eat outside?”

  He flipped the light switch that turned on the strings of bulbs he’d woven through the two big oaks that flanked his patio. The gleam reflected off the small glass-topped table that sat in the center. Besides the matching chairs, the grill and the hammock farther back were the only things he had out there so far.

  “Oh.” She breathed the word out as her eyes rounded. “That’s so pretty.”

  “Thanks. I did it myself.” Just like the work inside and the rest of the landscaping. There was something really satisfying about getting your hands dirty.

  “Sweat equity.”

  “Exactly.” He nodded. “You want to eat out there?”

  “I would love to.” She unlocked the slider and pulled it open, leaving it that way for him to follow. She put the food on the table, then did a three-sixty as she inspected his yard. “It’s kind of magical out here.”

  She stretched her arms out, closed her eyes and spun slowly.

  He just stood and watched, admiring how the soft lighting picked out the strands of honey in her hair and gilded her in the golden glow from the tips of her delicately pointed ears down to her pink-polished toes. She was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. And if this was her reaction to a few strings of porch lights, she’d be a very easy woman to keep happy.

  A sharp realization pierced him. He wanted to be the man—the only man—keeping her happy.

  She opened her eyes and laughed. “Sorry, it’s a fae thing, I guess. I just had to take it all in.”

  He couldn’t take his eyes off her. “You’re beautiful, you know that?”

  She licked her lips self-consciously. “Thanks.”

  “You don’t like compliments.”

  One shoulder went up. “No, I do, I’m just not used to them, I think.” Her face brightened, and she grinned. “Thank you. You’re kind of intimidating.”

  He nodded slowly. “I get that. I’ve used that to my advantage many times in the past. Still do, really.” He leaned against the open sliding door. “Do you still think that now that you’ve gotten to know me a little?”

  “Yes and no.” She swallowed. “You…sort of jumble me up inside.”

  That stunned him. “In a good way, I hope.”

  She nodded. “Yes. I’ve never spent time with a man like you.”

  He peeled away from the door and walked closer. “What kind of man is that?”

  She tipped her head back, the earnestness in her eyes almost undoing him. “Strong, but sweet. Dangerous and yet, somehow, funny. Handsome. Grounded.” Her hand came up to touch his arm, her fingertips gliding lightly over his skin and sending gentle bolts of power into his bones. “A protector.”

  The word sliced through him, reminding him of the violent and unbalanced history between his people and hers. It renewed his doubt about her and he didn’t like that. He didn’t want to consider she might be using him. “You just think that because I was military and because of the way I look.”

  “Maybe at first.” She shook her head, her fingers tracing the lines of the Ranger tattoo on his forearm. Whorls of energy spilled into his skin where her fingertips played. “But now I think that because you genuinely seem to care what happens to me.”

  “I do.” It wasn’t a lie.

  She turned away slightly, her arms wrapping her torso. “I haven’t had a lot of that in my life.”

  The longing in her voice made him realize once and for all that he’d been wrong. This was not a woman out to use him. This was a woman looking for her place in the world, trying to make a connection, hoping to get as much back as she was putting in. All things he understood very well. “Why is that?”

  After a deep breath, she stared at the pavers under her feet. “I ran away from home when I was a teenager. My parents—and my community—had expectations that I couldn’t live up to. I didn’t want to live up to them. They had my whole life planned out for me. I had no say. About my own life. So I did the only thing I could think of.”

  “You ran.” The carefully packed bags made sense now. So did the fact that none of the stories of her past had included family. No doubt, she’d run before, probably several times, which meant she’d do it again if she felt that was her only option.

  The thought of losing her now, when he’d just begun to understand her and care for her, made him ache in an unfamiliar way.

  She nodded and looked over her shoulder at him. “I’m sure running seems like such a childish thing to do, but it made sense to me at the time.”

  He put his arms around her and pulled her against his chest. Holding her felt good. They fit well together. “I’d never judge you for having a strong sense of self-preservation.”

  With a soft sigh, she turned and leaned into him. “Thanks.”

  He lifted her chin so he could look into her eyes. “Just please don’t run again. Not now.” That was as close as he could come to revealing how he’d begun to feel about her. More than that would leave him too vulnerable. Especially if she disappeared on him.

  She looked up at him for a long moment without saying anything. Finally, she broke the eye contact and frowned into his chest. “I don’t know. If this stalker doesn’t leave me alone, I don’t know what else to do except leave town.”

  “Willa.”

  She raised her head again.

  “I am not going to let anything happen to you.” He wanted to tell her that it was his duty to protect her, both because she’d made it so with her offering of stone and because Merrow had charged him with keeping her safe, but he didn’t want her to think that he was with her out of obligation. Because he wasn’t. Not completely. “I like you. I want you around.”

  A half smile curved her sweet mouth. “I like you, too.”

  He bent his head, closing the gap between them and capturing her mouth with his. The kiss was sweet and hot and broke the last bit of tension between them. She clung to him, kissing him back with the kind of enthusiasm that confirmed she was feeling the same things he was.

  The last remaining dregs of doubt about her disappeared.

  Her hands slid up his body to wrap around his neck, her fingers leaving trails of heat on his skin. The sensation of who she was, her fae powers of control, still lingered in her fiery touch, but they faded to the background with the knowledge that she wanted him as much as he wanted her.

  Their pasts be damned, he needed this woman in his life. She was the puzzle piece he’d been missing, and he hadn’t even been aware of it. Everything seemed more complete with her around. His house, which had always just been a sound investment and a place to sleep, now felt like a home.

  He wanted her. All of her. But it was too soon, and she needed to feel safe with him, not like he was one more aggressor to be fended off.

  He broke the kiss gently, but kept his forehead against hers. “We should probably eat our dessert, huh?”

  A soft, pleasurable sigh left her still-parted lips. “Is that why you stopped kissing me?”

  “No. I don’t wan
t you to feel pressured. With everything else going on right now, this should be a safe place for you.”

  She leaned back to look at him, her eyes sparking with a light he hadn’t seen in them before. Her fingers coasted slowly down the center of his body, bumping easily over the buttons on his shirt. “I feel very safe when I’m around you, but right now? Safe isn’t exactly what I’m in the mood for.”

  “You…uh…” Words escaped his short-circuiting brain, which had reverted to a very primal state that understood touch more than anything else.

  She pointed toward the far end of the house as she started for the door. “I assume your bedroom’s back that way?”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “You’re a grown man. I’m a grown woman. That makes us consenting adults, right?”

  “Damn right.”

  “Good soldier.” She winked at him. “Don’t forget the dessert.”

  Willa stretched, luxuriating in the afterglow Nick had left her with. Holy stars, the man was beyond words. She was still tired but also deliriously happy. And for a guy who was such a guy, he had good taste in sheets. Nice thread count, whatever it was. She stretched a hand out to touch him, but the bed beside her was empty.

  She leaned on one elbow and raised her head. The pillowcase stuck to a missed spot of frosting on her cheek. She laughed, rolling her lips in to keep the noise to a minimum. She peeled the pillowcase off and sat up. Nick wasn’t in the room, but she could hear sounds in the kitchen.

  And she smelled coffee. Oh, he was a keeper.

  She wrapped up in the sheet, which was sticking to her in other places, and traipsed out to the kitchen.

  “There you go, little man.” Nick was feeding Jasper.

  Her heart did a weird little fluttering thing, and an overwhelming wave of emotion made her temporarily light-headed.

  Nick was shirtless and wearing only a pair of cut-off khaki sweat pants that clung to his backside with commendable effort. He was almost too gorgeous to take in. He turned in the midst of her admiring him and smiled. His dog tags glinted in the light. On either side, two old-fashioned sparrow tattoos decorated each pec, a very different style of ink than the Army Ranger shield on his right forearm. She didn’t normally go for the tatted-up type, but on him, they worked. “Morning. Hey, I hope you don’t mind. I fed Jasper.”