The Golden Griffin's Baby (Shifter Dads, #3)

by Chant, Zoe

  Now, she wanted to call back and see if she could get the lawyer to give up some information.

  She was looking determined and brave, and Flynn just wanted to put himself between her and anything that might hurt her.

  “What if Victor is trying something shady?” he pointed out. “That risk hasn’t decreased since this morning.”

  “But the possible rewards have changed,” Lila argued. “I can talk to Elizabeth, see if she wants to have a meeting even, and try to learn some things from her about what Victor’s planning and who might be on his side.”

  “She probably won’t tell you anything. She’s a lawyer—they’re trained in confidentiality.”

  “We used to be friends,” Lila said, looking away. “Back when I first came to the pack—she’s really smart, and she was one of the few women who Victor trusted with a position of authority. I liked her.”

  Flynn had no doubt that Lila would’ve gotten along with an intelligent, capable woman like she was describing.

  “But after Michael died...” Lila shook her head. “She was quoting the party line along with everyone else. I couldn’t leave town. I had to stay with the pack. Michael’s life insurance was caught up in some sort of legal limbo, and she was the one who told me I couldn’t have that money. But I know she felt bad about it. I think Victor was pressuring her.”

  Flynn ran a hand through his hair, unable to explain the agitation he was feeling. It was a good lead, and a smart idea. Lila was uniquely qualified to get this information; Lord knew that no one else in Oak Ridge had any kind of line into Victor’s pack.

  But he didn’t want Lila to do anything that might put her in danger.

  His griffin’s feathers ruffled.

  “What if one of us talks to her instead?” he tried. “Maybe Lachlan. Everyone likes him.”

  Lila tilted her head, giving him a slightly confused, thoughtful look. “But clearly it should be me. She knows me. She likes me—or I thought she did. I’m the best chance at getting her to open up.”

  “You just shouldn’t—you shouldn’t have to put yourself in danger like this,” Flynn said. “You shouldn’t have to deal with anything else at all. You just had to take your kids and run from attacking lions earlier today. That’s enough to be dealing with.”

  “And I don’t want to deal with it again!” Lila’s voice rose sharply—but then she quickly glanced at the ceiling and lowered it. Sleeping children. “I will do anything,” she continued in a fierce whisper, “anything at all, to make sure that my children are safe. And this is such a small thing, Flynn. I’m not throwing myself into deadly danger. I’m making a phone call. All right?”

  She was gorgeous like this, fiery and passionate. Flynn could feel himself wavering, because how could he doubt that this woman was capable of anything she put her mind to?

  “And I don’t actually need your permission to do it,” Lila added, with a sudden tart edge to her voice. “I think it would be better if I had your cooperation, and an assurance that the shifters here will follow up on anything I find out, but I could just do it and you couldn’t stop me.”

  That was—true. Flynn had to crush down some of his protective instincts here, probably.

  Keep her safe, his griffin hissed.

  Don’t be a jerk, Flynn shot back, because he’d certainly done enough of that already.

  “I’ll call Malachi,” he said finally.

  Lila’s shoulders relaxed minutely. Flynn wanted to reach over and rub the tension out of them, see if he could massage away some of that brittle quality in her body, the fragile wound-up result of worry and overwork and sleepless nights.

  He kept his hands to himself, and dug out his phone instead.

  Malachi was working, and he picked up immediately. “What is it?”

  “No more attacks,” Flynn assured him, “but Lila’s thought of something that might help.”

  Quickly, he laid out the situation and Lila’s plan. Part of him was still hoping that Malachi might say it was too dangerous, insist on meeting the lawyer himself, or sending Lachlan to charm her into submission.

  But no. “That’s the first lead we’ve had,” Malachi said approvingly. “I take it you’re not worried she’s spying for the other side any longer?”

  Flynn’s eyes darted to Lila’s face immediately, but she didn’t have shifter hearing, and she didn’t show any signs of having heard what Malachi had said. “No,” he said shortly. “Can you call up the others? Let them know we might have some usable information soon.”

  “Will do,” Malachi said. “You okay there by yourself? I can send over Santos or Reid as backup.”

  Neither Santos nor Reid were employed by the Oak Ridge Sheriff’s Department, but they were big, strong dragon shifters. There’d been a lot of unofficial deputizing of the local dragons lately.

  “No, I’m good,” Flynn said. He didn’t need anyone else to help, and Lila didn’t need anyone else barging in on her home. “Wouldn’t hurt to have someone patrol the wider woods occasionally, show our presence. I’m going to stick close to the house.”

  “I’ll take care of it. Keep me posted.”

  “Will do,” Flynn said, and hung up.

  “So?” Lila asked.

  “You’re good to go. You want to call her right now?”

  Lila hesitated, looking down at her phone. “Tomorrow,” she decided finally. “I’m not at my best right now, and I want to be sharp enough to get what we need. I really shouldn’t have taken that nap.”

  Lila, in Flynn’s opinion, could probably use a hundred naps. But he understood what she meant—the fog that invaded your head when you slept too long during the day.

  “Can I do anything?” came out of his mouth before he could think better of it. “Anything you need taken care of around the house?”

  Caught in the act of rubbing her hand over her face, she laughed into her palm. “No, Flynn, you’ve done so much already,” she said, dropping her hands into her lap. “I can’t thank you enough. All right? I’m just going to take care of a few things, and then I’ll go to bed.”

  “Okay.” Flynn didn’t know how to articulate the weird discomfort he felt when she thanked him. He didn’t want her gratitude, as though he’d done her some enormous favor by playing with a little girl and cooking spaghetti.

  He didn’t know quite what he wanted instead, though.

  “I’m going to go do a patrol around the yard,” he said, rather than trying to voice any of that. “Check out the woods nearby. I’ll keep a close perimeter; nothing will sneak up on you when I’m out.”

  Lila nodded. “Thank you.”

  “No need to thank me,” he said, keeping his voice even, and made his escape.

  Lila probably didn’t want him around the house while she was getting herself ready for bed, anyway, he thought as he stepped outside into the cold almost-winter air. She’d want privacy, not some strange man seeing her change into her—whatever she wore to bed.

  His stupid brain immediately supplied him with a mental picture of Lila in a soft little nightgown, clingy fabric hugging her curves, just waiting to be stripped off—

  Wow, real classy. Ogling the scared widow. What a jerk.

  Flynn focused on the dark, thick woods stretching out from the house’s small yard, and shifted.

  ***

  He stayed out on patrol for a long time, scouring the woods immediately around the house. Once, when he’d ventured just a bit further out, he passed Malachi’s black form, gliding silently over the trees, a shadow in front of the stars. Flynn nodded to him as they flew by each other, heartened by the knowledge that the sheriff was keeping an eye on the wider forest while he stuck close to Lila and the kids.

  There was no sign of lions lurking in the trees. Flynn wanted to be reassured, but instead it filled him with foreboding.

  Because if they weren’t here, where were they?

  Still, eventually he had to accept that he wasn’t going to find anything and he might as well g
o back to Lila’s place and make sure that he got enough sleep to be useful tomorrow. He glided back into the yard and shifted.

  It was strange to be here, the house that he’d grown up in, as an adult guest of someone else’s family. Flynn had spent years playing in this yard, chasing little Lachlan around, climbing trees, stalking off into the woods in teenage rages.

  Of which he’d had quite a few. It had probably been good for the rest of the family that they’d lived right in the forest and Flynn had the option of making a dramatic exit into the trees, rather than having to stay in the house and inflict himself on everyone else.

  He’d thought that watching Lila’s kids run around and play in his house would’ve been invasive and strange. But instead, it was filling his chest with something unfamiliar and warm, knowing that the house wasn’t standing empty any longer, but housing a family once more.

  Flynn had always dreamed of raising his own family in that house. He lived in a tiny little place in town these days, because he wanted to be closer to the sheriff’s station if he needed to go in; it wasn’t big enough for a family. The family he’d always wanted.

  But the dream had always been just that—a dream. Flynn couldn’t have biological kids, and anyway, he’d never met a woman he’d thought would be happy settling down with him, so the point was moot.

  Better that Lila have the house, with her real family, than Flynn keep imagining a ghost of one in an empty building.

  He went to the back door—locked, of course, which he should’ve realized. Of course Lila wasn’t just going to leave it open for any random lion to just walk right in without making a sound. Now he had to decide whether to wake Lila up, or sleep on the lawn.

  It wasn’t a hard decision. He’d just turned around when the door opened behind him.

  “Where were you going to go?” Lila asked him, frowning. She was lovely in the dimness, dressed not in a sexy nightgown like Flynn had guiltily imagined, but in gray sweatpants and a pink hoodie that just hinted at her curves. She looked so soft and warm, Flynn just wanted to wrap his arms around her.

  “I wasn’t leaving,” he hastened to assure her. “Just thought I’d shift, sleep on the lawn.”

  “You didn’t even try knocking.”

  “Didn’t want to wake you up.”

  Lila was staring at him with this indecipherable look. He’d seen it before, when he’d offered her spaghetti earlier that evening, and he had no idea what it meant.

  “Come inside,” she said finally, stepping aside.

  “I thought you were asleep,” he explained redundantly as he followed her in.

  “I slept for a bit. Grant woke up, and I had to get him back down, and then I thought I’d make myself a cup of tea before I went back to bed. Do you want one?”

  Flynn never drank tea. “Sure.”

  Lila went back to the kitchen, Flynn following on her heels. “I’ve got—um, black tea, green, those are both caffeinated—I’m having licorice, if you want that. It’s herbal.”

  “Licorice tea?” Flynn tried to imagine what that might taste like, and couldn’t get anywhere good.

  “It’s the herb, not the candy. It doesn’t taste like what you’d expect. Here, try mine.” Lila held out her cup.

  Flynn took it hesitantly, careful not to let their fingers touch. The cup was faded blue ceramic with a picture of a sunflower on it and a chip in the handle; Lila must have been using it for midnight tea for years. He put it to his lips, trying not to imagine whether he could taste her on it.

  Then he was startled by the taste of the actual tea. It was sweet, but not like candy, like—like something from the earth. Bright and grassy, it spread over his tongue. He pulled back the mug and looked at it, then took another taste.

  “Right?” Lila said, and when he looked at her, her eyes were laughing. “It’s not what you expect.”

  “No, it really isn’t.” He looked at the mug again. “Okay. I’ll have a cup of this, thank you.”

  “Great.” Lila set the kettle up, then turned to the cupboards, finding another mug. She held it up: it had a picture of a dinosaur on it.

  “Looks good,” Flynn said. “Never say no to dinosaurs.”

  “Agreed. I’m getting Sophia into them right now because I like reading the books with her.”

  “You ever want to annoy a dragon, call them a dinosaur,” Flynn advised her. “I used to wind Lachlan up like nobody’s business when he was thirteen or so, calling him a triceratops.”

  Lila laughed, a hand over her mouth. Flynn tried not to find it adorable, and failed. “That’s great. I think Sophia would give a lot to be a triceratops. Or a dragon; she has a book about fantasy creatures, too.”

  “I’ll have to take a look at it for her, tell her what they got wrong.”

  Another laugh, and then the kettle started to hiss, and Lila turned away to make the tea.

  Flynn was slowly becoming aware of an ache deep in his chest. At the sight of Lila in her pajamas making tea for them; the plan to sit down with Sophia and her book. The warmth of the house, the dim light, the two of them here in this little pool of domestic happiness.

  It felt dangerous, like it was too good to be true.

  Because it was too good to be true; it wasn’t true. Flynn was just here as a bodyguard, not as a part of the family. Lila was making him tea to be nice; he was entertaining Sophia to help Lila out.

  But if it wasn’t true, it didn’t have to be dangerous. Nothing was going to go wrong between them, because nothing existed between them to go wrong. All Flynn had to do was keep Lila safe from the bad guys, and that was a piece of cake compared to any of the other stuff.

  Thank God.

  He took the tea from Lila when she handed it over in its dinosaur mug. This time, he was less careful, and their fingers brushed.

  Lila inhaled quickly, and pulled her hands back.

  Flynn kept his breathing steady, but his fingers sparked at the contact. His griffin’s feathers ruffled, a curious noise sounding inside his head.

  No. Nothing’s happening. It’s nothing.

  “I’m just going to—take this into the living room,” Flynn managed, holding up the mug. “Thanks. Thank you.”

  God, he sounded like an idiot. Good thing none of this meant anything, right?

  “Sure, of course,” Lila said. “I was just about to go to bed too—upstairs, I mean—well, obviously.”

  She blushed, and Flynn watched the flush moving up her cheeks and wanted to lean in and kiss them.

  This had to stop. At least Lila seemed to be stumbling as much as he was. Or no, that wasn’t good at all—he wanted her to be comfortable.

  Well, he knew one way to achieve that. “Goodnight.” He lifted the mug and fled the kitchen, managing not to spill any of it on the way.

  “Goodnight,” echoed back behind him, and then he was in the darkened front room, and letting out a sigh of relief.

  A pride of hostile lions he could handle—enemy soldiers in the desert, he could handle—even his six-year-old nephew having a tantrum, he could handle. But in the face of a sweet, pretty woman being nice to him, he fled like a coward.

  “Get over it, Flynn,” he whispered to himself, and took a big swallow of tea. It was too hot still, and burned his throat, searing away all of the sweetness he’d tasted before.

  So deal with it, he thought resignedly, and settled back on the couch to nap until morning.

  Chapter 5: Lila

  Lila stared at her phone, taking a deep breath.

  The morning had been its usual flurry. She was keeping Sophia home from kindergarten until they got this all sorted out, so she’d had to explain that they were all staying home today, which had caused a minor tantrum until Sophia realized that Flynn was staying home with them. So Flynn was spending another day running around at a five-year-old girl’s whim.

  At least he didn’t seem to mind it.

  Lila was determinedly not thinking about the Tea Interlude last night. She didn’t even k
now why she’d offered him a cup—he didn’t look like the sort of person who drank tea. Most men disdained it, in her experience; even Michael, who hadn’t been super macho or anything, had thought tea was an old-lady drink.

  But Flynn had accepted, and then they’d had that too-close moment in the kitchen, where she’d watched his eyes drift closed as he tasted it, knowing that the surprising taste was spreading over his tongue, and she’d found herself feeling like—

  —and then it had seemed like maybe he was also feeling like—

  But then he’d practically tripped over his own feet trying to get away, and Lila had been backpedaling too, because what did she think she was doing, with her kids in danger and her life completely upside-down? Sort yourself out before you go after anyone else, girl, she told herself severely.

  So this morning she’d let herself get totally caught up in the kids and their reassuringly predictable wants...and then suddenly Sophia was playing with Flynn and Grant was sitting contentedly in his playpen and Lila was alone with her cell phone, ready to start her career as a super-spy by calling Elizabeth.

  She breathed out, long and slow, and dialed.

  It only rang once before Elizabeth picked up. “Lila.” Her voice sounded tight, tense, even with just that one word.

  “Hi, Elizabeth. What’s going on? Your message sounded serious.” Elizabeth had just said, Call me back, Lila. It’s important.

  “It is serious. Lila, I found something out that—I can’t keep it a secret. Are you—can you hear something difficult right now?”

  No. “Yes.” Lila took another deep breath, thought about sitting down. No, she wanted to be upright, standing on her own two feet when Elizabeth said whatever was coming.

  “Michael’s death wasn’t an accident.”

  Lila staggered.

  Reaching for the wall, she leaned back against it. “What?” Her voice came out faint and faded.

  “He wanted to get out, take you and the kids and leave. And Victor had him killed. Staged a challenge, set Tony and Nevin on him, not a fair fight at all. Made it look like he’d been in a car accident.”