by Lora Leigh
“Unless you only eat birdseed.” He finally stood, stepping back so as not to loom over her, which was good, since the top of her head came to about his nose.
Her lips quirked into a smile, almost in spite of herself. “No, I don’t eat birdseed. I’m more of a pumpkin pancakes girl, actually. With bacon. Lots of bacon.”
He groaned, a deep noise that sounded like it came from the depths of his being, and it made her wonder what noises he’d make in the middle of lovemaking. As soon as the idea danced into her mind, she blushed so hot that she was glad for the darkness.
“Bacon. And eggs. And hashbrowns. Coffee. Lots of coffee,” he said. “I think I’m going to like you, Brynn Carroll.”
“I am very likable,” she dared to say, as if she’d suddenly become a woman who knew how to flirt with an unbelievably gorgeous man. Now he’d make fun of her, surely.
Instead, he grinned, and his smile felt like a gift he’d given her to unwrap.
“Breakfast?”
“Breakfast,” she agreed. “Where should we go?”
“Anywhere but O’Malley’s,” he said cheerfully, and she suddenly made the connection.
“You’re one of those O’Malleys? The O’Malley’s Pub O’Malleys?”
Everybody knew at least one of the O’Malleys; well, everybody except Brynn. Until now. They were big and brash; quick to anger and quicker to forgive, everybody said. They’d owned the pub for a long time, and everybody in Bordertown drank there or at the Roadhouse. O’Malley’s had Irish music on the weekends, and Brynn had lingered outside the pub on occasion, listening to the lovely sound and wishing with all of her heart that she’d had the courage to step inside and join the fun.
Sean reached out to take her hand, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to hold hands with a woman he’d only met mere moments after she’d transformed from waterfowl to human.
“Yes, I’m one of those O’Malleys, but don’t hold it against me. I like to pretend I’m adopted,” he confided.
For the first time in a very long while, Brynn laughed out loud.
THREE
She was even more beautiful when she laughed.
Sean didn’t know what to say or do with himself while they walked, so he held on to her hand in silence and hoped she didn’t pull away. He was too big, too tall, too rough—he didn’t want to intimidate or scare her, but hunching over to try to hide his size would make him look like a constipated gargoyle. Ever since his squad had rescued one of those from the roof of the Bordertown Bank & Trust, the guys had teased him about the resemblance.
“Hey, O’Malley, you sure your family is from Ireland? I saw some pictures of Notre Dame in Paris, and you look a lot like those stone dudes lining the roof!”
He’d laughed and taken it all in stride, but now, for the first time in his life, he found himself wishing he weren’t so big and rough and thuglike. She probably would have run screaming if she hadn’t caught sight of his gear. People usually trusted firefighters, even people who were shady enough to run from cops. In Bordertown, there was a lot of that going on. Things would get better if that wizard, Oliver, would ever take the vacant sheriff job, but O’Malley couldn’t find it in his heart to blame the guy.
Who in their right mind would want to try to enforce the law—let alone the peace—in a Wild West town like Bordertown? Built on the frontier between three realms—the Fae kingdoms of Summerlands and Winter’s Edge, the demon realm known as Demon Rift, and the human world—Bordertown was the place where the riffraff came to play, scheme, and eke out a sketchy kind of existence. People who lived here didn’t want to settle down, follow the law, or live within the confines of civilized society in any of the three realms, but they usually knew enough about petty crime or magic to believe they could pull off minor-league rackets or that one big score.
O’Malley’s Pub served drinks, hosted poker games, and offered entertainment on the weekends for all of them. One mountain troll with a sense of humor and a love of old movies had compared the place to Wyatt Earp’s joint in Tombstone. Sean’s brother Liam had punched the troll in the head, bought him a whiskey, and then agreed with him.
Brynn offered a tentative smile, and Sean’s thoughts scattered like tumbleweeds in the desert. Damn, she was beautiful. She pulled her hand away from his, though, and he clenched his fingers against the tactile sense of loss.
“The diner? I know the cook, and he makes really great pancakes,” she said, clutching her beat-up old backpack to her chest, as if still undecided whether or not to run away.
“The diner’s great. Olaf still beating his pots together before he uses them?”
Olaf, who’d been kicked out of Demon Rift for Actions Unbecoming a Demon, or so said the proclamation framed and posted by the diner’s cash register, was the best short-order cook in Bordertown. He’d never given his place a name—it was always just “the diner”—even though it was unique, since he’d built it out of a refurbished airship. Olaf’s menu was a thing of beauty and sky-high cholesterol, and his Heart Attack Special was a particular favorite of the guys at the station when they got a chance to eat breakfast out as a group. Fighting fires burned up a lot of calories, and the treadmills and other workout equipment they trained on every day did the same.
Sean pretended he didn’t notice that Brynn was ready to bolt, and he kept walking and chatting about nothing. Canadian bacon versus American, ham versus sausage, the best way to cook eggs. Sean was in the middle of mentioning that he liked his eggs scrambled with cheese, when it occurred to him that he was talking to a woman who turned into a swan about eating eggs.
Crap. He was a complete moron. He stopped walking, even though they were still about a half-block away from the diner.
“I’m an idiot. Eggs. I can’t believe I was talking about—”
She looked bewildered, but then her eyes widened as she reached the conclusion before he had to admit to it out loud. She laughed, surprising him.
“No. It’s okay. I mean, I’m not actually a swan. I don’t lay eggs or fly or do anything that real swans do. I just take on swan form every third night and sing until nearly dawn, and then I’m back to being me.” She laughed a little and pushed her hair away from her delicate cheekbones and out of her eyes.
He blew out a sigh of relief. “Thank goodness. That conversation was about to get seriously creepy.”
“Well, I know this keeps coming up, but it is Bordertown. You can’t live in a place where the most powerful ley lines in the world intersect without a little weird.” She shrugged and smiled up at him—this time a full-on, dazzling smile—and he almost forgot how to talk.
Damn, but she was beautiful.
“Bacon?” She tilted her head toward the gleaming silver, red, and white exterior of the renovated but grounded airship that housed the diner.
“Bacon would be great.”
He followed her into the diner, trying really, really hard not to watch her lovely round ass as it moved in those snug jeans, and failing completely. When they walked in to the brightly lit diner, he discovered that her dark mass of curls was actually a deep auburn color, and he almost groaned. Great ass and she was a redhead. He’d always been drawn to redheads; his family teased him that it was the Irish in him. He must have made a funny noise, because Brynn gave him a questioning look.
“Just enjoying the delicious aromas of coffee and fried everything,” he said, relieved when she smiled and nodded instead of accusing him of staring at her butt.
Olaf greeted Brynn like an old friend and then scowled at Sean like he’d never met him before and yet suspected him of vast and nefarious wrongdoing. The cook was maybe five feet tall, almost as round as he was tall, and would be practically blind without his enormous glasses. His gleaming bald head, its skin darker than the French roast he served, was always visible as he stood on a box behind his counter and surveyed his domain.
“You be careful of those crazy O’Malleys, you hear me, Brynn? You’re a good girl. Yo
u don’t need that kind of bad boy,” the cook scolded loudly, banging two of his skillets together for emphasis.
All the other patrons at the counter, and the few at booths this early in the morning, looked up with interest. Brynn’s face flushed such a hot pink that Sean almost wondered if she might be part fire demon herself. In the light, he could finally see that her eyes were blue, a pale gray-blue like wintry clouds reflected in a frozen pond. He suddenly wanted to pull her into his arms and warm her up, match his fire with her ice.
Maybe Olaf was right to warn her about him. He was clearly losing it.
The cook pointed a spatula at him. “You hurt my girl, I hurt your face.”
Sean stifled a smile. He knew the little demon wouldn’t take well to being mocked.
“I just want to buy her a good breakfast, Olaf. Feed her up a little,” he protested, trying to project wounded innocence.
Brynn was standing, mortified, only about two feet away, but nobody needed to know that the clean rain-and-grass scent of her hair was giving Sean all sorts of thoughts, few of which were entirely innocent.
“Okay, that’s enough from both of you,” she said, making a break for the booth the farthest from Olaf’s window.
She dropped her backpack on the red leather seat and started to slide in next to it, but Sean touched her arm to stop her.
“I’m sorry, but I need to sit on that side,” he said, indicating the seat and the wall behind it. “Unless you want to sit next to me?”
“But why—oh. Can’t have your back to the door?” She bit her lip, but then she nodded and took the other seat.
He’d expected it, but still found himself a little disappointed that he wouldn’t be able to feel the warmth of her body next to him, her legs stretched out next to his.
“Is that a firefighter thing?”
He was watching her seductive lips move as she spoke, and it took him a beat to catch up with what she’d actually said.
“No, it’s an O’Malley thing. My dad drummed it into us from the time we could walk. ‘Me boyos, you always scan the room for danger and protect the women and children.’ I asked him once, wasn’t I the child in the room?” He shook his head at the memory.
She leaned forward a little, resting her folded arms on the spotless Formica tabletop. “What did he say?”
Sean laughed. “He knocked me down and told me to stop asking him stupid questions. Then my four brothers jumped on me and pounded on me for a while.”
Brynn tilted her head, watching him as if he were a strange, rare specimen of animal at a zoo. Which was almost funny, considering she’d been the one swimming around in a fountain wearing nothing but feathers, but he could see her point. A lot of people reacted like that when he told them anything about his rather boisterous childhood. That’s why he’d quit doing it years and years ago.
So why was he suddenly telling tales about his family to a woman he’d only known for an hour?
Loneliness.
The word popped up, unbidden, from deep inside him, the place where he shoved words like that. Words like regret and isolation and sorrow. He’d been surrounded by beautiful, tempting women from the day he’d turned sixteen and started working in the bar, but even in a crowd, he’d always felt alone. There’d been plenty, male and female, human and not, who’d wanted to play with one of the O’Malley boys, but there’d never been anyone who wanted him for himself. His mom had always said that the perfect woman for him would come along, but now his mom was dying slowly from an enemy Sean couldn’t battle, leaving him with no faith in miracles. He swallowed hard and pushed the anger and bitterness away, yet again.
“You were the only one, weren’t you?” Her blue eyes held understanding and something else. Something he hoped wasn’t pity. He damn sure didn’t want pity from her.
“The only one who questioned the orders? The others wouldn’t have pounded on you, otherwise,” she continued, and he realized what that glimmer of emotion was in her eyes.
Not pity. Compassion.
A dizzying wave of heat swirled through him, and he looked down in case the demon glow made an appearance in his eyes. The sensation put him on guard at the same time as it threw him off balance. Rage was the emotion that catalyzed him into heat mode. Fear—terror—could do it, too. But a gentler emotion never had before, and yet he could feel his skin temperature rising way too high.
Brynn might be dangerous to him, he realized, and the thought only made him want to get closer. A lot closer.
“Yeah,” he admitted. “I was the only one who ever questioned, at least until after Dad died. We were O’Malleys, so we would grow up in the pub, work in the pub, and take over the pub. Liam, Blake, Oscar, and Yeats—they all mostly followed the party line. Me? Not so much.”
“Order up, O’Malley,” Olaf shouted, banging a metal spoon against a pot.
“We didn’t even order yet,” Sean said, startled.
Brynn laughed. “Sometimes he’s like that. You get what he feels like cooking for you. Trust me, it’s always good.”
Sean walked back to the counter to pick up the tray, which included a mountain of food, two mugs of steaming hot coffee, a carafe of more of the same, and, luckily for his rising temp, two glasses of ice water. Olaf refrained from threatening him again, but he did wag his finger in the vicinity of Sean’s chest.
“I understand why you want to protect her, Olaf. She’s definitely someone to be cherished,” Sean said, not even knowing where the words were coming from, but knowing that he meant them.
The little demon’s face relaxed out of its scowl, which was an improvement, at least, and Sean headed back to their table with enough food to feed an army of shapeshifters.
“Ooh, pancakes,” Brynn said, all but moaning.
She proceeded to take both plates of pancakes, consolidate them into one enormous pile, and slather them with butter and enough syrup to put out a small fire, while Sean watched in awed disbelief.
“You’re going to eat all that?”
“And bacon,” she said, snatching a crispy piece from the platter. “Hey, I worked up an appetite swimming around in the cold and singing. We can ask for more if you want some. So, you’re all named after Irish poets?”
“What else? Yeats had it the worst. People always want to call him Yeets when they see it written, instead of pronouncing it Yates. Drives him nuts.”
Brynn raised an eyebrow. “And Oscar didn’t get hot-dog jokes?”
“How’d you guess? He pretty much pounded everybody who tried, but O-S-C-A-R followed him around a lot when he was a kid,” Sean said, grinning at the memory. “We’d all jump in and help, of course. Not too many wanted to take on the O’Malley boys.”
“No sisters?”
Sean’s smile faded as he remembered the time he’d come across his mother kneeling in the attic next to a large trunk, tears running down her face. She’d been folding a tiny pink lace nightgown. He’d been a kid then, afraid to intrude on his mom’s privacy. Since he’d grown, he’d wondered sometimes if she’d miscarried the daughter she’d always wanted, but he hadn’t known how to ask. Hadn’t wanted to resurrect her sorrow.
“No sister,” he said abruptly. “You? Brothers or sisters?”
“No. My mother didn’t even want to have me,” she said, frowning. “She was trying to break the curse. No daughters means no daughters have to turn feathery.”
Sean took a long sip of his coffee, wondering how to ask the obvious question. Finally, he settled on the simplest way.
“Why? How?”
Brynn’s face lost its happy glow, and he bitterly regretted mentioning it. “Forget it. None of my business. Let’s eat, and we can talk about anything but fires or swans.”
Her smile was the best reward he could have gotten. “Yes. I agree.”
She took a big bite of pancake and closed her eyes in bliss. “Mmmmm.”
She was absolutely glorious. Desire sparked in Sean like tinder to a blaze, and he suddenly wanted to lick
maple syrup off her body, or at least spend the next month doing nothing but eating breakfast with her and watching her smile.
He lived his life surrounded by people, and yet he was always so alone. For the first time in forever, he felt a connection, and he had no intention of letting her get away before they could explore it.
“After we finish the pancakes and bacon, we can have waffles,” she said, grinning like a child at Christmas, and he smiled right back at her, basking in the warmth of her obvious enjoyment.
They talked and laughed and worked their way through most of the food and several cups of coffee, and a good hour and a half had gone by before it even occurred to Sean to wonder why it was so easy for him to talk to her. They had an ease between them that felt more like the connection between good friends than the awkward getting-to-know-you stage between strangers.
Brynn picked up the last piece of toast, sighed, and put it back down. “I’d better not. I already feel like I won’t want to eat again for a week.”
He suddenly remembered something and looked around. “Isn’t there usually a waitress here?”
Brynn pushed her plate back, apparently full at last, and nodded. “Ethel. She does synchronized swimming three mornings a week, so it’s serve yourself on those days.”
Sean thought about the old movies his grandmother had liked to watch, and decided Brynn must be putting him on. “Her name is Ethel, and she’s a synchronized swimmer?”
“Yes, why?”
He shook his head. “Never mind.”
The diner’s door banged open, and Zach strode in, followed by a couple of the guys from the crew. The last thing Sean wanted to do was share Brynn with them, and he knew the moment they caught sight of him they’d come barging over.
“Hey, we might want to head out,” he told her. “It’s about to get pretty noisy in here.”
She glanced back over her shoulder at the group just inside the door, and he could have sworn she flinched a little. “Yes, time for me to go. Breakfast was . . . nice.”