Christmas Griffin: A Mate for Christmas #5

by Chant, Zoe

  Hardwick raised one eyebrow. “Seems like a lot of trouble to go to for some booze,” he remarked.

  “Less trouble than Grandfather without his favorite tipple, trust me.” She tipped her head back and smiled. “You’re going to say something like ‘Really? Less trouble than getting stuck in the snow and almost dying?’ but honestly? If I haven’t managed to deliver the goods, then being stuck out here in the snow is a net good. Potential concussion included.”

  “You don’t have a concussion.”

  “Oh? Shall we test that? I don’t have a concussion.” She repeated his words, careful not to sound like she was asking a question, then raised one eyebrow at Hardwick. “Was that a lie?”

  “If you do, you shouldn’t be drinking that coffee.” He leaned forward, staring deep into her eyes one after the other. “Your pupils look fine, and you remember what you were doing right before you hit your head—right?”

  “Right.”

  And shifters can shrug off a little thing like a concussion like it’s nothing, anyway. She waited for him to say it; it was the obvious next step in their game of I-can-tell-you-are-lying cat and mouse.

  Instead, he frowned at her coffee mug. “No dizziness, nausea, loss of taste?”

  “No.”

  His face cleared. “Good.”

  Delphine should have been relieved. A lack of concussion was generally considered to be a good thing. And Hardwick treating her potential concussion seriously was a good thing, too.

  Instead, she felt irritated and off-balance.

  The electric energy that had snapped between them as they traded questions and almost-lies had vanished. Had she imagined it entirely? Hardwick was being so… professional. As though she was just some random woman whose life he’d saved, and not the love of his life.

  What if I’m not?

  The thought hit her like a punch in the gut. She turned her jerk of surprise into a pretend shiver and nestled more deeply into the blankets.

  What if she wasn’t Hardwick’s mate?

  It was possible. After all, she wasn’t a shifter. She wouldn’t know-know like he would. How had her mother described meeting her father? The certainty, the feeling of everything else in the world losing focus… and her inner animal had told her that they were meant to be together.

  She didn’t have an inner animal to tell her anything. The certainty she’d felt when she first laid eyes on Hardwick was—well, not quite fading, but becoming wobblier the more time she spent in his presence. And of course the rest of the world had lost focus. She’d just almost died. Of course her brain would zero in on the person who saved her life.

  And Hardwick…

  He wasn’t acting like a person who’d just been smacked around the back of the head with a whole quiver of Cupid’s arrows. He was looking at her like she was exactly what, for all intents and purposes, she appeared to be: a young woman who’d gotten herself in trouble through her own stupidity, whom he’d had to interrupt his vacation to save, and who was less love’s darling dream than… an irritation.

  Her heart half-leaped, half-sank, with the result that it felt like it was ripping itself in two.

  What a fool she was. This griffin shifter wasn’t her mate; he was just the man who’d saved her life. And then her heart, in full damsel mode, had clung to him like he was Prince Charming. It wasn’t a shifter thing. It was a fully human, fate-free thing.

  She was relieved. Wasn’t she? Of course she was.

  “I do remember what I was doing before I fell in the snow,” she said, her voice slightly shaky. And what was that about?

  Shaky with relief, she told herself.

  “I was about to get the car out of the ditch.” There. Much steadier.

  Across the room, Hardwick shifted uncomfortably, as though he had a sudden cramp.

  “I wasn’t thinking straight. Or—I thought I was at the time. I thought I could get myself out fine. I was going to put the chains on the car, which I thought was a fine idea at the time, except how I thought I was going to do that when the car was already arse-up in a ditch I don’t know, and it doesn’t matter anyway, because I couldn’t even get back in the bloody car without knocking myself unconscious. And!”

  Hardwick had opened his mouth, but he snapped it shut again.

  “And did I even knock myself out? I hit my head, sure, but I don’t think I’d be able to shout this much if I hit it hard enough to lose consciousness! Was it the cold? Because now that I think about it, I was out in the cold for far longer than anyone sensible would have been! And I took my gloves off, and I… I did so many stupid things!”

  She was angry. Why was she angry? Because she almost died? Or because she’d decided that Hardwick couldn’t be—

  Her eyes locked on to him. He looked different, somehow, and it took her a moment to figure out why. The deep, stressed lines around his mouth and between his eyes were less deep. The tension that had seemed to crackle through his whole body every time he looked at her had eased.

  Damn. All it took was her having one tiny breakdown, and suddenly her rescuer looked less like he wanted to throw up?

  She pressed her palms against her face. “I thought I was thinking, but I wasn’t. If you hadn’t found me…”

  “But I did. It’s—” He sounded reluctant as he added, “it’s best not to think about what might have happened if I had not.”

  “But how did you find me?” He was right, there was nothing to be gained from thinking about all the ways she could have died through her own stupid fault. But that wasn’t going to stop her from digging into what had happened. If she was going to explain all this to her family, she’d need to get her story straight.

  “I… heard you.” Hardwick grimaced, as though he’d just sucked down another mouthful of coffee. But his cup was still in his hand, resting on his lap.

  Delphine frowned. “You heard me? It’s not like I was calling for help. And I’m sure I would have noticed if this cabin was anywhere near where I crashed. I might have lost it, but I wouldn’t have missed a whole house with lights on and everything.”

  “You wouldn’t have seen the cabin. We’re about a mile away from your car—”

  “A mile away? How did you hear me from so far away?”

  Hardwick’s jaw twitched. “I told you my griffin can sense lies.”

  Delphine flushed bright red. He’d found her because he sensed that she was lying? What had she said that was a lie when she was stuck out there by herself? She searched her memory, determined to find that he was mistaken. Okay, she lied to her family, but she didn’t lie to herself.

  Hardwick flinched.

  She’d tried to boost her morale. Told herself that she would be okay. That wasn’t a lie, was it? That she could handle things. Maybe in the technical, objective sense they’d been lies, but she hadn’t meant them as such at the time. She’d thought they were the truth. Or that speaking them aloud could make them the truth.

  And then she’d said—

  Cold dripped down her spine, worse than the snowstorm Hardwick had saved her from.

  She’d said I am a real Belgrave, damn it.

  Was that what he’d sensed?

  Oh, God. Oh God oh God oh God—

  “Delphine.” Strong hands caught hers. One of them moved to her shoulder, then her chin. He pushed her head up. “Breathe. You’re safe now.”

  Safe wasn’t the problem.

  “On my count. In, two, three. Hold, two, three. Out, two, three…”

  Slowly, with the help of Hardwick’s breathing instruction, Delphine clawed herself back together.

  Don’t think about it. The realization she’d pulled herself out of was a black hole sucking at her attention and it took all of her strength to avoid it. She blinked hard and found herself staring into Hardwick’s black eyes.

  Her stomach tightened. Every point of connection between his body and hers suddenly flared with heat. His hand was wrapped securely around hers, the calluses pressing against her sof
t skin. His other hand under her chin, so intimate she worried he could feel her pulse thundering against his fingers. He’d moved to her so quickly that one of his legs was pressed up against hers and even though there were layers and layers of blanket between them, she was suddenly imagining what it would be like for him to slide his leg between hers, spreading her beneath him, hot and languid and longing.

  “Uh,” she muttered, breaking eye contact as heat flooded to her cheeks. “Sorry about that. I was… I… freaked out.”

  “It’s understandable.”

  “It’s embarrassing.” As embarrassing as the way her heart was fluttering in her chest. Of all the people to get a crush on, she had to pick a shifter—someone whose heart was always going to be on hold for someone else?

  She pulled her hand out of his. At the same time, he withdrew, as though he’d suddenly realized he was sitting too close to her.

  “I’ll get you something to eat,” he said. “There’s not much—I wasn’t expecting company.”

  “I’ll be out of your hair as soon as possible,” she reassured him. “My phone was out of range. Is yours still dropping? Does the cabin have a landline?”

  He shook his head. “Mine’s barely on half a bar out here. And I get the feeling we’re lucky the cabin has a generator. No phone, no internet.”

  “Not even for emergencies?”

  “I think they expect the people who rent this place to either be self-sufficient or far enough up their own ass to think they are.”

  And which are you? The words were on the tip of her tongue, but she held them in. He shot her an amused look, like he’d guessed what she was about to ask.

  “Neither of us will be flying anywhere until the blizzard runs its course, anyway.” There was something careful in the way he said neither of us. Blast. She should have just told him the truth—

  Except if they were stuck up here together for any length of time, and her family did come looking for her, then they’d meet him. No. Let him think she was a weirdo pretending to be a shifter. What did it matter to her?

  Out loud, she said: “Blizzard? I know it was snowing earlier, but…”

  She gathered one blanket around herself like a cloak and went to the nearest window. When she peered behind the curtain, the first thing she saw was a whole lotta nothing.

  While she was waiting for her pathetic human eyes to adjust, she took advantage of the darkened window’s mirror qualities to watch Hardwick in the kitchen. Which probably wasn’t helping her eyes adjust to the darkness, but, she reasoned, she’d made plenty of mistakes already today. At least this one had some nice rewards.

  Like the sight of Hardwick leaning over to grab something out of the freezer.

  She bit back a sigh. The man was a tall, rangy creature straight out of a Western, and that was apparently completely her type. His shirt didn’t strain at the seams like the guys her cousins drooled over, but the way he moved spoke of a controlled, contained strength that the usual recipients of Belgrave ogling didn’t possess. Those guys tended to be more open about their muscles. But Hardwick…

  Delphine turned her attention back to the world outside, where snow was gusting against the windows so hard, she was amazed she hadn’t noticed it before. Then again, had she really been looking? Had she even really checked if her eyes needed to adjust before spying on her rescuer?

  She closed her eyes. You need to get a hold of yourself.

  “How long until it blows over?” she asked.

  In the reflection, Hardwick shrugged. “Who can say?”

  Delphine closed her eyes and rested her forehead against the window.

  So, this was the situation. She was stuck in the middle of nowhere, without any way to tell her family where she was or why she was stuck, or of telling how long it would be until she could leave.

  That was a lot of withouts. Despite everything, it was the with that worried her the most.

  With Hardwick.

  With a man who made her body react in ways it hadn’t for anyone before.

  And not only her body. Hardwick knew her secret, she was sure of it, but she wasn’t panicking, or planning out ways to make this not a disaster, or trying to convince him that he was wrong and everything was just as she said it was. The idea of Hardwick knowing, of anyone knowing, she wasn’t a shifter should have been devastating. The first crumbling of foundations that could send her whole life falling down.

  Instead, it felt… good.

  She straightened and shook herself.

  It didn’t matter how it felt. What mattered was getting through the next few days and coming up with a good story for her family. Not being able to fly during a blizzard—that was a good start.

  And she wasn’t Hardwick’s mate.

  That was good, too. It meant that as soon as the blizzard was over and she could go back into town, she could leave his discovery of the truth behind her.

  It wouldn’t matter that he knew her secret, because they weren’t going to be a part of each other’s lives.

  Chapter Eight

  Hardwick

  Every breath was agony.

  The frozen pizza had been the last thing Hardwick wanted to serve a woman like Delphine, but it was all he had that could be cooked quickly enough. Her head was drooping before she’d finished eating.

  He’d given her the bed. What a mistake that had been. Now he was lying on the sofa where she had lain as she regained consciousness, where she’d sat to drink and eat. Her scent had caught on the cushions, the blanket… even the air.

  And if that wasn’t enough, his ears strained for every sound from the next room. The slight creak of the bed as she rolled over. Her soft, relaxed breaths, so much surer and steadier than her breathing had been when he pulled her from the—

  The memory crashed over him. Her face, half-buried in the snow and so much paler than the healthy gold and warm flush that had spread across her face once she was awake. She hadn’t moved at all; her limbs had hung limply when he picked her up. If it hadn’t been for the way she kept muttering words under her breath, he might have thought he was too late.

  Hardwick’s griffin swiped at him. He bent his head, acknowledging its disgust.

  Because of course it wasn’t just her murmuring that had reassured him she was alive. It was the way the closer he got to her, the worse the pain got. A hammer against his skull, beating harder with each whispered word.

  Almost everything she said hurt. When it didn’t, his griffin was so suspicious for her next lie that it was hardly a respite; even if she set the hammer down, there was a strange, constant ache. He would have put it down to his griffin’s end-of-year exhaustion, but there was something more to it than that.

  He’d never met someone so sick with lies.

  His griffin hissed and ground its beak. Hardwick groaned.

  I know, I know. How am I any better?

  He hadn’t lied.

  But he hadn’t told the truth, either. Not the bit of it that mattered.

  * * *

  Somehow, in the midst of the ache in his head and his heart, he must have fallen asleep, because eventually he woke up.

  Delphine was already up. Her footsteps were light, but sure—until he stirred. She spun around.

  “Good morning.” Her voice was low, with no trace of the surprise her feet had betrayed. “I thought I’d get breakfast on, since you cooked last night.”

  “Breakfast?” His mouth was moving ahead of his mind, echoing Delphine’s words before he’d managed to put thought to them. He shook his head.

  His brain was still lagging, but this time it was his eyes that snuck ahead.

  Delphine was standing at the iron stove, her hair pulled back in a single thick, untidy braid and her cheeks flushed. Her arms were dusted with flour and there were white handprints on her front.

  She followed his gaze down to the floury handprints and patted at them uselessly. “I didn’t see an apron.”

  “I’m surprised you found flour.” />
  Her eyebrows both rose. “In the pantry? I thought it must be yours. Perhaps the last person to stay here left it. Flour, baking powder, cheese, and butter. Just the basics, but…” She trailed off.

  It took Hardwick a moment to realize he was expected to pick up the conversation. “You can blame me for the cheese. The rest must have been left over from a previous tenant, like you said.”

  He left unsaid that his idea of ‘just the basics’ was the contents of the frozen meal section at his local corner store.

  “You’re to blame for the cheese, huh? A man after my own h—”

  She broke off suddenly. The color that flashed across her face now wasn’t the lively warmth that had tugged at his memories again and again as he waited to fall asleep. It was a deep, strangled red.

  “I—er—” Her eyes caught on his, like a fish to a lure.

  He half-rose. Something inside him was rising to a crescendo, a wave about to break.

  Then she looked away. “Cheese scones,” she said, her shoulders rising. “Or—you probably call them biscuits. Cheese biscuits. These old coal-fired ovens can be tricky to get the hang of, but my grandmother has one quite like this. She always let me practice cooking on it.”

  Something skittered just beneath the surface of her words, close enough to a lie to scratch claws behind his eyes.

  My grandmother has one—True.

  She always let me practice cooking on it—Something there, an itch that his griffin couldn’t let go.

  She always let me—

  That was it? The lie was that her grandmother let her use the oven? What was the alternative, that Delphine had barged in and taken over the kitchen?

  Hardwick shook his head.

  He washed up and changed his clothes, and by the time he ran out of excuses not to go back into the main room, the whole cabin was filling with the smell of baked dough and hot cheese.

  Whatever strange urge was making him drag his feet couldn’t compete with that.

  Hardwick muttered his thanks for the meal as he sat down opposite her.