Christmas Griffin - Zoe Chant Page 0,12

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