Christmas Griffin - Zoe Chant Page 0,23

when what came next was this.

She frowned as she slipped down from Hardwick’s back into knee-deep snow. The road looked nothing like what she remembered from the previous night. But it had been night, after all. The whole world had seemed ghostly and strange.

A memory from the night before rose up in her mind. Sitting in the car with the engine and all the lights off, and the darkness all around. No one watching. No expectations.

“Is this the right place?” she asked to distract herself from the unsettling sensation in her stomach. “Where’s the car?”

Hardwick blinked at her. She could imagine the look that would have been on his face if he was in human form, and she didn’t need fifteen years of decoding her relatives’ moods when they were in animal form to translate the stiff-legged way he stalked to the side of the road. One swipe of his claws, then another, and the front bumper of her rental car appeared.

He shook snow off his legs and moved back. Delphine gaped.

She’d known it had been snowing, of course, but…

There was a good foot-and-a-half of snow above the car. Above the car’s front bumper. More, over the rest of the car where it had fallen deeper into the ditch.

More, over the hole she must have made for herself, falling backwards into it. Much more.

Delphine swallowed.

She’d forgotten. Or let herself forget. She’d let Hardwick’s lie-detecting powers, and what that meant, distract her. She’d twisted herself in circles trying to reason her way around the strange feelings that gripped her chest whenever she looked at Hardwick, or thought about him, or thought about him looking at her. And this part of yesterday’s adventure had faded into the background.

If Hardwick hadn’t gotten here when he did—

“Can you get it back on the road?” she blurted out.

The griffin gave her a sidelong glance that looked so much like his human expression that she had to bite her tongue to stop a burst of nervous laughter. Then he shrugged and moved closer to the snow-bound car.

He inspected the car, and she inspected him.

When he’d said he was a griffin shifter, she’d expected something like her winged lion relatives: a stocky, powerful lion body, with wings, and a bit of eagle. Hardwick’s griffin form was nothing like that. The front half of his body, the eagle part, was streamlined and sharp. The lion part was lean and graceful. He looked like a creature made to glide through the air, not smash through it like winged lion shifters did. His feathers and fur melded seamlessly into one another, soft-looking grey that made her think of stones washed smooth by water, or the ash in a fireplace after a long, romantic evening.

Not romantic. A long something-else evening. Oh … good.

Hardwick jerked his head at her. She took his meaning and kicked her way through the snow until she was out of the way. She was beginning to wish she’d brought thicker trousers—or waterproof ones. When her boss did venture to colder regions for his work, it was to places that were more decoratively snowy than deeply snowy. Last Christmas had been an exception, but she’d barely ventured beyond the town then.

Had Hardwick been here last year, as well?

What if he had been? What if they had met, with only her mother and brothers to worry about, and not her whole extended family? Would she have been more willing to entertain the thought that her sudden attraction to him was more than just a crush?

What if it was more?

Her first instinct was to grab the thought and hide it away. She forced herself to let it go and it rolled over her like a cool breeze.

What if what she felt for Hardwick was more than she’d let herself believe?

She’d lain in bed the night before, aggravatingly awake, her ears straining for any sound from the next room. She’d pressed her face into the pillow, searching for any sign of his scent—she didn’t even know what he smelled like! They had barely touched. Just that moment on the sofa, when he’d gently checked the bruise on the back of her head.

Except he must have touched her before that. Carried her into the cabin, wrapped her in blankets. His hands around her back and legs, steadying her head as he laid her down, tucking the woolen blankets around her body.

Delphine gasped as heat surged through her. She could almost feel the ghostly pressure of Hardwick’s hands on her. She was making