Christmas Griffin - Zoe Chant Page 0,28

up to clear the table. “I didn’t sleep well last night, so don’t worry about me being in your hair today.”

“Sure.” Delphine put so much effort into not imagining Hardwick sleeping in the bed she’d tossed and turned in all night that she didn’t put as much tact into her next words as she might have: “Can I borrow some clothes?”

“Can you—”

Hardwick looked right at her for the first time that morning. His already dark eyes seemed even blacker than she remembered. His mouth opened as if he was about to sleep and Delphine’s eyes were drawn to it. Had his lips been that chapped yesterday? The shadows under his eyes had been less deep, she knew that. And the exhaustion weighing down his shoulders less heavy.

The rush of heat that had poured through her when she locked eyes with Hardwick faded away. It was replaced by a surge of guilt.

He’d told her he needed this time to recuperate from his work. And yet here she was, destroying his solitude, eating into his vacation time, and feeding him a terrible breakfast. He’d even figured out a way that she could return to town without giving her family anything to be suspicious about.

She needed to fix this.

Hardwick loaned her an extra outfit. She showered, if that was the right word for it, in what was little more than a bucket with a tap above it in the bathroom and shivered into the borrowed sweatpants and t-shirt. She would have to heat some water on the stove to handwash her own clothes.

But that was a problem to solve later.

Hardwick.

She’d been off-footed ever since she woke up here. No, that was a lie—hah. A lie she wouldn’t have even noticed before she met him.

In truth, she’d been off her game since well before Hardwick rescued her. Before the crash, too. Even before she had arrived in Pine Valley, ready to prep Mr. Petrakis’s vacation rental so it would be ready when he arrived.

It had started the year before, when her work took her to this tiny mountain town and another Christmas away from her family, and she’d woken up one morning to discover that her mother and brothers had come to meet her for the holiday.

Away from the rest of the Belgrave clan. Away from Grandfather’s ironclad declarations about what Belgraves were meant to be. Away from Grandmother’s flinty eyes that saw far too much, and Aunt Grizelda’s endless stories about their glorious history. It had been just the four of them, together, for the first time since Delphine had left home.

And she’d acted exactly the same way with them as she had with the wider family.

Maybe there was nothing left of her except her lies.

She splashed water on her face. It was cold, but not chilly enough to take the burn of shame from her cheeks. She filled the tiny, chipped sink and let her hands rest in the water until they were cold, then laid them over her face.

She didn’t regret what she had done. All those years of lies. How could she? The results spoke for themselves. The Belgrave clan had never been more harmonious.

But now that Pebbles and her mate were married…

Delphine shook her head.

That was a problem to solve later, too. Her problem, right now, was how she was going to manage however much time there was left before the storm ended.

Wind howled around the cabin as though it had heard her and wanted her to know how very long that time would be. She groaned and pressed her hands against her eyes.

I’ll manage, she told herself silently. Big surprise, she wasn’t convinced. Not listening to the voices in her head was just another sign that she was a failed shifter, she thought with a sigh, even if the only voice there was her own.

This was nothing new. It was also a pain in the arse. If she ever wanted to really talk herself into something, she had to actually talk herself into it. This wasn’t a problem when she was at work, mostly because Mr. Petrakis rarely listened to what anyone else was saying unless they were saying his name. But here? Now? With a man who could sense lies in the next room?

A gorgeous man, she thought. The sort of man who would have turned her head even if she’d met him in a crowded room and not in a place where he was the only other person in the room. A man with a restrained,