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. You 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.