Silver Basilisk - Zoe Chant Page 0,49

it’s not age. Maybe living in Southern California has made me go soft.”

She looked to either side, where Rigo’s legs formed protective columns, and slid her hand along the smoothness of Rigo’s scales. They were steely, cool to the touch. She leaned over to study more of him, admiring a huge claw the size of a manhole cover that looked like it could shred a tank. Potentially fierce—Rigo’s basilisk looked like he could personally take on an entire tank regiment, even with close air support—but he sat so still and quiet, curved around her like her very own fortress.

She turned her head up the other way to admire more of him, her admiration turning to dismay when she saw his magnificent crested head bent at an awkward angle. “That cannot be comfortable,” she exclaimed. “Go ahead and change back. This mega-heat you made is more than warm enough. Anyway, it’s raining out there again. The temperature has to be coming up a bit.”

He blurred, and with a brief whispery sound he was human again. He dropped down next to her, one forearm propped on his bent knee, hands loose. She’d always liked his hands, the palms rough from work, but gentle even in their latent strength.

She eyed his profile as he peered out at the rain slanting down, smooth skin over strong bones, eyelashes long and gold-tipped. Was that from working out in the sun? What did he do, anyway? She had yet to ask.

As she reveled in the warmth from the stone, she let her gaze travel down over the white shirt molded by the shape of his arms. His look had changed so much from the old days, when he switched between two very worn pairs of jeans—this was back in the days when jeans belonged to the working person, before they became a fashion—sun-faded cowboy shirts, ragged kerchief, and a battered, low-brimmed hat. The only thing shared between then and now was riding boots.

Godiva knew nothing about labels. Her fashion sense had firmly stayed in the hippie era. But his slacks looked expensive without being flashy, and his cotton shirt fit well over his broad shoulders and that long torso as flat as when she’d known him. She liked the idea that he stayed in shape . . .

Wow, that stone was sure putting out the heat.

Or was the heat inside? She was suddenly aware of a stirring way down deep, where she’d thought the ashes had long gone cold. In fact, she’d done her damndest to put those fires out, out, out.

Welp.

She mentally bullhorned a reality check on herself—a granny-aged battle-axe getting the hots was about as alluring as a bag of mad badgers. Get a grip!

She moved back a couple inches from that stone. When she moved, he stirred, looking down at her with the softest hint of a smile, but concern in his dark eyes. “You okay?” he asked.

“I’m fine,” she said in her heartiest voice. “Fine, fine, fine. More than fine. If anything, it’s getting to be a tad crispy in here. Not that I’m complaining. Better than freezing, oh yessirree.” She was babbling. Click! Her teeth shut off the blather.

“Storm is starting to pass,” he said.

That was nice and neutral, but she was still feeling that curiously intimate atmosphere. Grasping for a reality that she was beginning to suspect was gone forever, she cleared her throat, stared at that glowing stone that he’d heated up with just a look, and said, “So let me wind up my sob story. I think I mentioned I spent the last of the sixties mooching around Haight-Ashbury, working various crap jobs and taking alternative courses, but I was always, always, searching for Alejandro Cordova, which was the name I’d written on his birth certificate. My mother’s name.”

“I know,” he said gently.

“I wrote to him once a month, and sent money every birthday and Christmas. And every year if I could manage, sometimes every other year, I begged off wherever I was working—or quit, if they refused to give me time off—and scraped together enough cash to take the Greyhound back to that suburb of Chicago to check that box. I told you all that. At least I didn’t find my own letters. Since they weren’t there, I comforted myself with the knowledge that at least he had them, which meant he was alive.”

She sighed, her shoulders tight, as she gazed out into the silvery-gray wall of rain slanting down. “Okay, that’s sufficiently depressing, and it’s bringing