Page 35 of Fated to the Gargoyle

“Yeah,” I say with a casual little shrug. My chest goes warm anyway.

“Damn.” Shelly slumps onto the stool beside me. “I took this job hoping mine would walk in and swoop me up. You’ve heard about this place, right? Every woman who works this diner ends up carried off by some shifter. I’ve been here months and haven’t gotten so much as a sniff.”

I put my hand over hers on the counter. “I’m sure he’s coming.”

“He better hurry up,” she says, reaching down to press her thumb into her own ankle. “My feet are killing me.”

I nod along, all sympathy. Shelly does not need to know my gargoyle spent last night on one knee rubbing my feet.

There’s a stranger working the grill, an older man with a mustache, and he moves through Lamar’s station without one wasted step. I frown at the pass-through. “Where’s Lamar?”

“Didn’t come in today.” Shelly shrugs. “That’s John, one of Andy’s old friends, filling in.”

Something about that sits funny in my stomach. “Huh. Well, maybe a shifter lady came in and swooped him up.”

“It sure happened to Marcus,” Shelly says, smiling. “Our old dishwasher. Wouldn’t surprise me one bit.”

I laugh it off and treat myself. “Let me get the tomato soup, a grilled cheese, and an iced tea.”

Shelly jots it down and heads behind the counter. Andy wraps up his interview in the booth, telling the new girl she can start Monday, that weekends are dead in this town and he closes early anyway. She thanks him and leaves, and Andy comes strutting behind the counter with his chest all puffed out.

I glare at him over the sugar caddy. “So, what, I’m fired?”

“I haven’t fired an employee in a very long time.” He picks up a rag and wipes a counter that doesn’t need it. “But I know when one’s about to quit.”

My face goes hot. “I am not about to quit.”

Andy walks off to his office without another word, which is somehow worse than arguing.

I turn to Shelly. “What is his problem?”

She sets my iced tea in front of me and pats the counter. “Honey. You’ve got a big-ass gargoyle sitting outside this diner for you. You’re about to quit.”

I stab my straw into my tea and take a long sip. Neither one of them is gonna hear me say they’re right.

The afternoon is all mine, and I spend it all over town. I stop in on Lena and catch up over the fabric shelves, and she makes me promise our bar night is still on. Then I wander Cozy Corner, testing cushions and flipping price tags that can’t scare me anymore. There’s a chest of treasure sitting in my bedroom. I’ve got decorating opinions I’ve been saving up my whole life, and now I can afford every one of them.

By the time the sun sits low on the mountains, I’m back on the sidewalk in front of my statue.

“You know it’s agonizing, waiting for you to wake up,” I tell him, and today the word fits. “Oh, and Andy hired someone to replace me. The nerve of that man. He could’ve at least waited for me to put in my two weeks.”

A woman passing with her shopping bags gives me a long sideways stare.

“I’m not crazy,” I tell her. “He’s just my fated mate.”

She keeps on walking.

Then the sun slips off the ridge, and I get to see it for the first time.

The gray fades off him in one long slide, stone giving way to skin from his claws on up, and my mate wakes up in front of me. He blinks, straightens to his full height, and stretches, wings sweeping wide and then tucking back down.

“Hi,” I say, grinning up at him with my whole face.

He sees me, and his gold eyes flare bright. His claw stops in the air over my hair, and then it follows one silk-pressed piece from my temple all the way down to where it swings loose past my shoulder. Anyone else put a hand in this fresh press, I’d slap it down. I stand still and let him.

“You changed your hair,” he says.

“For our date.” I do a little turn on my flats. “You like it?”