Page 31 of Guarded by My Gargoyle

He was not, it turned out, the only male who’d noticed the dress.

Two tables over, a pair of human tourists in brand-new flannel shirts and boots that had never seen a speck of mud had turned in their chairs. One of them said something to the other, nodding towards Maris’s table, and grinned, and started to get up.

A wave of anger rushed through him and his grip on the bottle tightened until the glass creaked a warning. Gold flared at the edges of his vision, and he had one clear thought.

If he touches her table I will throw him across the bar.

And that was the moment he understood he needed to leave the room. He set the bottle down before he broke it and moved. Not towards the tourists, even though going the other way took most of his self-control, but towards the porch doors and the dark and the river. Outside, where the air was cool and calm and there was no one in a green dress laughing at anything.

The porch ran the width of the tavern with worn wooden planks and a rail overlooking the water. The river went by below in the dark, quick and quiet, catching the tavern light in broken pieces. He set both hands on the rail and breathed and waited for the gold to drain back out of his eyes.

“You look,” said a voice from the water, “like a male who just discovered a foundation problem he can’t fix by writing a check.”

He didn’t jump. It took a great deal to make him jump. But he did look down, and there in the dark river below the porch, half in and half out of the current with his elbows hooked over a mossy rock, was Sam—broad-shouldered, wet-haired, the faint iridescent sheen of his skin catching the light where a human’s skin wouldn’t have. The tavern sat on the kraken’s stretch of river, and he turned up like this more often than not, especially when his mate was working the kitchen.

“There’s no problem,” Garrick said.

“Mm.” Sam floated. The water moved around him and he didn’t fight it. “That’s why you’re out here white-knuckling a handrail instead of in there where the party is. No problem at all.” He tipped his head, and his eyes reflected the light like a cat’s. “I could hear your teeth grinding from the water, Garrick. Over the current. That’s a talent.”

“There were tourists.”

“There are always tourists.”

“They were looking at—” He stopped, closed his mouth, and started again more carefully. “At the table.”

Sam’s grin spread slow and knowing across his face, all teeth, a kraken’s grin. “Ah.”

He looked back out at the dark water and refused to dignify the response with an answer.

The music inside cut off, and there was a swell of applause and whooping. A moment later the porch door banged open and two more people came out into the cooler air. Ben first, still holding his guitar by the neck, silvery fur damp at the temples from the stage lights, ears swiveled back in the way that meant he was glad to be off the stage for a minute. Aidan came behind him, all red hair and easy grin, a beer in each hand, one of which he pushed at Garrick without asking.

“You looked like you needed this,” Aidan said. “You bolted out of there like the place was on fire.”

“I wanted air.”

“Sure.” Aidan leaned on the rail, spotted Sam in the water, and lifted his beer in greeting. “Sam. Heard you scared off the Pruitt boys last week.”

“They were throwing bottles in my river,” Sam said mildly. “I introduced them to it more thoroughly.”

Ben propped the guitar against the rail and stood there for a moment, working his shoulders loose. He looked at Garrick with the knowing look a mated male gives a single male who has just walked out of a room because he couldn’t stay there.

“You wanted to punch the tourists,” Ben said.

“I don’t want to punch anyone.”

“You wanted to punch the tourists,” Ben repeated, not unkindly, “because one of them stood up while she was laughing.” He pulled a rag out of his back pocket and wiped down his hands. “I know the feeling. First month Sara worked at that school there was a substitute who kept walking her to her car. Nice male. Never did a thing wrong.”

Garrick kept his mouth shut.

“I stood outside that school for three afternoons before she noticed and told me to knock it off.”

“That’s not⁠—”

“That’s exactly it,” Sam said cheerfully from the water.

Ben folded the rag. “When it happened to me with Sara, I told myself for about a month it was something else. Bad timing. Lack of sleep. Anything but what it was. Cost me a month I didn’t need to lose.” He looked at Garrick calmly. “You’ve got that same look. Like you keep adding it up and trying to make it come out with a different answer.”

He set the beer Aidan had given him down on the rail, untouched. “She’s human.”