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“No whores, I promise,” he said immediately. “That wasn’t something I wanted or needed. Not to mention, The Wall could only do so much to hide what I was doing, so I had to be careful who I spent time with.”
Grr. I bet he’d had plenty of non-human women to keep him company. I tried to shove the green-eyed monster back down where it had suddenly come from. I had no right to be upset at his playboy ways from before he met me. But what about any drug habits that might linger?
“Keep talking,” I said.
He shrugged. “Let’s just say I’ve been to parties where you’d swear Tony Montana himself was there. It takes a hell of a lot of the white stuff to have any effect on a gargoyle. But that was during our party days, before we opened Redrock.”
I relaxed. “Okay, that’s fine. I’m no prude. As long as it’s not a habit.”
“Not a habit. It only shows up occasionally at parties when we’re schmoozing with the rich and famous.”
“That’s fine. I went through a wild phase when I was younger, too,” I admitted.
I looked down at the selection of meals. We’d had Beef Stroganoff yesterday for dinner, with tender egg noodles, strips of perfectly seasoned beef, garlic, onions, mushrooms, and peas finished with sour cream, so I wanted something lighter today. I picked up the one marked Maple Salmon.
According to the sticker, it was “wild Sockeye salmon, marinated in an aromatic orange and maple sauce, with seasonal vegetables and a fluffy rice pilaf”. It was also labeled high-protein and healthy. That sounded perfect.
“Tell me more about your party days,” I said as I got ready to put the meal in the oven following the directions on the label.
“My brothers and I started life under the control of a wizard. Not a nice guy. We guarded his abode without him giving us anything in return. He ended up pissing a lot of people off, including a very powerful witch. She freed us from our bonds when she killed him. The wizard had no heir, and the witch had no want for riches herself, so we took everything we could when we left. It was our first taste of freedom, and my brothers and I reveled in it. We were like kids in a candy store, suddenly having all these choices in life.
“Eventually, we were hired by another wizard to protect his estate. By then, we’d learned not to spend everything all at once. That’s also where we met Eamon. He’d been ensorcelled too, much like we had been before. But that’s his story to tell.”
We walked over to the couch and sat down; we had a whole hour before the meal was ready.
“I guess it’s the gargoyle equivalent of going wild in college,” I said.
“Humm, yeah. Let’s just say lots of witches wanted to say they had bedded a gargoyle.”
There was that stab of jealousy again, until I saw the hurt on his face.
“But a quick thrill was all I was good for until my brothers and I had finally put away enough in savings for the interest to really start building. Compound interest is a hell of a thing.”
He didn’t need to say anymore; I understood. They went from not wanting him at all to wanting him for the wrong reason.
“I earned the bad-boy moniker because after The Wall fell, I went back out there, trying my luck again. But with the new technology—cameras on every cell phone, social media, all that—I ran into problems I’d never had before.”
“Like that model?”
“Exactly.”
“I guess you’d missed it? The partying?”
“No.”
“Then why go back out there?”
For a moment, he didn’t reply, and I wondered if I should just drop it. Then he said, “I was looking for someone special. But I guess I was looking in the wrong places. I have my brothers, but…” He shrugged.
Oh, my heart. That was so…human. “You didn’t want to be alone.”
“No. But I’m not now. I have you. I want every party to be a private one with you.”
I grinned. “Ooh, smooth.” I knew he’d just said that to be cheesy, but it still made my cheeks glow and my tummy flutter.
He waggled his brows. “Still got it.”
He pulled me over and kissed me affectionately on the forehead, then continued to cuddle me in his huge arms.
