Page 10 of Outside the Veil (Endangered Fae #1)

Nonsense. He wasn’t lovesick for any human. Never again. Diego was lovely and it would have been wonderful to seduce him. He was certainly grateful for all the man had done, could even call him a friend, but he wasn’t becoming attached to him.

Diego spotted them while the woman helped Finn into a chair. The profound relief in those loam-dark eyes, the way he hurried over as if Finn were the most important thing in the universe—

Oh, blast. Perhaps the pretty woman was right. He wasn’t so na?ve that he didn’t recognize the signs of rescuer infatuation. The warmth of it had spread through him when Diego’s gentle hands had caressed the filth from him under the little waterfall in the bathroom.

But by now, gods help him, it was more than that.

“Everything all right?” Diego glanced between him and the woman.

“He says he forgot his inhaler.”

For an eye-blink, Diego stared. Then he threw up his hands in a credible show of exasperation. “ Ay, dios! How many times do we have to go through this?”

Good man. Finn hung his head in his best imitation of remorse. “I’m sorry.” He fought to hold off the impending coughing fit until the woman went away. The last thing he wanted to hear again was the word ‘doctor’.

“You boys aren’t going to make me call in a medical emergency, are you? I hate all the damn paperwork.”

Diego put a hand on Finn’s shoulder. “No, ma’am. He just needs to rest and then I’ll get him home.”

As soon as she walked out of earshot, Finn doubled over his knees to muffle the barking coughs that threatened to shred his lungs. Diego sat down beside him to rub his back.

“This was a stupid idea. I’m sorry. You just looked so much better this morning.”

Finn closed his fist on the air to cut off Diego’s self-flagellation. “I’ll live. Don’t fret.”

“I don’t think I want to take you back on the subway, though, when you can barely walk.” Diego was silent for a moment. “Could you shift to something smaller? Not here in front of everyone. But something I could carry. Like a mouse?”

Finn leaned back in the chair. “It takes a good deal more effort…to become something so much smaller. The excess mass…has to go somewhere, you know.”

“No, I didn’t. I suppose I never gave the mechanics of magic much thought.” Diego chewed his bottom lip in that endearing expression he had when he thought hard. “How much smaller could you become? Without too much effort?”

“Oh, say, a terrier-sized dog. A weasel, perhaps.”

Diego nodded and patted his knee. “Wait here a sec.”

The sight of that shapely backside walking away was almost enough to distract him from the pain.

A thousand and three ways to conquer Diego’s reluctance had crossed his mind.

His concern, his empathy, his need to help those in pain all made him an absurdly easy mark, but the thought left a sour taste.

He wanted Diego willing and aching for him, not out of a sense of obligation or pity.

On the other hand, hang it all, I haven’t had sex in seven hundred years.

It didn’t help that the pedestal directly in front of him held a statue of a faun cavorting with a woman, her luscious body pressed between his furry thighs. He closed his eyes and thought hard about frozen lakes. With a freezing rain falling. And his balls trapped in the ice. That did it.

He pulled a second chair close and curled up across them to wait.

Diego hurried back with the shopping bag he’d wheedled out of the girl behind the gift shop counter. His pulse lurched when he spotted Finn, apparently asleep or passed out.

“Oh, gawd, there’s bag people even in here?” a nasal female voice whined on his left.

Diego risked a glance over at the trio of young women who had stopped to stare at Finn.

The one with streaked hair giggled. “He looks more like a refugee from Fashion Week.”

“Homeless designers, right? Like, ohmigod, you can’t live in that box. It’s not Perrier!” They collapsed against each other in gales of laughter.

“Excuse me.” Diego made a point of walking through them to Finn and shook his shoulder gently. “Time to wake up. I know you don’t feel well so let’s get you home.”

Finn blinked, his look seeming to ask why he was saying such idiotically obvious things. But with a glance at the girls and back at Diego, his expression hardened.

When Finn sat up and the girls began to walk off, a chair leaped out of line directly into one girl’s shin. She stumbled into the others and they all tumbled in a heap of shrieks and flailing limbs. Finn’s grim smile told Diego all he needed to know.

“That wasn’t very nice.” He took Finn’s arm to help him up.

“They’re nasty little bits. And they were upsetting you.”

“Still, you can’t go around…” Diego shook his head and led him off to the nearest bathroom. “If I’m really upset, I’ll take care of it myself, okay? Please don’t think you have to fight my battles for me.”

Finn fell silent except for his wheezing.

Offended , Diego thought. A check to make certain the bathroom was empty, and he pulled Finn into the handicapped stall.

He helped Finn out of his clothes, praying for a moment’s privacy.

Two sets of feet visible under the door, one shod and the other bare, would look bad.

“Can you manage?” he whispered as he folded Finn’s clothes into a neat bundle and shoved them into the bag with the sneakers on the bottom.

Finn heaved a hitching breath, closed his eyes and melted. Diego looked down. A black ferret lay on the tiles at his feet.

“Don’t ask me to get up. I can’t,” the ferret muttered in Finn’s voice.

A twinge of anxiety fluttered in Diego’s stomach. Ferrets tended to be nippy. “Please don’t bite me.”

The absence of any smart-ass rejoinders to this told him how bad off Finn was. He gathered the soft-furred body up in both hands and eased him into the bag atop the clothes. “I’ll try not to jostle you too much.”

The ferret grunted and curled into a ball, his head vanishing under his body.

All the way home, an itch lodged between Diego’s shoulders.

An unreasoning fear gripped him that some over-zealous security guard would call out, “Hold up, sir. Let’s see what’s in the bag.

” Not that transporting ferrets was illegal, but he’d have to concoct some explanation about not wanting to leave his pet at home.

Lying convincingly wasn’t one of his strong suits.

He breathed easier when he closed the apartment door.

Finn lay limp and unmoving when he lifted him out. He gathered the furred body close to his chest. “I’m so sorry.”

“Not that I want to discourage your embraces,” Ferret-Finn whispered. “But could you put me in the bath?”

Diego slid him into the water and held him, fingers tingling, until he shifted into a fish. Bass, grouper, trout, he had no idea what sort but one that looked comfortable lounging in a bath at any rate.

He’d banished the thought of handing Finn over to any agency, certain he would end up in some formaldehyde tank in Area 51, after being thoroughly interrogated, sampled, tormented and dissected, of course.

Later, when he settled Finn on the sofa with his bottled water and bananas, a plan began to percolate. He showed Finn how to operate the TV remote with cautionary statements about how little of what the picture box showed was real.

“Like a play?”

“Yes, exactly like.” Diego thanked the heavens that he understood the concept of drama. “I’m going out for a bit. Please don’t go anywhere.”

Finn nodded in a distracted way, his head cocked to one side as he watched Teletubbies bouncing across the screen.

Diego went first to deliver his articles due at various local magazines, then called Miriam to see if she had a few minutes for him and left a message on Mitch’s voicemail.

“I’ll be at Café Lucca by two. Should be there for about an hour if you still want to talk.”

He had to stop and sit on a bench when he closed the phone, his heart slammed so hard against his breastbone. Why did I do that? I’m too keyed up to see him today.

But to call Mitch back and cancel would make him look ridiculous. What was he hoping for, though? Reconciliation? An apology? One of those scenes where he could say the things he longed to and feel vindicated?

A black pigeon landed on the bench next to him, startling him out of his ruminations. “Finn?”

The pigeon paid no attention to him, pecked at a few crumbs and fluttered away. He supposed it was asking too much to expect a regular pigeon to answer him.

The view from Miriam’s office, perched high above Fifth Avenue, always made him dizzy. She moved the chair around to face the inside wall for him.

“What’s up, kiddo? You have something brilliant to tell me?” Miriam’s chair squealed in protest as she plopped back down, thick calves tucked back.

“No, sorry. It’s more along the lines of a favor. About your cabin—”

“You changed your mind! Good boy.”

“Well, no, it’s not for me, exactly. It’s for a friend.”

Miriam sat back to another chorus of metallic squeaks. Her sharp gray eyes pinned him fast. “A friend.”

“Yes, um.” Diego lost the battle against squirming. “He’s not doing well in the city. Has some respiratory issues. I think the air is slowly killing him.”

“Is he hot?”

“Miriam, for God’s sake.”

She shrugged. “You are the most inhibited gay man I’ve ever met. I was just asking.”

“But it’s not relevant.” Diego closed his eyes a moment. “I just wanted to know if you’d take him with you the next time you head up that way.”

“Then his looks are relevant. It’s a long drive. I’m not ferrying anyone, friend of yours or not, if he’s ugly.”

“He’s not.”

“So why don’t you take him yourself?”

“My car would never make it.”

“So we rent you one.”

“I’ll get lost.”

“You call me if you do.”

“And I don’t want to leave the apartment standing empty.”

“Mrs. Montoya will watch it for you.”

“But I’d feel so out of place in the country.”

“Just take your new hunk and go. Can’t beat the privacy.”

“What if I have a seizure?”

“You said they’re under control.”

“Yes, but—”