Page 3 of The Claiming of the Shrew (Fated Mountain Lodge #4)

FAWKES

“.... you said what to her?”

“Told her she isn’t my mate,” Fawkes said between his teeth. “At least that’s what it sounded like she was starting to say.”

The phone was tucked in the crook of his shoulder while he finished getting his kit together.

Outside the window, dusk was purpling the sky and the lights of campsites dotted the woods.

He had managed to dodge the mysterious, beautiful woman all afternoon, though he was aware she had been asking questions about him.

Way to keep a low profile.

“So you actually met your mate, or a woman you think is your mate, which some shifters go through their whole lives without experiencing. And then you told her you’re not her mate and fled. Yeah, that sounds like you.”

“I can’t believe I told you ,” Fawkes muttered. “Except that it’s relevant to the job, and?—”

“And you needed to share your stupidity.” The voice of his partner was suffused with suppressed laughter. “I agree, you definitely did need to share it. I’ll be laughing about this for days.”

“Shut it, Sam.”

Sam shut it, at least long enough for Fawkes to put the phone down and squirm into a black turtleneck. He picked up his phone again. “Still there?”

“Yes, though I was starting to wonder if you were. You’re going out?”

“Yeah. Working.” Fawkes zipped up his mini work kit and put it in his pocket. “In fact, I’m off.”

“Wait, do you want to hear my advice about—Fawkes, dammit?—”

“Can’t hear you, reception’s terrible here.” It was technically true; the call had been breaking up and had already dropped once.

“If she really is your mate, Fawkes, she’s more important than the job or anything else. You know that, right?”

“I’m not completely positive she’s my mate,” Fawkes said. It was true; he didn’t know exactly what it would feel like. How could he? “Why would I have told her she’s not if she is?”

“Because you’re an idiot who plays the suave James Bond card but in fact I have seen you, at a pool party, drop a pineapple full of a tropical drink and tiny umbrellas on your foot just because a pretty woman said hi to you.”

“Okay, first of all, that was once , and I was surprised, and it wouldn’t have been as painful if I’d been wearing shoes. Do you know what a pineapple on top of flip-flops feels like?”

“Aren’t you off to sneak into places you’re not supposed to be?”

“Yes,” Fawkes said. “Yes, I am doing that.”

“Check back in when you’re done.”

“Yes, Mother.”

Sam snorted. “This is more to make sure I don’t have to bail you out of jail.”

“You can’t see it, but I’m flipping you off right now.”

Sam laughed and hung up.

Fawkes silenced the phone and then, on second thought, decided to leave it behind.

He pulled on black gloves, matching the rest of his all-black sneaking-around ensemble, and went to the door.

The lodge had fallen quiet for the evening, now that the last few guests had come and gone from the tail end of the dinner service.

After listening for a second against the closed door, he pulled it open.

Pressed to the door on the other side, the pretty girl from the parking lot nearly fell into the room. Fawkes moved to catch her, but she stabilized herself before he could slap a hand onto her bosom. Whether this was good or bad, he couldn’t quite figure out.

“Why are you standing outside my door?” Fawkes asked. He became aware that she was hastily stuffing something back into her giant purse.

“Why are you dressed like you’re about to go burgle something?” she replied sweetly.

Because he was, more or less. Fawkes, as appeared to be usual around her, said the first thing that jumped into his head.

“This is how I dress for walks at night. Because I like to do that. Go for walks. I have insomnia. And this way I blend. With the night,” he added, while telling himself shut up shut up shut up.

The vision of loveliness narrowed her beautiful green-flecked eyes suspiciously at him. “You’re going for a walk.”

“At night. It’s a thing I do.” Technically true, he supposed. The lock picks felt like they were burning a hole in his pocket.

“I like going for walks too,” said the vision brightly. “I’ll come with you.”

This was simultaneously wonderful—because she was going for a walk with him!

—and terrible, because first of all he could feel all the evening’s opportunities slipping through his fingers, and second, the way things had been going so far, he would probably give her a dozen reasons to be suspicious of him inside the first five minutes.

Having her at his side might be worth it, though.

“Oh. Well—okay.” Nerving himself after that resounding example of suave small talk, he asked, “Do you have a name?” And then could have drop-kicked himself into the next hotel room.

He was definitely no James Bond. At the moment, it seemed, he was barely capable of being Barney Fife.

“I ... do,” said the vision. “I do have a name. It’s Leah. Do you have a name?”

“Yes. Fawkes. Like Guy Fawkes,” he added, because like anyone else with a hard-to-spell name, he’d developed a reflexive instinct for over-explanation early in life.

“I know,” Leah said.

“You do? How?”

To his surprise, she blushed very fetchingly. “Never mind that. Weren’t we going for a walk?”

“Yes, we were.”

Fawkes started to offer her his arm, which she ignored.

But as she turned to come with him, he abruptly noticed that she was on crutches.

Had she been on crutches through the entire conversation?

Probably, unless she had conjured them from a pocket dimension.

But she hadn’t been on crutches earlier—had she?

He had been completely captivated by her eyes, the most striking shade of brown-green that he’d ever seen, and her face, and her everything.

Maybe she had tripped between then and now.

“What did you do to your foot?” he asked.

Leah looked genuinely baffled. “What?”

“Your foot. You know.” She couldn’t have literally forgotten she was on crutches, could she? That seemed like a thing that would be hard to forget. “Did you break it?”

“My—oh.” She looked surprised, slightly annoyed, and still a little confused.

“No—Fawkes, it’s—look.” She turned and crossed one of her legs in front of the other one, at which point Fawkes abruptly realized that her legs weren’t merely slim, as he’d assumed, but wasted.

They twisted around each other like the branches of a tree, and when she shifted her hips so her pelvis was level, aside from distracting him completely for a couple of seconds ( oh no, don’t think about her pelvis ), he saw that the toes of her right foot barely touched the ground.

Also, she was wearing eye-searingly bright pink and white sneakers.

“Sorry,” he said quickly. “I didn’t mean to—uh—pry. I just didn’t notice all of that earlier.”

“You didn’t notice?” Leah said, staring at him. “It’s usually the first thing people notice about me.”

“Yeah, no, I was—distracted.” By her face, he didn’t want to say, and also by the swell of her small but perfectly formed bosom under her pleasingly form-fitting sweater, which he really didn’t want to say.

And also by his animal clamoring hold her clutch her carry her back to our den!! in his head, which it was doing again now.

“You must have been,” Leah muttered. She took off down the hallway in a rapid, slightly corkscrewing walk.

It looked inefficient, but she was at least as fast as a regular walking person, even a regular walking person taller than her.

By the time they reached the top of the stairs, Fawkes was glad he was in pretty decent shape.

He was also starting to feel self-conscious about going down the wide front staircase in his obvious sneaking-around gear.

“Are you sure we have to go this way?” he asked. “What about a side door?”

Leah gave him an arch look. “Ashamed to be seen with me?”

“What? No! Of course not. I just don’t want awkward questions—do you?”

“You know, you’re right. My sister might be down there.” She grabbed him by the elbow, reoriented him down the hall, and slid her hand back onto the grip of her crutch, so fast it was almost unnoticeable. “There’s an emergency stairwell back here.”

Fawkes knew that, because he had a habit of observing all the exits from a place and had been planning on using it before he ran into her. However, he allowed himself to be led. There was something both charming and a bit intimidating about being caught up in her whirlwind.

Now that he was aware of the crutches, he wondered how she was going to navigate the stairs, which were steep and concrete.

The answer turned out to be with one hand on the railing, the crutch dangling from the forearm loop, and the other crutch on the stairs.

And she was fast . She went three steps at a time, in a sort of tilted-forward falling kind of way that Fawkes suspected was about one wrong step away from disaster at all times.

Then again, so were most people on stairs.

At the bottom, Leah let them out into the night.

Although it was late spring, they were high enough in the mountains that there was a cool undertone to the air that promised to be downright chilly by morning.

There were lights on the walk along the side of the lodge, and beyond that, the smothering true darkness of a forest at night.

Dew glistened on the grass under the lights.

“Are you camping out with the other theater people?” Fawkes asked.

“I don’t really think it’s any of your business, but yes I am.”

“I just—wanted to make sure you were warm enough.”

Leah gave him a look.

“I was not volunteering,” he said hastily, but a very badly timed surge of honesty compelled him to add, “Unless you want me to.”

Okay, this conversation wasn’t merely going to make her suspicious, it was going to result in Leah pushing him into a thorn bush and taking off at maximum crutch speed.