A scant moment later, the lock twisted of its own accord, the door opened again, and Griffin stepped inside.
Sofia sighed. Gargoyles and their annoying magic. Penelope was starting to show signs of being able to create magic, although so far, she’d not experienced any sort of shifting capabilities. Sofia had no idea if that was normal, since she knew precious little about gargoyles. All she knew was that they were great in bed and they left you with their unwanted offspring when they were done.
“I want to see her,” Griffin demanded. He kicked off his shoes, dropped his bag by the front door, and moved deeper into the house.
Bringing an overnight bag was damned presumptuous of the man.
“Why now? Why are you back, four years later?”
He dragged his hand through his thick hair, setting it to standing on end. He looked like he had after their first round of rather energetic sex. Incredibly hot. Hot enough that she’d dived in for round two.
And three.
Ugh.
“I should probably explain a few things to you,” he said, taking in her tiny abode and probably finding it lacking. Well, too bad; it was hard to survive when one was ostracized from one’s colony and unexpectedly left to raise a helpless child, alone.
Sofia decided to go with honesty. Maybe it would convince him to leave. “You know, if you’d shown up six months later, maybe even up to a year, I would have been willing to hear you out. But that child has been fatherless for four years now, and I am not interested in rocking her world just because you suddenly decided to man up. You should never have left her, and as far as I’m concerned, you have no rights to her whatsoever any longer.”
He raked his hand through his hair again. She really wished he’d stop doing that.
“One thing I should have told you back then was that she isn’t mine.”
Chapter Three
Sofia staggered backward until her heels bumped into the couch, and then she dropped onto the cushion, her arms waving and bouncing like she was on a roller coaster.
She would no doubt agree that it was an accurate analogy.
Giving her a few minutes to absorb the little detail he should have mentioned four years ago, Griffin went to the kitchen. Hopefully, she had something with more of a kick than water.
Like the living room, this area was small and dated. The floor was linoleum, the counters were chipped Formica, and the cabinets were boring oak straight out of the 1990s. It was clean, though, and she’d added little touches, like red kitchen towels and a red-and-black abstract painting on the wall.
He spotted a bottle of Malibu rum on top of the fridge. A tug on the refrigerator door offered up both cranberry and pineapple juice. Sofia had a sweet tooth, eh? Saccharine concoctions weren’t his first choice, but this moment called for making her happy, so he set about mixing two stiff and sugary drinks.
When he returned to the living room, she sat as still as a statue on the sofa. He pressed a lowball glass into her hand, and she blinked like she was coming out of a daze. Staring at the hazy pink liquid, she said, “Did you just tell me she isn’t yours?”
Sipping and then wincing— damn, it was as cloying as he was afraid it would be—he carefully sat down in a chair perpendicular to the couch.
“Yes.”
She took a gulp of her drink. “Then who’s is she? And why did you leave her with me? And what were you doing with her in the first place? Where are her parents? Did they know you had her? How did you explain when you didn’t return with her? Oh gods, I’ve been raising a kidnapped child.” She took another slug.
“That was a lot of questions, so bear with me. First, you are not raising a kidnapped child, so you can relax.”
“What? Her parents are as heartless as you and didn’t want her?”
“Ouch.” He grimaced. “I suppose I deserve that for not telling you about her in the first place.”
“Also for leaving her with me with no explanation. Oh yeah, and for sleeping with me and disappearing, also without an explanation.”
“You should know that I thoroughly enjoyed our time together.”
“Nope, I didn’t need to know. And I don’t care.”
He nodded, not surprised by her reaction. “Admittedly, I acted like a coward.”
“You sure did.”
He sighed. “Her parents are dead. If I hadn’t brought her here, she would have ended up in the human foster system, and I could not do that to her.” There was no way in hell he was letting baby Penelope be raised the way he had been.
“Did you kill them?”
He was a freaking gargoyle. Even in the heat of battle their first instinct was to protect, not kill. Although given what little she knew about the situation and the fact that she was a dragon and their species definitely had no qualms about destroying others, he supposed it was a valid one. “No. Well, not directly.”
“That’s reassuring.”
He stood and carded his hair with one hand while lifting his drink to his lips with the other. Too sweet or not, he needed the calming effect of the rum in his system.
“Penelope’s father paid me to protect them, but I failed. The only one I managed to keep alive was Penelope. I brought her here because I was desperate and had heard there was a brethren of gargoyles who are the baddest asses in the entire world. I figured this was where she’d be safest. Except when I got here, I panicked. I didn’t think Oliver—he’s the leader of the gargoyles in New Orleans—would be willing to
