Page 6 of Let Go My Gargoyle
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 take on an infant. I figured he’d drop her at a human hospital or something, and I refused to let her be raised that way.”
“And you thought somehow that I’d be a better choice?”
“Well…yes.”
They’d met purely by chance. He had been standing outside the City of the Dead—much like earlier this evening—cradling the babe in his arms, trying to talk himself into walking through the gates and handing her over to Oliver. Sofia had been walking by, noticed him, and paused to compliment the beautiful, sleeping infant with her thatch of red hair sticking up every which way. He’d admitted he had no clue what he was doing, and she laughed and said he’d figure it out, most parents did.
He hadn’t corrected her assumption.
They chatted some more, he made it clear that he was single and she did too, and they’d ended up at her apartment eventually, where together they fed the baby, changed her diaper, and used an open suitcase as a makeshift bed. Then they’d spent the rest of the evening getting to know one another on an intimate level, until he snuck out shortly before dawn.
He’d sensed something in Sophia that night. A purity that was far too uncommon in today’s world. He’d known without asking that she would adopt the child, raise her to be as honest and sweet as she herself was.
“So what is she?”
He arched his brow, and Sofia flapped her hand.
