Page 11

"Honey, you leaned. It's your signature move. I've watched you do it to six different women since you got to town."

"Seven," he corrected, because if his reputation was going to precede him, it should at least be accurate.

Twyla laughed, bright and genuine, and shook her head. "Go home, Criss. Eat something that isn't pastry. And maybe, just maybe, consider the possibility that not every woman in the world is waiting to be charmed by a Holt with good cheekbones."

"Great cheekbones."

"Goodnight, Criss."

He left a tip on the counter that was larger than the bill because Twyla's scones deserved it and because it was the kind of gesture that usually made women smile at him, but Twyla just pocketed it without acknowledgment and went back to wiping down tables. Even the tip couldn't land tonight. The universe was conspiring.

The walk back to Kieran's cabin sped by as Criss spent every moment trying to figure out why this was bothering him. Women turned him down sometimes. Rarely, but it happened. A bartender in Charleston had laughed in his face once, and he'd found it hilarious. A witch in Asheville had told him she'd rather date a mailbox, and he'd bought her a drink for the creativity. Rejection wasn't fatal. It was barely inconvenient. You adjusted your approach, recalibrated the angle, and tried again or moved on. Simple math.

But this one felt oddly personal. And as much as he tried, he wasn’t able to shake it off.

Not the rejection itself, which had been clean and efficient and, if he was being honest, kind of impressive in its precision. It was the way she'd looked at him. Those hazel eyes with their gold flecks had swept over him and catalogued him in about three seconds flat, and what they'd catalogued was: not worth the time. Not mean about it. Not cruel. Just factual, the way someone might note that a particular rock formation wasn't relevant to their research and move on to the next sample.

She'd filed him under unremarkable. Him. Criss Holt, who had once made a woman forget her own name in a coat closet in Savannah and who had been told by multiple reliable sources that he was, quote, “dangerously attractive”.

His tiger rumbled low in his chest, not angry, just unsettled. The animal didn't like loose ends, and this woman was a loose end, a voice that had cut through his charm like it was made of tissue paper.

Kieran was on the cabin porch when Criss came up the trail, because of course he was. His cousin sat in the wooden chair he'd built himself, a mug balanced on his knee and his phone face-down beside him, looking out at the woods with the patient stillness of a man who could sit in one spot for three hours and call it productive.

"You're back early," Kieran said.

"Wasn't much going on." Criss took the porch steps two at a time and dropped into the opposite chair. The night air was cool and clean, and the crickets had started up in the trees. Somewhere across the valley, a nightbird called and another answered.

"How was the Griddle?"

"Twyla's pastries are still unrealistically good and her personality is still unbearably loud."

Kieran's eyes drifted to him with that quiet, assessing look. "You smell different."

Criss went still. "I smell like coffee and galette."

"Under that."

"Cedar soap."

"Under that."

"I'm not doing this, Kieran."

His cousin took a slow sip from his mug, expression unreadable. As a mated shifter, Kieran's senses were sharper than most, tuned by the bond in ways that Criss found invasive and obnoxious. The man could probably smell what Criss had for breakfast three days ago, and right now he was clearly picking up on whatever trace of that woman had followed Criss home like a stray.

"I met someone at the Griddle," Criss said, because not saying it would make it a bigger deal than it was. "Archaeologist. She shut me down. End of story."

"Shut you down." Kieran repeated slowly.

"It happens."

"When?"

"Occasionally."

"Name one time."

"Charleston. The bartender."