Page 14 of Match Made In Growl

"Holt." She set a whiskey in front of him without being asked. "You look restless."

"I look fantastic, Maeve. As always."

"You look like a man who's trying too hard to seem relaxed." She braced both hands on the bar and studied him with those sharp dark eyes. "What did Kieran do now?"

"Nothing. Can't a man just want a drink and some company?"

"A man, sure. You, specifically, only come here when you're avoiding something." She tapped the bar once. "First one's on the house. After that, you pay like everyone else."

The storm had rolled in about an hour ago, and it had the particular viciousness of a system that wasn't planning to move on anytime soon. Rain hammered the tavern's tin roof in a constant roar, and every time someone opened the front door, wind drove sheets of water across the entryway. The crowd had thickened as people gave up on getting home dry and settled in instead, filling booths and pulling chairs around the firepit.

Criss was two whiskeys in and doing fine. Better than fine. He'd found a spot at the bar with good sightlines to the room, the fire, and the door, and he'd spent the last half hour talking to a pair of fae women who worked at the learning center and laughed at everything he said. One of them had green hair that shifted shades when she moved, and the other kept touching his forearm when she talked, light deliberate contact that was an invitation he'd normally accept without thinking.

He was charming. He was funny. He was exactly where he wanted to be.

And he was bored out of his mind.

The green-haired fae was telling him something about a class she taught on elemental theory, and he was nodding in the right places and making the right sounds, but his attention kept sliding away from her like water off glass. His tiger was restless, that same unfocused alertness that had been plaguing him since the night at the Griddle & Grind, and no amount of whiskey or pretty company seemed to settle it.

He blamed the weather. Storms made shifters edgy. Everyone knew that.

"You're not listening," the green-haired fae said, not unkindly.

"I absolutely am. Elemental theory. Fascinating stuff."

"I stopped talking about elemental theory two minutes ago. I was asking if you wanted to get out of here."

Criss looked at her. She was beautiful, direct, and clearly interested. Six months ago, he would have said yes before she finished the sentence. Three months ago, same. Even three days ago, probably.

"Rain check?" he said, and the surprise on her face almost matched his own.

She shrugged with the easy grace of someone who had other options and left with her friend to find a table closer to the fire. Criss watched them go and took another sip of whiskey, trying to locate the part of his brain that had just turned down an open invitation from an attractive woman and ask it what the hell it thought it was doing.

Maeve materialized in front of him. "Did you just say no to Lina?"

"I said rain check. There's a difference."

"There really isn't." Maeve poured herself a short glass of something dark and leaned against the back counter. "Two months you've been in my bar. I've watched you flirt with everything that moves. And tonight, with a woman who actually wanted to go home with you, you blinked." She took a sip. "Interesting."

"It's not interesting. I'm just not in the mood."

"You're always in the mood. It's your defining characteristic."

Before Criss could respond with something clever enough to deflect, the tavern door swung open and the storm blew in along with the woman who'd been living rent-free in his head for two days.

Stephanie Ward stepped inside looking like she'd walked through a river to get here. Her dark curls were soaked and clinging to her neck and jaw, her canvas jacket darkened with rain, and her boots left wet prints on Maeve's pine-tarred floor. She had a leather bag slung across her body that she held close with one hand, protecting whatever was inside, and her hazel eyes swept the room with the same quick, cataloguing precision he remembered from the café.

She looked exhausted. Mud on her jeans, a smear of something across her left cheek that might have been dirt or might have been clay, and the slightly unfocused expression of someone who'd been working too long and thinking too hard. She also looked, in the amber firelight of the Silver Fang, like the most striking woman Criss had ever seen in his life, and he resented that observation immediately.

She spotted the fire and made a straight line for it, pulling off her jacket as she walked and draping it over the back of an empty chair near the pit. Underneath, she wore a fitted thermal that was damp enough to cling to her frame, and the tool belt was gone.

Maeve followed his gaze. "That's Stephanie Ward."

"I know who she is."

"She's been coming here for years. Good tipper. Doesn't start fights. Unlike some people." Maeve collected his empty glass. "You want another, or are you about to go do something stupid?"

"Both."