Chapter One

Josh

I eyed a flyer bunched in with the rest of the mail. It was a thin piece of poster board—or a thick piece of paper—and it looked as though someone had painstakingly written out their message, in uniform, clear inked lettering. It was a generic message that We buy homes! For top dollar! In your area! Okay, number one, using that many exclamation points convinced me it was one step shy of a scam. And number two⁠—

“Do you think they actually wrote each of these flyers? Manually?” I handed the piece of paper over to Teague, who was sitting on the wood and steel barstool on the other side of the kitchen island.

He gave it a cursory glance, his spade-tipped tail swaying casually behind him, and his stone teeth grinding the hell out of his Mini Wheats. One wouldn’t think a gargoyle needed a high-fiber breakfast, but that would just show how little people knew about gargoyles. Fiber was important for everyone. He licked a stray droplet of milk off one of his protruding lower tusks and shook his head. “No. It’s too consistent.”

I figured he’d know, as a cop. Since we weren’t planning on selling the sprawling, custom-built mansion anytime soon, no matter what ridiculous price we could get, I tossed the flyer into the recycling bin. “Second shift tonight?”

Teague grunted an affirmative.

“I’ll bring your lunch to the station at the regular time.”

His luminous purple eyes narrowed. “You know you don’t need to do that.”

I waved off his protest. It was something I’d started a couple of years after becoming the gargoyles’ caretaker and personal assistant, a role my dad had filled before me. It was what my family had done for centuries. Ever since these men saved my great-great-great-ad-infinitum grandparents from drowning when their ship sank as it was crossing the Atlantic from Europe. You’d think creatures made of stone would not be good life preservers, but you’d be wrong. They were probably in their mostly human form at the time, so…

At any rate, when I found out Teague was surviving primarily on coffee and donuts—way to hold up the stereotype, man—I’d started bringing him a hot, homecooked meal every shift. It wasn’t like it was a hardship. It was a ten-minute drive to the station, and although everyone he worked with thought it was weird at first, I’d noticed that more and more of his colleagues started bringing their own containers of homemade goodness for their lunch breaks. See, I was a trendsetter.

I tossed an envelope with a bill on the “to be paid” pile, and couldn’t hold in a groan at the next bit of mail in my hands.

“What?” Before I registered that Drew, one of Teague’s younger brothers, had joined us, he’d plucked the postcard out of my hand between the claws of his forefinger and thumb. He scanned it, then grinned, showing every one of his pointed teeth. Unlike Teague, Drew didn’t have tusks, but a row of shark-like daggers filling his mouth. His features were more feline, and he also had wings, which, as far as I knew, couldn’t support him in the air—they were for show only. I’d always wondered if he was disappointed in that.

“Your high school reunion is coming up?” he asked incredulously.

 I couldn’t look at him, but instead tidied the piles of mail that didn’t need any tidying. “I’m not going.”

“Why not?” Teague asked around a mouthful of fiber.

Ugh. How could I explain? The brothers had never attended high school—they had zero concept of modern day education except for what they’d watched on TV. Which, to be fair, was both horrible and not horrible enough. Sometimes when someone got bullied, there was no magical glow-up that showed everyone they were wrong, that the person was smart and handsome and worth their attention. And it wasn’t even that I was really bullied. I mean, I’d dated one of the most popular guys in school, and I hadn’t been ugly by any stretch of the imagination. But I just hadn’t fit, probably because I had this huge secret I could never share with anyone. I’d always known there was more to the world than the rest of my classmates even suspected, and that had made me a little weird. My uber-popular high-school boyfriend Brandon made sure I realized, over and over again, that he was doing me a favor by being with me.

“There’s a reason I don’t have any friends from high school.”

Teague grunted.

Drew rolled his eyes at his brother. “They were assholes, huh?”

It never failed to impress me that the gargoyles had so quickly adapted to modern language. For only having been awake for twenty-three years—this time—they’d managed to pick up the lingo pretty well. But I guess they had to be incredibly good at adapting to their circumstances to survive the curse without going mad.

One hundred years asleep, twenty five awake, until they broke the curse. It was some true love nonsense that would do it. Or, well, maybe not nonsense because one of the brothers had managed to break the curse the last time they were awake. According to their youngest surviving brother, Rian—who was probably off researching somewhere this morning—it had been love at first sight for Finnian, when he’d seen Elizabeth walking down the main street of Arrington, British Columbia, when the town was made up of barely more than a tavern, a general store and a warehouse. Despite the era demanding women dress a certain way, Elizabeth had been scandalous in a man’s shirt and trousers, her hair braided down her back, smile wide and eyes sparkling as her father made her laugh. Finnian had fallen head over heels at that moment, and though it had been a rough ride to their happily-ever-after, they’d achieved it and—boom—curse broken.

I knew the brothers were happy he escaped their torment, but their eyes were always a little sad when they spoke of him.

With a sigh, I shrugged. “High school sucked.”

Teague frowned, his pronounced brow wrinkling. “Didn’t you have a boyfriend in high school?”

Of course he’d remember that. I evened out the edges of the stack of mail in front of me. “I did.”

“And he broke up with you.”

I looked up with an exasperated sigh. “Thanks, Teague. Glad you could help me revisit one of the most embarrassing moments of my life.”

Whose boyfriend breaks up with them on prom night? Mine, apparently. Like, at prom. In the middle of the slow dance right after Brandon had been crowned Prom King.

Ugh.

“So that’s why you don’t want to go.” Teague, as always, was way too perceptive.

“Can you blame me?”

Drew tapped the postcard. “It says you can bring a plus-one.”

“You might have noticed that I have a distinct lack of plus-one candidates at the moment.”

One of his wings lifted and flexed, his version of a shrug. “I’ll go.”

I rolled my eyes. “Great. The only thing more embarrassing than going by myself would be to go with one of my bosses.” Gathering up the mail I needed to open and deal with, I waved a hand. “It’s no biggie. I don’t have to go.” Even if, by not going, I felt I was letting all the assholes in my past win.

I wanted nothing more than to show them all I’d succeeded. I mean, not in a Carrie kind of way. More in a you knocked me down, but I got up again sort of way. Maybe I’d even sing Chumbawamba while I was at it. That would definitely secure my reputation.

“What if I pretended to be your boyfriend?”

Drew’s suggestion stopped me in my tracks at the kitchen’s threshold. “If you what?”

He lifted one massive stone hand. “Hear me out.”

I was so stunned by the words coming out of his mouth that I had little choice.

“You do so much for us. You manage the household stuff. You look after the finances, including those of my and Rian’s shops. You keep us on track with our schedules and nudge us when we’re getting too old fashioned. Josh, I’m not kidding when I say we’d be lost without you.”

“It’s my job. Dad did the same thing.”

“Yeah, he did, and I know he cared about us—still does,” he amended quickly. “But it was never in his personality to be a caretaker like you are. You’re driven.”

I swallowed and looked away. I don’t know why Drew’s simple words affected me so hard. Maybe because so few people got that about me? Brandon certainly never had. He’d thought my desire to look after people had been a sign of a lack of ambition—which was why he’d broken up with me. He couldn’t hitch himself to someone who wasn’t permanently striving for the biggest salary. Something he’d apparently realized only after we were at prom.

“So let us do this for you,” Drew continued. “It’s one night, and I’ll bet most of your classmates don’t even live in town anymore, right?”

Yeah, they’d all abandoned Arrington for the glamour of the big city, either Vancouver or Toronto. Some had settled for Calgary. At least, that’s what I knew from Facebook. Not that I stalked their profiles or anything.

Okay, maybe after I’d had too much wine. But that wasn’t often.

He saw me wavering, and continued, his grin widening. “It’s not like we’ll have to reveal that we’re pretending. C’mon. It’ll be fun.”

I couldn’t help picturing Drew, dressed up and standing beside me in his human form. Could I get him into a suit? Probably not—the man had discovered jeans and lived in them when he was in his mostly human skin. But maybe a sports coat? A button-down that was open at the neck? His blond hair slightly mussed as it always was, and his piercing light-blue eyes under his thick, dark brows seemingly looking into people’s souls as they approached. I could picture it too easily, not that I’d ever admit it. I might have spent a little time thinking about Drew as I was growing up. Um, and after I took over from Dad. But I’d quickly shoved all those thoughts aside so I could be what the brothers needed me to be. A professional. The buffer between them and the outside world.

And now he was offering to be the same for me. How could I say no?

I smiled. “Okay, sure. It’s a date.”

He raised a brow, and for a second, I wanted to die. Why had I said that? A date? But his grin only widened. “Bring it on.”

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