WingSpan (Taken on the Wing Book 1) (9 page)

Shadow’s apartment is quiet when she lets them in. Silence is good. If her alarm is sounding it means she’s late. Talon let her sleep while he showered and she figures she’s got a little extra time to get ready for work. As she gets the lights on and tosses her coat and bag on the couch Talon puts their coffees on the table in front of the big TV. They’d each put down a couple of cream cheese filled bagels but she’s still hungry.

“Wow, you’re into this stuff?” Talon’s nose is against the glass of Terry’s cabinet. “DiMaggio?”

“Every piece has a story,” Shadow turns her back because she doesn’t want to see him look. It’s already too much to hear Terry’s voice in her head as she talks about the baseball he’d wanted so much. “1951. Yankees took it in six. It was DiMaggio’s last World Series.”

“Neat,” Talon says as her alarm sounds from the bedroom.

“Shit!” she grabs an apple to eat in the shower. “I’m late!”

“It just went off.”

“To tell me I’m late,” Shadow pulls her clothes off and tosses them aside. At least Talon’s lost interest in the cabinet.

She finishes stripping on her way down the hall and disappears into the bathroom, certain he watched the whole thing. As the shower warms she gets a brush through her hair then stops to stare at the mirror. She barely recognizes the woman in the glass.

When was the last time she remembers actually looking? She still pictures herself thirty pounds overweight and covered in baby fat. Now all that roundness is gone, replaced with strong lean muscle. Who’d have thought a really great body was under all that? And Talon? He was solid as a fucking rock once she got his clothes off him. Now that she’s covered in nothing more than the bracelet she’s aware that Jenn’s body image was far from reality. She’s seen what she looks like but after spending the night appreciating how Talon sees her she accepts it.

The hot water feels good even though it feels like sacrilege to wash Talon from her skin. As she pauses for another bite of the apple she lets the last of the conditioner wash away before she hisses at the sting of the needle-like drops on her tender nipples.

As long as we stay out of the shower I’ll survive another night with him
, she laughs but she’s also sure she doesn’t want to ride a bicycle anytime soon either.

A day of mashing twenties through the bill counter is going to feel like forever with Talon to look forward to. Maybe the next night as well.

Are you sure you’re ready for love?
It’s the shy Jenn voice inside.
How are you going to feel when he leaves? You don’t do so well alone.

Shadow scowls at her reflection, seeing the overweight naïve girl from the past for a moment before she looks away.

“Nobody said anything about love or alone,” she mutters as she clicks on the hairdryer but the idea lingers. If she’s attached then it’s going to hurt when he goes. What if he doesn’t feel the same way and it’s easy for him to get in his truck and drive off?

Her hair is mostly dry when she gets out of the bathroom.

“Jenn?”

“Talon?” she answers. He’s in her kitchen, white lace bra and panties on the counter in front of him.

“Jenn.”

“Mark?” she tries again. The realization that Jenn and Mark are complete strangers hits her hard.

Talon and Shadow are gone. Mark is wrapped in a wall of stone and Jenn is wrapped in a towel.

He chews at his bottom lip to contain a minute tremble and even in the poor light from the living room his eyes are red.

I broke his heart?
Jenn’s stomach rolls.
How did I break his heart?

“I’m sorry,” he starts. Just a brief look at her before he drops his eyes. His long fingers caress the lace bra, smoothing it out and fussing to make it into something else. “I wanted to pick out something for you to wear today; watch you put it on. Our secret. Maybe order in tonight and expose it together. Later we’d talk.

“Probably about nothing other than how great it is to knock boots but eventually I’d tell you I think about you all the time and I can’t leave without knowing when I’m going to see you again.”

He puts his hand between the bra cups, where her heart would be if she had it on then he makes a fist, balling the lace up and dropping it on the panties.

Jenn sags, her shoulder hits the wall and she grabs at it trying to stay up. Fuck, she knows exactly how she broke his heart. As she starts to slide backwards Mark takes her elbows and lowers her to the ground before drawing back like she burned him.

“Your top drawer,” he crouches before her. “That’s where women keep that stuff right? I was just going to go in your top drawer but it’s full of men’s socks. Boxers in the next one.

“I kept going. I’m so…”

Tell him
, Shadow demands but Jenn can’t. She never started to get on with it. She moved in to Terry’s room and shares his closet and pretends she doesn’t need a drink and all of that to keep her brother’s loss away. Shadow isn’t real and even if she was Talon isn’t here to listen and Mark is shutting down before her very eyes because Jenn is a fucking coward. Her mouth is so dry she’d never pry her tongue from the roof to speak.

“There’s nothing of yours in the dresser,” he whispers like he doesn’t trust his voice. She’s killed him inside and she disgusts herself, still trying to feel nothing to keep the grief away. Nothing for Talon, nothing for Terry. It never left; only waited. Mark looks at the bracelet and Jenn is sure he’s going to want it back but instead he stands up and turns away.

“Your underwear is in a plastic tote box in the coat closet. The freezer is full of meat,” Mark walks toward the door. “You don’t eat meat.”

Jenn crumples sideways to the floor as the door quietly snaps shut behind him.

The street in front of Jenn’s apartment is empty except for a lone male gryphon standing on the solid yellow line. Talon pretends not to notice since no human eyes will see his silent observer. Three floors above him Jenn starts crying; a strangled lonely wail that makes him feel like a justified jerk. He’s an idiot thinking that mating and love are the same thing. She loves him, he’s sure, but he’s not the only one and she didn’t bother to hide it.

If she’s half as broken hearted as he is she deserves every empty sob.

Doesn’t matter how genuinely happy she was to see him again. The apartment belongs to a male. Talon’s eyes still burn from the male’s scent but of course he had to stick his nose in the closet for a good whiff either to be certain or to rub it in his own stupid face. He’s not sure which.

Yeah, that’s why they were watering and explains your hitching lungs too.

Screw off.

The driver of a speeding car doesn’t slow his vehicle as he passes, oblivious to the fully shifted gryphon in the middle of the road. Its wake stirs fallen rain into his long black hair and heavy dark brown wings. Soar holds his tail perfectly still to say he means no threat.

Soar, grandson of Master Sky and as much a recluse as Lev, the Royal Sire of the Vancouver Island Eyrie, since he was recruited as Master of Sire Lev’s personal guard squares off with Talon. Jenn’s apartment didn’t smell of Soar so he’s not the other male in her life. Soar wouldn’t share a female anyway. Soar wouldn’t mate with a stranger. Soar wouldn’t let his dick talk him into bonding with the most precious female he’d ever met.

Sure Soar would. He’s as open to a broken heart as the next gryph.

He’s here for something though. Maybe to tell Talon he’s being watched and she’s not as alone as he thinks. Or to give Shadow his best shot, unaware she’s committed to another.

“She’s mine, old friend,” Talon says softly into the breeze, well aware Soar’s hearing clearly catches each word. “Do fifty years of friendship count for nothing?”

Soar mirrors Talon’s impassive expression. If this was about friendship Soar would be straight with him. His silence says he’s under orders to be quiet and the only one who’d give him those orders is the gryph’s Sire, Lev.

Soar stands shirtless, wearing only the rough linen trousers of the eyrie so he’s not dressed for battle yet he doesn’t approach or speak. A screech from above reaches them and Soar’s head snaps up, centering on Shadow deep inside the building. He turns and in a few running steps is airborne. His powerful wings drive him deep into the low cloud.

Chapter Eight

“Dis da las’ one, miss?” Ambrose asks.

Jenn’s fingers smooth and reroll her list of M. Williams.

“Yes,” she sighs. “If this isn’t it I guess I’m going to see Winnipeg for the first time.”

Ambrose’ heavy French-Canadian accent talks about his Maude as the second to last Saskatoon address disappears behind them. The taxi is warm and Jenn’s eyes close, picturing his wife of forty years as young and beautiful. The old man’s reverence for her is overwhelming. Maude is eighteen and pregnant, running off with him to Niagara to elope. Ambrose is much younger, whispering dirty things to her as the Falls thunder in the distance.

Mark whispered to her like that. Minutes pass as her breathing slows and the dark taxi hides the heat in her cheeks. Pain in her hips and bad leg from days seated on buses and in taxis makes sex unthinkable anyway.

Don’t get your hopes up, Jenn. If he wants to see you then take it slow.

The old cab driver laughs. Steadily thickening snow completely covers the road.

“Why you look for dis trucker?”

“We had a misunderstanding,” Jenn explains. The radio squawks and she pauses. “I was too upset about something else to clear it up and he walked out.”

“So you ride da bus to Calgary an Edmonton an Regina an Saskatoon an go to every ‘ouse wit ‘is name jus’ to ‘pologize? Could phone, eh?”

“It was a bad misunderstanding. He deserves better than a phone call.”

Ambrose stretches as they wait for the green light; thick fingers and thin thighs from years of working in a seat. He wears a tie and Jenn figures he’s one of the hardest working men she’s ever met. Two blocks later he turns the cab right onto a nearly invisible side street. Even during the day with a flashing street sign she would have missed it.

“Dis use to be good neighbour’ood,” he nods. “When I bring my family out ‘ere was bad. Workin’ girl an drug dealer, eh. Dey pay, dey ride.”

He takes his hands from the wheel to shrug; shoulders high, palms up. In the past few hours Jenn’s learned the gesture simply means ‘it is what it is.’

“Now even dey move on. Da city even forget dees street.”

This late in the day the good neighbourhoods look the same as the bad as long as you don’t look too closely. The street Ambrose turns left on doesn’t even have a sign. His cab lights illuminate a boarded-up house, its porch sagging under the weight of years of abandonment as they wheel around the corner.

“If dis not it my beautiful wife fix you dinner an’ tuck you in. Take you to da bus tomorrow.”

“That sounds fine,” Jenn agrees.

“Dis your trucker?”

The old guy’s eyes are good. Under a single streetlight three blocks away are two vehicles: one big, the other bigger. Jenn’s eyes strain to see through the snow and she makes out Mark’s rig and in front of it his truck. As they get closer the hood shines like a black eye where latent heat refuses to let the new snow stick.