Page 9 of Match Made In Growl

Steph bit into the scone and nearly closed her eyes. It was perfect. Warm, crumbly, lavender-scented, with a thin glaze. "This is unfairly good."

"Everything I make is unfairly good. It's my gift and my burden." Twyla refilled her tea without being asked. "Now, tell me about this dig. Diana said something about old wards and stone patterns?"

Steph leaned forward, and for the next ten minutes she talked about the site with the kind of energy she usually reserved for conference presentations. The layered magic, the storm revealing carved patterns in the limestone, the feeling of something enormous and deliberate buried beneath decades of silence. Twyla listened with her chin in her hand and her eyes sharp, asking the occasional question that proved she understood more about magical archaeology than a café owner had any right to.

"You're excited," Twyla said when Steph finally paused for breath.

"I'm interested."

"Honey, you're glowing. I haven't seen you like this since that lecture you gave on pre-Veil settlement patterns. You talked for two hours and nobody left." Twyla grinned. "This dig is going to be something special. I can feel it."

"Since when do you have precognitive abilities?"

"Since always. I just call it intuition because it's less intimidating." Twyla glanced past Steph's shoulder, anger expression turned brighter with a spark of mischief that Steph had learned to recognize as dangerous. "Speaking of something special."

"No."

"I didn't say anything."

"You made a face. The face always precedes something I don't want to hear."

"I was just going to mention that Kieran Holt's cousin has been in town for a couple of months, and he happens to be sitting about twelve feet behind you looking at you like you're the most interesting thing that's happened to him since he arrived."

Steph did not turn around. "I'm not interested."

"I didn't say you should be interested. I said he's looking."

"Good for him. He can look all he wants."

Twyla's grin widened in a way that meant this conversation was far from over, but before she could say whatever terrible thing was forming behind those bright-flecked eyes, a voice came from directly behind Steph's left shoulder.

"I'm going to take a wild guess that you're not from around here."

Steph turned on her stool, slowly, and looked up into a face that was, objectively and annoyingly, exactly as good-looking as Twyla's expression had promised. Golden-brown hair that caught the café light, amber eyes with a lazy confidence behind them, a jaw that could have been carved by someone who specialized in jaw-carving, and a smile that had clearly opened a lot of doors and an equal number of bedrooms. He was tall, lean through the hips but broad enough through the chest and shoulders that the dark shirt he wore was earning its keep. He stood with the easy, loose-limbed posture of a man who had never once doubted his welcome anywhere.

"Wrong," she said.

The smile didn't falter, but it recalibrated. "Wrong?"

"I've been coming to Hollow Oak for years. But I appreciate the effort." She turned back to her tea.

The silence that followed was her hope that the conversation was over. But, seeing the confidence in his posture and voice, she knew it was only hope.

He stepped forward and leaned one elbow on the counter beside her, smooth enough to look casual but close enough that she could feel the warmth radiating off him. Tiger shifter. She could tell from the way he moved, that predatory economy of motion wrapped in deliberate charm.

"Then I should probably introduce myself, since you've been coming here for years and we haven't met. Criss Holt."

"I know who the Holts are."

"Then you've got me at a disadvantage."

She picked up her scone, took a bite, and chewed before answering. "Somehow I doubt that."

Twyla made a sound behind the counter that was suspiciously close to a laugh being swallowed.

Criss leaned in slightly, and up close those amber eyes had a heat to them that she suspected worked on most women. She could feel the pull of it herself, a low magnetic tug that her body registered even as her brain filed it under absolutely not. "Can I buy you a coffee? Or something stronger? Twyla keeps the good stuff behind the counter for people she likes."

"I have tea." Steph met his eyes directly. "And I'm not here for coffee, conversation, or whatever it is you're about to suggest with that look on your face. I'm here to work. So unless you have something relevant to say about pre-Veil archaeological methodology, this is where the introduction ends."