“I’ll never forget the time she backed you up against the refrigerator and told you that you were, too, going to have the condom talk with your mother, or you were never going to go on a date as long as you lived under her roof,” he told his brother.
Liam threw back his head and laughed. “Oh, man, I thought I was going to die. My face was still purple by the time she finished and I escaped to my room. ‘You are responsible for your actions, Liam, and if I ever find out you’re having unprotected sex, I’ll beat your arse all the way down the street.’”
“She had the exact same conversation with me,” Sean confided, shuddering. “That talk scared me out of the backseat of more than one car, let me tell you.”
“Exactly as she planned. She had the same talk with Blake, Oscar, and Yeats, too, believe me,” Liam said, his gaze trained on a pair of small boys riding their bikes at the end of the street. “Seems like not long ago, that was us.”
Sean turned to watch the boys. It was less painful than staring at his childhood home and wondering how long his mother would still be able to live there. “And now we’re all grown up.”
“No wives or kids, though,” Liam said darkly, kicking a stone off the sidewalk toward the street. It thudded softly when it hit a tire on Sean’s car and bounced back. “Trust me, she brought that up, too.”
Sean’s mouth fell open. “She what?”
“She wants us to get married. All of us. Soon. Doesn’t want us to be alone.”
For some reason, the image of Brynn’s face as she’d enjoyed her pancakes flashed into Sean’s mind, but he pushed it away. She was obviously a complicated woman. The last thing he needed in his life was more complication.
“If she wanted grandchildren, she shouldn’t have married a fire demon,” Sean growled. “I never want to pass this heritage on, and I can’t imagine any of us feel any differently.”
Liam shrugged. “We managed to have a pretty damn happy childhood.”
Sean, who’d started to head for his car, whirled to stare at his brother. “Yeah, until Dad flamed on when that drugged-up wannabe burglar broke into the house.”
The druggie hadn’t been alone, and his accomplice—who’d also been on drugs and who’d been scared to death by the sight of a fiery demon blazing brighter than the noontime sun over the Summerlands—had been carrying a gun.
Sean and his brothers had called 911 and used the fire extinguisher to put out the blaze while their mother kept pressure on Dad’s wound, but it had been too little, too late. Their father had died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, leaving Mom to run a pub and raise five boys on her own.
“I’m never going to subject a woman to anything like that.”
When Liam didn’t reply, Sean shrugged and headed for his car. “I’ve got to get some sleep. I’ll check on Mom this afternoon.”
“It would have to be the right woman,” Liam said, so quietly that anybody without fire demon hearing would never have heard it.
Sean paused, but this time he didn’t look back. They’d been down that road before, and he was surprised that Liam, of all of them, had even a glimmer of hope left.
“There is no such woman.”
FIVE
After six hours of sleep and a quick lunch at a neighboring deli, Brynn opened her tiny shop and looked around, smiling. Scruffy’s Pet Spa wasn’t much of a business, but it was all hers. She tailored her hours to fit her late nights, and she wouldn’t take a pet twice if the owner was a pain in the butt. The animals were never a problem for her, even though she’d once worried that dominant or aggressive dogs and cats would try to push her around, somehow sensing her inner swan.
Swans weren’t exactly predators, after all.
Instead, it was as if they recognized a kindred animal spirit or were able to understand that she only wanted to help them. In five years of running the grooming salon, she’d only been attacked once, and afterward the vet had discovered a tumor the size of a lemon in the dog’s brain. Poor guy hadn’t been able to help his fear and aggression. She’d always have the scar on her left arm, but at least the experience hadn’t left her traumatized.
Brynn, of all people, understood the dog’s plight. There’d been a time when she, too, had been afraid and angry due to events beyond her control. She was never able to think back to her first several nights as a swan without shuddering.
Pushing the memory aside, she focused on preparing for her workday. She moved about in her usual routine, checking her tools, restocking her inventory of dog treats inside the glass case from the fresh shipment, and getting the cash box out of the small safe. Her cleaning service had done a terrific job as always. A brother-and-sister Fae team ran the cleaning business, and she had engaged their services on the barter system. The two Fae owned four excitable Dalmatians, and the dogs wouldn’t let anyone but Brynn, whom they adored, give them baths. In turn, Brynn always got a kick out of seeing the haughty Fae brought low by a quartet of canines.
As she prepped for the hundred-pound golden retriever mix scheduled to arrive soon, she caught herself humming. She froze, automatically glancing at the giant red clock on the wall, and was shocked to realize that she’d spent at least five minutes rearranging the same three brushes on the table.
Sean.
He’d invaded her fountain, her solitude, and her dreams. She couldn’t even remember the last time she’d had so much fun doing something as ordinary as eating breakfast, and the tingle of sexual attraction had added a zing to every minute. If only she could be normal for once, then maybe . . .
Maybe nothing. Maybes and if onlys were for fools. She could never have a man like Sean O’Malley, and she shouldn’t even want him. She’d promised herself that she’d never fall in love, never take the chance of getting pregnant and subjecting another generation—her own daughter—to the curse of the black swan.
The bell over the door rang, and Brynn flashed her biggest smile to welcome tiny old Mrs. Mastroianni and her dog. Peaches, as far as Brynn could figure out, was golden retriever crossed with moose. The friendly dog easily outweighed his owner, and could have pulled Mrs. Mastroianni across town—or carried her on his back, if he’d wanted to do it. But he was extraordinarily gentle with his tiny owner and saved all his boisterousness for the Bordertown dog park.
“Let’s trim his fur this time, dear,” Mrs. M. said, patting her dog’s shoulder without needing to lean down even a little. “And please use that apple-scented conditioner that leaves his coat so shiny. He’s looking a little scruffy.”
Brynn smiled, knowing her line. “Then he’s in the right place, isn’t he? We’re here for all the dogs who don’t want to be scruffy anymore.”
Mrs. M. chuckled, as she always did, and toddled off to meet “the girls” for tea and gossip. As Brynn watched her go, a trace of worry shadowed her mood. Her favorite client was walking just a little bit slower than usual. A little bit stiffer.
“But she’ll outlive us all, won’t she, Peaches?” Brynn ruffled the silky fur behind the dog’s ears, and Peaches, who never seemed to mind his silly name in the slightest, grinned his happy openmouthed doggy smile up at her as if agreeing.
Four hours later, Brynn, tired but content, swept up dog hair and disinfected the grooming table. In addition to Peaches, she’d bathed and groomed a pair of huskies, a chunky little pug who hated to have his nails trimmed, and a young wolverine who’d fallen into a vat of pickles. It had taken three shampoo-rinse-repeats with her special herbal shampoo for Brynn to remove the pungent aroma, and the faint scent of dill still infused the air.