Free Heart of Stone by Christine Warren

you ever find yourself without that possessive boyfriend, you should also call. I’d love the chance to take you to dinner sometime.”
    Shock made her do a double take. The police officer was flirting with her? That meant he’d believed her story and she wasn’t a suspect, right?
    “I—um—I mean, thank you.”
    McQuaid released the card and reached around her to open the door to the small office. “Thank you, Ella. If you wouldn’t mind, ask Dr. Lefavreau to come up next. I want to clarify a few things about the statue with him.”
    She agreed and stepped outside, trying not to appear to hurry. On a normal day, she would have wanted to dash to Bea’s side for a little girl talk about the attractive cop who’d asked her to call him. Personally. But today, the only thing on her mind was getting back to Kees to share the information she’d found in the file.
    What in heaven had the gargoyle done to her?

Chapter Five
    Ella hated to drive. She actually hated even riding in cars, which was one of the reasons she chose to live in the city, where walking and buses and trains could get her wherever she needed to go. Unfortunately, the address in Kees’s file couldn’t be reached by bus, and walking there would take approximately a day and a half, along with superior wilderness survival skills. A car was the only option, and Ella didn’t own a car.
    The rental made her grit her teeth and wince. Not only was she not comfortable driving anything bigger than the compact little Ford she’d used to test for her license years ago, but the idea of all the paperwork and insurance claim forms she would have to fill out if she damaged the hulking SUV during their trip did little to improve her mood either.
    Nor did the way her mind kept straying back to The Kiss.
    She italicized it in her head, as if it were the painting by Klimt. How something as simple as a kiss could have rocked her world on its axis astounded her. And unnerved her. Especially since the man who laid it on her hadn’t so much as mentioned it since she rejoined him in the museum ballroom post-interview. No, he’d been too focused on the information she had to give him. She might as well have become a computerized information kiosk, for all the attention he paid her. It was like he had no emotions at all.
    Maybe she should remind herself that he was made out of stone, after all.
    Too bad his lips hadn’t felt like rock. They had felt like sex, all smooth and hot and hard as they moved over hers, urging them apart, urging her to feel things she’d never felt before with a man, let alone a monster.
    Yeah, she’d used the M -word again. She had to; it was becoming her only self-defense mechanism. The things she felt when Kees kissed her, or touched her, or, you know, so much as looked at her had her hormones and her brain chemicals spinning little stories about lust and passion and all sorts of other things it was completely inappropriate to associate with a member of another species. She needed to remember that.
    And she needed to keep her legs crossed, which wasn’t really possible while she was driving north out of Vancouver toward the small village of Lions Bay.
    Kees sat beside her in the passenger seat, his huge form taking up every inch of space even inside the behemoth SUV that had been the only available rental on short notice. He had his arms crossed over his chest, and his gaze slid constantly back and forth between Ella and the road ahead of them. She didn’t mistake his intense scrutiny for personal interest, though. She knew very well what he was up to—studying her every move so that when it was time to head back to the city, he could make a case for getting behind the wheel.
    The gargoyle wanted to drive.
    “Forget it,” she said, keeping her eyes on the road. “I already told you, you have to have a special license in order to drive a car.”
    She’d also had to repeat it—loudly—several times before they had left the rental lot. She