The Spark of the Dragon's Heart: A Reverse Harem Paranormal Fantasy Romance (Harem of Fire Book 1)

by Willa Hart

  “Stop looking at me like that, okay? I don’t know exactly how it works, I’m just glad it does. We can gossip about it later, right now we need to find out who hired Enoch, which means a trip to Ventura.”

  “Ventucky is more like it,” Ryen snorted.

  I rolled my eyes at the lame derogatory term for the farming community north of L.A. “You’re better than that, Ryen.”

  He winced. “Yeah, I knew it as soon as I said it. I’ll do better next time.”

  “Whose car am I riding in?” I asked.

  My caddy was great around town, but I didn’t trust it to make it all the way to Ventura and back. Not to mention the gas bill would be more than I made in a month.

  Kellum glanced at the others. “Lazlo needs help on a case. Ash, Hale, you up for a drive?”

  “Sure!” they replied in unison.

  “Perfect,” Kellum continued. “If Enoch gives you any trouble, just call me. We’ll fly up and deal with it.”

  A thrill spun up my spine at the thought of spending some alone time with the twins. Max had said I should get to know all of his nephews, but I doubt he realized how tingly each and every one made me.

  “Where’s your car?” I asked, trying to conceal the heat rising in my face, not to mention other parts of my anatomy.

  They exchanged grins, then looked pointedly behind me. I turned to see their cars.

  Or rather, their trucks.

  The twins drove customized pickup trucks, and they were certainly something to behold. Both were late-model Nissan Titans with tinted windows, but that’s where the similarities ended. One was painted a sunny yellow with vinyl flame graphics rolling up and over the hood and along the sides.

  Next to it sat an identical truck that couldn’t have looked more different. A vinyl graphic covered the entire body, giving the impression the truck had green scales. Green dragon wings spanned each side, while a fierce dragon face with smoke drifting from its nostrils graced the hood.

  I stared at the monstrosities for a moment, my jaw totally slack, then turned to the twins. They looked proud as peacocks. Only one word came to mind.

  “Subtle.”

  All five burst into laughter, with the Novaks heading to Kellum’s SUV, leaving me to pick one of the two most embarrassing vehicles ever to exist.

  “Come on,” Ash said, nodding to the flaming yellow truck. “We’ll take mine. No one wants to ride in Hale’s Dragon Wagon.”

  “Hey,” his twin scoffed as we climbed into Ash’s only slightly less ridiculous ride. “It’s cool. Designed it myself.”

  Against my better judgment, I was soon sandwiched between the Campbell twins in the middle of the truck’s bench seat, my backpack nestled between my feet. I didn’t know whether to love or hate it, but it certainly was interesting. I just prayed no one I knew would see me.

  Hale poked at his phone, then announced, “We should take the 1. Crash on the 101, traffic’s backed up. Besides, I like the view.”

  California’s Highway 1 is probably one of the most beautiful and iconic roads in the country. Hugging the coastline for over six hundred miles, it offers breathtaking views around almost every curve. Which means it also enjoys a ton of traffic, especially on weekends. Naturally, we ended up stuck behind a behemoth of an RV with Montana plates for about fifteen minutes, before Ash took a chance on a double-yellow line and snuck around the guy.

  “Seems debt collectors have about as much trouble finding Enoch as we did,” Hale said as we made our way up the coast. “But that also means we only had to do half the work by following their footsteps.”

  “Great work,” I said, my eyes glued to the white caps on the Pacific Ocean to our left.

  We fell into a companionable silence, but I eventually noticed Ash glancing toward the stereo, no doubt wondering if he should bring the guillotine down on any further discussion since no one seemed to be in a talkative mood. Max’s voice echoed in my head, reminding me to get to know each of his nephews to help me figure out which one — if any — was my dragon. A two-hour drive seemed like the ideal opportunity, but my brain couldn’t come up with anything interesting. I went with a standard icebreaker.

  “So…twins, huh? What’s that like?”

  I almost slapped my hand to my forehead in shame. Seriously? I couldn’t come up with anything better than that?

  Ash smirked. “About what you’d expect.”

  That could have been the end of the torture, but I was determined to learn more about them. I wanted to know as much about them as I already knew about their cousins.

  “Max and Shirley basically raised you, right?”

  “Pretty much,” Hale replied. “We both remember snatches of our parents, but they died when we were just fledglings. Young dragons.”

  I nodded. “Yeah, I know what fledglings are. And I know what you mean too. I don’t remember much about my folks either. Just some dreams and fond feelings.”

  “Uncle Max obviously has a soft spot for orphans,” Hale said with a soft smile.

  “Which only made it worse when he disowned us,” Ash said in a clipped tone. Obviously, the pain was still fresh for him.

  “I can imagine,” I said, my heart aching for them, but still wanting to defend Max. “They’re good people, though.”

  Ash nodded. “They are, but damned if Max doesn’t know exactly how to wound, when he wants to.”

  I laid a hand on his arm, the one holding the wheel. His warm flesh felt like a balm to the anxiety of being alone with them both.

  “If it makes you feel any better, he was pretty wrecked by everything that happened. I can’t count how many times I caught him staring at the family photo of you all hanging in the hallway.”

  “Wow, that’s still up?” Hale asked. “I thought he would have purged all traces of us.”

  “Shirley outright refused. And quite honestly, he didn’t put up much of a fight about it. I think he wanted to make up, but, well… You know Max. He’s stubborn as hell but he’s still human. Wait, no—“

  Ash and Hale chuckled, and Hale nudged me, gratitude radiating from his eyes. “We get it.”

  “Favor,” Ash said, shooting me an intense look, “you need to know none of us wanted to leave him like that. Not even Kellum, and he’s always had his eye on the prize. But Max… He’s too damn stuck in his ways and refused to listen to us.”

  “He’s obviously improved since you came into his life,” Hale said, “but he was downright unreasonable before. I mean, it was easy enough to turn our noses up at the internet back when AOL was sending out all those damn disks, but by the early 2000s we were falling behind. Do you have any concept of what it’s like to run a P.I. firm without so much as an email address?”

  I snorted my amusement. “Kind of, considering I was the one who set up Max’s Gmail account. But I get it. It’s almost impossible to do anything these days without the internet.”

  “Easily the best thing you humans have created in my lifetime,” Ash said. “There was no way Maximus Investigations could keep up, the way Max insisted on running the place.”

  “We had a hard enough time explaining to him that carrier pigeons are extinct,” Hale added with an exasperated chuckle. “We started losing our first big clients by 2005, and it was just downhill from there.”

  “Lazlo, on the other hand, he caught on quick,” Ash continued. “Max laughed when he saw Lazlo wheeling in his first massive computer rigs and such, but ten years down the road, he had an edge that Max will never catch up to, even if he lives another thousand years.”

  Hale took over from Ash. “We all bugged him about it for years, but he refused to listen. I think it had something to do with raising us. We couldn’t possibly know what we were talking about.”

  “Powdered butt syndrome,” I mused. When they looked at me funny, I explained. “Once someone’s changed your diaper and powdered your butt, they aren’t interested in taking your advice.”

  “That pretty much sums it up,” Ash replied with
a wry smile. “Kellum pushed the hardest, even coming close to blows so many times I can’t count. Max started avoiding us whenever possible, because every time we were together, one or another of us would nag him.”

  “What was the final straw?” I asked, curious about their decision to abandon Max.

  “Kellum got a call from a supplier who hadn’t been paid,” Ash explained. “He got curious and dug into the books. From what he could figure out, Max pretty much stopped giving a shit about anything, including bookkeeping. He only had a handful of clients, all dragons, and we were all drawing paychecks. If we’d stayed, we would have drained his bank accounts dry unless he changed his ways. We knew he wouldn’t, and despite what he wishes, this isn’t the middle ages anymore.”

  “The time has passed when dragons could just go find some crumbling castle in the Wales countryside to live out their days,” Hale added.

  “Besides, he’s far too proud to steal sheep, and Shirley hates the cold,” Ash said with a wink that made me smile, despite the gravity of the conversation.

  “So instead of continuing to be a drain on his business, you quit and went to work at Drakonis?”

  “It was Kellum’s idea. It was the only way to keep the business in the black and keep Max’s pride intact. We knew he’d be hurt, but we never imagined he’d disown us.”

  “Damn,” I said on a sigh. “It never occurred to me you quit to protect Max. I’m really sorry.”

  Hale shrugged. “Don’t beat yourself up. How could you have known?”

  “It wasn’t a decision we made lightly, Favor,” Ash added. “But it solved the problem of Max’s finances.”

  “Plus, we got some sweet laptops out of the deal,” Hale said, then turned serious. “You have to know that we love Max like a father. We truly want what’s best for him.”

  I smiled at one, then the other. “Me too,” I murmured, warmth for these two men rising into my chest.

  I didn’t even need to focus on them to know they weren’t lying or covering their own asses. They loved Max as much as I did and were willing to sacrifice his love for them to protect him. Not everyone would do that.

  In the span of a heartbeat, I became keenly aware of Ash and Hale’s physical presence. Their shoulders occasionally brushed against mine when we went around a corner, lighting my skin on fire. Not only were they supremely loyal to their family — even when that family didn’t think so — but they were funny and smart and, if their choices in vehicles were any indicator, quirky as hell.

  The truck hit a pothole dead on and I instinctively slapped my hands to the seat on either side of me. The tips of my fingers tickled against Hale’s hand to my right. Inching my left hand over, I found Ash’s hand. Before I even realized what was happening, the fingers of both my hands were interlaced with theirs as we rolled past waves crashing against the rocky shoreline. It should have been weird, holding hands with two guys in the front of a pickup, but very little in my life had felt more natural, more comfortable, more safe.

  No one said a word.

  Eventually, we turned inland and let Hale’s phone direct us to what looked like an abandoned building on the outskirts of a strawberry field. It looked as if the farmer had long since forgotten it existed, or at least didn’t have time to bother tearing it down. Gaps of light shone through here and there, where a board had shifted to one side or fallen away completely. Needless to say, it didn’t look like much of a home, much less one with an actual address.

  “This can’t be right,” Ash said, snatching the phone from Hale’s hand to make sure he’d entered the correct address.

  I didn’t need the confirmation. Something inside me — sixth sense, maybe, or some other power that was finally manifesting itself — told me we were in the right place.

  “It’s right,” I said, never taking my eyes off the front door, which sat slightly askew in its frame.

  “What now?” Hale asked.

  I let go of their hands and took a deep breath. “What happens now is that I’m going to go knock on that door. Can’t just sit out here all day.”

  Without waiting for an answer, I grabbed my pack, climbed over Hale, my ass pushing past his face in very close proximity, and hopped out of the truck. The twins climbed out after me, but I waved a hand behind me to tell them to stay back. To my surprise, they understood my signal and didn’t join me on the muddy rock doorstep of the shack.

  Adjusting my backpack to make me look as much like a lost coed as possible, I adopted a soft, hopeful smile and knocked. A little voice in my head told me I was an idiot. The guy wasn’t in there and I was just wasting my time. I stood there long enough to start believing it. That’s when the door cracked open and I was staring into the wary eyes of Enoch Trinkas.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Enoch stared down his long, pointy nose at me with suspicion in his dark, bloodshot brown eyes. His almost haughty demeanor reminded me instantly of his older brother, Bertram, but that was where their similarities ended.

  Where Bertram exuded old-money aristocracy, Enoch looked more like an extra from Sons of Anarchy. No, make that Breaking Bad. His dirty jeans sagged on his skinny hips and were so worn the left knee had completely shredded. Dusty and scuffed back boots peeked out from the frayed hems. A once-white tank hung on his concave chest like draperies, and dark smudges and streaks all over the front made me wonder if it was just dirt, or maybe someone’s dried blood. The guy obviously hadn’t had a shower in days, judging by the way his longish hair clumped and hung in his face, not to mention the prickly shadow growing on his cheeks. I could almost hear Aunt Shirley say it looked like he’d been “rode hard and put away wet.”

  Still, under the leery expression and hardened appearance, Enoch had once been handsome. Obviously still was to some women — women like Crystal. He looked like a bad boy. To me, he looked like trouble.

  “Who the hell are you?” he sneered, his gaze darting to the twins, who had remained at the truck.

  “I’m sorry to bother you, sir,” I gushed, putting on my best damsel in distress voice. “But my truck just broke down and I was hoping to use your phone.”

  He peered past me to the brand-new truck with expensive custom graphics and two big dudes standing next to it. Then he raised a bushy eyebrow at me.

  “That truck?”

  “Mmhmm.” I tried to look convincing.

  “The bright yellow one with flames? That’s your truck?”

  Damn, he was suspicious.

  “Sorry, I meant our truck. Anyway, we ran out of gas and barely managed to coast up to your, um…house, and I was just hoping to use your phone to call triple-A. Please?”

  He squinted at me again. “What’s wrong with your phone? Or theirs?” He jerked his head at the twins.

  I found my most innocent expression and shrugged. “No signal.”

  Light flickered in his eyes, a brightness that gave him an animal aura. His dragon, no doubt. That same feral gaze darted to the sky above me, looking for something that wasn’t there. I’d met some odd ducks while working for Max, but Enoch Trinkas was by far the most paranoid. And for good reason.

  “Bullshit,” he spat, returning his hot glare to me.

  “It’s true,” I insisted, shrugging out of my backpack and starting to unzip it to show him my, hopefully, low bars. It was a crappy phone and we were in farm country, which meant the odds were good I wasn’t actually lying.

  “What are you doing?” he snarled, inching the door almost closed, alarm flaring in his eyes.

  “I just wanted to show you—“

  “Well, stop it! I don’t got a phone anyway.”

  “You don’t have a phone?” Hale asked.

  The fugitive dragon bristled at being questioned, puffing himself up to look a little bigger, which still left him painfully thin. “That’s what I said, inn’it? This place look like it has a phone? See any wires leading to it, smartass? And what about you two? You tellin’ me your phones don’t got no bars either?”
/>   Hale nodded at the same time Ash shook his head. “Forgot to charge mine,” Ash said through gritted teeth.

  Even from a distance, their growing impatience was obvious. But that wasn’t how this was going to go down. Picking a fight with Enoch Trinkas wasn’t the plan, and it certainly wouldn’t get him to open up to us. I made a show of hiking my backpack over my shoulder again to turn Enoch’s attention back toward me, then I flashed my most winning smile. Time to dial up the charm.

  “Listen, I’m really sorry for bothering you, sir. As you can probably guess, we aren’t from around here and we just need your help. It’s not like we’re dangerous criminals or anything, I swear. We’re just dumb college students who didn’t pay attention to our gas gauge. Isn’t there anything you can do to help us?”

  The fire in his eyes blinked out, returning them to the same dull, wary, dark they were before. But the wrinkle between his eyebrows smoothed out a little and his frown was just a hint less frowny.

  “Sorry, kid.”

  I stepped closer, close enough his unwashed state hit my nose like a noxious Mac truck. His gaze never wavered from mine, so I widened my eyes just a bit, pleading with him silently. He didn’t pull away or slam the door in my face, and that’s when I knew he’d taken the bait. Now I just needed to set the hook.

  Digging around my memory for the most sexist of clichés, I bit the corner of my lower lip and literally batted my eyes at him. No guy could possibly fall for such a transparent ploy, but Enoch’s frown continued to soften as he stared down at me.

  “I hope you believe me, mister,” I cooed in my breathiest tone. “I’ve never been a very good liar. We just need to make one call, that’s it. Now, are you sure you don’t have a phone in there somewhere?”

  He blinked, totally dazed, then nodded. “Got a burner.”

  I gave him a big, bright smile. “See? Was that so hard?”

  The poor guy didn’t know what hit him. Neither did I, for that matter. Who the hell would fall for that routine if they truly didn’t want to help? And his conflicted expression told me he truly didn’t want to help, but somehow my act caused his resolve to waver, his worry to be soothed. This wasn’t the time to question how it was working, it was the time to set that hook, once and for all before he came to his senses and sent us packing. Or murdered us. Odds were fifty-fifty.