Oh, that accent definitely made things much better. Who knew she was such an Anglophile? “It so, so is,” she emphatically agreed, and then stared at her blank plate. She couldn’t leave till she’d talked to her uncle about Danny, and if she knew her uncle, that wouldn’t be for about six more courses.
“Oh, no, you’re starving! I forget your weird sleeping schedule, Andrea. This is technically your breakfast, right? I’m sorry. I’ll go see what the holdup is,” her uncle said, waving them to talk together as he departed.
Andi whirled on her erstwhile neighbor the second her uncle was gone. “Were you here last weekend, too? Be honest; I’ll know if you’re lying.”
He seemed taken aback by her confrontational nature, but she knew by the way his face reddened that her guess was right. Her uncle had tried to set her up two weekends in a row—with the same man! Andi groaned aloud.
“Okay, so, despite what my uncle may have told you, I will be damned if I ever let him set me up with anyone. It has nothing to do with you and everything to do with the fact that I don’t want to hear about it for the next million years.”
His eyes went even wider, and then he laughed, hard, just as her uncle came back into the room.
“See? I told you she was funny, too!” her uncle bragged, taking his seat back at the table.
Somehow, they shuffled through the unending parade of dinner together. Her uncle was right, his chef was amazing, and David was exceedingly polite, even when her uncle started talking about his multiple Teslas.
Which were fancy, yes—but not a Pagani. Andi bit her lips as her uncle went on.
Sammy would be so proud of her for giving two shits about a car make. And speaking of cars, when her uncle excused himself from the table, presumably to go to the bathroom, but just as likely to try to leave the two of them alone, she let her smile fade and rolled her eyes in his direction, exhausted.
“Do I look like a used car or just feel like one?” she muttered aloud without thinking. Her uncle had been hyping her up all night like she was the last car on the lot, it was nearing midnight, and he had a monthly quota.
David laugh-coughed into a napkin, giving her a bemused expression. “If you’re a car, then I’m a wallet. Or maybe a bank. Like a physical bank. Square shoulders and full of money.”
She sympathized. Her uncle was a lot, and maybe this David fellow hadn’t fully known what he was getting into. David was handsome—very much so, really—but the kind of pretty she could appreciate without needing to go home with him. After last weekend with Damian, she definitely didn’t feel the need to go out any time soon. Still, she squinted at David and decided to commiserate with him a little because, in a very roundabout way, it was her fault he was here.
“I know, right? Did you have white marble teeth, or was it steps? It’s all kind of blending together now, honestly,” she quipped, and he laughed again. His brown eyes matched hers and danced with mirth.
“So, tell me about the rest of your family?” he asked while reaching for a glass.
Andi froze but managed to recover before he turned back to her. “Oh. It’s complicated.” She gave him a plastic smile and searched for something else to seem occupied with, but her uncle was right, his chef was amazing, and she hadn’t left any food behind on her plate.
“I get complicated,” David said kindly. “Families can be weird. My older brother still wants to wrestle me every time we meet, and he’s almost forty.”
Andi snorted. “Yeah, well, my twin brother’s called me collect from jail twice.” She saw the surprise on his face and decided to double—no, triple—down. “Currently, he’s skipped out on bail. My mother’s dead and my father left us high and dry when we were fourteen.”
He inhaled to speak, then thought better of it as his eyes searched hers. His expression seemed to hold an infinite gentleness to it, then he asked softly, “And you’re sure you don’t want to get coffee after this?”
“No, thank you.” His attention was disarming, and Andi liked to know exactly where her weapons were. She reached for her sarcastic sense of humor. “Besides, my uncle’s chef is going to feed us until we explode, or hadn’t you noticed?”
David’s eyes narrowed in contemplation. “If we explode, would he just taxidermy us and keep us here forever?”
“And keep talking at us? Quite possibly,” she said with a smirk. David snickered, and Andi grinned at him. He’d handled her overshare nicely, and having him here helped her to cover her exasperation—just like when she and Danny had taken their turns with uncle time as kids. It was any port in a storm when Hurricane Lee was coming in. “Look, if you got suckered into this because you’re new to town and need friends or whatever, I get that. I can give you my number. And my roommate? She’s super hot. Mostly in the ‘being willing to set you on fire’ sense, but she’s Irish with a fantastic accent and gorgeous red hair.”
“If that’s the only way I can get your number,” he said, handing his open phone to her.
She called herself quickly so she’d have his number, then put herself as ‘Andi Ngo FRIENDS ONLY’ in his contacts. “You’ll like her. And she really hates Teslas. It’s a win-win.”
“What’s this?” her uncle said, coming back into the room and holding a plate with what looked like a flaming pastry swan. The sugary scent of hot caramel filled the room as David quickly pocketed his phone, but not quickly enough to not be seen.
“See?” her uncle said, looking between them proudly. “I told you.”
Which meant from here on out for the rest of her life, her uncle would be after her to call David. Why hadn’t she called him? He’d set her up with him on purpose. He was good for her. Her brain did a decent imitation of her brother pretending to be her uncle, doing the litany of his relentless requests. It didn’t matter that she didn’t want to go out with some strange guy right now, no matter how nice. She’d been through a lot lately! Couldn’t anyone tell? Why was everyone so pushy? Starting with Damian!
It was like she could feel the walls closing in, and there was no escaping—except for one place and one place only. She stood abruptly. “Uncle, where’s your bathroom? I have to go pee.”
Her uncle set down the swan, looking flustered, and indicated with his hand the direction. She darted around the table and walked back the way he’d come, bound and determined to find a room where she could be alone.
The bathroom was full of sea horses and starfish trapped in resin and Andi sat on the closed toilet and sighed. What was Uncle Lee’s fascination with dead things? She remembered coming back from a trip once as a little girl and finding out their cat was gone. Danny had been so sure that Uncle Lee had let it out in their absence. If she went through enough rooms here, would she find it again?
Andi flushed to make it sound like she’d used it, then washed her hands, staring at the blank wall where a mirror would be. The man could import and stage the entire cast of the Lion King but couldn’t be bothered to put up one dang mirror?
She calmed herself and dried off her hands. They were at dessert, and what was more, she still had to go to work, so the night would have a natural ending. She just had to make it a little bit longer was all. It was the least she could do, for Danny’s sake—even though she doubted he’d have made it this long were the tables turned. Andi snorted and returned to the dining room without getting lost and overheard her uncle talking about her. She hid just outside the door.
“She’s not always like this,” his familiar voice said.
“Don’t apologize. She’s fantastic. And I can see the family resemblance. Both very headstrong.”
Andi blinked. To the best of her knowledge, she wasn’t actually related to her uncle. Not by blood. He was just a longtime family friend. All of her parents’ friends were aunties and uncles; that’s just how it was in their culture.
Her uncle chuckled. “Yes, well, everyone cracks eventually.”
Who?
Her?
She coughed loudly and then walked
back in like she hadn’t heard a thing.
“You’re always so interesting, Andrea,” her uncle said, shaking his head as she returned, trying to blow her potential for bodily functions off.
“I’m a nurse. We announce when we have to go to the bathroom, so people don’t die while we’re gone. It’s just a thing we do.” She sat back in her seat in front of a pastry swan wing. “Doctors do it, too, right?” she asked, looking over at David for confirmation, although they absolutely did not. It didn’t matter, though. She was not suffering alone; she was taking him down with her.
Uncle Lee’s head swiveled to look at David as he choked on a bite of pastry at being put on the spot. “Oh, yes, absolutely,” he lied, after drinking the pastry down with a swig of water.
“I’ve got to go give my compliments to the chef…I’ll be back in a bit,” Uncle Lee announced when they were done, waving his hands at them like he was smashing them together. Andi knew he was leaving them alone again on purpose the way he bolted from the room.
David turned toward her. “So, about that coffee—"
“So, about my hot roommate,” Andi cut him off.
He chuckled. “Fine. You win this round.”
“It’s a work night for me, besides.” Andi stood up and pushed her chair in. She’d left her work bag at the door with her scrubs and purse in it.
“What hospital are you at?” he asked, following her.
“You mean you didn’t catch it when my uncle was reading you my resume earlier?”
David leaned in, conspiratorially. “I don’t actually listen to everything he says. Don’t tell him.”
Andi laughed. “Me either,” she whispered back.
“See?” David said, standing up straight again. “We’ve got more in common than you think.”
The way he looked at her…if she could get David to look at Sammy like that, Sammy’s panties would slide right off. But it wasn’t working on her. Little did the poor man know she had a metaphorical chastity belt on right now. Her vagina was closed shut, and she’d thrown away the key.
“I don’t know about that,” she said earnestly and started walking back to where she hoped the front door was.
“Hey,” David said, catching her arm lightly. “I am sorry. For everything that’s happened to you…and whatever’s going on with your brother. If there’s anything I can do…” he asked, letting go of her arm when she stopped.
“Does your fancy biotech firm have private investigators?”
She’d meant it in a joking fashion, but he seemed to take her seriously, thinking before shaking his head. “Not any better than your uncle’s.”
So maybe her uncle did have people on it? She had to ask him. She hadn’t paid the bail bondsmen off with Damian’s cash yet. Maybe if she gave it to her uncle, it would help? She hated the way she always felt the need to come to Danny’s rescue, but she couldn’t help it. She was his Andi-bear. And once upon a time, he’d chosen her and her mom over everything else.
David cleared his throat. “Can I ask something that’s going to sound creepy, but I don’t mean it to be?”
Andi looked up at him and bit back the urge to say, ‘I don’t do anal.’ “Sure.”
“Can I have some of your DNA?” The expression on his face that followed let Andi know he knew it was a bizarre request. “My firm—we’ve got anonymized sequence sharing with several large databases. If you give me some of your blood, I can run it through and see if there’ve been any hits.”
“Hits? Like…at police stations?” Or at morgues, she darkly thought without saying.
“It may not be as grim as that, and I’m not saying he’s a criminal.”
“Oh, no, Danny’s definitely a criminal,” she said, biting her lips again. “And, what, you’re going to do it right here? You’ve got a butterfly needle hidden in your pocket?”
One of his eyebrows rose. “I’d ask you to frisk me for it, but we haven’t gone to coffee yet.”
“Oh, my God. It was nice meeting you and all, but I’ve got to get to work,” Andi said, pulling away again.
“No, no, really. Here,” he said, retrieving something from his pocket. It looked like a capped lancet for a diabetic, only with a small test tube like they used for babies at one end.
“That small thing?”
“You remember how Theranos, that company that was supposed to figure out all your illnesses from a single drop of blood, was built on bullshit? We’re not.”
Andi had seen that documentary. She looked from him to the needle. “Is it clean?”
“The needle, yes. Your finger, not so much. But, I do know one thing you might not know about your uncle.” David leaned over the table to pick up Uncle Lee’s glass. “This isn’t water.” He held it out to her, and when it got close enough, it burned the inside of her nose.
“Holy shit!”
“Holy high proof Russian vodka,” he corrected, holding the glass between them.
Andi bit her lips. “And you just carry those around all the time?”
“I’ve got a box of five-hundred in my car right now,” he said with a shrug. “We’re still in the start-up phase. Half of my job is convincing macho venture capitalists to poke themselves.”
“How do you do that?”
“Just like they say you do in prison…you go to the biggest guy in the room and dare him.” David snorted.
Andi wavered. She wasn’t worried about the pain. She’d poked patients a million times, and everyone had poked everyone else for practice in nursing school, but she was worried about not knowing about Danny. If Uncle Lee hadn’t been bringing his A-game to search for Danny because he’d been too busy orchestrating setting her up…. As Danny’s only living relative, she inhaled deeply, stuck her finger into the vodka, then offered it to David, palm up. “You swear not to use this to go out and frame me for future crimes?”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” he said, taking her hand in his, nicking her forefinger with a quick jab. He milked a drop of blood up into the tiny tube behind the lancet. When he was done, she put her finger in her mouth without thinking.
“Ah! Time to depart, I see!” her uncle announced. At finding them standing closely, a wide grin split his face.
David quickly pocketed his vial with the drop of her blood in it and smiled down at her. “Yes, unfortunately. It was lovely meeting you tonight, Andi,” he said, despite her uncle’s repeated insistence that she was an Andrea.
“Nice to meet you, too, David,” she told him. “And…you’ll let me know?” Her eyes traced the path his hand had taken, to the small vial denting his pocket.
“I’ll be in touch. Either way,” he promised, tapping the vial, nodding to her uncle before departing.
Andi waited until he was at least three rooms away before taking her uncle to task. “Okay, so, fess up or else. Who is he to you?”
Uncle Lee put his hands in his pockets and laughed like he’d been caught. “Just a friend.”
“Uh-huh.”
She followed him back through his house as he went on. “Just a new friend. You know me. I travel so much, I collect as many people as I do belongings.”
“A friend that it was so important that I meet that you had the same dinner party two weekends in a row?” She squinted her eyes up at him.
“Friends, business associates, future husbands, who’s counting?” He gestured at her with both arms, taking all of her in. “Is it such a bad thing that I want to show you off?”
“No, I guess not.” With Danny on the lam, her uncle was all she really had left. “But I just don’t know what you expected of me. Or tonight.”
“Perhaps, I didn’t either,” he said. “Or perhaps I just missed your smiling face. It’s been too long, and I won’t live forever, you know.”
She suddenly felt abashed. Her uncle was older than her mother had been, and she knew from working at the hospital that people died all the goddamned time. Death was death, just like Damian had told her. “I do know,” she said,
genuinely apologizing. “And I’m sorry for taking you for granted, Uncle.”
“It’s okay, Andrea. Taking the elderly for granted is one of the few true pleasures of youth.” He gave her a sly smile as they reached the door. He opened it, and his driver was already waiting outside. “He’ll take you to your work, of course.”
“Thanks,” she said, picking up her bag. “But…Uncle…about Danny—”
“Ahhh.” Her uncle let out a long-suffering sigh. “All right, for your sake, I will see what I can do. But I withhold the right to give him a thousand lashes if we discover he’s just being him again, only in a different city.”
“If he’s just up to the usual Danny shenanigans, only elsewhere, and you find him, I’ll help you lash him myself.”
“Practice your backswing then, eh?” her uncle said, and then gave her a bittersweet smile. “I know there’s been a rift between us since your mother’s passing, Andrea, and it hasn’t been all your fault. Let us try to repair it, shall we?”
She smiled back at him, much the same. As annoying and crazy as he was, he was family. “I’d like that, Uncle Lee.”
“Have a safe journey, Andrea dear.” And then he kissed her forehead before setting her off.
Chapter 6
Jamison was wearing the same black tactical gear as Austin in the driver’s seat of the SUV when they loaded up. He gave Zach’s T-shirt and jeans a look. “Is it casual Friday?”
“Don’t start with me,” Zach warned. Austin snickered as he buckled himself in.
“Latched,” Damian announced, pulling the back door closed behind himself so they could go. He thumped into his seat and stretched out, trying to think. Why else would anyone buy Andi a dress like that…for that much money? Did she know how much it was worth? Likely not, or she would never have let him trash it. He’d bitten clean through its strap, for Christ’s sake. Unless…she did know. And had worn it on purpose. And Andi letting him ruin her dress—and maybe even everything else they’d done that night—was part of some overarching plan…to…what?
Dragon Destined: Billionaire Dragon Shifter Romance (Prince of the Other Worlds) Page 6
