by Alisha Basso
Time would tell. Something that she had an excess of.
And she suspected that so did he.
Chapter 2
Six months later
The phone call came as Claude Willowby sat on the terrace of his newly purchased home in California’s wine country, where he smoked a cigar and was nursing a whiskey. Only a few people had the number of his private cell phone. He picked it up, looked at the caller’s name, and his heartbeat quickened.
What news would he be given? Bad or catastrophic?
In the first month or two after he’d come to Napa Valley, he had hoped for good as a choice, too. That had never happened.
But he was still here, and Jin Long was still in the area. A ten-minute drive to her place. As long as they were both in the same area, there was hope that she had come to see that she needed him in the same way he needed her. That even if she didn’t love him in the romantic way of fairy tales that not even full humans experienced in real life—and certainly none with dragon blood—she would see that she needed him as a companion. As someone who knew who she was and who was like him.
He’d seen her attraction to that other man. That winemaker with the Scot’s accent that even a dragon-woman couldn’t resist.
She’d probably thought he hadn’t noticed. Certainly no one else did, as they made it a point not to look at each other during the community wine events where he usually saw them.
But he had sensed the yearning in the air. The vibration of heat that had run between them, no matter how cool their glances.
Perhaps she didn’t care if he’d noticed. She was lust-blinded.
Lust didn’t last, though. He could wait. A year. Two years. Three years. Ten. Twenty.
He wouldn’t live as long as her, but he would outlive the winemaker with his full humanity.
He clicked on the cell phone, and Sonja, Jin’s assistant with the big hair and giant breasts and the bigger payments to her plastic surgeon, spoke in a high-pitched voice of excitement.
“She’s gone.”
His breath hissed in. “What do you mean?”
“She’s gone. I came into work, and she’s not here. Instead, I found a note saying she had to leave, and she’s not coming back.”
He couldn’t answer. Too stunned. As if someone had socked him in the belly with an iron fist.
“Her business manager is taking care of the sale of the winery, and Jin left her an inventory and instructions to sell everything. She’s not taking anything with her. I don’t know what happened.” Her voice rose even higher with a combination of an aggrieved whine and worry. “She said that once it sells, she’s leaving everyone with six month’s full pay and letters of recommendation, but I don’t understand why she did this without telling me.”
“You think she knew about our arrangement?”
“No! She would never think I’d do this. She’s too ... too...”
“Honorable.”
“I don’t know about that.”
He didn’t reply that her actions showed she didn’t know much about honor. But that didn’t matter to him. He didn’t care about her or her soul. She was like most humans, thinking only of herself. And he had that in him, too.
Why not? After all, who thought about him?
Who had ever thought about him?
“I know she was my boss”—Sonja’s voice lowered, sadness in it—“but I thought we were friends. She even asked me not to mention it to anyone.”
“Do you know where she is? And if you don’t, do you have an idea?”
There was silence for a moment before she said, “No.”
“I’ll send you a final payment.”
“Wait! What are you going to do now?”
“It’s of no importance to you.”
“She’s gone! You won’t see her again.”
She wasn’t useful to him anymore, so he hung up, scowling. He didn’t panic, though. He hadn’t expected this development—but he’d prepared for the possibility.
He clicked on an app on his phone.
Her phone showed up ... in the house. She’d left it behind.
His heart beat fast. He shouldn’t be surprised that she’d taken precautions. Yet he was. Though in appearance, she looked to be somewhere in her thirties, he knew she was his elder by many centuries.
Once he convinced her it was common sense for them to be together, they would be lovers. He felt no great desire for her, but they needed the physical connection to bind them together.
She would be his teacher, his mentor, the role model he’d never had. A wise woman and dragon tied up in one. She would teach him how to be a wise man who happened to be half dragon.
And she would get something out of this, too. A companion who looked up to her. Most of all, someone who was like her. Someone who wouldn’t be repulsed by the truth or by her. Someone who wouldn’t fear her powers. Someone who wouldn’t try to use her.
How could she prefer Hamish over him? It didn’t make logical sense, and the dragon part of him was very logical.
Though there were exceptions, it was the human part that grew angry.
And anger was simmering in his belly now. He was confused, sad ... and pissed as hell.
But he controlled the anger as he clicked on another app. The positions of all her cars that he was tracking lit up.
All of them were still in her garage.
A coldness grew inside him, as if there were a block of ice in his belly. She hadn’t taken them. He couldn’t trace her movements.
He looked for the other car he’d tracked, and relief flooded him. It had moved from Hamish’s garage to the winery office.
Just to be sure, he went into the spacious, five-thousand-plus square foot house to the room he used as his office. Unlocking a desk drawer, he pulled out one of the throwaway phones he’d bought, and he called the winery office.
“Scarlet Winery,” Hamish answered. The burr in his voice pronounced the r in the two words as if a truck were running over the letter, stretching it into rrrrr.
Claude hung up. Good. Lover Boy was still here.
Lover Boy was attached to his pickup. It was obvious by the age and the ruts that he wouldn’t abandon it. Hamish and Jin probably thought Claude didn’t known about their relationship.
It wouldn’t be the first time he’d been underestimated.
It was possible that she was going to leave the Scotsman behind, the same way she’d left her cars, but Claude had a feeling that she wasn’t ready to discard the square-faced winemaker. Claude had been told by his mother, long before she’d left him, that his dragon side didn’t believe in feelings. But after she’d left, he’d tracked his feelings for three months, and seventy-three percent of the time, the feelings had become real events.
The knowledge didn’t make the rejection easier. Anger and frustration boiled up in him, and he struggled to subdue an urge to smash furniture and dishes and anything else in the place. His head down, lest he succumb to the impulse, he strode up to his room to pack up the things that he would not want to do without.
He suspected the list would be small.
Whatever he needed, he could buy.
The only thing—and person—he hadn’t been able to buy was Jin.
Since money hadn’t worked, he needed to find another way.
Chapter 3
The rumbling thunder unsettled Lila Fox, as if a bad wind was coming. Or bad luck.
She looked out the glass door of her lover’s Nashville shop that carried all forms of dragon art from the Bronze Age to the present. Vases, masks, jewelry, lamps, paintings, sculptures, drawings. Anything that came in dragon form or had anything to do with the mythical beast.
Or, as she knew, the very real beast.
Inside Dragon’s Lair, many of the items gleamed, but outside, the mid-morning sky was an angry gray with rolling, black clouds. As a child, she’d known that when the weather was bad outside, bad things happened inside, too, with the scowl on her stepfather’s face d
eepening with every grumble from the sky.
Though she wasn’t a child anymore, and Noah was nothing like her stepfather had been, goose bumps rose on her arms.
As she rubbed them, a cat meowed behind her. From the back, footsteps came into the shop, steady and purposeful.
She didn’t turn around, continuing to look down the downtown street. Though the popular blues club next door wasn’t open until the evening, the street was never deserted. But foot traffic, though still busy, was sparser during the daytime, with the girls wearing less makeup and more clothes, and the men not swaggering quite as much as when the sun lowered. Especially after they’d downed a drink or two or more. Male and female, all of them waited for the night to put their wares on display.
The transformation to their night identities wouldn’t happen until much later, but right now a tall, angular woman on the other side of the street caught Lila’s attention—and she didn’t know why. There was nothing provocative in her quick stride or her black slacks and the gray long-sleeved top that hung loosely on her, flaring out over her hips. Her complexion was sallow, and her shiny black hair brushed her shoulders. Nothing stood out, yet Lila’s gaze lingered on her.
Directly across the street from the Dragon’s Lair, the woman stopped, turned, and stared straight at the shop. Her narrowed gaze and the way she stood so still made Lila think of an assassin zeroing in on her target.
Her lips flattened, the woman stepped into the street that had no traffic for this one second. As if she were a character in a fairy tale who possessed the highly coveted power of making traffic stop.
A rude honk blew away Lila’s fanciful thought, and a Jeep whizzed past the woman, a country song blaring for the seconds it took to pass the shop.
There was no annoyance in the woman’s face as she continued to cross the street. No expression at all. As if she were a soldier, intent on a mission, blocking out every thought that would interfere with her objective.
As she neared the shop, Lila could see her features were sharp and her complexion wasn’t exactly sallow. It was too ... golden. Not flashy fool’s gold but the soft gleam of true gold.
Lila shivered again, but this time she didn’t rub her arms. Her lover’s hands rubbed them first.
She leaned back against his chest, the top of her head reaching the middle of his neck. “Do you have a sister you didn’t tell me about?”
His hands on her upper arms stilled. For a second, he didn’t breathe. Then he exhaled and released her, stepping back. “Not that I know of. But I believe you’re about to meet my mother.”
Chapter 4
Crossing the street, Jin felt numb. Her emotions had been frozen since she’d left California in the back of the assistant winemaker’s SUV.
Since before that, really, after she’d kissed Hamish good-bye in his office. A long kiss. A passionate kiss.
And then she’d had to leave him.
There’d been the three-day drive across six states, in three different vehicles. All of the drivers friends or acquaintances of Hamish’s.
She’d lost control of her life, but she wasn’t afraid. Instead, she was dazed and dulled.
How was she going to explain to Noah that, first, she was his mother?
And, second, that she was the object of an obsession?
She knew what an obsession was. It came with the dragon nature. Her flute. The wine. And objects, of course. It was the dragon nature to collect and hoard shiny things.
But not people. What she felt for Hamish wasn’t an obsession. She didn’t want to own him. To possess him.
She just loved him.
But one of the two men who knew the truth about her didn’t love her, and he did want to possess her.
Many other women would do anything to get his attention, but she didn’t want anything to do with him. And he refused to take no for an answer. Wherever she went, there he was.
Despite Claude’s obsession, she hadn’t believed Claude was a bad man, just a needy one. This new development hadn’t changed her mind. Not really. But it had made her cautious.
And maybe ... just maybe ... it was wise to take precautions.
Disappearing had seemed the best way to go.
It wasn’t the first time she’d walked away from a home, a community, and a business she’d built up. It would not be the last.
This time she wasn’t going alone. Not only was her lover joining her soon, she was bringing something a little extra. Hamish’s friend—her third driver—had driven her to the Nashville street where Noah had his shop and his home. At her insistence, he’d dropped her off at the corner. She’d thanked him, forced a smile, and had said she would be fine.
And now she sucked in a deep breath and headed toward the son who didn’t know she was alive.
He opened the door, and pride filled her, the way it did every time she saw him.
He’d turned out well, this son of hers. With his angular body, shiny black hair, straight as a glass window, and his striking blue-green eyes, he was a beautiful man. And from her observations of him through the centuries, he was beautiful inside as well as outside.
“Mother.” His voice was deep and it resonated. A good dragon voice. “You’re alive.”
She stood on the sidewalk holding the one carryall she’d brought with her, the heaviest thing in it her tablet. “You recognized me.”
He bowed his head, and then he introduced her to the tall, blonde woman standing next to him. Lila. Jin liked the name. The woman looked to be strong, with defined arm muscles. Jin liked that, too.
The woman invited her into the shop. Jin didn’t raise her eyebrows though she felt like it.
Things had changed with him indeed.
They were going to have an interesting talk ... and an uncomfortable one, too.
Chapter 5
His mother was here. His mother.
It didn’t seem real.
While Lila took her to their rooms above the Dragon’s Lair shop for tea, Noah put the Dragon is Sleeping, come back later sign out. As he triple-locked the shop door, the old blues song “Long Tall Mama” played in his mind, even though his mother had never been sweet and kind like the mother in the song.
She hadn’t even been human.
And neither had he.
For thousands of years—how many, Noah didn’t know for certain, as counting years was a human preoccupation—he’d thought of this woman as Mother. She’d given him life and a mother’s care. She’d fed him. She’d taught him how to behave as a dragon, to hunt for food, and to admire beautiful things. She’d watched over him until he’d begun to covet her collection of shiny objects.
That’s when they’d both known it was time for him to fend for himself, and he’d left to find his own cave where he’d gathered his own treasures.
After he’d left, there had been changes. Adjustments. Transformation to this human body. Centuries—millenniums—spent alone. Days and nights—and sometimes years—when only the music had kept him alive.
But like most of his kind, he was pragmatic in a heavy-bellied way. He had adjusted. The most drastic change had been when his dragon body transformed to human. After that, other adjustments had seemed not as big or as important.
He’d tolerated his life.
It was all he’d known. All he’d expected. And the music was enough.
Until Lila had stepped into his shop and his heart.
She wasn’t his obsession the way his treasures had been. Or the fulfillment of his music. She was his joy.
His passion.
His love.
Intense emotions that were more foreign to him than this human form.
Before he’d met her, he’d been a man and a dragon in one body. Now he was a man and a dragon sharing one body ... and one soul.
All these thoughts bled through his mind as he walked up the back stairway and entered the rooms he’d made his home. His mother sat in the living room in his black leather chair with the brick fireplace that was
probably out of style, but Lila hadn’t changed it. Lila hadn’t changed much in his rooms, though she had brought her personal items.
Sometimes he wondered what it meant that she didn’t make changes. And he would recall that she still owned her condo in California. But every time the doubts slunk in, he forced himself not to fret about them. She was with him now, and now was all that mattered.
If, at a later time, she left him...
His mind clenched, slamming down that thought, calming his racing heart until it beat steadily. He could hear her in the kitchen, and that was like warm honey on his mind as he nodded at his mother. She nodded back, a queenly gesture, giving out the air of someone who expected others to either meet her expectations or to go away and never return.
Just as he’d done when he’d flown away from her cave on an eastern coast in China.
Yet here she was. In Nashville, the heart of country music. As human as he was.
He sat on the couch in the living room across from her. She didn’t speak much. She had never been a talker, and neither had he. It was part of their makeup, this reserve.
“You look different from the last time I saw you,” he said. A silly observation, because it was obvious she didn’t have clawed feet and her body wasn’t covered with golden scales.
“You look the same,” she said.
He kept his breathing even. So, she’d seen him as a human.
“When was that?” He made his voice casual, but in his chest, his heart thundered. Usually, that only happened when he made love to Lila. “When have you seen me?”
“I’ve quite enjoyed your horn playing through the centuries,” she said, not answering directly. “First the pipes, then the different instruments. You keep getting better.”
First the pipes...
His breath stuttered. The pipes had started his change from dragon to human. As a dragon, he could listen, but he couldn’t play.
