Now, however, was not the time to tell her so.
“I don’t see any point in beating around the bush,” Grady said, holding her gaze with his without wavering. “I recovered the footage, Moira.”
She nodded once, with no change in her expression. “All right.”
Damn, she was good. If he hadn’t known better, he’d have doubted whether he’d actually seen what he’d seen on the recordings and whether she was involved. But he wasn’t that easy to shake. “I haven’t talked to anyone else about it. I’ve come to you first. For an explanation.”
“What is it that you would like me to explain, Grady?”
He had no choice but to be the first to say it. “Tell me what happened to your friend. What he became.”
For the first time, a glimpse of Moira’s uncertainty moved over her expression. “What would it take for you to give me that footage?”
“I’m not going to do that.”
“You’re a businessman. You have a price, Grady.” Moira leaned forward, looking at him intently. “Every copy of the footage and non-disclosure agreements signed. Then we walk away from this, and everyone wins.”
Out of nowhere, a wave of compassion hit him, and he couldn’t help but lean forward and cover her hand with his. “Moira, I’m not trying to hurt you.”
She pulled away from him. “I can’t believe that. You have information that could destroy the people I care about. Destroy me. And you’re here, meeting with me to discuss what we’re going to do about it. If you didn’t want to hurt me, then you would have called me to tell me that you’re destroying the evidence. This is a business deal for you, Grady. It’s a way to put more money in your pocket. How much money will it take?”
Her assessment of him hurt more than it should have. There was no denying that he was a businessman—and a damn good one. He’d grown up wealthy, yes, but he was a self-made millionaire, having taken nothing from his father to start up his business that was now thriving. But the way she said the word suggested he should be ashamed of his success and of his business ability. The truth was, he really didn’t want to hurt her, and he wasn’t there to wring every lost dime out of her as some sort of hush payment.
He just needed to know what he was looking at. But she didn’t trust him. She never had.
But he needed her to—wanted her to. So he reached into his pocket and pulled out the jump drive that held the copies of the footage that the technician had given him. “Here,” he said, holding it out to her. “This is the footage. Take it.”
Moira looked at him skeptically, not reaching for the small device. “That’s not the only copy, Grady. We both know that.”
“It is, actually,” Grady said, not letting his frustration over her doubt show in his voice. “The technician I used was completely freaked out by what he saw. He made this copy for me, then deleted everything permanently and swore he’d never work with me again in his life.” Grady smiled slightly. “He was very flustered.”
Moira’s expression didn’t relax. “Even if that’s true—”
“Why do you doubt me so much?” Grady asked, interrupting her thought, his hand with the device lowering to rest on his leg. “What have I ever done to you, Moira? From the very beginning you’ve been this way with me. Except for those few minutes right before you deleted the footage…” He looked into her eyes, sinking into their green depths. “That was very different, wasn’t it?”
Chapter Fifteen
Moira
His words took the breath out of her, and it was amazing to her that she could be reacting like a schoolgirl with a crush in a situation of such magnitude. So much was on the line, but the way he was looking at her and invoking the memories of those few, brief, intense kisses was making her head muddled and her stomach fluttery.
Maybe that was his intention—to distract her.
“Grady…” Moira said, swallowing hard to get the lump out of her throat and bypassing his question altogether. “You say I’ve never trusted you, but what reason did you give me to trust you? I don’t even know you, but now we’re trapped in this situation together. All I want is to get out of the situation with my friend’s secrecy intact. That’s all.”
“I’m offering you that chance,” Grady said, holding the USB out to her again. “This is the footage. You can have it. I’m not going to try to use it against you. But I do want you to give me an explanation. Is that so much to ask?”
Moira glanced at the device, her fingers itching to take it from him. But she didn’t know how it could be that easy. Was he seriously not going to use this for his benefit? He didn’t want…anything?
Lifting her hand slowly, she slipped the device from his fingers, and he didn’t fight her on it. He let her take it, let her fist close around it, and let her slip her hand into her pocket, safely depositing the piece of technology that could ruin her life. When she felt the weight of the USB in her pocket, she felt relief settle over her, and she looked up at Grady, searching his face for some kind of hint as to how to proceed next.
He gave her a smile tinged with sadness. “How much more do I have to do to make you trust me?”
“I don’t know,” she said honestly, staring back at him. “You unnerve me.”
“I wouldn’t have guessed that.”
“Well, it’s true,” Moira said, leaning back against the bench and trying to adjust her mindset. “Is that really the only copy of the footage?”
“I swear on my twin sister’s artistic talent.”
Moira scrunched her nose up. “What?”
“I have a twin sister, Abigail. I’ve been supporting her artistic career for years because she’s amazing. I swear on Abigail’s talent that I did not keep a copy of the footage.” He held up his hand, Boy Scout style. “Abigail is my favorite person in the world. I wouldn’t invoke her name lightly.”
Moira smiled genuinely. “That’s uncharacteristically sweet.”
“I’m a sweet man.”
She laughed, the thought that he might be genuine beginning to resonate with her. “Wow. Um. I don’t really know what to say. This wasn’t how I thought this was going to go—at all. I’ve been up every night for two weeks, trying to plan for this moment. Trying to figure out what I would say. How I would bribe or persuade or threaten you. Now …I’m sort of at a loss.”
“You still owe me an explanation,” he pointed out. “Why don’t we start with that?”
“That’s sort of against the rules,” Moira told him, trying to buy another minute to figure out exactly what she was going to say. In her talks with Ronan over the past few weeks, he had only ever said that they would deal with the situation when and if it arose, which meant that he hadn’t given her clear instructions for how to handle these kinds of questions. She didn’t necessarily need his permission for anything she was about to say, but she would have liked to have his input. He was in charge of safely seeing the Dragon Clan through the next generation, and no matter what words came out of her mouth next, she was potentially making that a lot harder to do.
“What rules?” Grady asked. “The friend code? I don’t think you’re betraying your friend because it’s not like you’re just offering me this information. The way I found out was an accident…I assume.”
“Yeah, you could say that,” Moira agreed. “But it’s not just a friend code.” She took a deep breath. “See, it’s bigger than what you saw with Eamon. You saw him transition, which I guess is a pretty big deal in and of itself, but what’s behind that transition is several hundred years spent developing the Dragon Clan.” Looking at him out of the corner of her eye, she tried to gauge his reaction. She had never told another soul about the truth of her life before, and she suddenly realized that this feeling might be similar to what Kean had experienced when he had to tell Dhara about who he really was.
Of course, Dhara had been in love with him, and Grady—well, Grady was not in love with her and not guaranteed to react well at all, even if he had already survived the shock of
seeing Eamon’s transition unfold on the recording.
“The Dragon Clan,” Grady repeated slowly. “It looked like a big lizard to me.”
“Hey!” Forgetting the immensity of the situation, Moira took offense at his cavalier characterization. “We are not…lizards! I cannot believe you just said that. The screen was probably grainy, and who knew where the cameras were positioned. You might not have had a good angle to see how immense Eamon was, and granted, he wasn’t at his best. But we are not lizards, Grady. We’re dragons, and we’re damn well proud of it actually.”
Grady didn’t interrupt her rant, but when she was done, looking at him through narrowed eyes, he simply arched one brow. “We? As in…you too?”
She sighed, realizing that her mouth really did run away with her sometimes. “Yes, as in me too. Look, I don’t know how to explain this, okay? I’ve never had to do it before, and I wish I wasn’t having to do it now. I’ll do my best and you just listen. Then, if you have questions…I guess I’ll answer them.”
“All right,” Grady agreed, leaning back against the bench and folding his hands in his lap. “Explain the Dragon Clan to me.”
She started at the beginning, explaining how an Irish village, hundreds of years ago, had been cursed by a witch under the control of the then-British Empire as punishment for their rebellion. They had been turned into mute, lumbering beasts—dragons—and doomed, in theory, to wander the area, inspiring fear and living miserable lives until they ultimately died out. She told him how her ancestors had not been willing to accept that fate and had, through determination, perseverance, and ingenuity, found a way to communicate with themselves and others. They had found their own magic that allowed them to take control of the curse, master it, and create the origins of the Dragon Clan—composed of shapeshifters who could remain in human form as long as they wished, choosing when to transition into their dragon form. She told them about why the Dragon Clan had left Ireland, splitting up into different areas of the world, Boston being only one branch of the remaining shifters, and she told him that their mission was to help protect people against the forces of both the natural and the supernatural world, but that to do so they had to live in total secrecy.
There were moments that she was longwinded, getting lost in the details of her ancestors’ lives, and times when she jumped important pieces of information as she tried and failed to follow the story chronologically. Regardless, Grady listened without a word, soaking in all the information until she finally took a deep breath and sagged back against the bench, signaling that she was done with a gesture of her hand.
“That’s it?”
Moira looked at him in surprise. “You want more than that? Irish lore, English witches, and dragon saviors aren’t enough for you to digest on a Thursday afternoon by the Boston Harbor? Wow. Tough crowd.”
“I was just making sure that you were through,” Grady said. “I didn’t want any surprises later. And just so you know, if I hadn’t seen what I saw on that recording, there’s no way I would ever believe anything you just said. Even having seen it, I don’t know how to make it feel real. My worldview…just doesn’t incorporate anything like that.”
“But here we are,” Moira said, lifting a shoulder. “Now, because of a stupid mistake on my part, you have to know, and I have to live with you knowing.”
“What happened that night in the vault?” Grady asked, leaning forward again. “Obviously he didn’t mean to transition. I thought you said that was something you…all could control now.”
Moira shook her head, started to answer, then waited for a couple passing by their bench to move further away before speaking. “I don’t know what happened that night. We can control when we transition—almost always. But there have been times when some sort of other force at work triggers the curse in us beyond our control. It’s rare, and usually when we feel that happening, we can still hold back the transition. But for Eamon that night…he couldn’t. Not even close. And whatever happened to him left him weak and vulnerable, which is also new.”
“So does that mean…?”
“Yeah,” Moira said, looking at him sympathetically. “Whatever is happening in your vault…it’s not natural. It’s supernatural. And it might be stronger than us.”
Chapter Sixteen
Grady
Listening to Moira’s story about her past and her supernatural nature challenged Grady’s basic belief system that the world existed in the natural realm, that humans were at the pinnacle of the social structure, and that everything had a reasonable, rational explanation. It was difficult for him to hear her talk about things like witches and shapeshifting, even having seen Eamon transform with his own eyes. But it wasn’t impossible, because it was all rather removed. It didn’t affect him personally, other than the fact that his world was—however temporarily—interacting with her world. It was almost as though he could view the situation as a curiosity, viewed through a specific lens that he didn’t have to choose to apply to the rest of his life.
But then she said that what was affecting the contents of his vault was supernatural and everything changed. It became personal and real in a way that he hadn’t anticipated before, and it left Grady at a loss—something that hadn’t happened to him in many years.
“Uhh,” he said, fumbling for more words and coming up empty. “Uhh…hmm.”
Moira touched his shoulder gently. “Just got real, huh?”
He nodded, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat as he swallowed hard to try to clear the psychological block his vocal chords were experiencing. “Mmmhmm.”
“Take a minute,” she urged, shifting from a defensive position to a nurturing position. The look in her eyes held a great deal of compassion that he hadn’t seen from her before, and it helped to settle his nerves and his confused thoughts.
“What is it?” he finally asked her, leaning forward, his elbows on his knees, and his hands at the back of his head as he leaned over and stared at the sidewalk. “What kind of force is down there?”
“I don’t know,” she told him, rubbing his back lightly. “And I’m not putting one over on you. We’ve never experienced anything like that before, and we’ve been researching ever since to try to figure out what it is, given that it clearly has power over us. I don’t have any answers for you, Grady. I’m sorry.”
He looked up at her. “You mean you don’t have answers for me…yet.”
Moira looked at him warily, not responding.
“Yet,” he said again, straightening up. “You don’t have answers for me yet, Moira. Right?”
“Grady…given everything that’s happened and everything you know…” she shook her head. “I’m not sure that it’s a good idea for us to work together.”
“Are you kidding me?” Grady asked, standing up and drawing the attention of several passersby in the process. He didn’t let that stop him. “Who else is supposed to help me with this problem, Moira? The police? Do I call them and tell them that I have a supernatural force in my vault that’s more powerful than the other supernatural forces that I’m associated with, so I need their help? How is that going to go down exactly?” He knew that he was raising his voice and causing a scene, but the reality of the situation was descending on him and he felt totally out of control. It wasn’t a feeling he dealt with well, and he was making that abundantly clear at the moment. “You don’t have a choice in the matter, okay? You and your…others. You’re fixing this for me.”
Moira looked at him, that reserved expression on her face again. “Or what, Grady?”
Those three words knocked the wind out of him as he recognized her implication. He realized that he was standing, in a public place, shouting down at her, his voice too loud, his tone too aggressive, and, in all likelihood, his face too red. Given the power position they were in—he did have power over her now that he knew her secret, even if he hadn’t intended to—it didn’t look good and her quiet question reflected those feelings inside of her.
Grady forced himself to switch gears, sitting back down beside her and taking her hand, even when she started to pull it away. “Or nothing, Moira. I’m still not out to hurt you. Just please…help me. Because if you don’t, then I have nobody else and no idea what I’m up against. I’m not the kind of person who usually has to ask for something more than once or venture into the ‘please, please, please’ territory, but I’ll do both.” He pressed her fingers with his. “I’m up a creek without you.”
Sighing, Moira looked down at their joined hands for a moment, then nodded. “Fine. I’m not going to leave you stranded. But there are rules.”
“Name them.”
“Well, rule number one…you have to learn about discretion.” She pulled her hand away, looking back at him. “For instance, you can’t stand here on a public sidewalk and shout the word supernatural.” Her look became pointed, and Grady actually felt himself squirm a little.
“You’re right. I panicked.”
“Panicked or not, you can’t do it,” Moira said. “Rule number two…you deal with me and only me. Not any of my friends. I’m the one who got us all into this situation, so if there’s risk of consequence or exposure, then it’s just me. Not them. They’ll help me on my end, but you don’t have contact with them. Only me.”
That was hardly a stipulation that Grady minded, given that he still thought about Moira all the time. “Done.”
“Three,” she continued. “This is not personal.”
That one was harder to swallow. “Clarify.”
“I mean, you and me,” Moira said, that pointed look in her eye again that told him she was still thinking about those kisses they had shared too. “We’re working together. We’re not friends, and we’re definitely not…”
“Romantic.”
“Yeah.”
Celtic Dragons Page 33
