by Lola Kidd
He’d follow her. He knew it was a creepy thing to do, but his dragon wanted this girl, and it wasn’t like he was going to hurt her. He just needed to convince her that he wasn’t lying. That he was just a regular person looking to find Ms. Right.
Jasper knew he had a reputation for being a ladies’ man. Undeserved, but it came with the territory. He was disgustingly wealthy and extremely attractive. He’d even sought out the limelight when he was a naive teenager. Now, whenever he was pictured with a woman, there was speculation that they were dating. It didn’t matter how tenuous the link. The magazines had even linked him with Roger’s daughter Jessica.
Beautiful Leigh probably thought he was using the app to find a mate for the night. If he was too forceful with her now, it would only reinforce her poor opinion of him. Following her was his only option if he wanted to make it right.
Once he knew where the girl lived, he could arrange things so that he “ran into her” at some point. The more she saw him, the more she would like him—he hoped. It was risky, but it was the only option he had. He couldn’t let this one get away. His dragon wasn’t going to let it happen.
He shifted and took to the sky, searching for her from above the trees. Not the easiest task. He didn’t see any sign of movement below, but he couldn’t give up. The forest was only so big. Where could she be?
Frustrated, Jasper began circling around the edges of the forest. Finally, he spotted her emerging from the trees. Her blonde hair gleamed like a diamond in the sun.
She was wrong—this wasn’t a coincidence at all. This was fate. They were supposed to meet. How else would he have been able to find her again? It was like spotting a needle in a haystack.
He flew in a lazy circle, watching her walk for a mile.
Her destination made no sense, and Jasper began to doubt he had followed the right girl. She had gone to a house in the Wasteland. But the Wasteland was only for wayward shifters. Why would a human be living there?
He flew over the town for an hour, until the light started to fade. He was hoping she would leave the house for somewhere else, but she stayed put.
He knew that human women did come to the Wasteland in search of shifter men. There were organizations in the Wasteland that specialized in connecting human women with shifter men for a night of fun. Jasper hoped Leigh wasn’t one of these women, although it would explain why she had freaked out when she saw him.
Maybe she was the only using MateMe! as a mating app and didn’t want to get mixed up with a prominent shifter like him. She’d said she wasn’t interested in being with a shifter, but her smell had told him something different. She was more than a little intrigued by the idea of being with him. The lust had rolled off her and had practically hit him in the face.
Maybe she was only out for a good time. That was the most plausible explanation, but Jasper couldn’t accept it. He didn’t want to. She was too beautiful, and something about that didn’t sit right with him. She didn’t seem the type to frequent shifter prostitutes.
He would have to do some research. He knew her name and where she hung around. If he couldn’t find out something about her on his own, he would hire someone.
Once he’d flown back to his car, Jasper transformed and headed for home. It was a long drive back, and all he could think about was Leigh. He couldn’t wait to start working on this mystery. The entire drive home was torture. His dragon was riled up. There was no way he’d get a good night’s sleep until he saw this girl again.
When he got back to the family mansion, he wanted to get to work on finding out more about Leigh, but his family had other plans. His mother was on him as soon as he closed the front door.
“Where have you been?” she asked.
“I was at Roger’s.” He didn’t want to let her in on his mate hunt just yet, not until he was absolutely sure Leigh wasn’t using MateMe! for unsavory meetings. Also, he wanted to be the one to find her. If he let his mom know that he was searching for a potential mate, she would hire a whole team of private investigators to find the woman.
Leigh was his to find and his to treasure. He didn’t want to share that with anyone else.
“We’ve been waiting here for you forever,” she told him.
He looked behind her to see his younger brothers in the foyer. Max and Sean waved.
“Hello, brother.” Sean came over to him and hugged him tight, picking him up off the floor. Jasper was the oldest brother, but Sean was the biggest in human form.
“What are you doing here?” Jasper asked. It had been ages since he’d seen his brothers. They both had found mates and spent most of their time with their women.
It had been much easier living in his parents’ home when he’d had Sean and Max here with him. Without them, his mother focused all her energies on Jasper. She was desperate to find mates for her last single son.
Jasper would have moved out long ago, but it was safer to live in a compound with his parents. They were in the process of building homes for each of the boys on site. It was Jasper’s own fault he didn’t have his own place yet.
He’d been kind, letting his brothers have their homes built first, but he hadn’t anticipated that it would take so long to have them all built. And had he known that his brothers would both fly the coop and spend all their free time vacationing with their mates, he would have reconsidered.
“We thought we’d come in for the wedding,” Max said. “You have any room for us?”
“Of course you’re both invited. And I plus-one’ed both of you, so your ladies are welcome too.” Jasper patted his brother on the back. “I love to see you guys. You’re going to have a great time.”
“Hey, have you been using that app you told us about?” Sean asked.
Jasper could tell from the look on his face that the app talk was all thanks to their mother. She had probably been talking their ears off about “poor, lonely” Jasper since they’d gotten home.
“I have,” Jasper said. “The app is really fun, but I haven’t had a lot of luck.”
“I heard it can take a while to find matches,” Sean said.
“I’m hoping it’ll pick up soon. I haven’t been looking at it much, since I’m so busy with the wedding.”
“Have you tried talking to customer service?” their mother asked. “I’m sure we can get someone to help you directly.”
Jasper knew what she was referring to. He knew not only the creators of the app, but also the people who had invested in it. One of their old family friends, a bear shifter who owned a security company, had invested in the company from the get-go. He’d been hoping to find his son a mate.
Jasper shook his head. “I haven’t talked to customer service. But it’s fine, Mom. I’m sure I’ll find a mate soon.”
Very soon, he thought. If he could get his research started, he might have a mate of his own and he could start planning his own wedding.
Five
Leigh didn’t stop running until she was safe at home. Her aunts and cousin were gone by the time she got home. Her mother complained about Auntie Melly for the rest of the night. Leigh barely heard a word, but nodded along.
The next morning, she lay in bed replaying the previous afternoon in her mind. She was so stupid. Her curiosity might have gotten her into deep trouble. Dragons obsessed over the smallest things. She hoped the shifter didn’t have its heart set on her.
Jasper was an incredibly good-looking man and had a great reputation. He dated around, but none of his exes ever had anything bad to say about him. Honestly, if he wasn’t a shifter, Leigh would have been flattered he was into her. But there was no future for her with a shifter. Besides the fact that she wanted to try to integrate with the human world, she couldn’t imagine marrying someone who was going to live so much longer than herself.
Shifters had long life spans and never aged. While she would grow old, Jasper would continue looking the same for the next few hundred years. In fact, he might live forever. Dragon shifters in particular wer
e rumored to be immortal.
She hopped on the internet to look up Jasper’s age. He was only in his thirties, but his parents were centuries old. Leigh’s own parents were almost a hundred, but she didn’t often think of it. She might have even crossed paths with a centuries-old shifter in the Wasteland and never known.
She quickly looked them up, and of course, the elder Collinses still looked impossibly young and beautiful. They didn’t look much older than Jasper and his brothers.
Her mother came into the room while Leigh was looking at pictures of Jasper’s parents.
“I need you to go to your aunt’s shop.”
“What, now?” She quickly exited out of the page she was on and hoped her mother hadn’t seen what she was looking at.
She knew she was flushed and out of breath. She didn’t want her mother to guess that something was going on. Once her mother caught a whiff of something, she wouldn’t let up until Leigh had told her everything—and this was something that had to stay a secret. If her mom knew about the Collins match, she would be over the moon. Not only was he a shifter, he was one of the richest people in the country and a dragon to boot. She’d be planning the wedding before Leigh could explain that she wasn’t interested.
“She took my wallet by accident. Or on purpose. I never know with that woman.”
“Okay, I’ll go get it.”
Leigh grabbed the keys and was out the door before her mom said anything else. Since she’d said nothing about her ditching lunch the day before, Leigh didn’t want to do anything to annoy her mother or start an argument. It was a beautiful day for a drive, even if the destination would annoy her.
Her Aunt Melly’s shop was one of her least favorite places to go. It was always noisy and very disorganized. From the outside, the office looked like the other storefronts. It had a pretty design on the front door, and the part of it that customers saw was very nice. There was a desk near the entrance and then three tables where they did tastings and talked with customers.
It was the back end that was the problem. Once you crossed the threshold to the “employees only” area, it was as if a bomb had gone off. While the kitchen where food was prepared was always clean, the back office was a complete mess. There were papers everywhere and no rhyme or reason to where anything was placed. Leigh had no idea how they ever found anything.
Her aunt’s two assistants were arguing over something when she went inside.
“Have you seen my aunt?” Leigh asked.
“Who?” the assistants said together. They both looked at her as if she were stupid.
Leigh wasn’t in the mood for this right now. They always acted like they had no idea who she was or what she was talking about. “Are you kidding me? I’m looking for my aunt.”
“I think she’s in back,” one of the assistants said.
“She must be back there. If she isn’t, then we have no idea where she is,” said the other.
With that, they went back to bickering. Typical, Leigh thought. She had no idea how her aunt worked with these morons. It would have driven Leigh batty after five minutes.
She went in back and sure enough, found her aunt at her desk.
“Hi, Auntie Melly. Mom sent me here for her wallet.”
“Hi, dear. I think it’s somewhere in my purse.” Her aunt got up to check her bag. After a minute of rustling, she found what she’d been looking for and held it up triumphantly. “How did I take this with me? Thank God she sent you, Leigh. I couldn’t take much more of your mother today.”
Leigh didn’t take the bait. She wasn’t going to discuss her mother with her aunt. After all these years, she knew better than to let her aunt start on a rant. If she gave any indication of agreeing, Melly would be off on a tirade.
“What are you doing here so late, Auntie Melly?”
“Trying to figure out how I’ll have enough hours in a day to do what I need to for this wedding.” She showed Leigh her calendar. It was filled with lines of colored Post-it notes and arrows everywhere.
“This is a mess!” Leigh felt sick just looking at it. She didn’t keep a diary herself anymore, but when she had, it had been in perfect order. Now that she wasn’t in school, she didn’t have enough things to keep track of to need a diary.
“I know,” Auntie Melly said mournfully. “You can’t trust those two idiots out there to do anything this important. But I can’t do it all myself. I’m not sure what I’m going to do. There isn’t time to hire anyone else, but I could really use two or three more assistants. I know I’m only making the desserts and appetizers, but this is a big deal for me.”
“I could help you.” The words were out of Leigh’s mouth before she knew what she was saying.
“It would be a lot of work,” Melly cautioned. “We’re very close to the wedding, and you’d be doing most of the communication with the client while I take care of the baking.”
“You need someone who knows what they’re doing, and that’s me.”
Auntie Melly looked doubtful. “I could really use you, but are you sure this is okay? I don’t think your mother will be very happy with this.”
“She doesn’t like me working in the Wasteland. She has no problem with me coming to the human world.”
That was a lie. She was sure her mother would have a huge problem with this. She didn’t want Leigh working anywhere. It was a miracle she ever let her leave the house without a bodyguard. Her mother thought danger was lurking around every corner. But with luck, she wouldn’t say anything once Leigh had accepted the job.
If she forbade Leigh from helping, it would look like she was trying to sabotage her sister when she desperately needed the help.
Auntie Melly still looked doubtful, but she nodded slowly. “If you’re sure, then you’re hired. I have a meeting today to finalize all the plans. Can you come with me?”
Leigh nodded. “I can. Just let me text my mom to let her know we’re going.”
“Good. I’m going to tell my assistants that they’ll be manning the shop for the rest of the day.”
Leigh texted her mother that she was going somewhere with her auntie and would be back soon. But she didn’t say why. She’d deal with that mess later.
“When are we going?” Leigh asked when her aunt came back into the room.
“We should leave right now, if we’re going to get there on time.”
She and her aunt discussed the job as they drove. Auntie Melly would be providing the appetizers and desserts for the wedding and the rehearsal dinner. It was very short notice, but there was no way she was going to turn this job down. She had been one of the final choices for caterer before they’d gone with one of her competitors.
Hearing how excited and proud her aunt was, Leigh was glad she had decided to help.
As they got closer, Leigh finally thought to ask, “Who are we meeting?”
“Jasper Collins is working as the event coordinator.” Her aunt turned to wink at Leigh. “That dragon shifter sure is a hottie, isn’t he?”
Leigh’s mouth dropped open. He sure was. A hottie she couldn’t seem to get away from!
Six
“The caterer and her assistant are here, sir.” The butler came in, interrupting Jasper.
“Thank you. I’ll see them in my office.” He had lost track of the time. He had been researching Leigh with no luck. It looked like he was going to have to hire a PI. There was no information about the girl anywhere on the internet. No social media profiles, no mentions on websites, nothing. He was starting to think she might have changed her name and was currently using an alias.
Jasper pulled on a blazer and waited in his office for the butler to bring in the caterer and her annoying assistant. Melly was a dream to work with. She was no-fuss and got down to business the moment she was hired. Meetings with her were always productive, and when they parted he felt great about the exchange. He could count on her to get the job down.
Her assistants on the other hand, were a nightmare. They seemed to sl
ow her down more than help ease her burden. He had no idea why she kept them on. When he heard she was bringing one along, he’d almost canceled the meeting. But it was too late for that. The dessert menu was supposed to be nailed down weeks ago, so they couldn’t afford to waste any time.
He already felt bad enough for making her drive all this way for a private meeting. If he’d been able to meet with her the day before, he would have. He was really looking forward to the day he wouldn’t have to overbook his schedule to try to fit everything in.
“Wonderful to see you again, sir,” Melly said as she entered his office.
Jasper’s dragon could barely contain himself when it saw the woman walking in behind her.
He extended his hand to Melly in greeting. “I’ve told you a million times, please call me Jasper. And who is this lovely lady?”
“This is my niece, Leigh,” Melly said proudly. “She’s going to be my new assistant for this project.”
Leigh moved forward a few steps and bowed her head. Her lips were pressed together in a grim line. Jasper could tell from her scent that she wasn’t as excited to see him this time.
He was disappointed, but not deterred. Anger was rolling off her in waves, but beneath that, he could make out the slightest hint of the lust he’d smelled before. She still desired him. He had no idea what he’d done to deserve this stroke of luck, but he was going to be sure to make a sizable donation to some charity that night. He needed to keep the karma gods on his side. Obviously, a higher power had to be smiling down on him this week.
Just when he was ready to throw in the towel, here was the girl of his dreams. He could be sure of a few things. Even if his research had turned up nothing, she had to be a respectable woman. She was Melly’s niece, after all, and his people had done extensive research before they’d hired Melly’s small catering firm.
One of her brothers-in-law was the mayor of a town in the Wasteland, but he didn’t appear to be part of any of the seedier dealings in Ganjis. In fact, he frequently spoke in favor of the legislation to legitimize the towns. Most likely, Leigh was his human daughter. Their research hadn’t turned that up somehow, but it wouldn’t surprise him to learn that the mayor kept his human daughter a secret. She could be in danger and had little way to protect herself as a human among shifters.
