Naked Dragon

by Annette Blair

  “I do not understand you,” Bastian said. “I walked your roofline today. You have another house attached to this one. So many rooms going to waste.”

  McKenna tipped back her head to finish her wine, refilled her glass, and drank that, too. Being reminded of the family curse threw her. Chilled her. Worried her.

  “McKenna?”

  “The door to that wing hasn’t been opened in years,” she admitted. “That house has a dark past. It’s haunted, if you must know. When I get enough money, I’m going to have it torn down.”

  “You would rather tear it down than let your friends live there?”

  TWENTY-NINE

  McKenna threw a sofa pillow at him. “Bastian Dragonelli, you can be an obnoxious jerk, you know that?”

  He removed the pillow from Jaunty’s clutches, hefted it, and threw it above her head to the chair behind her. “I do know, yes. My brothers often told me so.”

  “I care too much about my friends to let them live in—”

  “Esther and Caleb’s house?” he said, to her surprise. “What exactly is the nature of this curse?” he asked.

  Good question. McKenna stood, feeling as betrayed by Bastian’s interrogation as the family had felt betrayed by Esther and Caleb’s defection. “I was never told why the family felt it was cursed,” she admitted—a step toward her own disbelief, she realized as she fidgeted with her dress buttons. “The truth is, when your grandmother warns you at an early age to stay out of a dangerous part of the house, you by damn stay out.”

  “So,” Bastian said, “the whole thing might have been a misunderstanding that got embellished or made more of over time?”

  “I suppose.”

  “Did anyone explain what would happen if you entered Esther and Caleb’s house? An instant case of flesh-eating warts, perhaps, or death by noxious fumes? I know—blindness due to a tendency toward gaudy colors, hunting prints, tinware, or ruffles on even the sinks?”

  McKenna nearly laughed. She remembered such a picture from somewhere. “I don’t know, okay? I just don’t know.” Rather than feeling foolish, though, hope was beginning to creep in. “Nobody ever tried to prove or disprove the dreadful stories about the addition, but every generation, I can tell you, did try to find the family treasure. How many places can a casket of gold coins hide, I ask you?”

  “Where did the coins supposedly come from?” Bastian asked.

  “They were brought from Scotland by Ciarra’s father, the first McKenna to set foot on Salem shores. “Why ask, anyway? I thought you knew everything.”

  “I know what I have read so far about your family.”

  “How the hell fast can you read? You’re smarter today than you were yesterday, and you were smarter yesterday than the day before that, and so on. Your stack of books in my library keeps changing. Read the dictionary tonight, indeed. And when you’re done, I suppose you’ll read more of my family history? What do you think you know about us?”

  “I know that the McKenna clan came here from Scotland. I know about Ciarra. You look like her, by the way.”

  “Did you find a picture of her? Because I never saw one.”

  Bastian looked away and became transfixed by a sketch on the wall; then he came back to himself and looked her in the eye. “I will give you her picture.”

  “Thank you.” Sometimes McKenna didn’t know what to make of him.

  “You were given the clan name as a first name,” he continued, “because you are the last, shall we say, to inherit through a McKenna daughter. Ciarra bore an illegitimate son, and after him, sons inherited from their fathers, until your mother inherited from your grandmother, and you inherited from your mother.”

  “Rub it in, why don’t you?”

  Suddenly beside her, Bastian ran a finger down her cheek. “What do you wish me to rub?”

  “You certainly know how to cheer a girl up,” she said, loving his attention and his sweet juniper and pomegranate musk, enhanced by the whiff of cherry wine that brought a wild but treasured memory.

  “I know you are frightened, McKenna. Who would not be? Four centuries of stewardship rests on your shoulders.” He kissed a shoulder, as if to lighten her burden, and by golly, it was working. “No wonder you are cranky,” he whispered.

  She pulled away. “Gee, thanks.”

  “I like your fight. That is what drew me to you from the first day, but you bear a heavy burden, McKenna Greylock, and you are justifiably afraid to fail your clan. I understand how that feels.”

  He touched her hand, which she liked, despite his mixed compliments, and she appreciated sharing her burdens with someone who tried, at least, to empathize. She liked it too much, in view of what she’d learned from Lizzie about Bastian, except that this nuzzling business—shiver—didn’t fit Lizzie’s “gay” theory.

  McKenna realized that what she knew about men would fit in Whitney’s milk thimble. Lizzie must be right. With Bastian, she wouldn’t get her feelings trampled. He wouldn’t leave her for some skinny—Holy mother of pearl, that was why his bubbleheaded followers didn’t interest him. Gay. Gay. Gay.

  She tried not to let her tears fall but they did anyway. “You can’t know how this feels. You can’t possibly know.” She wasn’t talking only about holding on to a centuries-old legacy, but about finding a man to share the burden, who saw the real her, who wouldn’t toss her away for a stick insect with fake boobs. But a man who liked women. She sure wished Bastian liked women.

  He chuckled as if to deny her concern. “I do know of such burdens, but I will save that for a day when we know each other better,” he said cryptically, and she didn’t have it in her to argue. “I read about the clan treasure, too. We should find it.”

  She cheered inwardly at knowing, without a doubt, something he didn’t. “If that’s why you took the job, go home. The treasure doesn’t exist. What now?”

  He ran a finger up her arm. “Invite Steve, Lizzie, and the children to live in Caleb and Esther’s house, and let me look into what happened when Steve fell off that roof. I have a talent for roof walking . . . when it is not hailing. I will walk the roof Steve fell from to see if I can discover how it happened.”

  “Both improbable ideas, dragon boy.”

  Bastian shot to his feet and left her without a shoulder to lean on, so she fell over. “Sheesh. Give a girl some warning.”

  “You called me dragon boy! Why?” Shock transformed his features.

  At a disadvantage lying at his feet, McKenna picked herself up and stood nose to chest with him. “I called you dragon boy because you painted dragons in every room, which is also why I named my bed-and-breakfast the Dragon’s Lair. Why so touchy?”

  “I apologize.” Bastian stooped down beside her and lifted a lock of her hair from her shoulder. “I misunderstood.”

  “Did you think I was calling you names?”

  He stroked her face with her own hair. “Why would you ask me that?”

  “No need to be embarrassed,” she said, trembling inwardly. “I understand. A teen doesn’t get called chunky monkey without earning a little scar tissue. I meant no insult.”

  “None taken.”

  “Good,” she said, mesmerized by the way he tested the texture of her hair against his own cheek, then his lips. She reared back at her reaction to it. “I was thinking.”

  “Yes?” he asked, looking ready for anything.

  “We may be able to solve Steve and Lizzie’s housing problem and my family superstitions in one spell.”

  “How so?” He might be curious, she thought, but not enough to stop toying with her hair.

  She felt his every touch radiate through her, but she ignored it. “Vivica’s a witch, you know? She could do a cleansing ritual in the addition to remove the negative energy that you believe resides there.”

  “Vivica is a powerful witch,” he said.

  “Maybe you could heal Esther and Caleb’s house.”

  “Now you are mocking me.”

  She could drown h
appy in the violet pools of his eyes. “A little bit,” she admitted.

  “The addition needs less work than this part of the house,” he said. “Though it is filled with ruffles and hunting prints.”

  She tried to tug her hair from his hand. “You went inside?”

  He pulled her back toward him by tugging on that same handful of hair. “I did. And nothing important fell off. Imagine.”

  “Who is mocking who?”

  He tilted his head. “Now we are even, except that I am still the grunt and you are still the boss.”

  “Why do I think that we are so not even, mystery man?”

  His smile was enigmatic. No surprise there. McKenna bit her lip to keep from making an idiot of herself by kissing him. “I guess Caleb and Esther’s house is in good shape because it hasn’t been used. You think you have all the answers, don’t you? I should make you live there.”

  “I would, gladly. I like Esther and Caleb.”

  “Oh, so you talk to ghosts, too?” McKenna shook her head.

  Bastian prodded her bottom lip from her teeth, and she about melted into a puddle of need.

  “You are right,” he whispered. “The addition is haunted, but so are your house and farm.”

  Before she could protest, he kissed her, and she lost her knees, so he lifted her in his arms and stood to carry her through the house. She floated and closed her eyes to keep the room from spinning, and realized she’d had enough wine to bypass horny and go straight to “sleep like the dead.”

  “Let me take your clothes off,” Bastian said.

  THIRTY

  McKenna woke naked and alone.

  She fell back against her pillows, disappointed. This time, if Bastian were sleeping beside her, she wouldn’t try to escape into her bathroom. She’d wake him up, big-time. But he was gay, or so Lizzie thought.

  McKenna never would have thought so last night. She curled on her side. Why did he have to be such a stud, such a turn-on, such a damned . . . know-it-all? She’d suspected all her life that her ancestors weren’t as far away as most, but she didn’t like having it confirmed. How did Bastian know? How could he be so sure? She huffed. Why believe him?

  The knock at her door made her yelp and clutch the covers to her breasts.

  “McKenna?” The focus of her thoughts called from the hall. “Are you ready to go and buy more paint?”

  “What time is it?”

  “Nine.”

  “Are you kidding me?” She jumped from her bed. “Why did you let me sleep so long?”

  “You were sick last night.”

  She slapped her forehead and winced at the horrific pain that shot through it. Drunk sick. Great, he’d seen her barfing and held her hair, no matter how green his face got. Right now, she wished she could join her ancestors. Did people die of mortification? “I’ll meet you at the pickup—”

  “What do you want me to pick up?”

  “Nothing. Just meet me at my truck in twenty minutes. Work on the roof until I’m ready.”

  “Will do.”

  She took a quick shower and got dressed. With him in mind—okay, with seducing him in mind—she wore a long flowered skirt that buttoned up the front, but she left the bottom buttons open, while the matching blouse had a nice V-neck. Good for cleavage and to accent her good points.

  Beneath the skirt, she slipped on a pair of Bermuda shorts. There was a downside to wearing skirts, especially working a farm, but she found that wearing shorts beneath solved the problem. And sometimes, if she was alone, she hung the skirt on a peg and kept working.

  When she looked out at the truck, Bastian wasn’t near it, so she wandered in the direction of Caleb and Esther’s place, the legendary cursed addition, which these days would be called a mother-in-law apartment.

  As she approached the door, she heard the same wail of warning she’d always heard, so she backed up and walked the area again, in the opposite direction. When she heard the wail, she bore down on the same floorboard again. Yep, the warning was a loose old floorboard.

  She continued on to the attached house and closed her hand around the knob. As she stood there—waiting for lightning to strike, she supposed—she looked out the window beside her. And there, she saw something amazing.

  Bastian jumped from her roof and landed on his feet. He raised an arm in victory and gave one of his body-shivering war cries.

  As if he heard her jaw drop, and her libido shift into overdrive, he turned and stared straight at her.

  She read his lips, and he hadn’t said, “Duck.” He learned new words by the minute, that man, and not all from her.

  She ran through the house and found him on the porch, hands in his pockets like a kid expecting a spanking, though how he got there before her, she couldn’t imagine. As for the spanking? Well, another time, maybe.

  He looked better in his own clothes. Black jeans. Black long-sleeved Ts. Masculine. Delicious. Muscular.

  “So?” she asked, ignoring his sexual attraction and distraction.

  “Special Ops,” he said. “I have a lot of weird skills.”

  “I think you’re just plain weird all around and a big crock of horse hockey.”

  He nodded, hands still in his pockets. “That would be correct.”

  “Let’s go buy paint,” she said, marching toward her truck but turning back to him. “I’m warning you, buster. I’m going to figure you out yet.”

  In the truck, neither of them spoke about anything more important than the weather—though that had been weird, too—as they drove from hardware store to department store buying paint in elaborate colors that nobody else wanted, for the weird artist who would make something magick out of it.

  Yes, she had fallen in love with the colorful world he created on the bedroom walls and hallways of her home. Go figure.

  The Pied Piper artist had a line of women behind him in every store, the poor deluded things. McKenna liked that he belonged to her, more or less, so she toyed with his entourage by taking his arm and leaning into him. She liked that he played along and put his arm around her waist to pull her closer.

  “This is aubergine,” she said later, checking a can on the markdown table. “No wonder it’s on sale.”

  “It’s almost as purple as Iverus.”

  “Is Iverus another dragon?”

  “Yes, he has the biggest wingspan of any dragon. I can use this aubergine.”

  “Good, they’re practically giving it away. I need bargains.”

  “What about these cans of paint over here?”

  “That’s for the outside of the house, not the inside walls. I have to get all the same color for the outside.”

  “Why? You have so many different sections and porches and trim that would not need to be the same color, but a complementary color.”

  “The kind of trim my house has is called either wedding cake or gingerbread, I believe.”

  “I found the painted ladies on the Internet,” Bastian said. “It is a row of houses in San Francisco, not actual ladies with face paint as I expected.”

  McKenna bit her lip so she wouldn’t insult him by laughing at his forlorn expression. “Your point?”

  “Many have different colors all on one house. We could study them. I found others painted that way. They have what you call charm, those houses.”

  “A colorful dragon’s lair. That would fit the magick theme you’ve set up. Let me think about it. I’ve been holding off buying house paint because of the premium price, and because I need so much. We’d still have to paint the basic structure the same color, though, right?”

  “Steve could measure and see how much we need for the different sections,” Bastian suggested. “Each side could be a shade darker or lighter. Each porch could have its own personality color but they would match overall. Structure changes could be different, like gables, curly designs, peaks—”

  “You’ve been sucking up Victorian house info on the Internet, haven’t you?”

  “Color speaks to me.
Victorian houses fascinate me, probably more than real ladies would have.”

  Rats, there was her proof. Gay. A decorator at heart. And of course, sensitive and caring. McKenna sighed. “Bargain house paint, hey?”

  “How poor are you?”

  “Pathetically so. Why?”

  “I was worried that you would not be able to feed Lizzie and her family.”

  “Not a problem. I raise stock and grow vegetables. We lived comfortably enough until Gran got sick. Right now, it’s the cost of renovations and starting a new business that’s killing me, though I have a little of my mother’s life insurance money left.”

  “I should think your property would have been paid for a long time ago.”

  “I will not take that as criticism, though that’s how it sounds. My mother had no choice but to mortgage the farm to pay Gran’s hospital bills. Gran didn’t have medical insurance. Neither did my mom. Neither do I, actually. Life can be hard.”

  Bastian caught her opposite shoulder and pulled her against him. “You are doing great.”

  She teared up and wallowed in the moment, then she got a quick grip. “I sense that you’ve known struggle.”

  “I am the king of struggle. We will get through this,” he said. “You are not alone.”

  How wrong was he? The better she knew him, the more she liked him, the more alone she felt.

  In the Home Supply Warehouse, McKenna stopped short and tugged on Bastian’s T-shirt. “That’s him, by the registers.”

  “Who?”

  “Elliott Huntley. The developer trying to steal my land.”

  “The man with the green-striped shirt and tan pants?”

  “Yes. Oh, crap, he sees me. Look at that apple-pie smile, as if I’m his best friend.” McKenna ditched Bastian and turned down the first aisle she came to.

  To her distress, Huntley followed her. “McKenna. Wait.”

  She fisted her hands and turned to wait for him.

  “Sixty days until foreclosure, my friend,” he said. “My offer now stands at half a million dollars.”

  “You can take that offer and shove—”

  Huntley held up a hand to stop her, chuckled, and walked away. “Think about it,” he called, though he kept walking.